Rick Green

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It's Walbuilders. We're taking on the hot topic to the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Thanks for joining us and thanks for sharing the program with your friends and family. Make sure you go to wallbuilders.com today and let folks know about the new book which we were talking about a little bit yesterday and again today The American Story. It's volume two. So this is the second installment. If you haven't read the first one, you should. It is fantastic and it's actually at the website Wallbuilders.com. This new one is called Building the Republic. So this is installment number two by David and Tim Barton, and you're going to love it. I'm telling you so much to learn. All of us, right, ignorance is curable. We are all ignorant about something and unfortunately in our culture today, we are very ignorant about civics, about our history, about what the formula is that made our nation great in the first place, which is why studying these things is so, so important for our children and our grandchildren. And, as we often do here at WallBuilders pretty much everything we do we want to do the good, the bad and the ugly. We want to teach all of it, and so we encourage you to get this book, read it, share it with your friends and family, talk to them about it, get them talking about what the formula is that makes a better nation, and this book is just a fantastic place to start. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator, serving here with David and Tim Barton. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. David is America's premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders. Alright, David and Tim, we're jumping right back in where we left off yesterday, talking about the new book, the American Story, and yesterday we talked about the fact that this is going to be a multi-book series covering almost all the way through American history, as David you mentioned yesterday up through Ronald Reagan, essentially up through the 20th century. But breaking it down piece by piece. Just a reminder for folks that may have missed yesterday it's available on our website. You can go watch it in the archives there. But just one more time, guys tell me again. So the first book is actually taking you up to the Constitution. Does it cover the revolution as well, or just up to the Declaration?

Tim Barton:

So the first book, the American Story, the beginnings, starts from the beginning and we go back to Christopher Columbus. Even though you can argue he didn't really discover America, he is the one that opened the eyes of Western Europe to recognize there was undeveloped land, there was a new world in their mind. And so we start with Columbus. We were initially going to go up through the Constitution. We go through the Revolution, we tell some stories, some major players, major moments, battles, events in the revolution, highlighting some of that as we go. And initially the idea was we were going to stop when the Constitution is written, George Walsh becomes president. We were going to stop there because now you have an American nation, but we were finishing writing in 2019, the 1619 project came out in 2019, the 1619 project said America was burst on the back of slavery and everything America's ever done has been because of slavery and therefore everything in America's evil, because it was all built on the backs of slaves. And as they were making these claims really outrageous claims in lots and lots of areas and for lots of reasons, one of the things that we thought we should do is let's go back and tell the honest story, because the accusation is that everybody in America was motivated by racism and it was all slavery. And it overlooks the fact that the vast majority of the founding fathers were actually anti-slavery, that when we separate from Great Britain, every single northern colony began working to pass laws for the abolition of slavery and this is also the slave trade and slavery. So some people look and they go, okay, well, yeah, you stop the slave trade, you still have  slavery. Well, in the North they did both. They banned the slave trade and they passed laws for the abolition of slavery. And the southern states? They didn't get all that accomplished and in some southern states there was a divide of what founding fathers were anti-slavery and some of the sentiments of the people, like Virginia is a great example. You go further south, in South Carolina and Georgia and you can make a pretty strong argument that the founding fathers in South Carolina and Georgia very racist, very pro-slavery in a lot of regards and pro-slavery especially comparatively, in the sense that they were not trying to end slavery, they were totally fine with it. They weren't all expansionists, they weren't saying we need more and more slaves in America. Nonetheless, the point is the 1619 project was making a gross overjournalization that was not historically correct and we said well, let's at least tell some of the honest story. And when you look at the honest story, America was the very first nation in the world that signed a law banning the slave trade Thomas Jefferson's on that law on March 2, 1807. England was a second nation to sign a law like that. They signed it March 25, 1807. So America was the first nation to sign a law banning the slave trade. America was arguably the fourth nation of the world, major national world, to end slavery. England did in 1833. And then you had Denmark, and then France, and then America did it and I think the estimates are at that time there were about 128 nations of the world. And to give some context to understand this, if you were going to run a race, for example, and in this race there's 128 people running this race and you come in fourth place out of 128 people, we would say, wow, that was really impressive, you did a great job running that race. We wouldn't say you are awful and terrible and evil because you didn't get first, second or third place. Well, that would be a ridiculous position, because you were far ahead of so many people and you came in fourth. You cross a finish line before nearly everybody else. That's the reality of what America and its slavery in 1865. The vast majority of the world and I mean vast majority of the world was still practicing slavery long after America ended slavery. And even today there are nations still practicing slavery around the world. So we wanted to tell more of that on a story but we kind of stopped with George Washington becoming president. And then the last section of that book was a very abbreviated version of the anti-slavery movement, the growth in America leading to the end of slavery in America with the 13th Amendment. So we tell the abbreviated version of that story just to give context, to know the 1619 project was not right. Well, this time we back up and say, okay, all the things that we skipped over when George Washington became president, let's start there and let's understand, when the founding fathers get us through the revolution, that they ride the Constitution. All they've done is really make America a nation. The early presidents they're the ones that, so to speak, they're the ones that took the ship, put it on the ocean and they began to sell the ship. So America becomes a nation in the founding era, but the first early presidents are the ones who determined the direction the nation is gonna go for, good or bad. And the reason America became the most successful, the most stable, the most free nation in history of the world is because of the foundation these early presidents played. And that's not to say that it was all good, because as we go through the book, we will highlight there were some good moments. There were some really bad moments. There were presidents who had really really good presidencies. It left an incredible legacy. And then there were some presidents that the legacy they left was a legacy of actually sin, and maybe the evil would be some of the better ways to define their legacy. And that doesn't mean, for example, that that's all those people did. But it is significant that if we look back, if we ask people hey, tell us all the stories you know about John Adams, for example. Well, if somebody's seen the HBO series on John Adams, they might know a few stories, but most people don't know stories about John Adams. Okay, tell us stories about Thomas Jefferson, people that I mean no idea. James Madison well, he wrote the Constitution. Okay, what do you know about him? Well, what did he do in his life? What was his life like? How did he interact with people? What were the defining moments of his life? What were his great achievements? Most people don't know. And if you go to George Washington, James Madison, those are the biggest names. Once you get to James Monroe or John Quincy Adams or Andrew Jackson I mean, unless you are someone in the South and you know Jackson, you know the Battle of New Orleans, right War of 1812, you might know that, but most people don't know anything about them. And this is one of the things we revisit so often with the foundation of America, with the founding fathers in general is so often, because we recognize names and we've heard their names a lot, we mistakenly assume that we know their stories and we know who they were and we have these assumptions about them that more times than not, are not historically grounded and are not historically correct. And what we do in this book is we try to show what these individuals did, who they were, what is their story, what did they accomplish, and then, like maybe a King David of the Bible or Joshua or a Gideon, we tell you their story but we show some of the good, the bad and the ugly that was part of their life to help you understand the whole honest picture, but then also to learn the lessons, just like we would from the Bible, to learn the lessons of what we wanna follow and emulate and what are the things we wanna make sure when we're leaders, we don't do that, and maybe even as we're coming in an election season, what kind of leaders do we want to stay away from and not elect? What are the characteristics, what are the traits, the qualities, what is the philosophy that we want in our leaders? Those are things that we unfold in this book as we introduce, or maybe reintroduce Americans to who these early presidents were and tell their stories.

Rick Green

All right, guys, quick break, we're gonna be right back. You're listening to WallBuilers. We're talking about the American story. Checking out today at wallbuilers.com We'll be right back. Have you noticed the vacuum of leadership in America? We're looking around for leaders of principle to step up, and too often no one is there. God is raising up a generation of young leaders with a passion for impacting the world around them. They're crying out for the mentorship and leadership training they need. Patriot Academy was created to meet that need. Patriot Academy graduates now serve in state capitals around America, in the halls of Congress and business, in the film industry, in the pulpit, in every area of the culture. They're leading effectively and impacting the world around them. Patriot Academy is now expanding across the nation and now's your chance to experience this life-changing week that trains champions to change the world. Visit patriotacademy.com for dates and locations. Our core program is still for young leaders 16 to 25 years old, but we also now have a citizen track for adults. So visit the website today to learn more. Help us fill the void of leadership in America. Join us in training champions to change the world at patriotacademy.com. ["the American Story"]. Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Today we're talking about the release this week of the much-anticipated second installment of The American Story, and, Tim, you were talking about the fact you get all these different types of stories, good and bad and yesterday we talked about Andrew Jackson, Tim you were talking about we were getting some of the good stories, the bad stories, and I'm assuming that theme will stay throughout the series of books as we go through out American history, because I don't think we skipped over the human part. We still are good, the bad, the ugly, right, so, even with Ronald Reagan. So, David, what are we expecting? The rest of the series?

David Barton

You know we were talking yesterday about how all of the series is going to be, how many books will it be, and you know it's kind of planned right now to probably be four books in the series. Now, four books, I was thinking about that yesterday when you asked I don't want to go back and experience because we mentioned yesterday hey, I've got a decade at least on you, Rick, and I've got a couple decades or more on Tim. So let me back up at the time when I was in school and through elementary school and all the way through high school and college and after, I had history courses every year and that was included in college. Now we had required courses in college. We had required history courses in high school. We had a history course every year of elementary school. We had history every year. That was considered an indispensable subject because if you know your history it helps you interpret everything else that goes on, helps you interpret humanities and literature, and if you know history then you know more about the scientists who did science and everything else. So it was always an emphasized course. Now in the last 30 years I've been appointed a number of times in a whole bunch of different states to help write the history standards for those states. And so for a long time, like 30 years ago and 20 years ago and even 15 years ago, they had what they called a tripartite philosophy. They said now what we want to do is we want to cover history in the fifth grade, and in the fifth grade we want to cover American history from Columbus all the way up to the Stamp Act. And then, when they get into junior high, we want a year of history in junior high and we want to cover from the Stamp Act up through the Civil War, and then in high school we're going to cover from the Civil War on up to the present time. So we'll have three years of history in school and it's a tripartite division. And so we wrote standards for that for fifth grade and eighth grade and the 11th or 12th grade. And then in the last 15 years or so they said no, no, no, we only need bipartite,  we just need two years of history. So we're going to do Columbus all the way through the start of the Civil War and then we'll do the Civil War all the way through current time and we'll get all the history in in two years. And now, Tim and I have been part of this in recent years dealing with states. I think Tim got a call from the state legislators that, hey, you're not going to believe what we just passed in our state. We just passed the new history standards in our state and we said for the next 10 years in our state we are not going to teach the American Revolution or the Civil War or World War One or World War Two or the Holocaust, and a number of other states have done that since then. So we've gone from having history every year to having at least no genuine history. They want to teach 1619 kind of philosophy we talked about that yesterday. They want indoctrination, and so we're looking at really four, four books and those four books. If you can go through these four books that we have planned for the American story, two of them are out now, you will actually get a very comprehensive view of American history. You're going to cover all the stuff we used to cover in school, but you can have all the stories with it. And when I went through school back in the day we weren't telling stories, we were dates, names and places. Now we can tell you the human side of these guys and I will tell you I've studied George Washington a lot, but he came alive to me in writing this book when I saw some of the physical pain and misery that he had to endure and what he went through and how that that was even visible in paintings of the day. I never understood how much pain he went through and what he sacrificed. But that's a story worth telling.

Tim Barton

And dad. It's also worth noting that, as we did this which is true for pretty much everything that you've written over the last many decades it's part of the DNA of who we are in these books. There's more than a thousand footnotes in each one of these books and there will be in every one that we do. If it's more than a couple hundred pages, there's gonna be more than a thousand footnotes because, as we are introducing people again to the founding fathers or these in this case they're the first seven presidents as we're introducing those individuals to you, we want to help into Americans. Really, at this point, we want to help Americans overcome this notion from professors that would say you need to trust me, I'm an academic right, I have credentials, what I know, that's what you should believe. And we come from the exact opposite position. We say please don't trust us. Right, here is the source. This is where this letter was, where he wrote this. Please go look this letter up. Please go read this document, please read this proclamation, this prayer proclamation. This is what they're praying for. We encourage people to go do a dive in history and the reason we do that is we know if we would go back and actually read more of these founding era documents. It not only would give more credibility to the things that we are saying, but would help people once again or rediscover these incredible leaders and heroes at a deeper level. That as you mentioned. How many decades have you talked stories about George Washington? But now that we're writing a book where he is the probably main character, main player, that the standard that we're judging every other president to his, the standard that he created as you've studied him, you were discovering things that first time you'd never seen before, that brought him to life for you in ways that you had never thought about. And I mean we can go further, because even guys like a John Adams and Thomas Jefferson we knew right that early on in a revolution they're kind of buddies. They're different. Thomas Jefferson is an introvert. He is a thinker and a writer. He's not an external communicator. John Adams is the attorney. John Adams very vocal, he's gonna tell you exactly what he thinks. And these two guys are friends. Well, when do they have their falling out? It's during George Washington's administration and it's because George Washington took a position and Adams and Jefferson disagreed on it and their relationship fragmented so bad that then, when they run for president against each other. It fragments it worse. It's just fascinating that as you begin to research and discover these individuals, you learn so much more about their stories that all of a sudden, things that I kind of thought I knew about as we did the research I went oh, that's why that happened, that's why they said this, that's why they made that decision, and it really does bring so much more life to these guys where I've read a lot of books about the founding fathers and about some of these heroes, some of the early presidents and some of the stuff we're bringing out in this book, the American Story Building the Republic, it's different than what I've seen in most books about these individuals and it's because you have taught such a different approach in philosophy and largely going back to these original documents and then not being embarrassed or ashamed to say, hey, if we think this guy messed up, whether it be according to the constitution or violated biblical standards and principles, we'll point out this, this was not constitutional or this was not biblical, and give the reason why, understanding not just that they were humans but sometimes that they made some pretty significant mistakes.

David Barton

And it's interesting too to even not only see the mistakes but also how that other presidents learned from those and didn't make those mistakes. But even just in discovering who the people were, I mean James Monroe, of the first seven presidents, James Monroe was the guy I knew the least about. I just didn't know much about him at all, and it was very intriguing to see some good things he did and some bad things he did. For example, under George Washington, Tim, you mentioned that John Adams and Jefferson started moving away from each other. That's when political parties started beginning and Washington, look, political party's okay. Just make sure you love the nation more than you love your party. But by the time you get to John Adams, John Adams becomes really a pretty partisan guy. I mean, he's pushing his party really hard. It's like he didn't listen to George and George is all right, parties have different beliefs and they're moving different agendas, but make sure you love the nation the most, not your party. When you get to the time of Monroe, when Monroe goes into office, man, through the time of Madison particularly, parties were vicious toward each other and Madison was trying to bring it back to civility and trying to take the party side out of it and you can have parties, but make sure you love the nation the most. And they just weren't that way. And the War of 1812, man, you really saw them go after each other in vicious ways. Not only you're fighting the British, but you're fighting political parties. And so when Madison finishes his term and James Monroe comes in, James Monroe had fought in the American Revolution. He was at the Battle of Trenton, there, when they marched through all the snow to do the Battle of Trenton and defeat the Hessians, and he was one of only three guys wounded in that battle. It was a miraculous battle. God gave him a victory. There was- Washington talked about how that God intervened and so many others did. And so Monroe is one of three guys who's wounded there. But he did so well at the battle that George Washington promotes him and moves him to a higher rank as officer. And so Washington and Monroe have been really, you know, they've been friends and they fought together. And so now Monroe becomes president, he says we got to reunite America, we can't have this split. So what he did was he took really the first two years of his presidency and he left Washington DC, he got into carriages and he started going to every state in the United States, going from town to town to town, and he's tried to reunite the people. He put on his American Revolution uniform. Now we're talking 30 years after the revolution. He put on his uniform, he powdered his hair and he put his hair in a ponytail like they wore back in the American Revolution, and he wore his uniform from town to town and he met with veterans all along the way. And you know what James Monroe did that I was really impressed with? He looked for political adversaries. He looked for people who disliked him and he went and met with them and sat down with them and talked with them. He did that particularly in Massachusetts who hated him. The papers up there just tore him up and he went there and sat down with people who hated him the most and they became friends. And, as it turns out, it was such an impact that there it turned out to be only one political party during the time of James Monroe. They called it the era of good feelings. All the bad feelings went away. Americans stopped fighting and showed their over parties. He was able to eliminate parties which wow, how wild was that? But then he turns around and for the first time in the history of the United States, he uses the federal government to expand slavery. That had never been done before. Washington used the federal government to keep slavery from expanding. The states were doing it, but the federal government wasn't doing it. But Monroe turns around and lets the federal government do it and go. Man, how can you mess it up like that? You've let the federal government get into expanding slavery. And John Quincy Adams, who became the next president, was the Secretary of State for James Monroe, and Adams pointed out he said the reason that Monroe got that wrong was he did not follow the Declaration of Independence along with the Constitution. And he just makes it really clear the Declaration is what gives you the spirit of the Constitution. It's possible to be completely Constitutional and get it wrong, and there's nothing in the Constitution that kept James Monroe from expanding slavery at that time. There is now, but there wasn't then. But the Declaration of Independence would have kept them from expanding slavery, and so James Monroe didn't follow the spirit of the Declaration, which is the spirit of the Constitution, and he got it wrong, even though it was constitutionally right. And so it was interesting to see that you can. You can actually follow the Constitution and really hurt the nation as a result. And Andrew Jackson did that several times. What he did wasn't unconstitutional, but it sure did damage the nation. And so there's just so many good things we learned out of that and stories that were unexpected, stories that were just amazing stories about each of these guys, the good, the bad, the ugly. You know we're going to tell the honest history, but there's a lot to learn from these guys that we had never known before, but now we're sharing it with everybody.

Rick Green

Yeah, I was even thinking about the whole Founders Bible process of hearing stories where you can apply God's word. And, in the same way, what you guys are doing here with The American Story is you're learning history and how to apply things like the Constitution and not get it wrong. So if we don't, you know, for instance, I mean if we, if we didn't learn this story, then we would make the mistake if we were then in government of just finding some obscure thing in the Constitution and hammering down on that and not taking in the principles and the foundation of the Declaration. So it's gonna I think it's gonna be very similar to that, as we get people to start thinking that way and learning that way. We say it here on the show all every day you know biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. We want people to see those, see and hear those stories so that they can make better decisions.

Tim Barton

And as we talk about the biblical, historical constitutional perspective, as we go through the American story building the Republic, we certainly use that as a standard, kind of a the metric as we are telling the stories what's? I think I mentioned this yesterday, maybe it's early in the program today. We've been talking for a while now, I don't know. I think it was yesterday. We we pointed out that we use George Washington's farewell address as a standard by which we measure other presidents and how well they did. Following his guidelines of principles was often an indicator how successful their presidency was gonna be. It's so interesting how that even applies to today, because these lessons and principles right that the Bible tells us there's nothing new under the sun. What has been will be again, and this is where we are. George Washington, one of the things he said in his farewell address, he cautioned and warned that Americans should not allow themselves to be caught up in foreign entanglements. And this is when Great Britain and France were having wars. And wars been going on for decades, right, I mean, could be hundreds of years at that point that they've been battling back and forth who's gonna be superior, who's gonna reign in charge, and there were people in America that loved France or people that loved England, and Washington says, guys, it's not our fight, right, we should not get involved there, because if we spend our time and energy there, then we will not be able to spend that time and energy here in America and then we won't be better off because of what's happening, as I, as I think now about, like Ukraine and Russia, right, I mean some of these things happening and you're like this is literally what George Washington talked about, that we should not be spending all of our time, our energy, when we're spending not just 200 billion plus dollars giving it to Ukraine with no accountability, when we're sending over military weapons that now we are not able to produce weapons as replacements fast enough if something were to happen. This is where it's so interesting. Even going back to those guidelines, there was so much wisdom from the early president that I would highly encourage people go get this book, rediscover who these early presidents were and then re-learn some of this brilliant wisdom and advice that is still practical and relevant for us today.

Rick Green

Our folks out of time for today, again go to the website WallBuilders.com There's actually a pop-up right there for the new release of the American story building the Republic. You want to get this right now. We're gonna run out of these. I guarantee we're gonna run out of these quickly. So you want to place your order right now. Early release edition is available today. So check that out today at WallBuildrers.com WallBuilders.com and that's where you can get to the radio program, all of the different Materials and tools and different things that we've got at wall builders. But right now, today, we want to encourage you to get the American story building the Republic. This is volume two, so this is a second one. If you haven't read the first one, get that one as well. You will be glad that you did, and we again really encourage you to share it with your friends and family. Use it to strike up conversations. You're gonna learn stories you've never heard before. You're gonna get the good, the bad and the ugly, and it'll give you a starting place For conversations with people in your life. We want more of that civil discourse Talking about what makes for a good society and a good nation and how we as citizens can do our part to make that happen. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders.