Rick Green
Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David and Tim Barton, and we appreciate you joining us. We're at the Intersection of Faith and Culture because it's the place where we have our faith influence. The culture and every topic we talk about is from that biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, because you need those foundational truths and you need those guideposts, if you will, to have a good culture and a good society, and so we're thankful that you're here with us to be a part of that. You know, yesterday I was talking at the beginning of the program about the impact that the Bartons have had on this debate, on this issue, on the culture of America, and I was thinking to last week, when Ken Ivory closed out his interview saying one person in this system can make a difference.
I think we've seen that with David Barton, we've seen it with Glenn Beck, we've seen it with Donald Trump, we've seen it with people that are willing to step forward, and you don't have to be a president or a radio host or start a big ministry. You just got to stand up for truth wherever you are. You got to rebuild the wall where you are, so you can be that person that makes a difference in your town, in your community or maybe even your whole state, but, most importantly, in your home, right there with your kids and grandkids, teaching them truth, so that the most important thing you'll ever do is make sure that your family is a good small political unit. If you will, if you really want to impact America, impact your family in a positive way, it's not near as important what's happening in the Statehouse or the White House as what's happening in your house. It's vitally important for us to recognize that we can complain about Washington DC, complain about our state legislatures all day long. Let's make sure we're doing our part and I'm preaching to myself here, listen, I need to do more in my local community. I need to do more with my family, and every single one of us can do more, and now is the time to do that. Lives, fortune, sacred honor and now is the time to step up and give more of our time that's our life more of our money to good causes, our fortune and then our reputation, our sacred honor.
Our willingness to speak truth and let the chips fall where they may. All right, guys. Justin Haskins will be back with us. Today. We're going to be talking a little bit more about how even the UCC is being used, which is the uniform commercial code that most states adopt, and it's usually kind of mundane contract language kind of stuff. But I think today's interview is going to be a reminder that the left man, they have left no stone unturned, like they have gone into every area of the culture and they've frankly been effective because they've been tireless at trying to change laws and trying to change mindsets, trying to change attitudes in every single area and we're just going to have to get, I think, that aggressive and that pervasive, and our people are going into every single area to fight back as well.
David Barton
You know, what's really striking about what's happening here is they're approaching us through what we consider to be innocuous kind of means. If I can go back to previous days, I built houses for a long time, and so in building houses you deal with a building code, and the building code says here's what you do with the electric boxes, here's how you ground them, here's how many you can have in a room, here's how far they have to be apart and plumbing here's what you have to do with plumbing. It's all about making sure things are good and safe and operate well, and that's been the Uniform Law Commission for about a hundred years. They've just tried to make things work well and work smooth, make sure things are safe, make sure citizens get a good deal out of what goes on, and that's the way they've been, and because of that nobody thinks about them anymore. Nobody thinks about them as being something other than safe. But now we're finding in the last few years they've really gotten into the World Economic Forum kind of thing, if we're going to take everything over and tell you what you need, because we know better than you how to live and so we're going to re-engineer society, and so what you've got is 7,500 state legislators that are used to hearing the Uniform Law Commission come in with ideas and they say, ok, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, that's good, let's pass it. And so they're not used to really having a high level of scrutiny to these guys any more than you would to building inspectors or other things. You think this is for the public good.
What we're finding out now is these guys have, in the last several years, really started to re-engineer the laws by which all 50 states operate. This is the way states connect with one another and they're opening the door for the federal government to come in and take over states economically, to take over states medically, to take over states with all sorts of aspects that we have been thinking about. Now. We've been seeing in recent years I mean, like with COVID, nobody liked what Newsom and what Pritchard, all these guys did with COVID when they became the tyrants in their states and told you what you had to do and who could be open, who couldn't.
But now we're finding the Uniform Law Commission thought that that was a really good model and every state needs to go even further than Newsom and further than Prister and these guys, and so we're just starting to see states awaken now and look, we've got a lot of legislators in our network. We're just starting to see states awaken now and look, we've got a lot of legislators in our network. We've got a lot of legislators that listen to this program and we've got a lot of citizens who are concerned about their states, and this is something that everybody needs to know about, because this is another way the camel's trying to get its nose under the tent and we need to slap that nose back pretty quick and not let them get grounded on what they're trying to do with this program.
Tim Barton
Rick, you mentioned, Justin Haskins is going to be with us. For those that don't know, Justin Haskins is one of the co-authors, really the co-author with Glenn Beck on his last couple of books, the one he talked about, the Great Reset, and got into ESG. And Justin has been this top researcher, a really unique – one of the only ones to really dive deep and actually I might need to caveat that he's probably not the only one, but he's the most noted one. He's the one that has broken so many of these stories, helping highlight what you know, Rick, as you mentioned, dad, as you mentioned some of these codes and you think this is no big deal, this innocuous thing, nobody really cares about it. And he has shown how nefarious some of the activity actually is surrounding it where people just haven't paid attention. And because of that, there are people on the left that have been very strategic and they have found ways that they can get involved and they can work to bring about change kind of infiltrate areas, bring about change in ways that a lot of people aren't suspecting, they're not ready for. Justin is one of the top experts on these issues because he's the one that's done more research than anybody else. We've actually helped introduce him to several state legislatures and legislative bodies and he actually came and spoke I think spoken a couple times for us at our pro-family legislative conference and at this point I know he's now been an expert in several states talking about a lot of what's been going on, and it really is, Rick, again going back to what you mentioned, it's reflective that when good people do nothing, it allows the opportunity for people to promote and do evil things, and especially when we're not paying attention or we have the best intentions or we're lazy, whatever the case might be, there's a lot of areas now where we can point to and identify that there's some major problems that we now are going to have to deal with, and really they become major problems because people haven't paid attention to it for a long time. Justin Haskins is the most brilliant person on these issues, so I I'm excited to hear what he has to say. Sometimes I'm a little hesitant and nervous because he says stuff and you go oh my goodness, there's so much there. It's a major problem, but just like going to the doctor, you want to know the truth. What are we dealing with? We can't ultimately solve the problem that needs to be solved if we don't know what we're really dealing with, and Justin is a guy that can definitely help us get to the bottom of what these issues are
Rick Green
All right folks, quick break, We'll be right back.
Justin Haskins, our guest today on the WallBuilders Show.
Tim Barton
Hey guys, it's Tim Barton and I want to let you know about an opportunity coming up for pastors and ministry leaders. We are doing our annual pastors briefing in Washington DC and we do this every year. We do one in the spring, we do one in the fall. This spring it's April 16th and 17th. This fall it is September 10th and 11th. This is one of the most significant things we do to encourage and challenge pastors in this culture.
We live in. It's in Washington and this is one of the most significant things we do to encourage and challenge pastors in this culture. We live in it's in Washington DC and Tuesday night we do an after hours tour of the US Capitol where we introduce pastors and ministry leaders to the history of the nation. The following day we have congressmen come and they give a briefing on what they're doing and how God is challenging and motivating and using them and, frankly, most pastors, most ministry leaders, they don't know the rich spiritual heritage of the nation or what God is still doing moving in the hearts and lives of leaders in this nation. I would encourage you if you're a pastor, ministry leader, you need to come to this. It's one of the best things we do at WallBuilders. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and look for the pastor's briefing.
Rick Green
Welcome back to Wall Builders. Thanks for staying with us. Great to have Justin Haskins back with us talking about the UCC and man uniform tyranny. I think Justin is what I'm going to rename it. Anyway, Justin's over at the. He's director of the Socialism Research Center at the Heartland Institute. Hey, man, thanks for coming back on.
Justin Haskins
Yeah, no, it's great to be with you again.
Rick Green
Well, thanks for warning people about this. And uh, just doesn't seem to be getting better, it seems to be getting worse
Justin Haskins
yeah, It's a total disaster. Most people have never heard of this organization, the uniform law commission. They sound extremely boring, but they are one of the most important activists, really an activist group, one of the most important activist groups in America right now today. Most people don't realize how influential they are, but in state houses across the country and state legislatures, everyone knows who the Uniform Law Commission is. They actually receive most of their funding from state appropriations, which means taxpayers are actually paying this organization.
And the way they've built this reputation is they're so-called legal experts who provide model legislation to states all across the country to try to get them to. They're supposed to be working mainly on commercial law, so they're trying to get all the states across the country to have the same commercial laws to try to improve economic efficiency across state lines, which is a good thing, and they've done a lot of really good things in that area. But in recent years they started to become increasingly more radical, and one of the ways that they've done that is with something called the Public Health Emergency Authority Act. This is one of their new model pieces of legislation they're trying to push all across the country. Essentially, what it would do is give governors almost unlimited power in the event of a future public health emergency which effectively can be determined by the governor himself and renewed almost endlessly by the governor.
Rick Green
The nightmare I mean that was the nightmare in COVID that the governor started acting like they had that authority and actual legislatures and the people, at least in some areas, pushed back a little bit, not as much as I was hoping, but the opposite of what the UCC is trying to do. We tried to curb the power and you're saying the UCC is going to give them more power.
Justin Haskins
Yeah, this would be way worse than what we saw during COVID, as hard as that is to believe. This would give the governor, if it were passed and again they're pushing this in all 50 states. They've proposed this to be a model bill in every state in America. What essentially it would do is give governors the ability to regulate any gathering of people in the state, the use of any building in the state, the ability to surveil people related to the emergency, with no limits as far as I can tell. It would give them the ability to kill any animals or plants in the state related to the emergency at will whenever they want to effectively move people to do almost anything you could possibly imagine to unilaterally get rid of existing laws, to take over local law enforcement the list goes on and on and on. It is absolutely terrifying, and this group it's. I can't possibly undersell this point. This organization, the uniform law commission, is highly respected by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Rick Green
Man, Justin, I got to tell you everything you just read sounds like Gavin Newsom wrote the thing. I mean, it's just, it's like a dream, you know, dream scenario for these wannabe dictators that loved micromanaging everybody's life and sounds like they just want more of it. Is this just a? Do you think this is just what's the right way to say this? Is it just another natural outgrowth of the culture becoming so leftist as a result of the education system, in other words, the people that are at the UCC? Did they just get more liberal all of a sudden? Or is this just that generation moving into the UCC that was educated in leftist institutions?
Right, Big question, I know Please.
Justin solve all the world's problems right now, in 30 seconds. That's kind of what that question was.
Rick Green
Yeah, I mean, I actually think that you're absolutely onto something there. The Uniform Law Commission is primarily which manages the Uniform Commercial Code or it rewrites the Uniform Commercial Code for lawmakers. It helps them with that. The Uniform Law Commission is primarily composed of lawyers and academics and people who are heavily involved in academia, and so these people are absolutely a part of the cesspool that has become indoctrination centers around America these colleges and graduate schools and law schools that are all pushing far left-wing ideology.
Now we know that for sure, and these people are basically all either from that world or they're still living in that world, while they are simultaneously working with lawmakers to pass legislation, and they're so involved in the legislation that they're actually writing the bills for the legislators, and then they hand the bills to the legislators and they say you should pass this bill, and if you change it you're going to screw everything up, so please don't change anything in it, and it's down to that kind of detail.
So we're not talking about normal lobbying or anything like that. We're talking about intricate details related to legislation, and it's not just on emergency powers, on a whole bunch of other things related to private property rights. They recently have done some things that seem to be laying the groundwork for a controllable, programmable central bank digital currency, even though one doesn't exist in the United States yet, and there's a whole bunch of other crazy stuff that they've been working on as well. It's a really dangerous radical group, and I just don't think most people have any clue who they are, including a lot of good state lawmakers. There's a lot of good state lawmakers that just don't know how insidious this organization has become.
Rick Green
Yeah, I think, Justin, we got spoiled to somebody else doing the heavy lifting, Like in my day, which was a long time ago, a couple of decades ago, when I was in the legislature. It was, you know, UCC stuff would come through and it was like, ok, this is some nuanced contractual blah, blah, blah, and I don't want to have to go do the homework for it. And these guys all got together and figured out what would be best for the country, and it was usually like silly is not the right word minor things, really minor things, and so we didn't really pay that much attention to it. And now, man, you're talking huge things, major shifts of power, like literally changing the jurisdiction of government from one branch to the other, or from one local to the state or whatever it might be. This is huge, but I think maybe legislators have been lulled to sleep by thinking the UCC is still just this, you know, nuanced contractual type. You know, like you said when we started, make commerce easy between the states.
Rick Green
Yeah, that is a thousand percent true, and if anyone has the time to go look at the uniform commercial code and just read it, you only need to spend 10 seconds just paging, thumbing through it. It is the most arcane, boring. Most lawmakers state lawmakers do not have the time to become experts on minute details in banking, commercial transactions and things like that, and so they have come to trust the Uniform Law Commission to give them unbiased, nonpartisan advice on what they should do to improve things, and to a large extent, that is what they have given them. They've done a lot of good things, but they have become increasingly more radical and they're using the good faith that a lot of honest lawmakers have put in them. They're taking advantage of that and used it to push increasingly more radical legislation, like the Public Health Emergency Authority Act.
Rick Green
That's a great way of saying it. They're basically abusing the good faith that's been put in them and that, like you said, was earned over the years and decades. I guess best way to warn our friends, right? I guess, is it literally one of those pick up the phone and call your state legislator and say, hey, if you would please take a closer look at what the UCC is trying to do? I guess the right way to say that is the ULC, because it's the Uniform Law Commission that does the UCC. I keep saying the.
UCC. But the commission, I guess, is the Uniform Law Commission. Is that right? Yep, Okay.
Justin Haskins
Yep, that's exactly right. And lawmakers will know the difference if they call people. Call them up and tell them and I think that I think that's exactly right tell them hey, there's a lot of really bad, disturbing stuff that the ULC is up to. I think pointing them in the direction of this Public Health Emergency Authority Act is a really, really good way of simplifying this, because there's a whole bunch of other things that we could point to, but that one is just so clear. There's no way that someone who supports individual liberty, a legislator, could look at that and be in favor of it. And I would go even further. I don't think there's any way that you could look at that and think that this organization is someone you should be listening to.
I mean it's so authoritarian you couldn't possibly believe that, and so pointing in the direction of that model bill is really, really important. It's a great sign of other things, other problems that are harder to prove, that one makes it really easy.
Rick Green
Yeah, and I would even add to the. You know anyone that cares anything about liberty, I would say anybody that cares anything about even protecting the balance of power and checks and balances, and you know the whole idea that we don't want someone, one person, to be able to make decisions that are unchecked, and certainly not one person that could make such huge decisions as what this would empower governors to do. We already saw tyrants are going to tyrant and power corrupts and we saw people just run away with that power during COVID, and the last thing we need to do is embolden them by making them think that it's okay through these UCC statutes. Really appreciate you keeping an eye on this, Justin, thanks for keeping us aware of it, thanks for speaking at ProFamily Legislators Conference and really appreciate you coming on today.
Justin Haskins
Happy to be with you anytime.
Rick Green
Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.
Tim Barton
Hey guys, it's Tim Barton and I want to tell you about our new book, the American Story Building the Republic. We start with George Washington as president and we've already become a nation. So really now it's how do we function as a nation? And if we look back in American history, the stability, the prosperity, success we enjoyed as Americans is because of the foundation that our early presidents laid, because the examples they set. How do we live in America under the Constitution? What is the role of federal government? And really what part did each one of these early presidents play? We go to the first seven presidents and a lot of people probably know the names Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. Very few people know about Monroe or John Quincy Adams or Andrew Jackson. Now, we might know some of their names, we really don't know their stories.
We want you to relearn, rediscover American history and see how it applies to today. Go to wallbuilders.com and get your copy of the American story Building the Republic.
Rick Green
We're back on the WallBuilders Show Thanks for staying with us, back with David and Barton David and Tim, Barton David and Barton Tim. David and Barton Tim. Your name now is Barton Tim and uh and and David and uh. Hey guys, so listen, I think what we're hearing here and what we're thinking through, uh, you kind of said it, but right before the interview, Tim, I mean it's all these areas where we just need to show up, and it actually means we can win a lot of these battles if we show up. Our mutual friend who passed away a couple years ago, Dan Flynn, used to always say that half the battle is just showing up. And, man, this is an area we've got to do that.
David Barton
We do have to do that. And, by the way, Rick, I thought you made a really great observation that this really now, again, we're talking about the Public Health Emergency Act that the Uniform Law Commission is trying to get all the states to pass so they'll all be standardized. But I mean, I thought you hit it. You said this is about protecting the constitutional balance of powers. Instead of having three branches where we split the power and we check and balance, we're giving all the power not to one branch, but to one person in one branch, and we're giving them power over private property and we're giving them power over medical, we're giving them power over income and I mean it's everything. This is back to the feudal era, where you had kings and you had king states and everybody else was a vassal, and so this really is a constitutional challenge, if you look at it, because you're letting one person make all the decisions in an emergency, and an emergency is really where you need the Constitution more, not less. So you need the constitutional protections even more. So, Rick, as you pointed out, this is about letting other people know. So, like Justin said, please call your state legislator and say hey, have you heard about the Public Health Emergency Act. It's in the state. It's in the state house.
All 50 states are dealing with this. This is a really bad idea because it gives the governor so much more power than they even had with COVID. It goes far beyond what we had with COVID. So make sure your legislators know there's a good chance they haven't heard of it because, again, like we said at the beginning, this is just kind of innocuous stuff. It's been innocuous for a hundred years. The Uniform Law Commission has just been a public servant done a really good job until the last few years, and now they've got this agenda and they're trying to make us look like Europe and the World Economic Forum and just you know, a few guys running everything and that's not America. That's not what we want, that's not what you want in your state. So call your legislator, ask them about this act, ask them if they're aware of it, ask them to look into it if they're not This is really important.
Tim Barton
This is really important and Dad, the good news is we've seen a lot of legislators, as soon as they find out about this, take steps in their states. Yeah, we've seen a lot of states already begin to file things to limit the UCC, the Uniform Law Commission, to go against a central bank digital currency. We have seen states already take significant steps. I think even it was last week. We had on Ken Ivory and they're looking at doing gold and silver kind of hard assets and part of it was again dealing with a central bank digital currency. We are seeing good progress and so in the midst of hearing sometimes what seems like this behemoth, these Goliaths of issues we're dealing with, it can feel overwhelming sometimes. But I would point out the good news is we are seeing a lot of traction, a lot of progress, a lot of victories in some of these states where people are beginning, these state legislators they're pushing back, where governors are stopping some of this stuff that's been going on because they're being informed, people are being educated and I definitely want to encourage people, as you were trying to process. What are we going to do with this? How do we handle this? Dad, you mentioned certainly we need to talk to our state legislators and if you don't know your state legislator, please reach out, connect with them. You don't want the first time you talk to them to be you're calling to, you know, be frustrated with them or tell them to vote right in a certain issue. You want to, you want to know them, you want to be connected, you want to be able to reach out and pray for them, you want to be a blessing to them and maybe even hold them accountable at times when they need to. We want to be connected.
But in addition to reaching out and having maybe those relationships, having that connection, I would want to remind people, if you remember in the Bible, Caleb, when the Israelites are having all their land divided and Caleb actually steps forward and he says, hey, I have a request. I would like see that mountain over there. I want that mountain and the reason I want that mountain is because I hear there might be some giants over there and I really, before I die, I would love to go kill a few more giants. This was Caleb's attitude and I think at times we can look at giants and feel overwhelmed and we need to change that perspective.
We need to much more be in the position of a Joshua and Caleb and say, hey, there's giants, but you know what? God made me a giant killer. Just turn me loose and let's go. We need to have the right attitude and perspective and certainly we can make a difference. We're already seeing a difference be made. We're seeing progress be made in states. We can continue to make a difference, so don't be discouraged when you hear these kinds of things. No, God made us to be giant killers.
Rick Green
I love it. What a great way to close out the day. Let's all be giant killers and you've got your area folks, everybody out there. God's given you a garden to tend. Let's make sure that we're doing our part to defend that garden and take care of it and protect it. Such a good show. Thanks to Justin Haskins for joining us today. Let's all look for an arena that we can engage in. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show