Playing by the Rules and Catholic Faith Involvement on Foundations of Freedom Thursday

Rick Green

you found your way to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Show, I think, the greatest radio program on radio right now. And of course I'm biased, you know everybody's biased. But uh, listen, I'm Rick Green, America's constitution coach, and I'm telling you, this program brings you more information in a short period of time than anything out there. And to get a chance to learn from David Barton, America's premier historian and our founder here at Wall Builders, and Tim Barton, national speaker, pastor and president of WallBuilders.

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All right guys diving into those questions. Joseph Miller is up. First.

He says during our recent primary election for General Sessions judge in our county, there was a difference of opinion about the role of judges.

One of the candidates said the judges should be quote neutral arbiters of the law unquote. The other candidate said the judges should not be neutral but have a duty to enforce the laws and protect the community Even further, mentioning that he disagreed with a comment of Chief Justice Roberts when he said judges are like umpires they call balls and strikes, they don't pitch and bat. My question is what do you think about judges being neutral arbiters and does it matter at what level the judge is arbiters and does it matter at what level the judge is meaning? Are they, you know, local, county, state, federal? Um fact of a lot of a lot of states have a county judge, but they're really more of a commissioner. In Texas it depends on the size of the county and some counties in Texas that county judge will actually do court, but anyway. So yeah, regardless of which position there is, when we say judge guys, should that be somebody that just calls balls and strikes? How much of a you know opinion do they end up having?

David Barton

Yeah, and I would say that the actual constitutional historical understanding would be somewhere between those two. It's a lot closer to Justice Roberts. But at the same time the courts do not get to decide. They may call balls and strikes, but they don't get to decide what the field looks like. They're not the one that puts the boundaries on the field.

Rick Green

 They're not making the rules or the policy.

David Barton

The Constitution says here's the field we're going to play on, and then Congress gets to make the policies on how to use that field. And then the judiciary gets to interpret those policies as to whether they align with the Constitution and whether they are consistent with the laws of the country. So a judge does not get to have an opinion on something he wants to see done. He does not get to make policy. All he can do is interpret the policies that are given to him.

And the first question is should I even be looking at this? Is this something the Constitution allows me to look at? Because that's a big problem with judicial activism is they look at a lot of issues that they're not even supposed to be looking at. So when you go to Article 3 in the Constitution, it tells you the type of issues you should be looking at, and there's just some stuff that's flat out of bounds for judges to ever look at. So they don't get to call all the balls and strikes because some pictures are not designed for them to look at, just the ones the Constitution gives them.

Tim Barton

And it also goes to the reality that they're not the only ones that can call balls and strikes right, because Congress can also say that's not constitutional and go a different direction. The president, there's three branches and they're not co-equal. We've talked about this many times in the program. In fact you guys spend some time about it on Constitutional Alive, diving into what did the Federalist Papers identify? When you look at New York, when the Constitution is written, 1787, it's done, it's sent to the states to be ratified. It goes to New York and New York is trying to determine are we going to ratify this or not? This is where the Federalist Papers are written, where you have Hamilton, Madison and John Jay all writing trying to explain to the people of New York the benefits of the Constitution. And as they're explaining it, they're explaining that actually the legislative, by necessity, is the most powerful. And then you have another Federalist where they identify that the judicial is, beyond comparison, the weakest. So the idea that the judicial branch is the only one that can call balls and strikes is certainly not consistent with the idea from the founding fathers. And even if you buy into this incorrect narrative that there are three co-equal branches, which there are not, but even if you believe that if they're co-equal, then that means the other branches can also call balls and strikes, and I say that only to point out. Sometimes people hear that, well, the courts are the ones that call balls and strikes. And I say that only to point out. Sometimes people hear that, well, the courts are the ones that call balls and strikes. Well, yes, they get to have a say in what goes on, and really they're the ones.

Instead of having to go to Congress, where you would have 435 judges, and go to the Senate, where you have 100 judges, and say, hey, when it's something dealing with, maybe this law that was written, let these guys, let them give some simplicity to it. But certainly, even if you look at what we would identify as the constitutional bounds of the judiciary, just like there's limitations on what Congress can and can't pass, what kind of constitutional parameters are around their job description? Just like there's parameters around the president's job description, there's also parameters around the US Supreme Court. And what they were supposed to deal with and what they're actually dealing with now are two very different things, dad, which is why you're alluding to. What's also important for judges to know is do I have the constitutional authority to address this issue, or is this something that actually the state legislature or the federal Congress should be dealing with? Because this is not something that a judge has a constitutional authority to deal with. So there's a lot more understanding that should go into some of this judicial perspective and position of judges.

David Barton

And when a judge looks at it as much as anything, they're supposed to be looking at the process, not the content per se. The founding fathers early on had a position that look for a court to decide what's constitutional and what's not, that's right at an impeachable offense. That's not their role. That's what Congress does. Congress. They're supposed to read the Constitution and say, nope, this law violates the Constitution. That's supposed to be done before it ever gets to the courts.

Now where we are today, where most individuals in Congress have never read the Constitution, certainly could not pass a basic exam on it. That's a whole different thing. Now at least we have individuals on the Supreme Court who are reading the Constitution, which is more than what a lot of congressmen do. So that has really shifted over time. But originally everybody read it, everybody studied it. For the first eight years of school you took a written exam on the Constitution once every year. You had books like Stansberry's Catechism on the Constitution which, by the way, WallBuilders are reprinted, Tim's that from 1828, I think 1828's, when it originally came out. And if every congressman, if every judge, if every mayor, school board member were to study that, then you don't need a whole lot of judges because you've got understanding what Constitution is right there.

So now judges are getting in there to say, no, actually on the border, you can and can't do this. They're getting into policies which is never their design. They're supposed to take what Congress throws at them and they can look at it to decide if it's applied correctly, but they're not to say, no, you're the wrong pitcher, get another pitcher in or call the bullpen. You can't do that. That's not what judges do not have any kind of positive action they can take. They can take negative actions, but not positive actions, and that's where judicial activism occurs. So it doesn't matter whether it's a county judge, it doesn't matter whether it's a school board judge, it doesn't matter whether it's a US Supreme Court judge. What they're supposed to do is interpret the Constitution within the bounds which apply. In other words, they should look at the law and say all right, according to the law, was the jury and panel correctly? Yes, it was. Were the witnesses heard correctly? Yes. Did they follow the correct judicial procedure in interrogating the witnesses? Yes, okay, that was a good trial. So that's where the difference is.

Is we've had to we? I don't say we, but the country has adjusted over a period of time because we don't know the Constitution anymore. We kind of evolved those positions to be what we think will help. At the time they take on political ramifications. The fact that judges were nonpolitical is no longer a question. Everybody pretty much feels they are political now, and so Republican judges will give you one kind of philosophy, democrat judges will give you one kind of philosophy, socialist judges give you one kind of philosophy, and they all should be reading the same document, the Constitution, so it should not be that type of differences among it. It's a great question, but that principle applies at every level and it is first off, as Tim has mentioned, judiciary is not the supreme branch. They do not get the final word. That's not the way they were designed, and so that's the problem we have today is people from both sides think the judges get the final word.

Rick Green

All right. So since Justice Roberts used baseball and David, you went even further with another baseball example there, much to the chagrin of the Bartons who would prefer to use a basketball example. I'm going to stick with this baseball example for a second and you guys tell me if this makes sense. I've been, I've been playing around with this in my head but I haven't figured out exactly if it makes sense. If the umpires are supposed to make sure the rules are being followed, then who writes the rules? Right, if the rules in baseball are written by the team owners, so they get together and they adopt a rule book and says here's where the foul lines are going to be, and you have to hit a ball in between the two foul lines for it to be fair. And then all of a sudden, the umpire says one day, foul ball right down the line. But he's like no, no, that's good, let's call that fair today we're going to change the rules on the spot and the guys on the field are going wow, we didn't know this was the rules, but we're just going to keep playing as if it was.

If the umpire changes the rules, how do you overrule the umpire? The team owners have to get together. Right, they have to get together and say no, we're going to clarify, make it very clear to this umpire, maybe even fire that umpire, but they're in control of the rulebook. Now, I say all of that to say we're in control of the rulebook. And if the judges change the rules on the field without actually changing the rulebook, then the owners have to get together and clarify what the rule book is. And of course, guys, I'm talking about the constitution is the rule book. And the state legislators and we, the people, have to clarify because, man, these judges, these umpires have rewritten the rules completely. You can hit a foul ball, you know, behind home plate and their plate they're saying it's fair. It's unbelievable how far out of bounds we are. See what I did there. Out of bounds.

David Barton

There you go. What you got in your analogy is what protects umpires like a major baseball angel, remember is the union. He gets calls wrong all the time and the owners all yell about it, but the union protects him. What protects judges now is we have taught that they cannot be impeached unless it's a criminal offense. Impeachment used to be the way you controlled them. You said umpire, you're out of the game. We're putting a new umpire in that follow the rules.

You can't do that in the major leagues today because you have all these union contracts that won't let you hold umpires accountable.

And there is a particular umpire that is notorious for you know, a guy struck out a week ago and all the replays showed every strike was six to eight inches outside the strike zone. But there's no way of overturning them because the union protects him and won't get rid of him. And that's what's happening with judges now is when they get calling stuff outside the strike zone that they shouldn't be calling that way there's no way to get rid of them. Now we think they have lifetime appointments because that's what we've been taught. Check the Constitution. They serve for the duration of good behavior. What you have to have is accountability over your umpires so that you can get them gone if you need to. And that's where I think, unfortunately, it's too close to a baseball analogy, because you can't get rid of bad umpires in baseball now because of unions and you can't get rid of bad judges now because of this lifetime appointment nonsense that people interpret in the Constitution that actually is not there.

Rick Green

Yeah, yeah, and unfortunately, those judges have been doing these crazy rulings for so long that now the players and the fans all think this is just the way it's done, right, and so they literally change the rules, without ever actually going into the rulebook and changing the rules the right way, which would be an amendment to the Constitution.

David Barton

Okay. So if I'm going to mix our metaphors here and you're baseball and we're basketball would it be like the home plate umpire saying you can dribble the ball to first base?

Rick Green

Now we're really mixing it up, yeah, yeah, I mean it literally is changing the rules. So we're really mixing it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Barton

I mean it literally is changing the rules. Let's add a few hockey plays in there.

Let's add a few softball plays and it's crazy and the proper analogy is with what you just said is they're literally turning a constitutional republic into a democracy, so they're bringing in a whole other sport. That is not even the game that our founding fathers designed and put in place. All right, folks, sorry, I just couldn't help it. Baseball I just go off the rails sometimes. All right, quick, quick break. We've got more questions coming up from the audience. Stay with us. You're listening to the Wall Builder Show on Foundations of Freedom, Thursday.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back to Foundations of Freedom Thursday here on WallBuilders. Next question up for the guys is from Roxanne and this is going to be a little bit of a throwback, guys to a few weeks ago. We had a discussion about how few Catholics have been talked about in terms of being engaged in the early American History, are basically Catholic champions of freedom and that sort of thing. So here's what Roxanne said. She said this is in response to a question on your podcast from a listener who asked why you never mentioned the contributions of members of the Catholic Church to early America. Tim asked the listeners for a suggestion on a Catholic that contributed to early America and I would suggest Mother Cabrini. She opened orphanages, hospitals and schools for the poor all throughout America.

I encourage you to watch the movie Cabrini as it is available now. She contributed so much to our great country it's hard to fit it all in one movie. There are books written about her from people that knew her well. I enjoy your podcast, listen to it several times a week on the way to work. I even try to share it with others and share about your Patriot Academy and Biblical Citizenship classes. I love the work you do and look forward to Good News Fridays. All right. Well, Roxanne, that's tomorrow, so make sure you don't miss tomorrow. Good News Friday tomorrow, but you made it onto the Thursday program. And David Tim, we actually were talking about this a few weeks ago. This movie looks really good. I haven't seen it yet, don't know if you guys have watched it, but the trailer looks amazing.

Tim Barton

Yeah, rick, we were talking about having I think it was. NRB is where we saw the trailer for it. It looked really, really good. And I do want to point out first of all, I'm so grateful that we have listeners who are willing to offer suggestions and help us, because in the midst of all the studying and research that we do, like, for example, in our WallBuilders library, we have more than 100,000 documents from early American history. We haven't read all of those. We've read many of them.

David Barton

You haven't read them all yet accomplished. 

Tim Barton

But my point was, when we had this conversation a couple weeks ago, there was criticism of people saying, hey, you're leaving out certain groups. And we said, look, we don't tell history through the lens of what group are you in. We're not highlighting a group. And so, okay, now let me tell you one of the Protestant heroes, now one of the Catholic heroes, now one of the white heroes, now one of the black heroes. That's not the way we tell history.

We go back and look and say who are the major players, who are the major contributors?

And so my recollection and this was a couple weeks ago, I could be remembering this wrong, but my recollection was tell me who the major Catholic heroes are that I'm leaving out of the narrative of the American story.

And, specifically for me, I was thinking of the founding era, when you look at the founding fathers, whether it be signers of the Declaration, signers of the Constitution, and it's not that there weren't significant Catholic contributors. My point was I'm not ignoring them, I'm just not categorizing them to meet some kind of DEI quota of who's in what group. Now, with that being said, I certainly did not mention this name and didn't go into that story and, dad, when we first saw this email, I know you did some research and you were like this story is even more incredible than I knew the contributions, and so it was one that we definitely wanted to highlight, because God has used so many amazing people from all different spectrums. Right Now spectrums being relative there's only two genders right so, not different spectrums of gender and sexual identity, but from all walks of life, from area and people groups. God has used so many incredible people in His story, and certainly in the American story, and this is a really fun example of that.

David Barton

It is a real fun example and kind of just jumping on what you and Rick both said, one of the reasons that there's not as many Catholics talked about in the American founding goes back to something that Montesquieu pointed out. And Montesquieu was a political philosopher in France in the 1700s and he said you know, if you just take away all theology and if you only judge a religion by its fruits, he said that what you find in Muslim areas, where Muslim people, they tend to have tyrannical governors, tyrannical leaders. He said, in Catholic areas you tend to have monarchies, because the Catholic Church was often the state-established church of Spain or France or of England for a long time and all these other places, he said, but where you have Protestantism, you have Republican forms of government, whether that was Austria or Geneva or other places. So he said, the form of religion tends to affect the form of government. And so in the early American founding there were not nearly as many Catholics involved individually because they were pro-monarchal. In most cases they were supporting France or Great Britain, et cetera. And that's where when you have somebody like Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who was a strong Catholic leader in America and he was a real breakthrough guy in the sense that he signed the Declaration of Independence and people said, wait a minute, he's a Catholic and he's supporting a Republican form of government. This is unusual. And then you had two Catholic signers of the Constitution and that's really what started breaking things in America and opened the door for a lot of Catholics. Now still a lot of Catholics remain pro-monarchal and you know that's like the forms of government within Protestant denomination. You've got so many different leaders. In Protestant denomination there's not one leader you follow. There is one leader you follow in Catholicism, the pope is the head, and so it tends to reflect more of that form of government internally. But there are so many strong Catholics that were patriots in America and so you see that starting to break through at the American War for Independence. So that's kind of late in the game historically. As you look back in the early history you won't find the Catholic involvement in leading the nation and becoming leaders in legislatures et cetera, because they're just in a different direction. That philosophy in America definitely changed and I think that philosophy in America has gone throughout Catholicism across the world, where the Catholicism now is a much more Republican style of Christianity than it used to be back in the 1200s, 1300s, 1400s et cetera. So that's part of the background.

So, looking up Mother Cabrini and now Saint Cabrini, this was an amazing story. Never heard of her. She was born in Austria, she came to America, became a naturalized citizen here in America and just looking at the things that she did, her heart was for, really for those in poor, for those impoverished, to help those in Matthew 25, the sick and the needy and all the others. And she wanted to go to China and actually her Catholic leadership said nah, we really need you in America because there are so many immigrants coming in who are so impoverished and who are unable to get on their feet and there just needs to be a lot of help. And so she agreed and she followed their request and went to the United States. And so she got here in 1887 and it was with the Pope's approval. She came to the United States and she gets into New York City in 1889. And so New York City, she started right away. She founded Columbus Hospital, which is now Cabrini Medical Center in New York City. She went to Chicago, founded a hospital in Chicago. All in all she founded 67 institutions to serve the sick and the poor in America.

And this is before the government was doing any social services. That was not the role of government. Biblically it's not supposed to be. I mean, if you look at the Bible, there's scores of verses in the Bible about taking care of the poor. And all the government is supposed to do in taking care of the poor not meet their material needs, but when they get to court make sure they have equal access to due process. It's supposed to be the church and the family and individuals that take care of meeting the needs of the poor. So that's why you really didn't have welfare programs up until you get into the late 20th century mid to late 20th century you get these welfare programs going where government's doing it.

That is never the role of government, biblically, constitutionally, historically, et cetera. And so she really stepped up to help fulfill the need of meeting the needs of the poor, meeting the social services kind of stuff. And she did it in so many big cities and so many areas. So she ends up building these facilities and hospitals and social services not only in New York City and Chicago but to plain Illinois and Seattle and New Orleans and Denver and Los Angeles and Philadelphia. I mean all the big cities and this stuff is always worse in the big cities, than it is anywhere else, and so she just did a terrific job of giving her whole life to doing that and it's I mean it's just, it's a name that we had not heard, but it is a really good name to know and this is a good biblical model to follow in this.

Tim Barton

Well, and it's certainly a name that most Americans are not familiar with, which. Again, going back to when Rick and I were at NRB and I think that's where we were when we saw the trailer and we thought man, this is going to be a great movie. And to this point, I still haven't seen the movie.

David Barton

Wait a minute, guys. I think I heard one of you guys tell me that it was C&P rather than NRB. Was it C&P?

Rick Green

For me it was C&MP. I think they also aired it at NRB. I didn't make it to NRB this year and all of these acronyms we sound like you know.

David Barton

That's right.

Rick Green

We sound like you know, when you talk to a lobbyist or to a staffer at the Capitol and they're rattling off all these acronyms of state agencies and you're going. I have no idea what that is, so probably got a lot of listeners going. What's this ABCDEFG thing they're talking about? So CNP is Council for National Policy, a group of great conservatives and religious leaders around the country that gets together. Our friend Bob McEwen runs that, and then NRB, national Religious Broadcasters most all the broadcasters you know, faith-based broadcasters around the country getting together, you know, once or twice a year with them.

David Barton

And, by the way, just pointing out, NRB is Catholic and Protestant. They are all religious broadcasters and they cooperate really well and they've done a great job with helping the government get some good laws in there 

Tim Barton

As a CNP. So as we just throw this out there, all this to say right is this is a name that we had heard before, didn't know much of the story, and at WallBuilders, part of our initiative is to present America's forgotten history and heroes, emphasizing religious, moral, constitutional heritage, and so, anytime we can highlight more stories where there's a faith component, God used people, did incredible things through them. Those are the kind of stories we like to highlight. Going back to the golden thread of American history, we highlight that in the first book, the American Story, the Beginnings, about how God is weaving this incredible story, and he's done so with incredible people along the way, and certainly this is one of those stories. So thank you for somebody suggesting this name to us that we can learn along the way.

David Barton

Yeah, Roxanne thank you for this and thank you also for your note in here that, Corbini, the, the movie is now available so people can go watch the movie and, according to what you guys are saying, it's a really good movie, but it's a great story. So thank you, Roxanne, for bringing this, this name, to our attention.

Tim Barton

Well, according to me, it's one I haven't seen yet, but now I'm going to go download it. I'm going to watch this tonight and I can give you guys a better report as soon as I watch it 

Rick Green

Well, guys, we're out of time for questions today. I think we only got to two, but we had so much fun and folks still send in your questions. We'll get to as many as we can next week. You can send those to radio@wallbuilders.com. Radio@ wallbuilders.com. And certainly don't miss, as Roxanne mentioned, good News Friday tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the WallBuilders Show.