Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Builders Show. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David Barton, America's Premier Historian and our founder at Wall Builders, and Tim Barton, national Speaker and Pastor and President of Wall Builders. You can learn about all three of us at wallbuilders.com, where you can also get a lot of great tools for your family, for yourself, to get educated, equipped, inspired and get in the game. Get out there and help make a difference and restore this constitutional republic. Wallbuilders.com.

Now, if you want to listen to more of the radio programs, go to wallbuilders.show. So wallbuilders.show super easy website to use. The wallbuilders.show super easy website to use. You can just scroll down and pick out a program to listen to or to share with your friends and family and help be a force multiplier. I mean that's basically what you're doing when you're sharing a program. You're spreading the news, you're helping to get truth in the hands of as many Americans as possible. And speaking of truth, guys, on our Thursday programs Foundations of Freedom, Thursday we get questions about all kinds of things and we give that biblical, historical and constitutional perspective about those things, and the first one up today is from Nicholas. He said greetings from Virginia. Hey, Nicholas, big election there in Virginia this year. Make sure you're getting a lot of people to turn out, ok, anyway, he said I absolutely love your show and all you do. I listen every day on my lunch.

Recently, myself and some friends were talking about schools and the education system. I think that we should do away with public schools, government-funded schools all together and let capitalism thrive. There, of course, would be good schools and bad schools. This school in this community may favor one thing and that school in a different community may favor other things. Do you think this would be a good idea? And if so, should it work? And maybe it means would it work? But all right, guys, I have often heard people say man, just get rid of the government schools. I would love to have just a free flow of competition. I'm not sure how we get from here to there. What do you guys think?

David Barton

Well, I think there's two issues that Nicholas brought up, and the first is the issue of competition. And what we know for sure is that the US Constitution supports the issues of competition, what we call the free market. The US Constitution does not support the principles of socialism. That's not part of what's there. The individualism versus the groupism, the way the Constitution goes at it is you recognize individuals, and that is key to not being socialistic, that is key to free market capitalism. So I think real easy to say the Constitution supports the concept of competition.

There are very few things where that is exclusively the federal government, and even in those they still have competition. You could say well, the military belongs to the government, yeah, but you can have state and local militias as well, and that's an addition too. So there's very few things that the Constitution makes exclusively federal. But the other issue is should government be doing that? And I think the answer is it's not a matter of should government, it's a matter of which government should be doing that.

And it really comes down to it's not whether you have schools or not, it's who's going to run the schools, and if you have competition, you can have government schools and non-government schools and local or parents or groups or whatever. You can see what works. But the state constitutions are very explicit in authorizing the state to make sure that students are educated. Now it doesn't say the state has to educate them, but the state has a very definite interest in having educated students and there should be some standards of that as well. I mean, if we decided we're going to start Sharia schools in every community, that's not what the state needs to have good citizens. That may be great for Islamic students, but that's not great for state, where you need to understand government and all the other.

Tim Barton

Let me pause. That might be desired for Sharia nations.

Yeah, that's right, you know great becomes maybe subjective how we define great, because teaching kids that the only way to heaven is to kill non-believers, I would not argue is a great thing in what Sharia law actually teaches. With that being said, dad, to your point is, if it really comes down to, what is the mandate of government? And then how do they accomplish that? Because it's also where we've had some interesting conversations internally that the government's supposed to do postal roads and then they have postal carriers and whatever else. I understand there's some level of responsibility, but that's also at a time when there was nothing else.

There wasn't a UPS, there wasn't a FedEx, there was no other options, and now so many things are digital, and so is this something that is even still necessary from the federal government? Would you trust the United States Postal Service more than you would trust UPS? Well, it depends on, maybe, what I'm shipping, but probably not. And so if now they are no longer the best at what they used to be, the only ones that could do it at some level, but now, through competition, there's better options. And if you look at where there's waste, is there more waste in the UPS and FedEx or is there more waste in the postal service run by the federal government?

David Barton

That's a tough question. I don't know if I could come up with that. The government, they're so efficient and the government does such a good job.

David Barton

They are known for doing so good with our tax dollars.

Tim Barton

Exactly, exactly.

Rick Green

That's a tough question, tim, and getting everything there on time, right Everything and never missing anything Exactly. And easy to hold account Like. The customer service is always amazing when you walk into a government office, it's like they really want you to be there and they really want to serve you well. They have this real servant leadership. Did we all like smoke something, or?

is there something in the air?

somebody put something in the vents. I don't know.

Tim Barton

Just to add one more thought to this also not only do they contribute, sometimes mail damage, package or not, I mean, they've even taught us phrases like going postal, so we, they've actually even added things to the American vernacular. Yeah um you know there's so much, but, but again, all that to say is this is where it's an interesting conversation about, if you look back at what was the—?

David Barton

Now wait a minute Before you go further. I do have to point out that the Postal Service is socialistic. It is definitely not a free market service that is run by competition, because you can't fire people who are not good or it's really hard. I mean all the civil service stuff. So I think that is the biggest problem they've got is they don't they enforce socialism rather than the free market. But back to your point.

Tim Barton

Well, yes, but I mean, you can say the same thing with teachers unions and other things as well.

And so this is where, if you back up and look in 1892, the US Supreme Court and their decision on the case of the Holy Trinity, one of the things they were acknowledging is, when you look at a law, you should determine what was the evil which was intended to be remedied, why did somebody pass this law? What problem were they trying to solve? And if you go back and look at the Constitution even when it comes to education, and this could be states as well if you look at state constitutions, what problem were they trying to solve? And then we could ask the question is the government the best one to solve that problem? Because sometimes it's not that I disagree that there's a problem that needs to be solved or something that needs to be accomplished, but it's possible that in prior times the federal government was the only one that could accommodate that, where now they're the least effective and least efficient ones to accomplish that same intended purpose. And so I do think this is where we can have some interesting conversations and see, and this is why the founding fathers, even looking at the Constitution it's certainly true with state constitutions as well the founding fathers knew the Constitution wasn't a perfect document. It's why they made an amendment process. They thought that future generations would come up with issues that needed to be resolved, and so there needed to be a way to add things or change things or fix things in the Constitution, and that's happened 27 times up to this point. It's not that we can't change things if it needs to be changed, but sometimes we don't acknowledge or we don't dig deep enough to see what is the actual problem.

And really, what was the whole point of this? Going back to the Supreme Court case of 1892, what was the evil which was intended to be remedied? What problem were we trying to solve? And now, what is the best way to solve that problem? And certainly it becomes to a proper education for students. What we have seen is public schools are not the best place to accommodate that, and competition certainly does tend to add benefit to the market by challenging schools to be better and have a better product. But again, I think there's a lot of questions we can kind of ask, dissecting. What is the proper solution based on? What was the problem that was intended to be remedied from the very beginning?

David Barton

All right guys, quick break, we'll be right back. We've got more questions from the audience. As Foundations of Freedom, Thursday, stay with us here on the WallBuilders Show.

Brerak

Rick Green

Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us here on the WallBuilder Show. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Next question coming in is from Tom. He said I believe you have talked about us being a republic, not a democratic republic. The DNC is saying meaning the Democrat National Committee is our convention is saying this is a democracy Twenty four convention. I don't know if he means I didn't watch much of the convention. Was that a theme for them? Or does he just mean they're saying it 24-7? Whoa, whoa, whoa.

David Barton

How did you miss your own party's convention, bro? 

Rick Green

Yeah, I was on pins and needles. I was on the edge of my seat bro, I was watching every minute.

I didn't watch a minute, I did watch some clips on social media, but anyway, even the Republicans are using democracy. I haven't heard anyone say we're a republic. Have they changed the definition of democracy and republic? Can you please explain the difference? And so Tom, yeah, great question. I just have to throw into his question. Probably the most frustrating and funny thing I have seen on this topic in a long time was CNN bereding these Trump supporters at a Trump rally who responded to a reporter who was saying you know, aren't you a threat to democracy? And they and they schooled the guy I mean absolutely educated him on the fact we're not a democracy, we're a republic. And so then, instead of doing some homework and correcting themselves, they went on the air with the interview and just lambasted these three for being supposedly idiots and not know, not knowing where democracy. So anyway, just to throw that into the mix, go ahead, fellas.

David Barton

This is one that is a real reflection of how poor education has become, because who cares what CNN says to the degree that Article four, section four of the US Constitution requires that every state maintain a Republican form of government, not a Democratic or democracy form? There's a clear difference between the two.

Tim Barton

Now and Dad, I would actually counter that it doesn't reflect how poor education is. It reflects how intentional education has been.

David Barton

There you go 

Tim Barton

Because they have worked to remove this notion that there is a constitutional republic Because we are a republic and in a republic there are votes from the people. And people then would say, well, that's a democracy because people voted yes. But in a democracy the people vote on every issue. And we don't vote on every issue. We elect officials that represent us to go vote for us. That's a republic, and those officials can't do whatever they want. They have constraints put on them according to the constitution of their state, the constitution of the nation, with that being the US Constitution. So we are a constitutional republic. But if you are working to change the power structure, if you're working to remove the limitations of the constitution, the power of the constitution, if you're working to change the separation of powers and the checks and balances, then what you do is start teaching the rising generation a different idea and say, hey, guys, we're a democracy, we should be in charge and we shouldn't let these things hold us back.

And the founding fathers that was so long ago and we've evolved past that and all these things that are going to come out. I don't think it's a poor education. I think it's been a very well done, intentional education that they have taught what they wanted taught. They have been accomplishing what they wanted to accomplish, which and I know you weren't suggesting something other than the education system has been so bad that kids haven't learned very obvious things from the constitution. But it's bad in one sense, but it's been very successful in the other sense because I think it's accomplished exactly what they wanted it to accomplish.

Going back to when the progressives took over and they stated some of their objectives, that's what we are seeing unfold before us right now -An ignorant populace that is what would have been called in previous generations identified as useful idiots. This is exactly what they wanted to happen in education. This is why they made the moves they did. So this is not by accident and again, the reason we know that is because, to add to your point, all they'd have to do is read the Constitution and go oh, that's what it is. Or maybe why don't we say the Pledge of Allegiance anymore? There could be lots of reasons, but one of them is because you pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, 

David Barton

to the democracy 24 for which it stands.

Tim Barton

See and again, there could be lots of reasons we don't say the Pledge of Allegiance anymore in public schools, although most of us, who are probably listening to this right now, and certainly those of us who are having this conversation we all grew up when we were saying the Pledge of Allegiance. That was the way you started. Every single school day was saying the Pledge of Allegiance, but because of that, we constantly heard and to the republic for which it stands, we knew we were a republic. There was no confusion. But if we don't say the Pledge of Allegiance anymore, if we don't read the Constitution anymore, and if now we are intentionally promoting this idea that we are a democracy, it's not by accident. It's been quite intentional. So they've been very successful in what they were trying to accomplish. But what they were trying to accomplish was not a proper, solid foundational education for students, and that's where you were pointing out their education is so bad it is. It's been terrible, but it's been quite intentional and it did accomplish the purposes they were going for, I think.

David Barton

Yeah, you're right, because this has moved the nation in a transformational direction and it's not a good direction. This is something the Founding Fathers dealt with extensively back at the time they were creating the Constitution and the Constitutional Republic. John Adams I love the way he says it the difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic. He said one is a rule of law, the other is a rule of men, and so with one you get whatever the person in charge is, and that's what you see all over the world. Whoever the leader is, whoever the national leader is, that's the direction the nation goes. Until they have a revolution, choose another national leader, because everything is about the people you elect, not about the laws. And so we used to be a nation of laws. We upheld laws. It's what made the Constitutional Republic. We have a written document, but they have gotten into saying, well, it's a living document, it's whatever we say it is, and that moves you away from fixed laws. So that's a problem. And the founding fathers the other term that Fisher Ames, for example, used on this the founding father he called a democracy a volcano. It is just waiting to explode, and this is part of what we see going on in campaigns right now, you see all these referendums, referendums is really moving the country more toward democracy than toward constitutional republic. For example, when you go into Ohio and some of the other states, in the last election that had all these abortion referendums on there, everything at that point was dependent around the $415 million that pro-abortion forces spent to indoctrinate people that this is really, really, really, really good for America. And so, rather than having the debate, rather than having it take a while and people complain about how slow government works, that's exactly right, because it takes the passions, the immediate passions, the anger, the response. It takes it out and you have to think about it for a while, because everything takes a while to happen and that's good. All that feeling kind of simmers down. But when you're in a democracy and you have all these referendums and you pour money into it and you pump the emotions up and you get people really really stirred up over something that's not healthy for the nation and that's what the founding fathers did not want, and that's because they studied history, which we don't do well at all today, and they even one of the things we have in the founders Bible. We cover the different forms of government and the Bible illustrates seven different forms of government. Most people they can't name three or four forms of government, but we used to know the seven and what was wrong with each, what was good with each, why some were better than others, the situations in which they were used. But we don't get that today and as a result, as you pointed out, rick, the CNN reporters, rather than actually reading the Constitution, schooling themselves on history, showed their own historical and constitutional literacy by making fun of the people who actually quoted what the Constitution said. So there is a huge difference between the two, no question about it.

And you know, the Democrats are stuck on this democracy thing. That is their phrase. You'll hear that from Kamala, you hear that from Joe Biden all the time. Our democracy, our democracy, our democracy. That helps them govern the way they want to. It helps them get away from the rule of law, helps them get away from the fixed things in the constitution. They did not like what the Supreme court has done, and so, therefore, we're just going to ignore that part of the constitution. That's why you hear so much democracy coming from them. They do know what it is and they do know what it means. They do know where they want to take the nation and there is no democracy that has existed nearly as long as any constitutional republic. So if they get this stuff done with democracy, it's not good for the future of America. According to history 5,800 years recording history democracies never last long, they never do well, they always blow up internally, and we don't want that in America.

Rick Green

We definitely don't, and we certainly want the basics of our structure to be taught to our people and for them to understand it, and certainly makes it more likely that they get involved and can make a good difference. So great question. I really appreciate you sending that one in and we're going to close out today with a question from. Let's see. That was Tom that we just heard. Let's hear from David. He said howdy, david, rick and Tim, if the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and the Second Amendment prohibits the infringement of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, how can federal, state and local laws and regulations restrict a person's right to carry? Why are these laws and regulations unconstitutional? Thank you for all that you do, david. Thanks for sending in that question. Boy guys, as much as we love this topic, the three of us could talk about this one for like six hours. So good luck answering this one in our final few minutes together.

David Barton

Well, this is actually part two of the previous question is that the Constitution is only a binding document. If you believe in a constitutional republic, if you believe in a democracy, you go with whatever the whims or the wishes of the people are at the time or whatever the leaders try to whip those feelings into. And so when you hear phrases like the Democrats use a living constitution that moves and adapts to the people, when you hear those kind of phrases, that's a democracy. And so what happens is they set aside the constitutional laws that they don't like, the constitutional republic laws, the inalienable rights that they disagree with, like the right to life, they set aside, like the right to possess private property and have borders. They set those aside. They just set aside what they disagree with. And so the whole Second Amendment issue is whether we're a republic or whether we're a democracy. If you're a republic, we have fixed constitutional laws. We have inalienable rights.

Tim Barton

Well, and to that point of inalienable rights. This is also where it's interesting, because initially the Bill of Rights was done to limit the infringement on those rights from the federal government. So of course now, because the 14th Amendment, because of other things that have happened legally, really since the Civil War and the slavery issue, that the federal government then said, hey, all of these federal issues we're now going to mandate, every state has to follow these issues. But initially, under the founding fathers, the federal government can never infringe upon these things. We're going to make sure that can't happen. But even in the founding era there were some places where there were some states, there were some local districts where they had restrictions on firearms in communities and there were some that actually had mandates that you had to have a gun if you're in the community. If you don't, you get penalized.

There was definitely different ideas surrounding some of these notions and far more pro-gun than anything else. Unquestionably, it wasn't really until more of the 19th century that you start sawing some of these laws in cities and various places that were restricting of firearms. But with that being said, this is where even you can have an interesting conversation of federalism versus this notion of unalienable rights or inalienable rights, because this is the idea of self-preservation, self-defense, something the founding fathers were very clear that is a God-given right and because of that they believed every government should protect those God-given rights. So this was something that states should do, protecting those inalienable rights. But this is where I would counter Inalienable rights are different than what the Bill of Rights initially was done for, because the Bill of Rights was done showing what the federal government could never touch. It could never touch those things because they knew they were inalienable rights. But the Bill of Rights wasn't initially written to restrict states. It was later applied to all states, but that's not why it was initially written.

However, the idea that certain states are going to say you can't carry in our state or you can only carry if you have a magazine of certain capacity or if you have, for example, your concealed handgun license or a license to carry, depending on what state you live in, they might call it something different.

There's reciprocity, where certain states say if you've taken a course in, for example, Texas, then if you're in Arkansas and Oklahoma, they say we recognize that you can conceal carry in our state too, no problem.

Well, there's around 30 plus states that have reciprocity, depending on what state you're from and what training you had to get your container and hangar license, and some states are open carry-in, so that doesn't really matter. But all that to say is the founding fathers still recognize the rights of states to have some kind of say in this, but because this was an inalienable right or a God-given right the way they identified it it was something that states weren't supposed to be able to restrict. Instead, the founding fathers identified that government exists to protect those rights, not to restrict those rights. But I'm saying that because it is a little different than when we look back at the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was written acknowledging what the federal government could never do, and certainly their idea was that state governments would never do that either. But that's not what it was written exactly for, even though it was later applied to be that.

David Barton

You know. I would add to that that the concept I think you really made key to this is inalienable rights. Inalienable rights come from God and it really depends on how God conscious you are as to how you fall in this right. In many cases, now, that's not an exact line, but the more secular you are, the more secular thinking you are, the more you want to control guns, because they're the bad. People are inherently all good and guns are inherently all bad. That's not the case.

There's a lot of people that I would give a machine gun to, fully loaded and fully trusted, knowing they're not going to shoot me in the back or do something else, because they're accountable to God. That's the best restraint there is. There's other people I would never give a loaded machine gun to because without ethics and morals and accountability to God, they'll use it for anything they can to help themselves. In the same way, there are lots of people I would give a nuclear launch button to and not worry about ever a launch having happened that would destroy innocent life. There are others I would never let them close to that, and it goes back to whether these rights come from God and whether there is a God, because if there is a God, then you start thinking well, maybe I'm accountable to him at some point. And that's where we see this whole debate going. It's the debate over life is no, no, no, there's not a God and I'm not accountable for taking innocent unborn life or anything else. There's not a God. So what I do with genders or what I do with sexuality, I don't have to account for any of it.

I think God is the restraining factor, which I think is why God was mentioned so many times and alluded to so many times in the declaration the whole concept of God given rights. There is a God. They start with acknowledgement. We have a Creator. The Creator gives certain inalienable rights. He establishes certain rights and wrongs, the laws of nature and nature's God.

Without that framework of understanding, the Second Amendment will never work well and you'll always have people trying to restrict it or people trying to protect it. But it largely comes from their worldview. If you believe that there is a God and God does give inalienable rights and those inalienable rights include the right to self-defense then you're not worried about guns. But if you have a heart that does your own selfishness, I would be really worried about a guy having a gun in a convenience store if he's not conscious of God, doesn't believe in God and sees a cash register full of money that he wants. So I think that's a whole lot of where the debate happens right now is you have a very secular group, the Democrats, who don't acknowledge even the word God in their platform, and you have much more of a traditional God-fearing group. Even though they're not always religious, they are conscious that there is a God and there is accountability, and I think that's a whole lot of what happens with the gun debate.

Rick Green

Okay, I have to ask you guys, as we're closing out, because we all three travel a lot are you the same as me? Like you get a request from a state that we don't have reciprocity in, so you can't carry your firearm, do you at least pause for a minute and ask for twice the money, or?

Tim Barton

 Well, it definitely makes a difference. And I will tell you, after having now been in jujitsu for quite a few years, I have a lot more confidence than I used to. And you know, I recognize that there are other things that at times,

David Barton

 let me just paraphrase that, rather than carrying a weapon, he's just telling you he is the weapon now.

Rick Green

So that's that's right.

Tim Barton

Well, there are other things that you can utilize as well, but I would much prefer to have a firearm and, and for sure, and some of those States uh, it's, and actually probably more cities than States, because there's places in California I feel totally safe in and there's some very conservative states with very liberal cities. I don't feel safe in those cities, even though I might have a firearm with me as well. I feel safer, but certainly it does make a difference and I'm so grateful the founding fathers recognized that was an inalienable right and the role of governance to protect that inalienable right.

Rick Green

Great show, guys. Thanks for listening everybody. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.