Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's WallBuilders Live, where we're talking about the hot topics of the day, looking at them from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. And specifically, this week, we're doing Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. That's our new course. It's an eight week course that you want to do in your living room or at your church with friends and family. So we're giving you a taste of it this week. We're actually sharing the third week out of the eight week series. And it's a great opportunity to learn these things and share it with your friends and family.

We're going to jump right back in where we left off yesterday with Biblical Citizenship. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution coach and a former legislator in Texas, and thrilled to bring you this program, we're going to dive right back in where we left off. But if you missed the last couple of days, make sure you go to wallbuilderslive.com. Here we are with Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

BIBLICAL CITIZENSHIP IN MODERN AMERICA

Celebrate freedom week, and when it did, we actually numbered it to House Bill 1776. I just love saying that in this room. I don't know why. So we knew, I had to stand in line to be able to get that number for the bill, so House Bill 1776. And what it did was it said every kid in Texas has to spend time studying these guys, studying the Declaration and the Constitution, studying the men that gave them, studying the ideas that went behind them and studying our military, and studying the sacrifices made.

And we're not going to just gloss over it once in 5th or 11th grade and forget about it. We're going to teach it every single year so that we can pound it into the minds of our young people, so we put it in their hearts and their souls so that they'll appreciate the freedom they've been given and they'll be able to defend and protect it for future generations. So we passed that bill and now we've got several other states that have passed it. We've got an effort happening all across the nation.

And if you're at home tonight watching on the webinar, you're watching this DVD, go to my website at Rickgreen.com and click on ‘Celebrate Freedom Week’ and pull up the page there, and it'll tell you what's happening in your state. You can click on your state, and it'll tell you the action steps you can take to help make this happen in your home state. It's a great way to make sure every kid studying these wonderful documents that came out of this room right here.

Can you imagine how much better our country would be if every kid in America was studying the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, I mean just imagine every single year? I hope you'll help us make it happen. Be sure and take that down as one of your action steps hopefully after this class is over.

Let me just first say folks, I'm no guru, okay. I'm so blessed to get to work with some guys, I think, are gurus, guys like Ed Meese and David Barton and other guys like that, Mat Staver. I get to learn at their feet. And all I'm doing is I'm here with you as a fellow citizen, we're going to sharpen each other's countenance tonight. We're going to help each other open these documents and study them. So will have questions all night, feel free to ask questions, we'll probably do them at the end of each section. You're going to stump me before the night’s over, and it'll be fun. Alright. Let's just have a good time together, learning to be better citizens.

And the other thing about the class, we're not an exhaustive study. This is not a year long program. In fact, the best analogy I know to think of, how many of you have ever bought a computer or a monitor or our big TV or something, and it came with a quickstart guide? You know, the nice glossy thing you could flip out? Just because you know something like this where, hey, I just want to know where to plug everything in, right? I just want to get this thing working. I don't want to read the big thick manual that came with it. I'm never going to read it. I want the quickstart guide so I can make this thing work. That's what we're doing tonight.

We're going to do the quickstart guide to the Constitution. Why? So that we as citizens can get plugged in so we can make sure the pieces of our government are properly plugged in and working correctly, and so that we can make corrections on it if we need it.

Kind of, if you look at my books back here, these are all the things that I'm trying to study to be able to do the quickstart guide. So these are the big manuals and everything. And I'm trying, you guys can help me distill this thing down to where citizens all over the country. And you guys, you've traveled here from all over the nation. So you love this, right? I mean, you're willing to read the big, big manuals, and many of you probably already have, but most people back home aren't going to do it. Are they?

I mean, how many times have you tried to get people to study the Constitution and even if you just give them a pocket Constitution, they never open it? What we've got to do is we've got to put some tools in their hands that they can quickly access how this country works, and they can quickly access how to be a part of it. So remember, our goal is to identify our rights, and then know how to protect and preserve them, how to properly do that. So that's our approach number one.

Approach number two is we're not going to focus on judicial interpretation. We're going to focus on original intent. There's another analogy for this. When my mom actually gave this one to me, she was a bank teller when she was younger. And she said as a bank teller, I went through all this training, and I handled all this money, and she said, Rick, they never gave me a counterfeit bill. They never showed me a counterfeit so I can feel it and know what it felt like. She said, no, no, what they did was they had me handle the real deal, the genuine article, so much so that when that counterfeit bill came through my fingers, I knew something's not right, because I had worked with the genuine article so much I recognize the counterfeit immediately.

Same thing for us, we're going to study the real deal. We're going to study the Constitution itself. We're going to study the Founders and what they said and did and how they acted when they were putting the Constitution in place. We're going to study the actual words of our founding documents, not on what some Judge says that he thinks he or she thinks that they met. I think that's what's gotten us off course, as we've allowed Judge after judge to pontificate on what some other Judge said about what some other Judge said, about what some other... And we've gotten so far off course.

You know, you think about the freedom of religion now. We got so many tests on what the freedom of religion is, or when you violate that or one of the establishment clauses. But I mean, Sandra Day O'Connor header three part tests that are four part test and a five part. I mean, everybody's got all their tests, right, and it's just confusing. Why? Because we've gotten away from studying the original itself, and what the Founders did. So our goal is original intent. Let me give you a couple of quotes from the Founders on this.

They said “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted.” And how about back to the room? I don't usually get to say that in a class. Let's carry ourselves back to the time, here we are in the actual room where the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit, manifested in the debate. So what these guys were actually saying right here when they adopted the Constitution, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, in other words, instead of taking the words and oh, well, today, that word means X, Y, and Z, so this must be what the founders are trying to invent some meaning into the Constitution to try to get an outcome on the judicial decision of, instead of doing that, Jefferson says we should go back to the time, study what these guys were actually saying, and he said, then conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

So these guys are going to speak to us tonight. They're going to tell us what they actually said about these different areas of the Constitution so that we can follow Jefferson's suggestion there. And then Madison, of course, the “Father of the Constitution”, we’ll hear a lot from him tonight. He said, “I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation.” So in other words, you get to figure out what it says. He says, you go back to what these guys said when they adopted it and then what happened in those individual states when they had their ratification debate. In that sense alone, it is the legitimate Constitution.

So you want a legitimate Constitution, you go back to the beginning what these guys did. If that be not the guide, so if you go the other direction, if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for consistent and stable Constitution more than for a faithful exercise of its power. So what do you get? Instead of having a stable Constitution and a clear understanding that stays true throughout time, and if you don't like it, you use Article 5 and you amend it. But instead of having that stable Constitution, what do we get? Three part test on this or four part test on this, total confusion about what is or is not constitutional?

Madison said, come back to the original if you really want to know. He said what a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in the modern sense? So when we think about phrases like ‘general welfare’, what did it mean back then? What did it mean in this room? Not what does it mean to us today. Not what does it mean when a politician tells us what it means. What did it mean to these guys? We're going to talk about that too.

This is James Wilson, by the way. Now, this guy, he was in the room both times. He signed both the Declaration and the Constitution. He actually went on to be a Supreme Court Justice, one of the first guys George Washington nominated to serve on the Supreme Court. So he's actually an original Supreme Court Justice. He said, “The first and governing Maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.” Well, who made the Constitution? Guys that were in this room, right? The ones that ratified it back home. Those are the ones we got, if you will kind of crack open their heads, get inside their mind, figure out what they were thinking, what was the intent.

And the last guy I'll give you on this is Joseph's story, Supreme Court Justice who wrote about 94% of the opinions when he's on the court. He's actually called the ‘Father of American Jurisprudence’. He said, “The first fundamental rule in the interpretation of all documents is to construe them according to the sense of the terms of the intentions of the parties.” These are the parties, folks. Welcome to the party. We're here with the parties that actually gave us the documents, and we're going to hear from these guys and find out the original intent, not judicial interpretation. So number one is not exhaustive. Number two, we're going to use original intent, not judicial interpretation.

Third thing in terms of our approach is we're going to do something that we don't normally get to do with the Constitution. We're going to take it as amended. Those of you that have studied it a lot, you probably had some of those frustrating days like I did. When I first tried to study the Constitution, I opened up my pocket Constitution, and first thing I was curious about I said, I want to know about this Electoral College. I want to know where this school is in the northeast that all candidates go to. I was hoping for a little laughter there. No laughter. Can we dove in some laughter there, camera guys? Okay. A lot of people really think that. I think the Electoral College is some campus over, out here in the northeast that all the candidates come to. No, it's the way we elect the president.

So I said I want to figure out how this thing works. I was always confused by it. So open up Article 2, start reading about the presidency, three paragraphs, and guess what? This has been amended by the 12th Amendment. And what’s your pocket Constitution do? It just underlines what's been changed, but it doesn't tell you what's been changed, so you got to flip over to the 12th Amendment and try to look at both of them and figure out okay, what actually changed? What does it mean?

And then three paragraphs into the 12th Amendment, that's been amended by the 20th Amendment. So I got an Article 2 open, I got the 12th Amendment open, I got the 20th open, and I'm having trouble holding on to my pocket Constitution, guess what? Article 2 is also amended by the 22nd, and the 23rd, and the 25th amendments. So I got five amendments affecting Article 2 and I was supposed to, I just went crazy. I am so thankful for my buddy, my colleague. Mike put this thing together. He did meticulous work to put together this “Constitution Made Easy”, the tool we're going to use tonight.

And as the night goes on, you're going to think this Green guy is really simple-minded, because I am I need things to be explained. Okay, so Mike really helped me with this and he laid out the Constitution as amended. What a novel concept.

So the tool in your hands tonight, what you're going to be able to do is flip that thing open. And on the left hand side of the page, we get the original, because I'm an originalist, I'm not for replacing that language. But we get the original on the left hand side of the page. And then on the right hand side of the page, we get the Constitution as amended. So the blue is all the amendments incorporated into the original, and it's in modern language. So that's the fourth thing we get is, is some plain language that makes it easy for people that haven't made a big study out of this to actually go and read through the Constitution very quickly.

Part of what I love about that “Constitution Made Easy” is you can actually sit down and read the blue part, the plain language in about 15 minutes. So people that have never been exposed before, you can hand that to them and say, hey, just sit down and read the Constitution, just read through it real quick and you'll find some things you never even knew were in there, you're going to be able to clarify some things you may not have been aware of before.

So that's our approach. That's how we're going to do this, we got a lot to cover in a short period of time. And you'll find people say that David and I both, we talk about 90 words a minute, we gusts up to about 350. I'm going to try not to gust on up to 352 often. In our echo chamber here, I'll do my best to keep the speed down. But we've got a lot of time together and we're going to cover as much as we possibly can. So that's sort of our introduction to the process.

And what we're going to do a little bit about our approach, we're going to talk about the seeds that were planted here, what the concepts were. Because I find it interesting that if you just read the documents, and you don't really go back to the philosophy that undergirds them, the philosophy that was put in place, you can get off track very quickly. So we'll be back to talk about the seeds of liberty when we return.

To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, well, if you could tell there, David, I was a little excited to be in that cradle of liberty…

David:

Such cool place to be.

Rick:

And you’ve recorded there several times. It's just something about being where it happened.

David:

And I always love looking back at George Washington's chair and that was the rising sun and setting sun on that chair, and boy, frankly, that's such a cool story with that. But it's cool to be in that room.

Rick:

Hey, friends, got to interrupt the program real quick for our one break of the day. We'll be right back on WallBuilders Live.

CONSTITUTION ALIVE!

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.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. It's time for the conclusion of week three of Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. Let's jump right back in.

BIBLICAL CITIZENSHIP IN MODERN AMERICA

One of the things we talked about a lot, and we'll talk about a lot more throughout this course is original intent. Now, you wrote an entire book on this, bestselling book on original intent where you took all these documents in this room, and really shared with us what was inside the minds of our Founding Fathers. Why is it so important to get that original intent?

David:

Because that's where you get the most effectiveness. It's really hard to use a screwdriver as a shovel because it was not designed for that. You see, you can work all day long screwdriver, and dig something out. You have to know original intent, have to know how it’s designed, just like using the owner's manual. If you want the most out of your car, your TV, anything else, you have to…

Rick:

And you’re not saying people would misuse the Constitution and for something it wasn't intended to be used for?

David:

You know how we talked the beginning about human nature and principles and that's what the Constitution works, because it's based on certain principles. One of those principles is human nature, and absolutely can be. And we'll cover this in future lessons. But that's why we have checks and balances and separation of powers. The Founding Fathers told us about human nature. And because of that they put principles in there to keep people from taking abuse in this. It won't stop it if we don't apply those principles. But they gave us some tools by which we can stop…

Rick:

I like that analogy, because now, not just original intent, but original intended use. That’s a good to think of it.

David:

It is. It is. And one of the things, this kind of a good example that you talked about if we don't do that, right, then you're going to have we get off track, and you’re exactly right. Here's a great example. This is one of the bestselling books in American history. It's one of the McGuffey readers. They came out in 1830s and 40s and went through 120 million copies to this date. So I mean, they have sold like crazy. So here is a fourth grade reader.

And I just opened up here to lesson number nine, “Death at the Toilet”…

Rick:

I have no idea.

David:

Why would they use such crude bathroom humor back in that day? Because back in that day, toilet is where we get the word toiletries, which is like your shaving stuff and your hair stuff. And well, toilet was really your vanity table and that's why we call vanity. So down the toilet is death at the vanity table. And it deals with a young girl who's really cocky and pride and arrogant about how beautiful she was and it turned in her demise.

Well, we look death at 12 and say, I can't believe that you're such crude humor. No, no, you have to go back to understand what they were trying to do. Now once we understand that, the principal's the same, the arrogance and the cockiness and the kind of stuff that they talked about with that girl, but it's not death at the toilet, it’s death at the vanity table. Her vanity is what destroyed her.

So that's the kind of stuff that's this still works, and it does have an impact. And that's why you want to go back and know original intent. We'll just go back where we started at the begin with John Jay. These are the six things that we want every single citizen to be able to do.

When you read the side of the Constitution, number one is read the Constitution. It doesn't take 20 minutes, is as an easy thing to do. Number two is study the Constitution. Once you've read it, you kind of get the overview, now go back and look at the things in it and start making lists…

Rick:

And then that's where we really are getting into the minds of the Founders. We're studying what those words actually mean, we're not just reading them.

Rick:

And as we go through these next lessons, these other lessons, we're going to be studying what that meant and why they put that there, why that clause is there, and what are they trying to do?

Rick:

So is that all of these books are important, not just the words of the Constitution, but when you pull a book off the shelf that is someone that one of these guys in this picture that helped give us the document, it gives you a chance to really find out what they were thinking when they did it.

David:

It helps set the tone at the time. So if you understand, people accuse the pilgrims all the time, being so bloodthirsty, because they had the death penalty. So they did. They had 15 crimes that had the death penalty. But let’s look at the tone of the time. When they came to America from Great Britain, the country they left had the death penalty for over 230 crimes. So they've taken it from 230 death penalty crimes down to 15. I don't think they're bloodthirsty…

Rick:

So that puts it in context? If you just look at it by itself, you could get your way off. But if you step back and see the big picture, and kind of…

David:

And that is the thing. You can get fixated on a particular issue and you see so much of the trees, you miss the forest. And that's why you read it to see the forest. Now let's go back and study some of the trees that are in the forest. And that's the second part.

The third part is be able to teach it. Once you see what's in there, teach it, especially the rising generation. But in this culture with our poor education, teach all of us. I love, there's a Bible verse in Song of Solomon 8:13, it says your friends listen to your voice. So speak exactly. There in this day and time with what we have in social media, there's nobody who doesn't have a platform for. There are people who will listen to you. There are people who hear what you say. On Facebook, being on Twitter, whatever you got, speak.

Rick:

Might maybe five people, might be 5,000, but all of us have some folks we can influence.

David:

Whatever you got, you talk to your friends, and that makes a difference. Then what you want to be able to do is know those constitutional rights. Now that you've read and studied, you start to teaching them. You now recognize when somebody has crossed the line. Wait a minute, he can't do that, that's not constitutional. And then at that point, you can defend those rights. If they're coming after you or if they come after somebody else, you can assert those rights. So you stand up, and those are the six things that everybody needs to be able to do with the Constitution.

Rick:

So you can't have that perception, you won't know that those rights have been violated if you haven't done these first steps. First, you got to study them and know.

David:

See, I mean, you talked in there about how your mom when they trained her as a bank teller, they didn't show or counterfeit stuff, they just let her handle the real stuff so much that she instantly recognized it. And we did the same thing in World War II. If you want it to be able to recognize the enemy you studied those enemy identification charts. So you study all the enemy planes, all the enemy tanks, so when you saw, you’re oh, that's the enemy, now we can defend and assert ourselves. We’re going to offense. You want to make sure you didn't get one of the Allied tanks, you know, you didn't want one of the British tanks. So you studied and once you study, you could recognize when there was something wrong. And that's what it takes.

Rick:

Well, as we study, sometimes people today, I mean, if we're not doing a good job of this in our schools, then that means we need more tools. We've got to have the tools to be able to study and know those things.

David:

And by the way, just so nobody gets intimidated over this thing. Studying the Constitution and understand it is not a hard deal. This notion that we get from law school, it said only the nine people in the Supreme Court really know the Constitution.

Rick:

Yeah, these high priests of the law.

David:

I have been in several legislatures where that I have, and it just tears me up, legislators say, let's just go ahead and pass it and the Supreme Court will tell us what is constitutional. No. You took an oath to uphold it and you don't have to be a brainchild to do this. And a great example of that is this little book right here. This is a book, an elementary book back in 1828, and elementary kids study this Constitution, I mean…

Rick:

So they're teaching the Constitution to elementary kids. So these are little kids…

David:

You don’t wait until you get to Law School, you don't wait until it’s postgraduate stuff, and the kind of stuff that they were having, these elementary kids study, the questions they asked…

Rick:

1828, alright, so we’re going all the way back, but this is…

David:

Some of the elementary questions.

Rick:

Okay, so these are these questions…

David:

Now, you’re an attorney?

Rick:

Yeah.

David:

You are a legislator.

Rick:

Now what if I can't answer it, this is going to be bad, which I'm probably not going to be able to. So these are elementary school kids, and they're asking them, can the Congress punish piracy? That is robbery committed at sea. Because we have some of that today, so this is actually a good question for today. You got small pirates, that whole movie about the captain…

David:

That’s international law, so can we in America do anything to punish other nations under our Constitution?

Rick:

Yeah. How many people, now, I don't really answer that question on top of my head. So what does the elementary catechism say? Yes. And all other crimes committed there, it can also punish offenses against the laws of nations. So there's another question and in fact, that’s the next question. What do you mean by the law of nations? So this is done in a catechism way where you ask one question, it raises the next question.

David:

That's right. And that's elementary kids. And I bet, if you sit down in a law school and take third year law students that are about to take their Bar exam and run those questions through, they…

Rick:

No, it talks about marque and reprisal, all these things.

David:

And nobody knows what that is anymore. And that actually is a very current thing that still goes on, because it deals with restitution, is a form of restitution. So there's a lot of there's applicable, so do you not get intimidated saying, you know, I'm not that smart. You don't have to be smart. Founding Fathers, remember, these were average guys; they were farmers, they were shipbuilders. You know, one of these guys, he was a shoeshine guy. He made leather shoes, and kept shoes. They're common folks and they did this for the common average everyday person.

Rick:

So if they can do it, we can do it today. And if of yesterday, an 1820 little kids could do, so it was intended as an elementary catechism, but we need it for all of us today?

David:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Rick:

Well, that's the whole idea of Constitution Alive! So when we come back, we're going to actually talk about the seeds of liberty, we're going to dive into some of these materials, and talk about what was planted to give us such a successful formula here on Constitution Alive! with David Barton and Rick Green.

BREAK

Rick:

We're in the very room where the Constitution was framed, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. You should come here and visit. It's absolutely amazing. We do our course in here teaching the Constitution. And actually right behind us, Mark, that chair is the chair George Washington sat in throughout the convention.

Mark:

Yeah, I think about that, you know, I kind of get the chills just being in the room to think that's the chair Washington, the indispensable man, the father of our country sat in that chair. Something really interesting about that chair, there's a carving on the back of that chair, I happen to have…

Rick:

Wait a minute here. I've been coming here for years, this is your first time and you get the props that they never let me have.

Mark:

They call it Convention of States, right. This is a Convention…

Rick:

I guess. Yeah.

Mark:

So it's important to remember where we were at in American history. The Articles of Confederation are falling apart. The nation is being torn apart commercially. States are kind of at each other's throats.

Rick:

Financially broke, the states aren't willing to pay. States are fighting.

Mark:

So not unreasonable that Franklin's looking at this, he doesn't know whether it's a rising or setting sun, right, looking at what's the future of the nation, are we going to make it or is it going to fall apart? But in the end, he knows.

Rick:

At the very end, he says, I've been looking, I've been wondering, is it a rising or setting? He said it is indeed a rising, not a setting sun.

Guest:

We have a Constitution that is the envy of the world. It was established for the rights and protection of all flesh. All people in the whole world, they knew they were doing something so unique that was the light of liberty in all the world. Let's do this. Let's come back and look at that recipe, because it was structure, it was form, it was the system that they designed to check and balance to provide a double security. In fact, Alexander Hamilton said, this balance between the state and the national government is of the utmost importance, because it provides a double security of the rights of the people.

Guest:

I think the next generation, although there's obviously concerns about the generation, but I get a chance to work with some of the amazing young people of this generation that are much more conscious of their role, their God-given calling, and their duty and much more talented and much more on fire for the Lord than our generation ever thought to be. And those individuals can go and should go into all these areas of life, in the judiciary, in the legislature, in every field of possibility, and really be light in these dark areas and transform the culture. I think this generation is going to surprise a lot of people because there's so much negative about them. But I see God raising up Gideon’s army in this generation, I'm telling you. When you work with this generation, you realize our generation can't even hold a candle stick to what God is doing in this young generation.

Rick:

Well, that's it for week three. What a great opportunity to have David Barton right here live with us teaching on truth and courage and then to get to visit Independence Hall to actually be in that room and learn what the Founding Fathers were thinking, what was the philosophy behind the formula that produced the most free, most powerful, most benevolent nation in history.

Well, we hope you enjoyed week three. Next week in week four, we're going to start talking more about what the Founding Fathers actually designed in our Constitution. We're going to dive into those seeds of liberty, and then we're going to do a 30,000 feet view of the entire Constitution. We'll see you next week for Biblical Citizenship in Modern American.

Rick:

Alright, you've been listening to Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. That is an eight week course that you can get for free, for free, and you can share it with as many friends and family as you want also, for free. They all get a free digital workbook. Host this class in your living room or at your church. Check it out today at patriotacademy.com. If you just joined us today, and you missed the rest of the programs this week for Biblical citizenship, check them out right now at wallbuilderslive.com. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders Live.