Constitutional Defense Of Your Family And Freedom, Part One

Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and the Culture. This is Wall Builders, where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Thanks so much for joining us. My name is Rick Green. I'm a former Texas legislator and America's Constitution Coach.

It's my great honor to work for WallBuilders and host this radio program along with David Barton, America's premier historian, our founder here at WallBuilders, and also Tim Barton. He's a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and you should invite these guys in to speak in your community. We love coming out and sharing the truth of America's founding, of how the constitutional republic should work, and truth of America's founding of how the constitutional republic should work and how to restore liberty and, most importantly, how to be good biblical citizens. So you can book a Wall Builders speaker at our website, wallbuilders.com. Check that out today. And while you're perusing the websites wallbuilderslive.com wallbuilderslive.com that's our radio site. That's where you can actually kind of jump back over the last couple of days or weeks or even months and look into the archives of what we've been airing here on Wobbler's Live, which means you can catch up on all these great interviews we have with folks that are arguing cases before the Supreme Court or members of the US Senate or Congress or state legislatures, or people that are on the ground testifying in these school board meetings, constitution coaches, I mean we have the opportunity to have guests on military veterans from World War II and from every war. I mean it's incredible, the people that we're able to get on this program and get to hear their stories, ask them questions. It's just amazing. I am super blessed to get to do this program and I hope you feel blessed when you listen to WallBuilders Live. But if you go to wallbuilderslive.com and you jump into those archives, you can find a lot of great programming in there that you may have missed on days you weren't able to listen.

That is also the place where you can make a one-time or monthly contribution. We would sure appreciate that If you would consider doing that. It allows us to reach more people. The truth's hard to find in America right now. You've got a lot of folks out there just flat out spreading lies. There's not a nice way to say it. I mean they are after a Marxist agenda. They're pushing a Marxist agenda. They're after my kids, your kids, the culture and certainly the children of America, and they're willing to lie to get them, and so it's vitally important that we speak truth and that we get that truth in as many hands as possible. So here at Wall Builders Live, we're always looking at those foundational principles from a biblical, constitutional and historical perspective, but we're also getting people to really understand what it means to be a good citizen.

Speaker 1: 2:34

What is a biblical citizen? You know, we put about 100,000 people last year through our biblical citizenship class and that has just been amazing. We've got over 10,000 coaches now hosting these classes and living rooms and churches and libraries, you name it. And it's a great time, I mean honestly, when you sit in one of these classes. You go once a week and for eight weeks you have the chance to get to know those other people. But I tell you, you realize you're not alone. You realize there's other people that care about the country, that care about the future of the country. They want to restore liberty, they want to preserve America, not destroy America. And once you realize you're not alone and that there are people that are raising the banner and others that are willing to rally, it gives you hope. There's just something special about what's been going on in these classes, so this idea of teaching people to be biblical citizens. What does the Bible say about being a good citizen, about how to treat your neighbors, about how to form your society, and then what does our Constitution here in America say about how to do that properly? That's what we do here at Wobblers and we really enjoy getting to do it. We appreciate you being willing to listen, so check out the website today wallbuilderslive.com.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Let's get into our programming for today. We've got a special program coming to you throughout this week, so this is going to be a five-part series. It's called Constitutional Defense of your Family and Freedom. This is actually a presentation that my kids and I did at our constitutional defense course. This is actually the opening night of our constitutional defense course, where we talk about the foundational principles of America. We talk about the need for people to study the Constitution, study the Declaration.

We go into a lot of those foundational principles, study the Declaration. We go into a lot of those foundational principles and we zero in on the Second Amendment and the importance of this, what the Founding Fathers called the palladium of all of our other liberties, this important palladium of our other liberties, and how important it is for us as citizens to take this seriously and to take the responsibility to do this ourselves. In other words, it's not up to the government or the police to protect us. It's our responsibility to protect our families and protect our homes. That was the founders' view as well. I'm not saying we shouldn't have policemen Obviously I'm a back-the-blue kind of guy but it is very important for us to take the first line of protection. We had to have that mindset, and that requires having a mindset, like Proverbs says, of not being that fool that walks blindly on and suffers the consequences, but being the wise person that foresees danger and takes precautions.

And then, actually coming up here in just a couple of weeks, we've got a constitutional defense course at the Patriot Academy campus, where all three of us will be. So myself, rick Green, along with David Barton and Tim Barton, we're going to be doing a special constitutional defense course, which is handgun training during the day and constitution training at night, and fireworks on July 4th. It's going to be very, very cool and it'll start on July 4th. So check that out today at patriotacademy.com, click on the constitutional defense button and look at that date. That starts July 4th. We've still got some slots left. It is going to fill up fast and we're only a month out, so we've got to start making plans now. But it's an amazing weekend. You will love it. Best instructors on the planet, best ranges, maybe in the country and at the new, phenomenal Patriot Academy campus in Fredericksburg, Texas.

Check it out at patriotacademy.com and, believe it or not, most of the people we take with us have never shot a gun, never touched a gun. It's incredible what happens. It's a phenomenal experience, and the mission is I want to have a sheepdog, a God-fearing, bible-believing, well-armed, well-trained, tender warrior, male or female, in every restaurant, in every shopping center and Walmart and grocery store and all the places where these mass murder events happen. I want to have someone there that is able to stop the threat, because it's a citizen that's been trained and is ready. I want to have more and more good people, good families, prepared and able to defend their home should the wolf come knocking at their door, and that requires being a sheepdog, and so that's what this training does, I mean.

If you go to the website constitutioncoach.com, you can watch some of the videos and you'll see some of the stories of others that have come that had never done anything like this. And if you shot your whole life, trust me, I grew up on the ranch I thought, no, I don't need this training, I'm a type A person I'll step up. Oh boy, oh boy. I didn't know what I didn't know and by noon of the first day I realized I didn't know what I didn't know and they made me so much better, so much more mentally ready so I’m going to stop talking about that and the presentation is called Constitutional Defense of your Family and Freedom. And this is the presentation that we did out at Frontside. It's actually the first episode and we've got a really cool box set on this that takes you through the entire course, but we're going to share that first episode with you all throughout this week. So all five programs this week diving into constitutional defense of your family. Let's get into that presentation when we come back from the break. Stay with us.

You're listening to WallBuilders Live. Hey, friends, if you've been listening to WallBuilders Live for very long at all, you know how much we respect our veterans and how appreciative we are of the sacrifice they make to make our freedoms possible. One of the ways that we love to honor those veterans is to tell their stories here on WallBuilders Live. Once in a while we get an opportunity to interview. Veterans that have served on those front lines, that have made incredible sacrifices, have amazing stories that we want to share with the American people. One of the very special things we get to do is interview World War II veterans. You've heard those interviews here on Wall Builders Live, from folks that were in the Band of Brothers to folks like Edgar Harrell that survived in Indianapolis to so many other great stories you've heard on Wall Builders Live. You have friends and family that also serve. If you have World War II veterans in your family that you would like to have their story shared here on WallBuilders Live, please email us at radio@wallbuilders.com, radio at wallbuilders.com. Give us a brief summary of the story and we'll set up an interview. Thanks so much for sharing here on WallBuildersLive.

Rick Green

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Here we go, we're going to jump into constitutional defense of your family and freedom. The constitutional defense of your family and freedom. Freedom Everyone says they love it. Most even say that they would fight for it. But how many of us can even define it, let alone know how to defend the freedom we love? The time has come for every American citizen to learn about our constitutional freedoms and then do our part as good citizens to defend that Constitution, especially our Second Amendment. Rights Front Sight has teamed up with Constitution expert Rick Green to bring you an entertaining and educational program that will equip and inspire you to defend your family and your freedom.

Brad

This is Constitutional Defense. I've been training people how to defend themselves with firearms for more than 30 years. I could not do that training, nor could any of us live out that training, if not for the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, the Second Amendment, and indeed the Constitution itself, must be vigorously defended if we expect to maintain these critical rights. So, in addition to providing you with world-class firearms training, FrontSight now offers you expert training on the Constitution. Armed with this knowledge, you can be even more effective at defending the founding document that makes all of this possible.

Welcome to FrontSight's Constitutional Defense Course, where you will learn how to defend your family's liberty for the long haul, not just in the heat of battle. We'll be taking you into Front Sight's classroom where you're going to learn from our constitutional expert. He's even going to take us to the very place where the Constitution was framed. However, we're going to start this program with a roundtable discussion to give you some insight into the purpose and the goals of Front Sight's constitutional defense course and also to introduce you to our expert instructor, Mr Rick Green, who is also a Front Sight First Family member and a Handgun Distinguished Graduate. Rick, thanks for teaming up with us to bring us this information to our members.

Rick Green

Man. It's my pleasure, Brad, it's an honor to be with both you guys here at Front Sight and get to team up with FrontSight, Super excited about it. Of course, I get excited anytime anyone is willing to take time to actually study the founding documents, start diving into what made America so great and unique and, most importantly, start asking the questions what can we do to make sure we're taking this freedom we've been given and actually passing it on to the next group coming behind us?

Brad

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, especially since you and your family have a way of taking what many people consider to be fairly drab subjects history and law and literally bringing them to life.

Rick Green

We try to. I hate boring history right? Nobody wants to just memorize dates and names. Let's tell the stories about how we got here.

Brad

Well, you guys do a great job and it's very inspiring. All right. Also, joining us is longtime First Family member, Eric Rogers. Eric, tell us what you think our members can expect to get out of this new series. Well, first of all, I think this is a great partnership.

Eric Rogers

I mean, I've been training here a very long time. We all know that Front Sight is the absolute best at training people in how to use firearms right. I think that's a unanimous decision there. And now that I've learned more about you, Rick, I understand that there is probably no one better in the United States in teaching us about the Constitution, about the Bill of Rights, about what they mean, about how important they are, and particularly here, since we're here at Front Sight, the Second Amendment right. I mean, that's a big one.

Rick Green

I was a little worried when you said now that I've learned more about you, I thought you were going to say I'm out of here now that I've learned more.

Eric Rogers

But thank you, no, I want to stay. I also am really impressed with your family, Rick. I'm impressed with your kids. I'm impressed with your wife. I'm impressed with your interaction with each other and how you team up to teach us this stuff.

So we're honored to have you here and we're ready to learn man,

Rick Green

 I'm looking forward to it

Eric Rogers

 All right, and just wait till we combine your family's love of the constitution and the second amendment with some serious firepower out on the range.

Rick Green

Wait, wait. You guys are saying we're not just going to sit around, break out the old books and spend time in the classroom.

Eric Rogers

Oh, yeah, you know what I predict. I can predict that there's going to be some serious firepower. There's going to be some serious liberty and freedom going down range.

Rick Green

I love it.

Brad

All right, hold on there. Before we get to exercising those second amendment rights, we need to make you work for it a little bit. Okay, I'm willing, I'm willing. Some people would say that, look, the Second Amendment's been in place for, you know, 230 years, roughly, give or take. Why is there even a need to discuss it?

Why can't we just get to the range and start exercising those rights, right? 

Rick Green

No, I think this is a great place to start our classes, even to start thinking about why is it so important to study the Second Amendment, not just live out the Second Amendment? And the reason is because we always think of the Second Amendment protecting our right to keep and bear arms. We forget that it's also our job to protect the Second Amendment through our activities as citizens, to make sure that it's still the law of the land, to make sure that we continue to have those rights. The only way we can do that is actually studying those rights and studying the documents where they're found.

Eric Rogers

That is a concept that most of us have, and certainly that I've had my whole life, and that the constitution exists, it's there, it says what it says. So what work do we have to do? So I think that that's really important. And that kind of brings us back to our earlier question about you know what people are going to get out of this series? Yeah and um, I guarantee people will learn a ton. You know, certainly, important history that they maybe they've never heard about before. Um, they're going to be entertained and and that's interesting too, because like you said before or you said, sometimes these subjects are thought of as drab or maybe a little boring or that sort of thing. Absolutely not, you know, particularly when you're talking about it. Oh, thanks, you know, you bring it alive and you use great examples and you got the humor in there and it really helps. I mean, I think that's really important and I think it's important that we all, through this exercise, get inspired to be good citizens, which I think we all want to do.

Rick Green

Man, I couldn't agree with you more. I think that really is the purpose, because a lot of times, frankly, we're spoiled. We enjoy the liberty, we enjoy the blessings we've been given and we forget there's a burden with that. With every right, there's a responsibility. So while we enjoy the right to keep and bear arms, we enjoy the right to throw that lead down the range. We need to understand what it is that's protecting it and then take the actions that are necessary to do exactly that. So that's really what we're going to do in the course is deep dive into how does citizenship really work? What can we do to preserve these rights.

Eric Rogers

I have a quick comment on that, and that is that it depends on where you live. Maybe because you live in Nevada or Texas or someplace like that, which is a little more free, a little more open, maybe you do take those for granted, but I live in California, right, and so I understand that. You know, I see the erosion.

Rick Green

Yeah, you've seen the infringement. You've seen them little by little. Start to take away your right to keep them there.

Eric Rogers

Yeah, and it's. It starts as a trickle and then you know, and then it's a full river and um, so so I see that and I'm looking forward to you helping us learn what to do in order to reverse that.

Rick Green

Well, this really fits, brad, with your talk on moral and ethical decisions and using deadly force, because you talk about you know the difference between morals and ethics the fact that society decides what the ethics of that culture you know what they're going to be and, fortunately for us, the ethics of the founding of our country. Back then the society said, hey, right to keep and bear arms is essential, it's part of the laws of nature. We want to make sure it's part of our culture. It's been that way for 230 years. But sometimes you can feel that sand shifting, right. I mean, things are changing and the attitudes are changing out there, and so it's up to us as citizens to influence what those attitudes are. Otherwise, we're going to wake up and society is going to decide hey, you guys no longer have the right to keep and bear arms.

We bear arms. We're just going to let the government take care of that. No longer do you get to defend yourself.

Brad

So basically, you're saying the way to prevent that erosion of liberty then is to study the roots of that liberty.

Rick Green

 Exactly right? No, he's exactly right, and I would say I kind of stole that line, I would say, because John Jay's the one that really said it. He was our first chief justice and he said every single citizen ought to study the constitution, not just read it, but study it so that we can teach the rising generation to be free. So, as these kids are coming up now, we got to know what our rights are, teach the next generation what those rights are.

And then he said if we know our rights, if we've actually studied, if we found it in the Constitution and understood where it came from, then we'll be ready, we'll recognize when those rights have been violated and we'll be the better prepared, he said, to defend and assert those rights. Which means if we know those rights, we know where they came from, we know what the founders actually meant. When California or the federal government or whoever starts infringing on them, we can say whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. We know what our rights are. We can stand up for those things peaceably, right, we just engage in the process. There's plenty of you know, at our fingertips we've got everything we need to peaceably assert, as John Jay said, those rights. That's what we're going to learn how to do.

Well, and I think that what's important about that, there's social media today. Let's bring it to the current times. You know, you see these posts and things, and people start arguing with you and if we're equipped to not just say, well, it's right there, it's in the Second Amendment, and read the text, but actually have the arguments, have the background, understand what the founders were talking about.

Rick Green

You could say we're going to give people ammunition, ammunition. It's just a different ammunition than what we're usually throwing down range.

Eric Rogers

I mean just talking to you from the time we've been together. I already have way more arguments, way more ammunition to be more effective

Brad

All right, gentlemen. So let's take this opportunity, then, to take our viewers directly into the training, with Rick in the classroom, and throughout this series. We'll be going into the Front Sight classroom, we'll be going out onto the ranges, we're even going to go to the Cradle of Liberty itself. That's obviously Independence Hall in Philadelphia. For today's session, we're going to start on that part of the Constitution that is most near and dear to Front Sight First, family members, and that is the Second Amendment. Without a doubt, Front Sight members get their firearms training by day and their constitution training by night. Great match man, get them both at once. I think it's wonderful, absolutely All right. Well then, let's head into the classroom where, Rick, you're going to load us up with some constitutional firepower. Let's do it. All right, let's go.

Break

Brad

He is an attorney and a former legislator from the state of Texas. He is also a front-site First Family member and a handgun distinguished graduate. Please help me welcome our guest instructor for the evening, Mr Rick Green. Thank you brother.

Rick Green

Yep, I'm going to use that one. Thank you, man, appreciate it very much. All right, okay, you guys ready. Yes, did anybody get to throw some lead downrange today? Yeah, everybody, all right. Yeah, everybody, All right. Tomorrow you'll shoot a lot more than you did today. You got some great stuff, so we're getting started, but it's going to get even better. We're going to load you up tonight with intellectual ammunition so when you get back home you can do battle with your neighbors, family, whoever it is that's wanting to get rid of the Second Amendment and destroy our Constitution. You're going to learn how to restore our Constitution and make sure that it's protected for future generations.

I don't know about you guys. I love Front Sight. I've been coming for about six years now. I consider this the Disneyland of gun owners. This is where our family would rather vacation here than anywhere else. We love coming out to Front Sight. It's been an absolute privilege for us to get to train here, get to know so many folks and get a chance to prepare our family for defense.

I really appreciate Brad being a part of this as well. I remember the first time I saw Brad, he didn't have any idea who I was. I was sitting in the very back back there with my son, Trey, and we came and we just sitting back there watching and learning from Brad it wasn't videos at the time, we were watching him give those lectures live Videos at the time we were watching him give those lectures live and we just learned so much. And so now to get to team up with him and go to these historical places has been really cool, a great opportunity for us and just exciting to be a part of this. I'm thankful to Dr Piazza for allowing us to do this. He loves the Constitution, wants to see the Constitution protected and defended, and he knows that you as members of Frontside or for those of you that are here for the first time that in learning to use your weapon and learning to exercise your Second Amendment learning to defend yourself and your families you've also got to begin to defend the Second Amendment itself, to defend the Constitution. It's under great attack today. Dr Piazza understands that and that's why he wanted us to be able to do this. So we're thrilled to be able to team up with him and team up with Front Sight. I'm a little bit surprised that he's letting me do this.

Frankly, I mean to let a Texas politician have the stage for a little bit, but I am a recovering politician. Just for those of you that are wondering, I am now two years clean off the ballot, so my wife is quite happy about that. Would much rather us be doing exactly this than running for office. So we do tend to think of politicians in a very negative light. What we're going to talk about a little bit tonight is what to look for in leaders that will defend the Second Amendment. First thing you've got to look for is not politicians, but patriots. A politician is only thinking about the next election. A patriot is thinking about the next generation, and by the end of this evening you're going to learn how you can help to raise up an entire generation of patriots that are willing to defend not only the Second Amendment but the entire Constitution and how to lead effectively. In fact, you're going to hear from some of those folks tonight as well.

I want to jump right in, first of all, to why I started becoming a patriot, I believe, and patriotic about what we have here in America. I, like many of you maybe, grew up a little bit spoiled when it came to freedom. Just the idea of we get to enjoy the blessings of liberty but we don't really sometimes think about the burden that comes with that. We don't accept the burden, we don't invest our time in a way that will defend that freedom. Typically, most of the time, we just enjoy those blessings and we enjoy being free. That's certainly how it was for me.

But I went to a dinner in 1994. It was the last public speech that Ronald Reagan ever gave and as we're waiting on President Reagan to come out, they were playing some of his speeches. They had screens just like this right here and they had them going all the way around the room and they were playing these speeches of Ronald Reagan. We're waiting for he and Margaret Thatcher to come out and they played this particular speech. And if you recognize the screen right there, that's Pointe du Hoc, france Pointe du Hoc, however you want to pronounce it, but it's Pointe du Hoc. It's where our Army Rangers 225 of Rudder's Rangers Any Aggies in the room I know Nathan Macias is back there. Yeah, so these were Rudder and rudder's rangers and taking those cliffs. That was the beginning of d day. That was the beginning of taking back an entire continent for freedom.

Well, here's Reagan. It's the 40th anniversary. He's standing there atop the cliffs, the monument is behind him and seated around him you can kind of see in the picture there were about 15 or 20 of those rangers that were still alive at the time. On the 40th anniversary of the 225, only 90, the mission. Here's 15 or 20 of them seated around Reagan, and Reagan starts to recount the horrific, yet heroic events of that day. He starts reminding them what it was like and talking about how one would fall and another would take their place. He's going through the whole thing and the camera starts kind of panning across these tough old army rangers, every one of them tears welling up in their eyes as they're taken back to those days of sacrifice.

Here I was. I was probably 22 years old as I sat there and watched this on the screen. My dad's on my right guy on my left was a man named George McCormick. Now, mr McCormick was a bomber pilot in World War II. He was a great patriot, great American, and I'm sitting there and I'm watching this on the screen and I happen to look over at Mr McCormick as Reagan is taking us back to those days of sacrifice. And right there at that dinner, everybody in their tuxedos Mr McCormick's just got tears running down his face and instantly it suddenly hit me for the first time in my life I began to understand the personal sacrifice of the man sitting next to me and that he had made that sacrifice for me, sitting next to me, and that he had made that sacrifice for me.

Speaker 1: 26:01

Our friends got to interrupt our presentation on constitutional defense of your family and freedom because we're out of time for today, so we will be back tomorrow with part two. We're going to play it all throughout this week. You don't want to miss it. And by the end of the week you'll be able to get all five pieces of the program on the website at wobblerslive.com. If you would like to join us and actually go out for this live class you get the presentation, the constitutional training and the handgun defense training then visit our website today at constitutioncoach.com constitutioncoach.com. Thanks for listening today. We're going to pick it up right where we left off, so don't miss tomorrow. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders.