Child
President Calvin Coolidge said the more I study the Constitution, the more I realize that no other document devised by the hand of man has brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.
Rick Green
This is the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's Wall Builders and we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David Barton and Tim Barton. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. David Barton, of course, America's premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders. You can learn more about all three of us at wallbuilders.com. That's wallbuilders.com.
We don't hang sheetrock, we don't do you know, carpentry. We don't actually build physical walls, but we do rebuild the foundations. And, of course, the name WallBuilders comes from that scripture in Nehemiah that says Arise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach. Just like in the book of Nehemiah, we are rebuilding the walls right there by our house, everybody, everybody listening. Now you have a role to play. You have a role to play as a biblical citizen in your community, rebuilding the foundations of America right there where you live. There is so much work to be done, so many things that each and every one of us can be a part of, and, of course, we're always asking you to step up, be a biblical citizen host a biblical citizenship class, even right there in your home or at your church. You can find out more there at wallbuilders.com and maybe just share the links of today's program.
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All right, David and Tim, we're jumping into those questions from the audience. First one up tonight is from Nicholas. He said greetings, Rick, David and Tim, I love your show and all you do. Eventually, I want to get down to Texas and take a Constitutional defense course at Patriot Academy. Well, Nicholas, come on, we'd love to have you. My question, he says, is about elections. While I am for paper ballots and a secure election, don't we securely transfer millions, if not billions, of dollars on a daily basis electronically, every day? So if we're able to transfer money regularly securely, why can't we vote securely? All right, guys, pretty good question. He's right. I mean, the financial industry's figured out how to do that in a secure. Well, you know what I say that, but I guess there's still a lot of theft and hacking that does happen.
David Barton
Well, there is. But there's a couple other things that go with this as well. If you got people who cheat, they're going to cheat. They're going to be smart cheaters or dumb cheaters. If they have to do it the old school way or the new school way, they're going to find ways to cheat.
This is a problem with human nature. This is why George Washington said for our Constitutional Republic to work, you have to have religion and morality as the basis. You have to believe you're accountable to God for your behavior and that if you cheat or steal you're going to answer to God. So many people don't believe that. But I go back to LBJ. You remember LBJ had famous box 13. It was paper ballots but they could always stuff that box with enough to make sure he won every election. It was always the last box to report. If he was down 300 votes, it'd be 420 in there or whatever.
So paper ballots can be illegally done as well as machine ballots. You're talking about the character of individuals. Now, interestingly, Texas had one of our counties passed something last session that said, hey, we're going back to paper ballots. And it was a smaller county in Texas. It was a very rural county and they were able to get all the paper ballots counted within 24 hours, but it took 300 volunteers to do that. And that's in a small county, that's not a Dallas or San Antonio or Houston. And that's assuming that all 300 volunteers were ethical and did things the right way.
So what happens if you get into a Houston? You're going to have to have 10,000 volunteers or whatever, and how can you make sure they're all ethical? So it's really hard to secure any election at all if you don't have religion, morality and the people. Having said that, when you look at, we just had a program with John Graves where the Graves was talking about what they have now discovered is that on the Dominion machines, they left a front door open. They essentially had not encrypted stuff. Before you got to the encrypted stuff, they actually had it where the encryption key was out, where you could get ahold of it.
Tim Barton
And let me just clarify real quick that was on the available data on the machines they tested. So before Dominion brings a lawsuit against us for saying something no, no, this is just on all the machines ever tested. It doesn't mean every machine had this, just everyone that was tested.
David Barton
Just everyone that was tested. That's right. So you've got that going and that's why you can have electronic banking be more secure, because they didn't leave the key to the front door out in the parking lot where you can get a hold of it. It's behind firewalls and all sorts of encryptions. This was on the front side of the encryption. They left these keys out where they could get it before you got it, so you had to get partially into it. But all the guys he was telling me all the guys who were looking really deep in the programs because that's where they expected the hidden stuff to be was deep in the programs. He said it was in the really shallow part right up front.
Tim Barton
Well, yeah, and I think the way he described it is right. It's like locking the front door of a bank but leaving the keys to the vault right inside. So you still had to get inside the bank, so you still had to hack into the machine, but once you hacked in, all of the code for all of the keys to change all of the election results were right there available for anyone that hacked in. And we've talked about it before. I, I think he mentioned I think was it uh, Tuesday, Wednesday, I don't remember when we had him on earlier this week but one of the things that we have seen many examples of where democrats watching people and I don't know was this 2018, I remember what year it was but they were watching people in and I don't remember what year it was, but they were watching people in Congress come and hack into these machines, showing how vulnerable they were, and back then they were going oh man, these machines are not safe. We have to secure the elections, but then, once they win, they're going. No, it's fine. It's almost as if there were people on their side that found out how to cheat and like no, no, no, as long as we're winning, we're not super worried about the security of this, but there are too many examples showing it's not secure. And then again with Dominion. Once people were able to get past this initial front door, so to speak, then the keys to the kingdom again, so to speak, the keys to the vault, were right there for people to be able to change whatever elections results they wanted clearly not secure.
David Barton
But the thing between electronic transfers of large amounts of money and elections it really boils back to the character of the people involved, because if bad people get involved in electronic transfers you're going to have the same problem and that's where you find the embezzlement, crimes and other things that go on with the electronic stuff. It goes back to the character of the people involved, but there's more incentive, I think, in some ways to get into election side and change the outcome, because that controls billions and trillions of dollars as opposed to just electronic transfers.
Tim Barton
Well, dad, another thing I would think maybe my tip of scales on this a little bit too is if you look at people that are stealing money, I think there's a higher level penalty for thieves that are caught stealing money in many cases, than there were people doing fraudulent things in elections, and so I think part of the difference it's not just where people are dishonest, but it's where laws are enforced, right?
Well, we're seeing in California and really this is in many liberal cities and towns where you have a very liberal district attorney that's not enforcing the law you see crime more rampant in California, right? The examples where if you stole less than a thousand dollars of goods, merchandise, products, resources, right, whatever we want to categorize and label it, then those individuals were not prosecuted. So what did it do? It encouraged people to be dishonest and steal and damage and destroy more property. It's not that there are more honest criminals in other cities, it's that. No, if you're going to let people get away with certain crimes, you should expect them to do that more, and I think that's what we've seen with some of the election fraud that's happened is people are not being penalized to the extent of the law, so it's incentivized people to continue on with some of that bad behavior.
Rick Green
Yeah, All right, let's go over to our next question. It's from John Greig, I think that's how he says his last name. It's G-R-E-I-G. It might be, I don't know. What is that, guys? Is that that's probably Greek? I don’t know, maybe. Anyway, alright John, your question is, He says, hello Rick, David and Tim, I have recently learned that president Monroe about president Monroe and his connection with Liberia. A mand from Liberia who works in the office building where I work says economy is not good in Liberia because of corruption, and my question is if President Monroe helped to establish Liberia based on our constitution, why is Liberia not experiencing the same type of economic prosperity as the United States? So, guys, I'm clueless on this one, though I do know that we have all kinds of corruption here today, but not as bad or worse now than in years past, I guess. But we always kind of think we've got it worse than in previous generations. But I don't know. Liberia did they experience? Did he even give them a constitution like ours?
David Barton
They named Liberia because it means liberty. It was kind of a free colony of the United States. Anti-slavery groups went there, purchased that land, was able to obtain that land. They named it liberty and it was done under James Monroe and that's why they call it Monrovia is the capital city in Liberia, so Monrovia in honor of James Monroe. They liked the American Constitution so much that essentially they copied the American Constitution. So America's got a great Constitution, they have a great system. We'll just copy that and it's going to work. And it doesn't work. And the reason is George Washington in his farewell address said that our political prosperity in America was based on religion and morality and that was not taught in Liberia the same way we had this in education. We had this in our schools, whether it was the beginning schools, what we would call elementary schools, up to the college level. We had this out of the pulpit. We had this in Congress. We were so pushing and encouraging religion and morality, which did not happen in Liberia, did not happen in Liberia. Missionaries went there but they were dealing with a very pagan, different culture that had not gone through two or three centuries of the inculcation of biblical principles.
So Liberia has had a lot of difficulty. They've had some wars and revolutions that we didn't have to go through. They do have a lot of corruption and back to your comment, Rick, I'd say America's got a lot of corruption. Exactly, look at where we are. Our corruption is in the trillions of dollars, with what's going on with the White House and other things, but it's a lack of morality and religion in both cases.
So America is moving in the wrong direction. Liberia has moved in the wrong direction, and that's because the Constitution by itself will not work by itself, and that's why George Washington said the only indispensable supports of political prosperity are religion and morality. And that's why he said in vain, would that man claim the tribute of patriot? You can't say you're a patriot if you're trying to secularize, if you're trying to remove religion and morality. And I would say that is the big problem with Liberia, because they have never put the focus on that type of moral and religious foundation. America did for a long time, but we have definitely moved away from that in recent decades. So we're having some of the trouble Liberia's having.
Rick Green
Makes perfect sense. All right, next question, and then we'll hit a break. This one's from Ricky. He said hi gang, Would you explain what happens when no presidential candidate receives the number of electoral college votes needed to become president? I think this could work out well for Republicans because they control most of the states, or the state governors and legislative assemblies. Well, I'll toss that to you guys first, but I think it's a great question because we could end up with either a tie or nobody getting a majority, but I don't think the governors are going to have anything to do with it. Go ahead
Tim Barton
Well the first question is where can we find the answer? And if only there was a coach to help us address constitutional issues.
Rick Green
I think, Tim, we should not answer this one today and we should tell them you have to go, take Constitution Alive or Biblical Citizenship, and we'll explain it in there and we'll actually walk you through what happens if nobody gets and then we just leave the audience hanging. What do y'all think? No, well, I mean it's definitely a good plug.
Tim Barton
Also, they could just do a basic search for US Constitution.
Rick Green
It's a good cheat though the best cheat codes there are right there in the constitution.
Tim Barton
Well, and that's literally part of the point that we make in things like constitution alive or in biblical citizenship is that, even though there's a lot of unknown historic information, it's not unknowable in the sense of you don't need an expert to explain it to you, like this is. This is very discoverable in the constitution, and I don't I don't say that in any kind of slight or belittling way. I mean it in the sense of that everybody listening to this program is intelligent enough to read and understand the US Constitution, especially when it comes to this. And so this is something the Constitution doesn't answer clearly, and Constitutional Alive, Rick, you, dad, y'all answer this. And then in biblical citizenship, it's something else that we address again, and so this is something that the founders in their wisdom recognize. There could be a scenario where there's not a clear winner, and this has actually happened historically. It would not be the first time in American history that a president was chosen not through the standard election process because there was not a clear electoral winner. And when this happens, it goes back to Congress, and Congress are the ones involved in choosing the president.
Rick Green
And you know what's kind of cool here is that I think this was the brilliance of the founders. When Roger Sherman chaired this committee to create the election of the presidency, he kind of combined all the different things from popular election if a state wants to do it that way, which most states do within that state, to the Electoral College piece, to a parliamentary system where Congress chooses the president. If the nation doesn't choose through the states and the Electoral College, then it does. It goes to Congress and the thing is the House gets to pick the president and the Senate gets to pick the VP. But Ricky's on to something here. It's done by state delegation, so each state gets one vote. So really he's right, Republicans would have the advantage in the House in terms of 26 states, most likely going with Donald Trump. But it will be really interesting because it's the top three and so there will be three.
Probably I bet Robert F Kennedy ends up winning a couple of electoral votes somewhere. I don't know. He's probably going to win. Maybe not Usually, even if he gets 15 or 20 percent of the popular vote a third party does not get any electoral votes, but he might. But you mentioned Tim, history. I think it was David. Do you remember? If it was, I think it was John Quincy Adams. That was not. I know he was not number one. I know Andrew Jackson had more electoral votes but nobody got a majority and Jackson was very unhappy that the House chose Adams. So even if you have the most electoral votes, that doesn't mean you're going to turn around and win in the House. They're going to choose who they think is best.
David Barton
Yeah, and let's complicate this more. Let's say what if it's a tie? What if it doesn't go to the House? We have a tie in electoral votes and that's where you go to the 1876 election of Rutherford B Hayes. And man, what a mess that was so let’s not do a tie.
Rick Green
That took them a while, right?
David Barton
Eight months without a president and so much bad stuff happened.
They made so many corrupt bargains and deals back and forth and it was not a good situation. But yeah, there's been four occasions where the House had to choose the president of the United States and if you had a tie you've got the one example of what happened in 1876, which was really bad for the nation. So as far as consequences the consequences I mean if nobody gets a clear majority, it's not going to last much longer than it would have for the inauguration anyway. So there's not going to be many consequences past that. But there will be a lot of recriminations, house and Senate divided. They'll be yelling at each other for having chosen the candidate they did, or going against the popular vote, or whatever they say. But that's all happened before too.
Tim Barton
And I would say if people want to know more about the first time this happened with John Quincy Adams, probably the best place to go would be the book the American Story Building the Republic.
Rick Green
You think we'll learn something about Jackson's character there if we go study this?
Tim Barton
You know, there's a big section on that written by two very good looking individuals, uh, very intelligent.
David Barton
Um there, you and rick, you talk about you and Rick?
Rick Green
do they both have the last name Barton? Because I don't think there's a green involved here.
Tim Barton
I think they both have the last name barton uh, you know I I'll have to go look that up, but I know the book is called the American Story Building the Republic, and it definitely covers the John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson debacle, the fallout. Fascinating story in fact, something everybody should go purchase and read.
Uh, you, just, you can thank me later it's going to be great
Rick Green
Now I do want to ask you guys before we go to break because we got to take a break and we got some more questions to get to though, but as you studied all of that and you got deeper into it was there a character evaluation by Congress or was it pure power? Like, did they say, was there anything you found where they were like you know, we just think JQA's got a better, a better foundation or has more character and that's why we pick him. Or was it pure power and party power kind of thing
Tim Barton
At that time it really was a real political party move where there were Democrats who recognized some of the flaws in Andrew Jackson's character. And I'm saying that I mean this is a little early, they weren't quite Democrats yet but there were people behind Jackson that knew he had character flaws but they still supported them because they would rather have him than John Quincy Adams. So even back then you see the political polarization. This is really where you see the outgrowth of what George Washington warned about in his farewell address the love of parties. There was a little bit of that under Adams and Jefferson, but more than the love of parties it was the individuals, that kind of their champion. But once you get more to the Jacksonian era, this is when you see people start supporting party regardless to some extent of the character of the person there and not recognizing the failures that potentially Jackson could or would be. So we do cover that in the book as well a little bit. But definitely they were not looking to see who was the most competent or qualified, because that would have been no question John Quincy Adams as far as political savvy, political understanding, engagement, involvement, understanding of the origins of America the declaration, the constitution. I mean he knew every one of the founding fathers. He was very involved. He'd been part of the federal government and every single administration up to that point. So his, his resume, politically speaking, is the most impressive of any president in American history.
Rick Green
Wow, good stuff. All right, guys, quick break, we'll be right back. We've got time for, I think, one more question. Stay with us. It's Foundation Freedom Thursday. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show.
Break
Child
Thomas Jefferson said, In questions of power, then let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down for mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
Rick Green
We're back here on The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us and, truth be told, folks at home a little behind the scenes here you know. I was trying to stretch that last question because David always comes up with a whole bunch of questions. He's very optimistic that we're going to get through a lot of questions each. Foundations of Freedom, Thursday, and of course sometimes we do one and once in a while we do three or four, and he actually picked five for today and this is number four that we're fixing to do. So if these guys don't answer too quickly, I'm going to have to eat crow and we're going to cover all five, even though I was poking fun at David on the break that you guys at home didn't get to hear. All right, here we go, let's see how fast it goes.
Deborah says Louisiana passed a law recently stating that they would not allow any outside entity, like the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum, world Bank, etc to supersede Louisiana laws. This is in response to the WHO trying to vote in a treaty agreement in May that would usurp our national sovereignty over decision making for declared emergencies, pandemics, climate change, etc. If our US Congress were to approve this treaty or legislate into law this treaty language? Does federal law supersede state laws? What about the Tenth Amendment? Thank you, okay, this one would need a whole program, probably, to cover it completely. Guys, we of course have Michelle Bachman on warning us about what the World Health Organization is attempting to do here. So, man, I don't know where you want to tackle it. First, it's not a treaty unless the Senate approves it, right?
It's an accord, I think is what they're trying to call this.
David Barton
It's a great question and this is a jurisdictional question period. When does any kind of policy from another nation supersede American law? And that's when it's a treaty, Rick you mentioned, it has to be ratified by the Senate. But Article VI of the Constitution puts treaties as part of the supreme law of the land and within that the supreme law of the land is also federal law over state law. So your jurisdictional thing is the Constitution, then federal law, then treaties and then state laws, unless that state law occurs in one of the enumerated powers. And this is where you get into court battles.
The Constitution essentially lays out 17 things and says all right, these 17 things belong to the federal government, to the Congress. Outside of that, the 10th Amendment is for everything else. Well, the federal government has now gotten into every conceivable area you can think of and so in court this is what's been going the last four or five years, trying to get some of these areas back. Immigration used to belong to the states and federal government, not just the federal government, same with so much else. So it's a great question, but it would depend in what form it came to the Senate.
But essentially, if it's a federal law, it's going to be above state law. If it's a treaty, it's going to be above state law because that's the supreme law of the land, article 6. And then if it's a state law, it doesn't matter if it's part of the 10th Amendment. If the federal government has seized jurisdiction, you got to be able to get a court to say, hey, the federal government is wrong, the states are right. But again, that's what the state attorney generals are working very aggressively at right now. Great question. So essentially, the bad news is that if it becomes a treaty and is ratified, it has a lot of standing, regardless of what the states say.
Tim Barton
But to be ratified in the Senate. That's not a simple majority vote is it?
David Barton
Two-thirds?
Tim Barton
I think it's two-thirds. So this is where, in my mind, even though we're at a very dangerous time, that you have elected officials, we have a president who'd be willing to give over our national sovereignty to things like the World Health Organization and follow what seemingly is very politically motivated, bogus health advice, as opposed to doing what's best for the American people. But the good news is, right, if you look at the Senate right now and you think, man, under Chuck Schumer's leadership, I'm not sure they would oppose this. Well, no, I'm not sure they would oppose it either, but I am pretty confident that they'd have a hard time getting two thirds of the Senate to support giving up American sovereignty in favor of the World Health Organization. So, overall, I would say that this is, you know, it's really silly. We're going to this place in my mind, it's a little bit. It's not the same. I think this is worse, but it's a little bit like when President Biden says, hey, we're just going to give right kind of this cleansing of debt for college students, we're going to wipe out all this student loan, student debts. You don't have the power and authority to do that. That's not something you can do and you don't have the power and authority to do that. That's not something you can do and to this point courts have upheld that he can't do that. And yet they're politically posturing for a reason I think it's more politically posturing than I think it is maybe the danger and reality that we are going to have to deal with. But certainly having a president encouraging this, having a Senate that would encourage this, it is a negative thing for America.
David Barton
Hey, by the way, while we're at it, why don't we just get Biden to go ahead and erase all credit card debt? Why don't we just get him to announce that there's not gonna if you owe credit card debt
Rick Green
But cars and and home mortgages. All of it, all of it can't. Can't he just get rid of all of it?
David Barton
yeah, exactly and car debt. You bet car, car loans, everything Exactly.
Tim Barton
Well, if we're going to do that, I'm going car shopping.
Rick Green
Yeah, no kidding. No kidding, I want to thank Tim for stretching that answer to the last question so that he and I would have bragging rights over David off air, of course, for not getting to all five questions that he had, but we will make sure that we have that fifth question teed up for next Thursday. You don't want to miss it. Foundations of Freedom Thursday every Thursday, or pretty much every Thursday, and Good News Fridays, on Friday. So don't miss tomorrow. We'll send you into the weekend with some good news. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.