Rick Green

It's the Intersection of Faith and Culture. Thanks for joining us today. It's the WallBuilders Show. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. If you listen, often you hear me say that every show at the beginning. Why do I do that? Repetition is the mother of all learning. Why do I do that? It's to prepare us for the program and to realize that we're about to take on some topic, some hot topic in the culture.

Something's going on in the world. Maybe it's in our backyard, maybe it's in a particular state, maybe it's in Congress or Supreme Court, maybe it's even around the world hint, hint to what's coming up. But there's something happening out there, and when it happens it affects our lives, and so we have to know how to respond to that. We have to know from history. What can we learn from the things that have happened in the past? Because there's nothing new under the sun. Nothing we're facing in America is brand new. None of the societal problems we're dealing with are brand new. Nothing new under the sun. Solomon was right. So we can look into history and learn from how either we in America faced it before or, if we never faced it, someone did. And then, of course, constitutionally, we need to know how to do this correctly in our system. And then biblically, all the answers yep, all of them. There's nothing missing. It covers everything in life. So when you hear me say that we're going to do a historical, biblical, constitutional perspective on whatever the hot topic of the day is, that's what I'm talking about.

Visit our website today at wallbuilders.com. That's our main website, our wallbuilders.show for the radio program. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David and Tim Barton. All right, David and Tim, Justin Haskins from the Heartland Institute will be with us here in a little while, going to be talking about the European Union. And you know we dodged a bullet. What was it a week or two ago with the World Health Organization? I say dodged a bullet, I mean there was a lot of effort by our friends Matt Staver, Michelle Bachmann, Frank Gaffney, a whole lot of others that were trying to keep that absurd World Health Organization treaty from being done. That would have given them the power to determine pandemics and what everybody would have to do. Well, today we're going to talk about another international threat, and it's coming from the European Union and has to do with regulations on businesses. But it doesn't just affect the European Union. It affects companies all around the world.

David Barton

You know, this is an amazing thing to me, Rick. We're coming up just in a few weeks on another birthday for America. It'll be another world's record and it's like we just have America folks that can't stand the success. They just hate it and have to change it and we can't govern ourselves. We've got to let somebody else govern us because we're not smart enough to do it. But man, those great experts in Europe, they have done such a good job over there. We need to let them govern us. And it just mystifies me the lack of logic, the lack of common sense, the lack of analytical ability that often goes with these guys, and for the Biden administration to do what they've done and tried to hand our medical control off to World Health Organization. Let them do what they're doing. It's amazing.

So I was just kind of thinking about this, thinking about Justin and what he's got today, because I knew we're going to interview him and it really struck me that it's just a I hate to oversimplify this, but it's a basic worldview conflict and we know that. But what kind of strikes me is you're either going to worship the creator or the creation. That's the only two options you've got, and creator or creation. And if you choose to worship the creation, then you're going to be a secular progressive. I mean, I just can't find a historical example of someone who throws God out and worships everything that's made. Somehow, they want that to be your God. What's been made, what's been created, becomes your God, and so from that point they become globalist. And that's been all across the history of the world is we don't recognize our own national boundaries, and so, whether that's empire building, whether people who want to take over the world or anything else Hitler, Stalin, anybody else you got to throw God out. And once you throw God out, then your authority becomes yourself, and then you're not limited to your own nation, you become global.

That's what I see with Biden and the progressives. I mean, they want to control Israel and they want everybody else to have the- It's just a weird thing. I don't know how to explain it, but it goes back to you either worship the creation or the Creator. And if you worship the creation, you're going to be a secular progressive and you're going to be one that does not recognize national or local or regional or state. It's all global for you, and I keep seeing Biden and the progressives hand this stuff off to the international folks, and even in a couple of votes that happened this week on states saying, hey, we're not going to let an international group come in and run our state, it was only the Democrats that objected to that bill. It was not The Republicans and the Democrats have become so aggressively secular that they took God out of their platform. And even here in America, one of their key speakers now is a drag queen. When did that become standard for a party?

Tim Barton

Well, and I think specifically, Dad, you're referring to the Democrat convention, the national convention that took place. Was that the national convention, or was that a state convention?

David Barton

It was no, it was national convention. It was our national convention that took place. Was that the national convention or was that a state convention? It was no, it was national convention. It was our national platform.

Tim Barton

National convention, the last time they did a national platform and they had, as some of their featured speakers, they had transgender, they had drag show performers.

It's certainly wrong and I want to back up,

David Barton

 tim, I'm backing up to even in Texas. Just in the last couple weeks in texas the texas democrat party that was that was their featured speaker was a drag queen.

Rick Green

I saw that and they and they cheered her on and they cheered him or her or whatever it was, it was and it was talking about. I know that's rude, I shouldn't say, but I really don't know, because somebody told me it's not even a guy being a girl, it's a girl that's dressed up as a guy being a girl I'm that that confused, but that's what I was told.

Anyway, apparently it was you know. They were bragging about all the children that they had taught and the Democrat Party people were cheering this person on Unreal.

David Barton

Yeah, and the question is how many public schools have you been in and why would we do that? But yeah, it was Texas which, amazed me

Tim Barton

 well the bigger picture point. Going back to what you identified, where it's a worldview, I would actually say it's not only either you believe in God or you have this really woke leftist, progressive ideology. I really do think it's how well do you understand and apply the bible? Because, yeah, I know some Christians that are globalists right, because well, Jesus, God they love everybody, and there shouldn't be borders.

Rick Green

And environmentalists Exactly Worship in the creation too. Yeah.

Tim Barton

It really goes back to do you have a biblical worldview and if you have even some basic understanding of life? And I do want to give this caveat, because there might be some people out there who would say well, I don't believe in God, but I'm a moral person. And then you have to ask the question well, where did you learn your morals, right? Was there a biblical standard by which you learned your morals? Did you have a grandma who knew God and believed the Bible and taught you right from wrong? That taught you to treat other people the way you want to be treated? That that that you know, walked you through some of these concepts. Because that was exactly the conversation that Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin had.

When Thomas Paine was coming out attacking Christianity and Franklin's like man, I think you might be misunderstanding. You say you're a moral person and don't need Christianity for that. And Franklin says first of all, you're discounting how many people need Christianity to help them with their morals? But he says, Thomas, where do you think you learned these things? And so I think that there are people that would say I don't believe in God, but I'm a moral person. There were some people that say I'm a Christian, but I'm a globalist, and so it really does come down to having a biblical worldview.

I think more than just a general acknowledgement of God or not acknowledging God. But with that being said, one of the things that's very clear in scripture is God is the one that created nations. God is the one that sets boundaries of nations. I mean, there's so many verses we can point to and the idea that in a nation that some government leaders of that nation would say, well, we want some other government who doesn't live here, who doesn't represent us, to control our destiny and our future, that is so foolish and certainly unbiblical. And that's literally why we separated from the king back in 1776, was to not go through that process anymore. And so it is really crazy that you see the EU taking moves to try to make every nation subject to them, their whims and their wishes yet again. And we've seen Justin write about this and we thought, man, we need to get Justin on to explain some of what's going on and help give people perspective to what can we do to put a stop to some of this nonsense.

Rick Green

Justin Haskins, our special guest. He's from the Heartland Institute. Stay with us. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us. Justin Haskins, back with us, always keeping an eye on the crazy out there. Justin, thanks for coming back on man.

Justin Haskins

Happy to be with you.

Rick Green

Hey, so now Europe is apparently taking ESG to a whole nother level, which I mean, I guess probably means it's headed our way as well. But what is this new kind of push in Europe to force companies to adopt all these left-wing policies?

Justin Haskins

Yeah, one of the most radical, dangerous policies to individual freedom here in the United States was just codified in the European Union, made into law. This just happened at the end of May. It's called Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Rolls right off the tongue CSDDDD. So what it does is impose radical far left social justice, climate, environmental policies on large companies in the European Union and on American companies and companies from all over the rest of the world as well that do business in the European Union above a certain threshold. So Ford, Mcdonald's, Apple, Facebook, Meta, like all these companies, they all do business in the European Union above this threshold, and so they'll have to adopt these left-wing policies.

But it's even worse than that. The requirements for these companies that are covered under this CSDDD law mandates that they impose those policies on the businesses that these companies are working with, no matter where they are in their supply chain.

So in other words, if you're Ford, you're covered under this law because you do a lot of business for the European Union. You have to impose these policies not just on your own company, ford, and your subsidiaries. Impose these policies not just on your own company, ford, and your subsidiaries, but also on all the suppliers that you're doing business with many of the suppliers that you're doing business with, no matter where they are. So you could be a rubber plant manufacturer. You could be a rubber manufacturer in, say, Ohio or Pennsylvania that sells to Ford and you don't do any business in Europe. But because you sell to Ford, ford is going to have to impose these sets of policies on you as well. And when you actually start looking at all these major companies and all these different partnerships they have with businesses all over the United States, what you realize is almost all major companies, many of the medium-sized companies and many small businesses even will be forced to comply with some aspect of this European ESG system as a result of this law that just passed.

Rick Green

Wow, this is not just Milton Friedman's old thing about government creating friction in the market. I mean, this is gumming up the works completely, and the tentacles of this reach obviously across to us and to around the world. Help me out, Justin, because every time I hear EU, I mean I know and I'm just ignorant about this. So help me. I know Great Britain left, I know England left. Who else is still? Is everybody else still in? I mean, does this still affect most of Europe?

Justin Haskins

Yeah, the vast majority of Europe is in the European Union. Nearly all of the really powerful countries like Germany, France, Spain. These countries are all in the European Union. There are some countries, like in Eastern Europe, that are not in the EU, and the biggest country that's not in the EU, the most powerful one, is the United Kingdom, but that's because they just left, so these policies would all be imposed on the United Kingdom as well, which is kind of ironic, because the whole point of them leaving was to escape this sort of thing. Um, and I think that's sort of the main point wait, say that again.

Rick Green

wait, say that again so why so they left? But why would it still affect them?

Justin Haskins

well, it affects every country including the United States.

Rick Green

I see what you're saying, because of the second tier, any company doing business in Germany or somewhere else in the EU, obviously most of them are also doing business in the UK, so that's why I get what you're saying. Right the way that they did it they're just essentially saying you don't have to be members or not, we're coming after you is basically what they're saying.

Justin Haskins

That's exactly, that's exactly right. It could be anywhere in the world and they're coming after, and that's really the whole point is the biggest problem with this is actually not even the, the leftist metrics that they're imposing on everybody, which would completely transform our society, our economy. Uh, for example, they they're having all these crazy biodiversity requirements for companies, they want to eliminate fossil fuels, all kinds of policies that would be imposed on farmers and ranchers.

The worst part of it really is that it's an elimination of American sovernty and Euopean sovernty rest of the world. Whether you want to or not, or you just can't do any business here at all, or business with anybody who does business here. And because they know that all these large corporations are never going to leave McDonald's is never going to leave the European Union, Ford is never going to stop selling cars in the European Union. Apple, meta, Microsoft they're not leave the European Union. Everybody knows that and because of that, these policies are going to end up getting imposed all across the world as a result of these big, gigantic corporations doing business.

Rick Green

Man and I can't even imagine, Justin, not only the negative flow of what this does to corporate culture in the country I mean, these are horrible Marxist policies that they're talking about but it's also just the compliance. I mean, how in the world do you know now you're going to add all these compliance officers and you're going to have your ESG officer and you know virtually every you know outlet of your chain. I mean it's an absolute nightmare what it does. I just the socialist ideas here permeating the world so quickly. It's hard to, it's hard to fathom and they don't even understand what they're doing to hurt themselves and cause the economy to get even worse than it is now. It's shocking, honestly. Is anybody in Europe, I mean, is there a conservative pushback at all?

Justin Haskins

Yeah, there was a conservative pushback. It looked as though the law was the bill was going to die. They've been working on it for years three years they've been trying to get it passed. At the last minute it looked like it was going to die. There were some politicians in Germany and some other countries Italy that were trying to kill it. They failed and the bill made it through, and I think the reason for that was largely because, as you may have heard, the European Union just held elections shortly after this, within just a few weeks of the law passing, and the far left did very badly in that election and probably would not have the vote to pass it in a subsequent session, so they had to get it through.

This was their last chance to get it through, and so there was backroom deals and horse trading and all the usual stuff that you hear about in Washington DC. Well, that happens in Europe on steroids, and that's what happened here and they managed to get the thing through, and so now the only way to get rid of it would be to pass a new law, which would take years to do, and they don't have the votes to pull that off. So unfortunately, we're stuck with this. The only way we in America can protect ourselves from it is if we have a President and a Congress and state legislatures too, but especially president of Congress who are going to stand up to the European Union and say hey, you're not going to do this to us. You can do it to the rest of the world if you want, but you're not doing it to us and right now we don't have that.

Rick Green

Yeah, that's the kind of I mean that's the kind of serious negotiation and strong stance from a strong president that is necessary to win these kind of battles. When you have a weak president, weak leadership in the country, these kind of things, you just get run over. I mean that's what's happening, we're getting run over, and what an embarrassment and what a negative impact downstream. I mean that's what. I'm just stuck on that. I'm just thinking about all of the, all of the. I always think about regulation and red tape and how much it gums up the works and makes it difficult for the economy to thrive. And in this case, man, you're talking about the entire economy. I mean it will affect every company in Europe and then, of course, as you said, most of the companies, large companies, also doing business here.

Justin, thank you for the work you're doing at Heartland Institute. Thank you for staying on top of this stuff. We'd love to get you back and get an update. Hopefully there's a pushback that begins. Maybe I don't know, it's caught is does congress, or the rumblings in congress, to try to push the president to to stop something here, or or is it? Uh, is everybody just kind of caught off guard on this thing?

Justin Haskins

yeah, to be honest, I don't know that anybody has heard of it until the last week or two, wow, so we're working really hard to try to get people informed. I'm 100 percent sure that there are some very high level members of Congress that are now aware of what's going on, but there's a lot of work to be done if we're going to save the country from this.

Rick Green

Yeah, no doubt. Well, so it's not just World Health Organization and those types of things. This is another part of that just just dangerous, dangerous policy that can destroy our way of life very quickly. Justin, God bless you, man. Keep up the great work. Let's get you back again soon.

Justin Haskins

Sounds good. Thanks very much, rick, god bless.

Rick Green

Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Break

Rick Green

We're back on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Justin Haskins for joining us from the Heartland Institute. All right, David Tim, we beat back the World Health Organization, at least for now. Now we got this European Union thing and I was really surprised. Well, I hadn't heard about it till we set up the interview and Justin basically made it clear man, very few people are paying attention to this. He said there were some high-level members that he knows for sure are now on the. You know they got the scent and they're on the trail. But wow, this is a big deal and very few people talking about it.

David Barton

Yeah, it is a big deal and it's really amazing because, as Justin explains it, this is a way that international globalists can control America by pushing these contracts down into the subcontractors and down into service areas in America that are manufacturers and do parts for Ford or they help assemble things for global companies or they provide food for McDonald's or cups or straws or whatever. And if they do, and if they're going to stay in business, they're going to have to conform to these globalist kind of standards. And so it's an interesting these guys have gotten anywhere in the world philosophy. We don't care where you are, what nation you're in, we're going to tell you how you're going to conduct your business and the ESG stuff. I mean, like you said, ESG now with two letters added.

This is a whole new thing, and I guess I've been recently doing some work on a book we'll have coming out before too long, but it deals kind of with World War II and it's interesting that with communism, fascism, nazism and socialism as it was progressing, the people in the country really agreed with it and thought it was a good thing and thought this is really good for us and this is going to help our business. And that's what they said with Stalin. When Hitler came in, man, it was almost unanimous everybody wanted Hitler because he's going to move the country in the right direction. And all of these start with talking about the right thing and they start trying to impose their values on nations around them. We want German values on everybody, we want Russian values on everybody, and that's what this EU kind of group is doing. It's just amazing to see that there's nothing new under the sun. We've been through this before, but hopefully we'll recognize it before this gets down the path very far.

Tim Barton

Well, and you know, guys, I would throw out that, even though we would absolutely disagree with this because of the ESG policies, you know, I mean the strategy itself is something that, if America implemented this, what if America said, hey, we're going to do this when it comes to the slave trade, and so right, if we're getting stuff from China and they're using slave labor to do it, then we aren’t buying that anymore. It’s not that this is a bad strategy. I mean maybe I’m seeing it wrong, you guys can correct me if I am, but I don’t think it’s a bad strategy, I think the major problem is, the moral implications and because we don’t have the right kind of leaders. And I mean, arguably, around the nation, that have the right kind of moral compass. And the thing he said that resonated with me, he said you need leaders that will stand up to the EU. And right now we don't have that right, we don't have a leader that's going to say, hey, you're not doing that to us. And it reminded me that when Trump first was elected, his first term, there were several things where he was telling the UN, hey, we're not doing that right. I mean, he was literally telling other nations that were trying to control America that we're not going to play that game, we're not going to let you manipulate us, we're not going to let you to force us to pay for things, et cetera. And it really does again exemplify why it matters what leaders you have, why it matters that the church gets involved in the whole process, because we want people that have a very good moral foundation on school board. We need good moral people on city council, we need people that have a biblical moral foundation on every county position we have. We need moral people that have a biblical foundation in the state legislature.

If we had this all the way up, there would be a lot more data of like what you talked about before. We had Justin on with. I think it was Governor Stitt in Oklahoma where they just passed something saying, hey, we're not letting the EU tell us what we're going to do and how we're going to do it, or the WHO and whoever it is over there, we're not letting them tell us how we're going to live our life in Oklahoma. If you had more leaders with that kind of moral foundation and the character and then the backbone, the fiber of courage to stand up, then this would not be as successful. But when you have weak leaders that don't have the same kind of moral compass shaped by the Bible, by biblical worldview, then this is the kind of stuff that happens, which I'm saying that now because we have elections coming up and it does matter who we are supporting and who we are voting for, because our leaders will make a difference.

Rick Green

I have to tell you guys, as we're closing out today, it is really hard for me the dad joke side of me to not seize on every time Tim says the who, and either an owl joke or come back with who. I mean, it's hard. I'm telling you guys, I'm exercising restraint because now that I'm a grandpa my kids really do roll their eyes when I give dad jokes. So for all the listeners out there, roll your eyes. But thank you so much for listening. And Tim is now of the dad joke age, so I've been waiting for some good dad jokes.

Tim Barton

I was just going to say that who is on first base? And I don't know that's quite the right place, but oh, that was the other one, that would have been even better.

Rick Green

See, you one-upped me. That was good. See, that's young dad jokes. That's what you do when you're dad and you're still cool. All right, folks, thanks for listening. We a part of the WallBuilders Show. Be sure to tune in Monday through Wednesday for great interviews. Thursday for Foundations of Freedom. Thursdays and Friday for some good news. Friday all the programs available for you right now at our website, wallbuilders.show. That's the easy place to just grab some of the archives and then for some great materials and resources and information, go to wallbuilders.com. Thanks again for listening to the WallBuilders Show.