Historic Quote: 0:12
Calvin Coolidge said the more I study the Constitution, the more I realize that no other document devised by the hand of man has brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.

Rick Green: 0:38
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live and it's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. We're diving into those foundations and we're taking your questions so you can guide the conversation on which particular area of those foundations we're going to discuss. But we're always talking about hot topics in the culture from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. We're having that conversation today with David Barton. He's America's premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and the president of WallBuilders. My name is Rick Green. I'm a former Texas legislator. You can find out more about us and the program and you can also listen to some of the past programs over the last few months right there at WallBuildersLive.com. That's our website for the radio program. You can get a list of our stations and a lot of other great information there, and then over at WallBuilders.com, you can get some great tools for your family, whether it's DVDs or watching videos online or getting some of the books or just reading some of the articles right there on the website. All of it is designed to equip and inspire you to be a part of the solution, to be a good citizen and live out your freedom in a way that will preserve it for future generations. One of the things you can do as our founders gave us lives, fortunes and sacred honor is to invest some of that fortune to actually make a contribution to WallBuilders. Maybe it's a one-time donation, maybe it's a monthly donation, but if you would come alongside us and help support this program, where a listener-supported program it allows us to reach more people, inspire more people, equip more people and do our part in preserving freedom for future generations. Check it all out at WallBuilders.com today. It's time to dive into those questions from the audience. Thank you so much, folks, for sending those in. First one is going to come from Heather. Greetings from Frisco, Texas. Wow, I used to play Frisco in baseball guys back when it was the sticks I mean the sticks, Big city now. Anyway, greetings from Frisco, Texas. I am very that's all caps folks VERY pro school choice. Recently a friend sent me an article showing how UNESCO, the UN's education agency, is encouraging encouraging the use of tax subsidies including vouchers, education savings accounts and scholarship tax credits for private schools to impose government control regulations for requiring quote equity and other goals. Could you please let us know how legislation should be structured and worded so that parents and private institutions maintain freedom and their rightful control over the curriculum that is used. I don't want Texas to follow in the footsteps of Arizona, where ESAs are reportedly restricting the freedoms of private Christian schools. Thanks for any insight you can provide on this important issue. Respectfully, Heather. Ok guys, I got some thoughts on some of this, but I'm not sure about the reports from Arizona. I haven't heard anything negative on the Arizona ESAs yet. There's always going to be somebody that's negative. But I mean I haven't heard repeated or anything like that and I did not know UNESCO was pushing this. But I also always have a knee-jerk reaction to questions like this that even if somebody evil is trying to take over something good we're doing, doesn't mean we don't still do the good thing. Ok, that's my two cents. What do you guys think?

David Barton: 3:27
Yeah, I stand with you on that last statement because you always stand for the right principles and competition is the right principle. It is always the right principle. You don't shy away from competition just because your enemy says we should have competition as well. Now, granted, if Arizona has gone in the wrong direction with their school choice, it's not because the bill was designed badly, because that was done by Trent Franks nearly 20 years ago. We know Trent. We know exactly why he did it. The motives are right. Implementation was right. It went to the US Supreme Court. He wanted the US Supreme Court. It's affected the entire nation. If it is being twisted now, it's likely because their governor, who right now happens to be a liberal Democrat governor, is taking a good law and twisting it to do things that was never designed to do, kind of like Biden is done with the FBI and Obama is done with the FBI. They're doing things that were not designed to do. So I don't think we back away from school choice and the away shaped fashion reform simply because UNESCO sees something there. And people there's some groups that are very good friends of mine they say oh man, when you start taking the government money, the government starts controlling you. My advice is take the government money until they do start controlling you and then don't take it anymore. But if they're not going to control you, don't refuse competition because they might control you. If they're doing what's happening in Arizona and that's a problem, then don't take the government money anymore. Just maintain your freedom, and we've seen some universities do that as well. When the federal government started using student loans to control that, some universities stopped taking federal government and student loans. So the competition is the right principle. Now Texas. This is an issue because here in Texas we had more than half the Republicans in the House vote against any form of school choice. They said not a single cent of state money can be used for competition and education. That's a really bad deal. Republicans need to clean those guys out of the House of Representatives. There's going to be some really some national attention drawn to this shortly, pointing out how bad these Republicans are in Texas. Some of them not a. There's some guys really good on this, but there is a handful of Republicans in Texas that constitute a majority. When you add them to all the Democrats that don't want any school choice and when you limit competition, that is a really bad principle Competition's always good. There's so many examples of that in the Bible, so that's one. I think you stand for the principle. If it gets off track, do something later.

Tim Barton: 5:45
Well, I'd like to point out too, when people talk about you shouldn't take money from the government, because if you take money from the government, they control you. How many people turn down their tax refund after they pay their taxes? Right, right, are we concerned?

Rick Green: 5:57
Or tax credit. Who takes the child tax credit, right? If you take that, are you now taking government money, right?

Tim Barton: 6:02
I mean, it's one of the things that a lot of people express a dislike for something because of a fear of what might happen. But what they are expressing, that principle, is something that they actually embrace in other places, and we're not afraid of the government coming in and telling us how we control our household. Now, at some level, yes, we're very aware and cautious. The government should not tell us how we can be parents or how we should be spouses or whatever the case. That's not the role of the government. I mean at all. That does not be the role of the federal government to do that. But it's the same thought and principle that if we are looking and saying I'm afraid the government's going to come in and do this, well, you can write things in such a way to limit that and then that, as you mentioned, if the government ever does begin to do things at that point, then you don't need to play that game. But this is, I mean, really this tax credit is no different than we would see with a tax refund after they've taken your money and they said oh, we took too much your money and you loaned us some money. We're going to give it back to you, a tax credit for school choice and competition is saying look, we've already taxed X amount of dollars and we're going to give you not even the full amount for most states, most states are looking at school choice. They're only doing a portion of the percentage that's allotted for every student that goes to public school. They say you can have a percentage of that amount, which is still thousands of dollars, and it can follow the student to wherever the student's going to go, and there's different ways to write this bill, but it's not a lot different than the thought in the principle when it comes to taxes or tax refunds at least not in my mind. So when people oppose some of this stuff, I think there's a lot of people that have very good hearts that actually do have a very legitimate perspective to say this is of great concern and there are things that can be of grave concern and significant concern. It doesn't mean it can't be done. It means you need to do it strategically and carefully. But the things that help education get better certainly is competition, and we wouldn't want kids to be stuck in a failing school and we wouldn't want teachers to have tenure and never be accountable and do whatever they want All the issues we have seen for decades in public schools and not now to mention all of the issues with what is being taught in public schools. There's a lot of problems and a lot of reasons we should support school choice right now and obviously the homeschool community and everything else going on. But back to the basic thought. I don't see. I mean, guys, I'm with you. I don't see a big problem with saying we want competition and our tax dollars should follow our students to where they go to school. That seems pretty logical to me.

Rick Green: 8:31
Yeah, and I think you know back to what David, your initial thought on it just stay with the principles, right, stick with the principles. All this other stuff will take care of itself. And the principle here in my mind is you know, err on the side of freedom, not on the side of fear. And on the side of freedom you give the parent the choice, like you said, until if strings come, then you stop taking the money. And how do you keep strings from coming? You elect good people to the legislature. They could regulate you right now homeschoolers and private schoolers. If you don't have good legislators, you've got to constantly pay attention to who's getting elected to make those decisions. But great question, Heather. I love it when people ask questions like this and think through these things and we have a chance to have these kind of discussions. Let's get another one in before we go to break. This one's from Casey and here's the question. Hi brothers, I love and appreciate what you do and I'm learning all the time from your daily podcast. My question is do these Satanic LGBTQ groups, such as the one invited to Dodger Stadium for their Pride night, have a constitutional right to hold the types of events they do? And, as they are a 501C3 non-profit with a deceptive mission statement disguised as anti-Christian hate groups. From a constitutional and legal standpoint, how do we combat the devil trying to push his agenda under the freedom of religion rights? Clearly the founders were brilliant and they did not intend for this. Any info as to if this type of immoral and Satanic pushes actually unconstitutional would be helpful. Thank you and God bless. Brother in Christ, casey and guys, if I could just add to that question, because they had a Satanic high priest do the prayer right here in my home county in San Marcos, Texas, a few weeks back or a couple of months ago, and so similar kind of question it's like is that what the founders meant by freedom of religion? Was there any limitation if it was subverting the public good, as Jefferson said in his letter to the Danbury Baptist?

David Barton: 10:10
What you're talking about is the current view of religion is redefined by the Supreme Court in the 1960s and 70s, when they turned the Constitution on its head and went completely secular. Unfortunately, the last four years, the US Supreme Court has overturned those previous five decades of decisions on religion, particularly the limit test. They said, hey, we had 7,300 former decisions made by the federal courts and they were all done wrongly because they used the wrong test. So when you go back to where it was originally designed George Washington is very well addressed said you can't have political prosperity without religion and morality. The religion and morality about which they spoke is what we would call Judeo-Christian religion and morality. Now, it's not Judeo-Christian theology, it's Judeo-Christian principles and behavior. It would be things like the Ten Commandments, it would be things like the Golden Rule and like the Good Samaritan and things that we look at as the basis of civilized nation behavior. It is not saying every single religion gets to do whatever it wants, because even at that time, back then, there were religious groups that wanted to do things different with marriage than what Judeo-Christian values had, and they were not allowed to do so. There were all sorts of groups that said, hey, here's our religion. They said well, that's good for you, but that's not the behavior that we accept civilly in the United States. And so this is not a question of theology when you say Judeo-Christian. It's a question of how you measure your behavior. And so when you measure the behavior of Satanist and what they're doing, they're into anarchy, they're into destruction, they're calling, they're the ones supporting rebellion and revolution, and they also still use, they say that they're pro-abortion because there has to be the shedding of blood, they have to have human sacrifices, and they view abortion as doing that. There's no way in God's earth that the Founding Fathers would have tolerated one iota of that, because that violates that biblical Judeo-Christian standard. Now, there are other standards out there, but you're not going to find a better standard for civil behavior with any religion than what you find Judeo-Christian, and so that's the way that should be measured, not the fact that they call themselves a religion and do they suddenly get protection. You have to judge it by their behavior.

Tim Barton: 12:17
And to make that point, of how much the standard has changed in the founding era. You know, Dad, we've talked a lot about this and you've written many things on this. We have several articles in the law builders website dealing with this, some going back to the notion of the separation of church and state what that really meant. But understanding the context that when the Founding Fathers and their families, their parents, their grandparents, when they're coming to America, over in Europe, virtually every single nation in Europe has a state, established religion and it was the religion of the Lutherans, the religion of the Catholics, the religion of the Anglicans, things that we today would know as denominations. Those were religions. And when the Founding Fathers are doing the First Amendment and they say that Congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, they're saying we're not going to do in America what all these kings have done over in Europe, and we're king in the eight said we're Anglican now and everybody has to be an Anglican. They said we're not going to do that here in America. We're going to give people the freedom of choice when it comes to their religious beliefs. However, it wasn't the freedom of choice when it comes to you can now have laws where you worship Satan versus you worship the God of the Bible. It universally was understood and appreciated as a God of the Bible and this is the way all their laws were written. It was not to favor the Anglicans or the Baptists or the Methodists or the Episcopalians. Instead, it was upholding biblical moral values and moral standards. That's why, if you look back on the early laws, virtually everything that they did that would have some level of criminality to it. And actually you need to go back to the early death penalties. But why do they have death penalties? And we can acknowledge that maybe that was extreme for death penalties in some of these areas. But if you committed adultery… In some scenarios there might have been the death penalty, depending on how early back in the colony, but it didn't matter when you were in the colony, Adultery was always against the law. Well, what if you had Satanist coming in saying, hey, this is how we worship, we have these right, these drunken orgies, and we do all this kind of sexual stuff? No, no, no. That's never going to work in early America because even though they had the freedom of religion the freedom of religion the idea was to worship the God of the Bible, according to the dictation of your conscience, not to worship the other gods of whatever your belief system might be. It was literally centered around the God of the Bible. So this is certainly not something that lines up with the original intent of the First Amendment, but because of the interpretation we've had over the last many, many, many decades. Now everybody who has any belief at all can identify as that is their religion and therefore they should have their practices and as long as their practices don't violate someone else's rights, it's supposed to be okay. The problem, even going further with that, is now you have judges who say well, it can violate other people's rights, as long as the rights that are being violated are the Christians and conservatives, it's okay to violate their rights. But Christians and conservatives, you can have your religious belief and offend somebody else. That is the battle we have been in for so long and ultimately, you know, Rick, as you mentioned, having different kind of Satanic individuals leading a prayer, even where you are in small time or small town, Texas, even there, we are seeing this kind of stuff happen. It's a revelation of the decay of morality in our society. It's a revelation of the lack of the church's involvement in the culture, in the community, because if we had the right kind of people getting involved, obviously we would be discipling and mentoring and raising people up with a different ideology and worldview, but also we'd be working to reach the lost that have these incredibly terrible evil beliefs in many regards, where they think that human sacrifice is something that's very honoring and very good and they need to honor Satan by having abortions. That's evil. That is, I mean blatantly that is evil. It's a reflection of how bad we've done as Christians in culture, society, as churches and communities, of making disciples of all nations. It's certainly not where the founding fathers ever would have imagined. It's not something that fits under the original intent of the First Amendment, but it's something that now we're having to culturally battle because of the increasing secularization in America.

Rick Green: 16:23
Yeah, and it's going to. It means a bigger answer than even some you know Supreme Court decision laying out a definition of freedom of religion and how it would work and who gets to and who doesn't. It's literally, like you're saying, an entire cultural change. We've got to get back to an actual idea of right and wrong and putting Christian morality back into the culture. Fantastic question, casey. Thanks for sending it in. We've got a few more for you folks. Stay with us. We're going to take a quick break. You're listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 16:53
Hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called the American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today. And, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not not the statement, black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There's so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? Well, what is a true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It's a story you want to check out, wildbuilderscom the American story.

Historic Quote: 17:56
Thomas Jefferson said, the constitutions of most of our states and of the United States assert that all power is apparent in the people, that they may exercise it by themselves, that is their right and duty to be at all times armed, and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of press.

Rick Green: 18:25
We're back here on Walb orders. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Keep sending those questions in. Next one comes from Nick. He said I've been here in Rumblings from the Biden administration that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment gives them the right to continue debt issuance regardless of the debt ceiling passed by Congress. I believe it's obvious that this wasn't the intent of the 14th Amendment, but would be interested to hear your thoughts on this topic. Thanks for all you do. Hey, nick, you're not the only one wondering about this man. I got a call from a friend that's in Congress, a member of Congress, saying hey, what in the world are these people talking about? I've never thought of the 14th Amendment in that way. Well, that member of Congress and you, nick, your gut instincts are absolutely right. Of course, that wasn't the purpose of any of the 14th Amendment, including the part about honoring the federal debt. That had everything to do with saying, not Confederate debt, but federal debt. Yes, we're going to make sure that we pay that off. It had nothing to do with what they're doing today with the debt ceiling Now. Clinton is the one. Bill Clinton is the one that first floated this idea. Nobody had ever thought of the 14th Amendment as fitting this, and he floated this back when Obama was president and even Obama said that's not constitutional, that's not going to work. But we've heard Biden talk about it several times when he was trying to avoid negotiations with McCarthy and the Republicans in the House. I haven't heard it mentioned again since the negotiations actually started, so I'm assuming they won't end up going down that road. But yeah, nick, I think your instincts are 100% right on that. This had absolutely nothing to do with the debt that they have right now, which is passed by Congress, and that's essentially what they were saying, even with that part of the 14th Amendment. Is that, hey, if the federal government spent money, borrowed money, we're going to pay it off, but you Confederates, nope, we're not paying your bills for you. That's essentially what that clause was really all about. Alright, guys got one from Christie, she said. Over the Mother's Day weekend I was talking to our nephew who works for Citibank in St Charles, missouri. He said Citibank is planning to roll out next month some kind of digital tracking of debit card purchases on private personal bank accounts. Crazy times. I'm glad God is in control. Long time listener and homeschool mom, christie. Wow, guys, we've talked a lot about the whole banking thing and digital currency being tracked, and this is a private institution that is basically going to be tracking people's expenditures on their debit card, I guess to give to the government. Is that what we're talking about?

David Barton: 20:44
here. Well, it's already going on. It's just Citibank is joining what the other banks are doing. If you go back to the prosecutions on the January 6th of the Senate, which what's that? Is that two years ago? Three years ago, one January 6th now three years ago?

Rick Green: 20:57
Yeah, we're looking. What are we?

David Barton: 20:57
two and a half for almost two and a half years from that Bank of America Voluntarily gave the Justice Department said hey, you wanted to know who's in DC on this day so you can track them see if they did anything. Well, here's the people who hold our credit card that used it in DC on that day. Now that violates federal law. You can't do that. You can't share that information, you can't collect that information. All that is violation federal law. But that is what the DOJ used to help go after January 6 people and and there's no question, some of those January 6 people Definitely needed to be gone after. I talked to some really conservative congressman, was shocked by some of the things that happened that I had not heard about. But, like them, there's a whole lot of guys that should not have been gone after and Bank of America helped do some of that by providing this information. So anytime they're doing more of this kind of tracking and vaging a privacy and they're getting more information, there's more and more danger. With that I mean literally, and this is part of the reason why WallBuilders over the last six months or so since the start of the year, has really put a lot of time into trying to stop central bank, digital currency, programmable currency, the uniform commercial code, because this is leading all banks into this direction, that this is where a lot of them want to get and we just got. We got to stop that. We can't allow them to do that. So this is, this is something that, yeah, it's kind of scary. It's the George Orwell 1984 governments become too big kind of stuff, but it's been going on already. So city bank is simply catching up with some of their peers and wanting to do this, and that's just not a healthy place for America to be Alright, guys, we got time.

Rick Green: 22:33
I think this is a record for us five questions from the audience in one program. Here we go. Let's see if we can get this one in in our final few minutes together. It's from Seth, in White River, south Dakota, he said hello WallBuilders. I know that the Bible says in God have I put my trust. I will not be afraid what man can do unto me. However, I find myself worried and afraid of the potential World War three that we see looming on the horizon. It worries me because our president is so reckless with our military. Also, experts claim they will have to reinstate the draft. I'm willing to fight for freedom and serve my country, but I don't want to get involved in a pointless conflict without Congress formally declaring war. What advice would the American founding fathers have for a troubled young guy like me? I'm sure that some of them must have been placed in similar circumstances. Thank you, seth, for sending that question in. David and Tim.

David Barton: 23:18
Yeah, this is a good question to to consider. And when do you go to war? And this is one of the things that used to be a subject of sermons in earlier generations. Literally this week, Tim and I just bought a sermon from from 1747 and it's a pastor talking to his church members About war. When do you go to war? Why do you go to war? What are the causes for what is the just war? What is an unjust war? When do you use physical violence? When do you not use it? Those were were Teachings that came from the church for a long time and, as a consequence, we literally knew what was a just one and unjust war. Today, I don't know that many people could make a difference and definition between a just and unjust war. It's more of who is leader, and literally Seth just expressed hey, if Biden's our leader, this really worries me. That would not have been a worrying previous generations when we had a good definition for this, and I don't think you have to worry just about External international war, declaring war on someone else. It could be on the people itself, and this is the kind of understanding you have to have. What do you work in? A military be used, and as often as not. Historically, it's used against its own people as much as is against other nations.

Tim Barton: 24:28
And it is on the two that we, unfortunately, have seen the negative side in war for for literally decades, where we've not been clear on what is. What is the goal, what are the objectives, and then we have not done a good job of working to accomplish those goals and objectives. When, when you look early on, from you know 20 plus years ago, when the war on terror first started, it seemed that there was a fairly clear objective, and then the objective got very muddy and murky and it kept changing and the goalpost Kept moving. And early on there was rules of engagement that was hey, take out the bad guys, be the good guys. Right to do good In the world, stop the bad guys. And then those rules of engagement changed. And so I think it's also a concern Not just that we understand what is a just and unjust war, but even that we understand the clear boundaries of what are we trying to accomplish. How are we going to do it? How can we get it done quickly with the greatest impact and yet the the smallest amount of loss of life possible? Those are things that we have not done a good job of in recent decades, and there's a reason that you should be cautious about it. But it's why we need the right kind of leaders to help resolve these kind of questions and problems.

David Barton: 25:33
And let me just add, from a principal standpoint, if you understand the principles of war, you'll understand that there are times when it's right to go to war, even if Congress does not declare war officially. But at the same time, there's going to be times when it's wrong to go to war even if Congress issues an official declaration of war. So having an official declaration is not not what makes a war right or wrong. Now, from a legal standpoint Maybe, but from a moral standpoint, there's a lot of reasons why war is justified and you need to know what those are. Because if you get involved in war, you want to have a clean conscience. If you're involved in war and you have to do something lethal to someone else, you want to know that you've done it with a clean conscience and a moral underpinning.

Rick Green: 26:12
Folks, we got a lot more questions we didn't get to and we really appreciate you sending them in, so we're going to try to get to them next time around and please keep sending them. radio@wallbuilders.com Is the place to email your questions and then, of course, visit WallBuilders.com today to get some of the materials that will help equip you and inspire you to be a better citizen and help restore America's Constitution. We sure appreciate you listening today to WallBuilders.