Historic Quote: 0:11

President Thomas Jefferson said, I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves. And if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

Rick Green: 0:34

This is the intersection of faith and the culture. Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders Live, we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. If you want to know the right position on any issue out there, that's how you do it. You say, hey, what does the Bible have to say about this? I got to be in God's word every day to know these things. But then what can history teach me about this, as well. What works and doesn't work? History shows us that. And then, of course, our Constitution. If you're going to apply these things appropriately, under our system of government, we have to know the Constitution, and get that constitutional perspective, as well. So that's why we always say WallBuilders Live, looking at things from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. We're doing that with David Barton. This guy is America's premier historian. I am so honored to get to work with David for the last couple of decades. I've run into so many people that are serving in the legislatures of states all over the country, in Congress in Washington, DC, school boards, city Council's you name it that say, I ran for office, because I saw this from David Barton or I read this from David Barton. David has been a catalyst for restoring biblical values and constitutional principles and so thankful for that. And just thrilled to be here with WallBuilders. And of course, the name WallBuilders comes from that scripture and Nehemiah that says, arise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach. We've got to rebuild the foundations, folks, right here in America, there's major cracks in the foundation, we've got real problems and rot in the culture. But the good news is, it's been revealed over the last couple of years. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. And now we know it's there, and we're learning what to do to restore the foundations in America. So we're here with David. We're also here with Tim Barton. He's a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. You ought to book him into your community, to your church, to your business organization to speak. I'm telling you he'll light people on fire, he'll get him excited, give them hope, and give them answers to how to turn this culture around. My name is Rick Green. I'm a former Texas legislator and America's constitution coach. And its foundations of freedom Thursday, so let's get started today. You send in your questions to radio@wallbuilders.com . Send your questions to radio@wallbuilders.com . All right, David. And Tim, let's dive in. First question is actually coming from Eric and Jen Peterson in in Cary, North Carolina. They said, hey guys, we love the show. We're constitution coaches and we're actually now teaching homeschoolers a US History class using Patria Academy and WallBuilders materials. Good for you, Eric. And Jen. They said, we have looked and we know you've addressed quite a bit about Lincoln, but we don't think this specifically has been addressed by you guys yet- was the Emancipation Proclamation constitutional? Thanks so much for everything you do. Okay, I don't think we've actually, maybe we have, maybe we have over the years, we've done a lot of shows a lot of years. And the old noggin doesn't work like it used to sometimes. So we may have covered this before. But what do you guys think? Emancipation Proclamation? Is it... was it constitutional at the time?

David Barton: 3:23

Just making that admission, Rick. That's a confession, it's like an admission that the white hair is sucking brain cells out of your brain or something!

Rick Green: 3:33

Oh, no, no, I was referring to you guys. I was say in your noggins. No, no, did I say my noggin? No.

David Barton: 3:38

Well, let me answer the question a different way or phrase a different way. The Emancipation Proclamation would have been unconstitutional if it had applied to the United States. But because he did it only for those states that had separated, it applied only to the areas that the Confederate states that had left and had been retaken by the government. Therefore, under martial law, military control, that's really where to apply to. So it applied to the southern states, he did not make an emancipation proclamation for northern states. It took the 13th amendment to end slavery in those states, but when those other southern states left, the constitutional provisions don't apply to them anymore. That's why, for example, I know a lot of people in South get really ticked at Lincoln because he didn't... he suspended the rights of habeas corpus. He sure did. Because the Constitution says that if you're in rebellion against the United States, you can suspend the rights of habeas corpus. So when you look at the Emancipation Proclamation, it was only written for the southern states and those parts of the southern states that came back in under military command or martial law, when for example, Vicksburg Mississippi was taken back in early in the war as other places were so it's a great question, but I would phrase it the other way. It would have been unconstitutional if he had done it for all of the United States, but doing it the way he did it, it was constitutional, or at least did not violate the constitution. He has a lot of latitude on what he can do with the southern states that have left the United States at a point in time when they're not part of the nation anymore. Or at least they claim they're not. I think he always thought they were part of the nation. But the legal status was definitely different. They weren't legally part of the nation because of secession. So it gave him some different options he could use.

Tim Barton: 5:30

way that benefits the nation or not benefits a nation. And I say that in the sense of, if you look at what happened on January 6, a couple years ago, the reason that you still, to this day, have people being held that have not received a trial, they have been charged with insurrection and charged with treason. And of course, being charged doesn't mean they're guilty of it, but once you are charged with insurrection and treason, then the government does have the right and ability to suspend habeas corpus. It goes back to this very thing that Lincoln did, where the current government under the Biden ministration, they suspended the rights of habeas corpus for individuals that they found to be guilty of going against the federal government on January 6, the ones that went into the Capitol building. Now, of course, once Tucker Carlson released that footage, and you realize, wait a second, this was not a attempt to overthrow the federal government, as many of us knew from the beginning, as there were cell phone videos coming out they were on social media. And then of course, social media censored those, they took them down. But this is something that when you actually have people taking up arms, when there's an actual war going on. And when Lincoln does the Emancipation Proclamation, you are several years into that war. It's a very different scenario. And so this is something that as you study Constitution, very much so, as we've seen different presidents do, right, whether it be something like executive orders. Executive orders are actually constitutional. Presidents can do executive orders, however, constitutionally speaking, they should be confined to the executive branch, because that's the president telling the people that work for him what they're going to do. Whereas when you see a president like President Obama, who did an executive order to arbitrarily give amnesty to all the illegal immigrants coming across the border, that violates the constitutionality of the executive order. That is using it in the wrong fashion, the wrong manner. If you go back to what Lincoln did, Lincoln did something that was constitutional, and quite arguably did it in a constitutional manner the way he did it, even though not everybody has to like it, nobody has to agree with it. It is something that from all outward appearances does seem to be constitutional, what he did.

Rick Green: 7:42

Alright, guys, well we're going to move over from North Carolina to, oh I'm sorry, I don't know where Karen's from. So Karen, wherever you are, we're moving from North Carolina to you. Karen's question is this, I don't require an answer but I always wonder about the medical insurance or cost for this. Parents are paying for insurance. Under age abortions, gender assignments for minors is what she's talking about. Does the insurance company okay this without adult consent or pre authorization? Maybe there can be a discussion about it. So I think if I understand Karen's question, right, guys, she's basically saying, you know, listen, if these schools are doing or California, for instance, literally inviting kids to come there without their parents permission and get these under age, you know, gender assignment surgeries, and drugs and everything else, underage abortions, all of this stuff. If that happens, and an insurance company is paying for it. Well, wasn't it the parent that paid for the insurance bill? Shouldn't they know about it? And I've never even thought about that question. I don't know how to address that one, guys.

David Barton: 8:36

Well, I love her question about should we have a discussion on this? And the answer on that should be a definite yes, we should have a discussion. And we did a week and a half ago, it was in the US Congress, where they called it the Parental Rights Act, and said you can't do these things without getting parents permission. And they passed it in the house. But it was a party line vote not a single Democrat, voted to allow parents to know about these type of things with their kids. So how do you have a discussion when only one side shows up at the table? And that's the problem we're seeing across the country right now. It's hard to have a discussion when the other side didn't want to talk about it.

Tim Barton: 9:13

Well, and I would argue that we did have a discussion. And the Democrats said we don't want parents to have rights. Right? There was a discussion, it's just that one side said, We don't like you, we hate you, and we want to control your kids. So the discussion did not go well. It was not an intellectually honest discussion, it was not necessarily a productive discussion, other than the Democrats really revealed their hand on this position that they don't think parents should have a right to be involved in their children's lives. And of course, when it comes to something like this, when you have an underage child going and getting a medical procedure or getting medication or whatever the case is, certainly the parents should be informed of this. And to the idea of insurance. Yeah, if the parents paying for it, they for sure should know what they're paying for. But this goes back to the logic of the position. And the Democrats are saying things like, we don't care what is logical, we want kids to have autonomy, regardless of how old they are. And they can have direction from teachers or from school boards, or from some of those surrounding influences, but certainly not parents who might try to have moral boundaries or do things that would restrict their kids expressions, like the mutualization of their own genitalia and their bodies, which is, again, it's utterly ridiculous a position the Democrats are taking. But I would argue Dad I think there has been a discussion and Democrats said, we don't think parents should have any rights.

David Barton: 10:32

Well, I would add to that, that even this week, we've seen where that now 12 states have said, hey, we're not going to do this gender reassignment surgeries on young kids below 18. We're not going to let the permanent damage be done, and parents are going to be involved. And here comes Boston Children's Hospital, saying that's really wrong. Parents don't know the stuff, we know the stuff, parents don't need to be in this. And so you got all these medical professionals, including two of the largest Doctor associations in the United States come out against parents on this. So the discussion is going the wrong way for sure on this, but it's striking that even within that, what's going to happen, an insurance company is not going to do something that they don't have legal protection for. So if you're in a state like Illinois, that says you don't have to have parental consent for an abortion, and a kid wants an abortion without telling their parents, that's not the insurance deal that they're going to cover the medical stuff that's going to be there as long as they've got legal protection. Now, if there's a state that says you can't do that, without parents consent, and the insurance company does it and pays for it. Now they've got trouble, they got an attorney general or someone else that can come after them. So a lot of this is based, for the insurance, they're going to base it on what's legal, and what they can do, and be protected by law, because they don't need the lawsuits hitting them for millions. So that's part of the discussion to from the side of the insurance company, their discussion is only what is the law saying, we're going to do that. And I guess some of them could go further and have a moral position as well, we really don't see that much. But it's okay for a company to have a moral position and say what they will want to do. So that's really, you know, kind of where it is. And, Tim, as you said, we had that discussion. The other side just didn't want to participate. But now we're seeing it spread. And as there's more efforts to have a legislative debate on this, and then by the way, Idaho just passed the bill this last week and there was not a single Democrat in Idaho that voted for this bill. And so Tim, as you said, I mean, there's attempts at this discussion, and they had the discussion, and the Democrats came down and said, parents shouldn't have any rights. So that's where this discussion is ended. It's been a discussion, and I think it's going to turn in the right direction as this goes along. We're seeing a lot of pickup. We've seen even last couple of weeks, with the races we had in Wisconsin, Illinois last week. While we didn't get the Supreme Court seat we wanted in Wisconsin, got a ton of school boards. And they're from groups that are advocating parental rights and parental involvement, protecting kids and parents relationship. So we're still making a lot of gain on that. And I think that's the side that will eventually win. And if the other side decides they want to show up on the field and have a discussion, there's people waiting to have that discussion. But right now, Tim, as you said, they just don't want to discuss it.

Rick Green: 13:06

Alright guys, we're going to take a quick break. We've got more questions coming from the audience. If you've got one, you can send it in radio@WallBuilders.com . That's radio@WallBuilders.com . Stay with us. You're listening to WallBuilders. Its foundations of freedom Thursday. Have you ever wanted to learn more about the United States Constitution, but just felt like man, the classes are boring, or it’s just that old language from 200 years ago, or I don’t know where to start? People want to know, but it gets frustrating because you don’t know where to look for truth about the constitution either. Well, we’ve got a special program for you available now called Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green. And it’s actually a teaching done on the Constitution at Independence Hall in the very room where the constitution was framed. We take you both to Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty and Independence Hall and to the WallBuilders’ library, where David Barton brings the history to life to teach the original intent of our Founding Fathers. We call it the Quickstart Guide to the Constitution, because in just a few hours through these videos, you will learn the citizen’s guide to America’s constitution, you’ll learn what you need to do to help save our constitutional republic. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, and it’s going to inspire you to do your part to preserve freedom for future generations. It’s called Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green. You can find out more information on our website now at WallBuilders.com.

Historic Quote: 14:28

Abraham Lincoln said, we the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Rick Green: 14:42

We're back on WallBuilders Live it's foundations of freedom Thursday, we're diving into your questions, you can send them into radio@WallBuilders.com . The next one comes from Zach. And it's about, let's see, oh, it's about the Declaration of Independence guys, some good language here. He said in recent years, I've wondered what this excerpt from the Declaration of Independence means for us Americans today, and it's that part about whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form. And it goes on and on and on. Bottom line, guys, in today's society, under our current government, with a lot of the abuses that we see, have we reached that point? And I always try to remind people that it does say that mankind is, you know, is willing to suffer for a while. So they're more disposed to suffer as it goes on to say, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed, and we're probably at some point going to reach a... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. So, you know, at what point do we say we've reached that? I think that's really what he's asking. He said, he'd love to hear our thoughts, keep up the great work. So, you know, interesting, very important language in the declaration, they certainly had reached that point, then. Some would say we've reached that point today. How do we know when you've reached the point where you can throw off your government?

Tim Barton: 16:08

I think there's no doubt we are very close to what the Founding Fathers we're dealing with on a lot of levels. Certainly, when you see the abuse, the overreach of federal government, when you go back to the founding fathers were there are some unique differences. Now, there's a lot of similarities. Even what I'm going to say, I'm going to say things that there's slight nuance, but right, for the Founding Fathers, one of the grievances they identified is that they had no representation because there was unusual and there was distant meeting houses, and they would send their representatives over and the parliament was calling these whatever committee meetings in these random buildings, and they weren't telling the Americans where they were. And so we were having no representation in Congress, or in their parliament, so to speak, right? This is part of the statement, most people know taxation without representation, that the civilians were being forced to house troops. When you start going to the grievances, there's definitely some grievances that we have not come to that point yet. However, when you get to the big picture, that there's judicial abuses. Yes. There's legislative abuses. Yes. There's military abuses. Yes. In fact, maybe not by the US military on some regard to Americans. But when you look at the police, state of the FBI, the CIA, some of these organizations, yes, that, in essence, that is a de facto government military that's abusing the people. So the same foundational grievances they had, we have today. Where it is very different, is we still have a voice. And we still have a major part in what happens. We still can get involved in elections, we can still elect different officials. Dad as you just mentioned, there were some elections where there's different school board members, or, for example, like even in North Carolina, where you just had a Democrat state legislator from North Carolina leave the Democrat party, come to the Republican Party, they now have a supermajority, which they can override any veto from the Governor. The same thing in Wisconsin, we lost the Supreme Court, I'm saying we, conservatives lost the Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin, but they have a supermajority in the Senate, which actually they can remove Supreme Court justices. So so there are still checks and balances in some regard. Now, if people have the courage and backbone to use those checks and balances, might be a different conversation. But all that to say is we still have a major party, major voice in this. And as Rick mentioned, even the Founding Fathers said that, you know, we... they were going to suffer as long as it was sufferable. As long as they can make it, they were not going to try to separate and ultimately they didn't do the declaration until after you'd had the Boston Massacre, right? And then five years later, you have the Battle of Bunker Hill, the shot around the world and you had the Battle of Concord bridge. And as you start going through this, it's still a year after that, that they've already been at war, the British have already fired into Americans, and this is what's worth noting in this. If we go back to the shot heard around the world, why did this happen in the first place? The British order was to go to Lexington and Concord and was to seize all of the military supplies, the military surplus, so all of their gunpowder and all of their munitions. So they were going to disarm the people to take away their guns in their ammo. And that's when Jonas Clark the pastor at the church, there in Lexington Green, he had his church out that next morning, when the British come marching in April 19 1775. And this is when one of the deacons or elder from his church, Captain John Parker from Jonas Clark's church famously said that we will not fire unless fired upon but if they mean to have war let it begin here. What led to the ultimate revolution, the separating of America from Great Britain, is when they came to disarm Americans and I think when you draw the line, where we say okay, now this, right, this is a bridge too far so to speak. If they show up and they say hey, we're taking all your guns, were taken all your ammo, at that point okay, now we're not going to tolerate this because you disarm a people before you enslave them. That's the way it goes. That's what we understood in America for a long time. It's why we had more freedom in America than virtually anywhere else in the world for the last several hundred years. And so even though there are a lot of similarities to the issues we're dealing with, and the issues the founding fathers were dealing with, we are not yet to the place that... there should be no call to arms in a physical sense of actual firearms, there should be a call to rally to get involved in the process, churches should become more involved in the local arena in the school board and the city council. If we got more involved in the process, we can resolve every problem we are seeing to this point. And people might point out that wait a second, but there's a big swamp, right. There's so much bureaucracy in DC. I totally agree. But if we are able to get people elected, which I do still believe, even though there's challenges in the election process, I do believe there are... there's many states where they're working to secure elections, I do believe that there is still levels of security. And again, based on the state you live in, it can make a difference on how much security there is. But elections still are a real thing, people can still get elected. And if we would show up in overwhelming force, we can still get people elected, who then can work to clean out that swamp. So we... there's still hope. And we're not yet at the point that I think the founding fathers were, where they were being fired upon by their own government, and the governor was coming to disarm the people.

David Barton: 21:18

And I think even answering the question of when to use that part of the declaration, you got to understand where the declaration fits and where that fits in the declaration. The declaration is the foundation for the Constitution. The declaration gives you six principles of government. And everything in the Constitution goes to those six principles. The principle we're talking about here is principle number six in the declaration. And principle number six says that if you lose all the first five things, then you have the right to create a new government, but not until you lose the first five things. And those first five things you start with the fact that there is a Creator God. The Creator God gives an established set of moral rights and wrongs. There are absolute rights and wrongs. Creator God gives you inalienable rights. Government exists to protect your inalienable rights, and you have the consent of the governed. If you have a government where you can't have the majority win, where you can't have an inalienable rights, where you can't have all these things it talked about, that's when you kick into clause six. And that's what we've just been talking about. Tim and Rick both going through it. So I think we still got a long way to go before we've lost all of those first five things. And that's why they put the sixth clause in there that says if any government doesn't do the five things we just mentioned, then you got a right to abolish that government, but you only do it after a long chain of abuses, etc. And the other caution that I would kind of throw out with this is those guys at that point in time, they pull the trigger on it. They used that sixth clause in the declaration, but they were really grounded in religion and morality. And I'm not sure that America has the same depth of understanding of religion and morality, today. We got a lot of frustration, we got a lot of stuff that triggers us and sets us off, we got a lot of stuff we point to in the government with tyranny, we got a lot of things we don't like, but they kept bearing up with it, because they had that sense of religion and morality. And as Tim mentioned, they were shooting bullets at us for a year with a lot of battles, before we ever even said we're going to separate. And so they went a long way into this. And I think there's a lot of people now that would love to trigger it really quickly, because they're frustrated. They don't like government. But you can't do that on a secular foundation, you have to have that religious and moral foundation. Otherwise, it'll look like the French Revolution rather than the American Revolution. And that's something you definitely don't want. So a great question, I would encourage you go back and look at everything else in declaration. Notice what those five things are that make a good government. And then notice that when those five things aren't there, that's when you kick in this clause. And this is a super important clause and as other guys pointed out, you got to go a long way before you hit all the things in that sixth clause to trigger a resetting of government. But this is your escape clause. This is your reset button. This is what you push the reset stuff. But man, you got to go a long way to get here.

Rick Green: 24:04

Yeah, and I mean, Tim, you you alluded to this, too, but I mean, there's a way under our system to throw off the people that are in government without having to destroy the whole system, right? That's the beauty of our of our system. As you're saying, David, this was the declaration. Under the Constitution itself, we're empowered as we the people peacefully within the process to do exactly what the declaration is saying here. So even if you look out at our government right now and say, listen, this is now a long train of abuses and usurpations, that they are moving towards despotism. Okay, well, first, let's use everything David and Tim are saying, peacefully, to throw off this particular government, meaning these people in government and the way that they're enforcing government, and we have all the tools we need to do that. And yeah, like you said, Tim, questions about the elections? Absolutely. There's ways to clean all that stuff up. There's ways to restructure this government and as we talked about, many times on the program through convention of states to actually go back to limiting the government. In our last foundations of freedom, we... you know, we talked about the 17 enumerated powers in the Constitution. Get back to that. There's ways to do this peacefully, to basically do exactly what this clause in the declaration says, within the current system that we have in the Constitution. And God forbid that that doesn't work, and then we get to a point where they're doing what Tim's talking about, and taking away the weapons and doing all those things. At that point, yeah. Now, it's a different ballgame. But man, we are not there. We have the opportunity right now to do this thing peacefully. We need to use the tools that the founding fathers gave us. We need to live this out. In fact, I'll emphasize one more thing before we close out, that language that Zach sent, what does it say? It says if all that's happening, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government. Folks, we've got to bring that word back. You know, David's got a whole presentation of quotes after quotes after quotes of the founders, using the word duty. So yeah, we've got a duty to throw off this current enforcement of government and replace it with good people in government, and to... and yeah, reset the table, some, we need to put the federal government back into its proper place. But man, there's peaceful ways within this constitution, to do all of those things. And that's the tact that we should be taking, that's the road we should be taking, that's what we encourage you to do here on WallBuilders. Start getting educated, learn the Constitution, teach your friends and family and then go live it out in all these different ways. Great question, Zach. Thank you so much for sending that in and to everyone else as well. You can send your questions into radio@WallBuilders.com . We do foundations of freedom every Thursday and it's an opportunity to dive into these questions. Appreciate you being with us today. You've been listening to WallBuilders.