Historic Quote: 0:07
President 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: 0:25
This is the intersection of faith and the culture. Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders. 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 councils, 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 Walb others and of course the name Walb others comes from that scripture in Nehemiah that says aarise 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 rotten 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 Walb others. 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 them 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 it's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. So let's get started. Today you send in your questions to radio@Walb builderscom. Send your questions to radio@Walb builderscom. Alright, guys. Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Let's dive into the questions, but I'm going to take the first one. Alright, this is. This is highly unusual. If you're a new listener out there, we normally just go straight to the audience. But I have a question for David and Tim, so I'm just going to pretend that I wrote in. You know, y'all just pretend this is an email from some guy, Rick Green. He's like David, Tim, I love your show. I listen every day. I learned so much. Da, da, da, da, da, all that good stuff. And then the question is it okay to advertise on a bus? I mean, this is just a hypothetical question, guys. Just just you know, out of nowhere, I'm just wondering if you would have run some ads on the side of a bus, and you know like most businesses do all over the country, but you wanted to run your ads talking about American history, talking about America. I mean, wouldn't that be so weird, like so highly inflammatory and controversial that it would somehow be unconstitutional to put an ad? Not that you guys are going through anything like this, just you know. Not that this is personal.

Tim Barton: 3:26
Now, let's just say hypothetically yeah, hypothetically. I mean just hypothetically, say, if you were to choose like two kind of iconic images. If you were to choose an image of, let's say, like George Washington kneeling in the snow, praying, you know, kind of like from a Valley Forge scenario. Let's say you were to choose another iconic image, George Washington's in it, founding fathers at the constitutional invention and, by the way, both these images are kind of prominently known for being in Washington DC. If you go to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, or even if you go to the US Capitol building, outside the US Congress House of Representatives there is a massive painting, it's like 20 feet by 30 feet, in one of the stairwells that the congressmen and women go up and down, and it is the painting of the constitutional convention. So if, hypothetically, you were going to take two very iconic images of like George Washington and the founding fathers, and then let's say you put a single word on it with a question mark, and let's say you chose a word like Christian question mark, like you're asking the question were these individuals Christians, George Washington Christian? And then if you put a QR code that would take you to an article on a website that actually addresses some of these questions and, more specifically, says that if you want to know the founding fathers more, here's some quotes from them. You can actually read and study their writings. And if, let's just say you were going to, then, like in Washington DC, you're going to try to take out some ads to maybe reintroduce people to some of the founding fathers and the WMATA, which is the Washington Metro area man, what is it WMATA stands for? I'm trying to thank him now. What? even the word the transportation yeah it's the Washington metropolitan area transit authority, so they're the ones that control who gets to do advertising and where. And if you try to take out an ad, and they said you know what, this just seems really controversial. We're quoting founding fathers and quoting founding fathers and we have a policy that you're not allowed to have anything controversial on our buses. Now it could be interesting to see, like, did Pfizer advertise on your bus? Because I feel like right, that the Pfizer vaccine, that that could have been controversial, maybe not to everybody, right, but like I feel like I could find some things where there could be controversy, where there could be disputes. And yet, hypothetically, in a scenario, let's say that they said you cannot advertise because it's controversial. And so let's, let's say you were problem solving, and you said, well, maybe it's just, maybe it's the word Christian they don't like. So let's, let's try to run the ad and let's remove the word Christian, let's just show the image of the founding fathers, the image of George Washington, with only a QR code to the website, and maybe that resolves the problems. And they say, no, it's, it's still too controversial, you know, going to a website and now let's say this is not hypothetical, this is literally what we tried to do in Washington DC. We were in the middle of working on a new website and we were going to come out with a new website and we thought, you know, it would be really fun if, when we come out with a new website, to to do maybe kind of a marketing campaign and let people know about the new website, because we're so excited about this new website and how cool it is and and we want to get some attention drawing people to it. And literally one Mata, the Washington Transit area individuals who are in charge of what adds one of the buses they said, yeah, you're not allowed to do that. Fortunately, we have some really good friends that are in the arena of defending the first amendment.

Rick Green: 7:13
And just to just to draw. You know, I love putting the exclamation point on this. So a picture of George Washington and a QR code is too controversial for Washington, washington DC.

Tim Barton: 7:26
Yeah, I mean, it does make you wonder. Like are they which maybe not wonder, because I think they would, but like, do they need to rename Washington because it's too controversial? And yes, I mean probably right, they would want to give me any ideas, Tim right, many ideas, so.

Rick Green: 7:39
so let me get this right. So you guys and of course, joking about this being hypothetical, you guys literally just wanted to help educate the population about the founding fathers and their own quotes. You put a picture of George Washington or you send in I guess that's how it works, right so an advertisement and say we want to purchase you know space on buses or what, I don't know how, exactly how many buses or whatever, but and they rejected it based on it being controversial. And so now I guess you have to file suit to try to make them do it, or you know also full disclosure.

Tim Barton: 8:12
You know probably I'm not supposed to talk too much about it because our attorneys will be present. You know to make sure that, like hey Tim, let's not talk about that right now. Oh yeah, hypothetically I should have said, you know just hypothetically yeah, hypothetically speaking if we would have worked with an agency and said, hey, we want to time the campaign a four week campaign and we want to have, you know, so many, whatever the size might be, on so many buses, what is that going to cost? And they sent back a policy guideline and they said that you have failed to pass the policies and there's two policies that we that they only pointed to the first one because they said well, you didn't pass this one and so there's no need for any further consideration. The first one is nothing controversial, which again is an utterly ridiculous standard. It's so subjective because it could be a controversy right that there, literally, there's a new trend in style now where people don't wear socks with suits. Men, right Like men, are wearing shoes no socks.

Rick Green: 9:15
You use that term loosely, but yes, yes, no, sorry, I'm just kidding, but I mean, what do we mean?

Tim Barton: 9:22
controversial? Because anything can be controversial. That is a very arbitrary, subjective position and so it's not a clearly defined standard, and at this point it really seems like it's just somebody saying we don't want this ad, it can't be there, but that's what they pointed to first. Well, had it gone further, they actually have a section where they say that you're not allowed to have any religious things in an ad. And certainly asking about the faith, the founding fathers, and even though we were only using their own quotes in their own writings, right, so we're not even taking a position saying that they clearly were this or they clearly weren't something. What we were actually doing is saying, well, here's some of their quotes, and maybe this is a topic you want to dive into. If you want to dive into more, we encourage you, go to their writings, write, study from their writings. Here's some link to writings. But it was literally pointing people to getting to know the founding fathers, to encourage them to read their writings, and so we arguably would have failed on two measures and this is again totally hypothetically, because probably again our attorneys want to be present, so we probably don't need to go too much into this, but the bottom line is that and we probably can talk a broader picture about this when it comes to a Foundation to Freedom, thursday.

Rick Green: 10:39
Yeah, because the question is is it a foundational principle to allow for discussion about, even if it? Was super controversial, right, but certainly the founding father history, who we are as Americans. Is this a free speech issue? Is this a freedom of religion issue? Is this a? I mean, there's so many areas that seems to get into.

Tim Barton: 11:00
Yeah, I mean when you have a government agency or someone working on behalf of the government, right, because this is a Washington DC is still a federal district, and so this calls on the federal government. And so, literally, when the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law respecting and establishing religion, prohibiting the fair exercise of the rub, the First Amendment was targeting Congress, saying Congress cannot restrict the speech or religious expression of its citizens. And so then, for there to be an actual statute or policy under this that says we will not allow any religious material to appear on any advertising that they do. Well, that already seems to be a violation of the First Amendment. It didn't go even further to say that somebody arbitrarily gets to choose who can and who can't based on their own subjective perspective of what they consider to be controversial, like, as some people might say, hey, pfizer is not a controversial company. And then there's people on the other side who are like no, pfizer, that's a. There's a lot of controversy surrounding some of the the jabs they are promoting right now. You can quickly realize that in such a subjective perspective, where somebody arbitrarily is choosing the winners and losers, that is also a problem when it comes to someone representing the federal government in the federal district of Columbia.

Rick Green: 12:23
It really gives somebody a heckler's veto right, cause they can just make it controversial so that they can keep you from advertising if they want. Well, you know, and again, I don't know how much you guys can share and I hijacked the first half of our program to give you my question. But I've just started seeing some of this and hearing you guys talking about it. I was like, wow, I cannot believe we've gone that far that George Washington is now controversial in this light and of course they have. They've gone after statues and things like that. But I think there's some pretty interesting news about who is representing you guys on this case too.

David Barton: 12:56
Hey, and you know, completely respecting the fact that we don't have our attorneys here, there's a couple things I think that are worth pointing out because they have been in the published news about this particular case, and part of that is and, Rick, going back to what you said about the first amendment says Congress shall make no law. If the first amendment applies to any single city in the United States, it is Washington DC, because that is the only mention in the US Constitution. That is the only completely federal city that exists and if there is any limitation on the federal government to not be able to regulate Speech, it exists in Washington DC. So this is the only completely constitutional US constitutional city in the United States from the standpoint of Jurisdiction but then from the standpoint of even speech. It's already come out in the news about this case that there's been plenty of other types of Controversial and religious ads on buses. Tim mentioned the COVID-19 vaccines. One of the one of the ads pointed out that. You know, when the Book of Mormon was running on on Broadway and it's a very derogatory play making fun of Mormons and demeaning Mormons and meaning their faith Washington DC had no difficulty running ads, for that Broadway showed the Book of Mormon, which made fun of Mormon people making fun of religion, and that was controversial. They didn't have any trouble with that. At the same time, they did not have any trouble running ads for the American atheist, diminishing religion and attacking religion. So they had no difficulty running ads that would attack religion or make fun of religion. But now they won't even run an ad that takes you back not to religion but the history, as Tim pointed out. They didn't even get to the religious part of the code. All they did was say the controversial part of the code, and the only thing it does is take you back to historical articles, and that in itself, I mean, this is, this is so ironic on so many levels that it would be this particular city that chooses to ignore that particular part of the Constitution after having done exactly what they say they can't do, which Really does make this, I think, a very interesting case for what's probably going to happen in the future.

Tim Barton: 15:15
And so, Rick, what I, what I would suggest is, obviously, we, we booked guests periodically. I happen to know a couple people that might be available, that are part of this case, and probably we could even ask them if they can get their attorney on and then they can actually probably dive into it with the Well, if those guys you're thinking of check, yeah, if those guys you're thinking of have the last name Barton Would, could you, could you send me their info so I can try to get a hold?

Rick Green: 15:43
I'd love to interview those guys anyway. I think they'd be really interesting guess.

Tim Barton: 15:46
I will send you their contact info. You work on setting it up and we will work to make that happen.

Rick Green: 15:51
Alright. Well, thank y'all for letting me hide. This is just a teaser, folks. This is a little taste of what is to come and we will cover this topic much more in the future and, of course, follow it. WallBuilders calm to keep up with all the things going on here at WallBuilders. We're going to take a quick break when we come back. We've got questions. Let's see David and league cities got our first question coming coming up, so stay with us. You're listening to the WallBuilders show.

Historic Quote: 16:12
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.

Tim Barton: 16:39
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 it's a 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. WallBuilders calm the American story.

Historic Quote: 17:45
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: 17:59
Welcome back to the WallBuilders show. Thanks for staying with us. It's foundations of freedom Thursday. And our first real question from the audience not just for me is from David in League City. He said hey, David, Rick and Tim, I love your show. I have questions about President Biden's proposed rule which would allow the federal governments to seize the patents of expensive, quote-unquote, expensive drugs that were developed with federal funding. He said I've learned from y'all that article one, section 8, 8, 8, dot 8, is the basis for the government's function of issuing patents. The proposed rule allowing the government to seize patents seems to be the Opposite of the intent of issuing patents to inventors. Is it constitutional for president to put forth rules and policies which contradict one of the constitutionally enumerated powers of Congress? And then also, from what I've read about it, the proposed seems to be an alteration of the by-doll act. Is it constitutional for president to put forth rules and policies which alter or amend properly past laws? Thanks for all you do to educate so many people about biblical, constitutional, historical truths. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of the American story, part two. David, me too, brother, me too. I can't wait to read it. Alright, listen, by the way, folks. This is the patent and trademark clause in the Constitution. If you've taken Constitution Alive or Biblical Citizenship in Modern America, you already know we kind of put an emphasis on this as an example of the abuse of the federal government, because in the Constitution it says to promote the progress of science and useful arts comma, which means we're about to say the only proper way for them to promote the progress of science and useful arts is by securing, for limited times, to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. In our classes, David, you point out, it's essentially property rights. We're literally protecting the creation, the intellectual property of the citizens. When they create something, are they, you know, write something or invent something? And I think what David's saying is that this new rule is the opposite. They're going to seize something that was created by the people.

David Barton: 19:53
When you have an invention or a creation of private individuals that can be taken at will by the federal government, then you no longer have a Constitutional Republic. You no longer have a Constitution that protects the inalienable rights of the people, one of the rights of the people being private property. Private property is also enjoying the fruit of your own ideas and your own creations and your own labors. So the patent protection clause says hey, individuals, part of their private property is what they can create in an invention with their mind. If they come up with a brand new idea, a brand new way of doing something, they can patent that and make money and make profit off of the really the fruits of their labors, what the Bible calls it. So what you have is the federal constitution drawing a line between what is the role of individuals and what is the role of the federal government, and the federal government is not to take the ideas of individuals for its own profit. When you do that, you no longer are a Constitutional Republic. You're some type of a socialist or even a fascist type of government where things belong to the government, not to the individuals. In the US federal system, everything is about the individual, not about the government. It's about protecting the rights of individuals, not about protecting the whims of the government. So for the government to step in and say, hey, we know that private individuals or private companies or private corporations, whatever came up with this and they invested a lot of money to do so, and it took them a lot of effort and a lot of testing to come up with these particular drugs, which went through a lot of testing and a lot of federally required laws just to get to where it was safe To take all of that and say we don't care how much money you spent, we, the federal government, are now going to take that and make that ours so we can do what we want to with it, that is a very clear Constitutional violation. But more than that, it's a fundamental violation of our form of government. Even if you did not have a specific clause to protect the ideas of inventors and companies and individuals who make inventions, you have a form of government that also explicitly prohibits that. So to take that, that's a real problem.

Rick Green: 21:57
And then to say and, by the way, congress passed a federal law and that federal law was passed before by the way, David, before you go to that second part, I just got to point out that that's like something you would hear about in some I don't know Eastern Bloc country in the old days, or you know Venezuela or something like that A government literally think about. I mean coming in and seizing an invention because they want it for themselves. Unbelievable.

David Barton: 22:21
Yeah, that is unbelievable. But we are becoming that third world nation in the way that we are behaving in this administration. We are not following just clearly laid down laws. Look at all the immigration laws that are very clearly on the books and we pick and choose which laws we do and don't want to follow, depending on who the at this point dictator is when they're in there. I know it's a president, we're saying he's elected, but nonetheless he took enough to uphold the laws of the land and the Constitution and then to set all of that aside, ignore your oath. That's third world kind of stuff. But that happens when you have citizens who do not know the Constitution themselves or do not care about the Constitution when they choose their leaders, and so we're drifting into that area. We're seeing it the way we spend money. There are so many indications that at this point this federal government is willing to remake itself into something that is not part of the Constitution or part of our history, of tradition or heritage. And so when you have that and then when you say, well, you know previous Congresses who did it right, they actually follow the Constitution and a law, federal law, was passed, it was introduced in the House and it was concurred to in the Senate and the president cited, it became a federal law. But you know what? We're going to skip all of that lawmaking process and articles one and two of the Constitution and we're just going to say here's how we're going to do it at the federal level, from the presidency, we're going to set aside previous laws even though there's been no new law passed that allows us to set that law aside. We're just going to do it because we don't like the law. I mean, you're back in that third world kind of mentality where that you're run by people, not by laws. John Adams, when they did the Constitution, he bragged about the fact that we're a government of laws, not of men. Now we've gone the other direction, say we're a governor of men, not of laws. It doesn't matter what the law says, it matters who the man in charge is and what he wants to do. So this really is a dangerous, dangerous precept that we're playing with on this concept of patent protection clause, and the Constitution set aside constitutionally passed laws.

Tim Barton: 24:21
Well, in all, point out too I mean, we're pointing to Joe Biden for what this decision was, but, Dad, one of the things you're really talking about is more of an oligarchy, because we're talking about having a dictator face and John Adams says, no, we're laws, not of men. Well, they were concerned that when you have men who are in charge and they're not constricted, they're not bound by a constitution, for example which is why we're a constitutional republic, because our leaders are bound by the constitution. But when you have kings, when you had leaders that were not bound by that, they could do whatever they wanted, and so it was a government of men, not of laws. Well, we have a president who is acknowledging some policy, but I think most of us would acknowledge that we don't think President Biden is really there all the time. Mentally right, and maybe not. The cognitive firings are not all happening where they should. There's a lot of people, what became known as a swamp. There's a lot of swamp. That's there, and this is where, when Trump talked about draining the swamp, a lot of people now are recognizing there's a lot of swamp creatures on both sides, but, especially when you're the agencies, there's a lot of people that are now setting aside laws for what they think is their own advantage, their own ends and purposes, and so this is why, when we talk about elections having consequences, it has consequences not just for who the leader is. But having a leader who's willing to drain some of that swamp to clean out some of these oligarchy kind of leaders becomes increasingly important to protect what fundamentally the founding fathers recognize as our inalienable and God given rights, and that's we have to get back to protecting.

Rick Green: 25:54
And this has a major effect in the market too. I mean, people are going to be less willing to invest, less willing to put their time and energy and elbow grease and all those things into inventing things. If they're not going to be protected, they're going to be taken or seized by the governments. It's the downfall of socialism and communism and fascism and all these isms. Every time that they're tried, and as our Patriot Academy graduates always say, socialism is bad, very, very bad. Alright, folks, out of time for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you check out our website, WallBuilders.Show. That's WallBuilders.Show. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Historic Quote: 26:26
Thomas Jefferson said, the constitution of most of our states and of the United States assert that all power is inherent in the people, that they may exercise it by themselves, that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed, that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of press.