Rick Green

This is the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Builders Show, where we take on hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective and on some days you get to drive the conversation. That's Thursdays. We call it Foundations of Freedom Thursdays, so send in your emails. Radio at wallbuilders.com. That's radio at wallbuilders.com.

I'm Rick Green, America’s Constitution Coach, here with David and Tim Barton. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of Wall Builders. David's America's premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders. All three of us appreciate you listening, but we also ask you to share the program. Spread the news, be a force multiplier.

A lot of folks need to learn the answers to these questions. I know I'm going to be learning today, so as you ask these tough questions, I have the easy job of just reading your question and tossing it over to David and Tim, and then we all get to learn together. So here we go. Nathan's leading us off. Guys.

He's got the first question. He says, with the incredibly sad and evil and frustrating move of the Republican Party platform and Trump to the left on abortion, is a vote for Trump, a vote for this continued barbarism? I was always wanting to support him based on policy versus personality, but this flies in the face of that, doesn't it? All right, guys, this is a question that's getting debated all over X and Facebook and social media, everywhere, and I've even had a few conversations with folks myself about this. So what do you guys think this is? You know, back to the convention a few weeks back and the simplified platform by the Republicans, and then, of course, trump making a couple of statements that were definitely not perceived as pro-life, shall we say, and then everybody's saying, well, if he's not as pro-life as me, I'm not going to vote for him at all. Okay, so that's the setup to Nathan's question. Go ahead.

Tim Barton

Well, this is something that we have all talked about and had to navigate, because there's no doubt the platform is not as strong in the issue of life as it has been. There's also no doubt that President Trump has said some things that do not appear to be pro-life or as strongly pro-life, because he's still been very strong on the position of no abortions, third trimester, some of those that would be considered quote unquote more extreme, because now you have not just a pain capable unborn child, you have the viability of human life, and you're still choosing to kill that or murder that unborn child. With that being said, I think this is where understanding from a more strategic standpoint, not compromising on values or issues, but there's only two options, and I don't even mean between trump and kamala, yet. I mean there's only two options either you vote or you don't. And and if you don't vote, well then is, is that the proper Christian response? Because we've been given a stewardship in this nation, we have a duty, we have a responsibility to actually vote. And so if, then, for this first question or this first problem or dilemma that needs to be resolved, either we vote or we don't vote, if we determine, well, we really should vote, then it's only a question of who do we vote for. And so then we ask well then, who are the options? So, if we're supposed to vote, and the options we have are someone that is in favor of murdering all unborn children all the time, and someone says that there should be a limit to when and how we murder unborn children, well, neither of them are correct.

In our theological position, in our pro-life position, we would say, well, neither one of those are good, but one is certainly better than the other. One is further away from the right decision than the other. And if we also look at this, if you go back and read the Republican platform which I have done, it's not that long. You can get through it. It does talk about the sanctity of life. It does talk about protecting in the third trimester, although there are other things in there that I get, I'm not a big fan of. However, there's no doubt that President Trump is more pro-life than Vice President Kamala Harris, and so if we have to vote, and then we're going to vote for somebody. Dad, I heard you recently talk about one of the mistakes that so often we make is we think that when we vote, we are voting for everything right now, instead of recognizing that your vote is not a right now vote. There's actually a much more long-term thought. We should apply to that.

David Barton

Yeah, you should look at your vote in this election as the first step in a 25-year process, because you're not going to get what you want in one election and if you vote like you do, you won't show up next election because you'll be frustrated. You have to go into every election saying this is a partial step to where I want to be 25 years from now, and all it can do is take a part of a step. And I've got two choices here. Which one is going to get me closer to where I want to be 25 years from now? If I take Kamala, I've lost ground. Now it's going to take me 30, 35 years to get there. If I get Trump and don't get anything out of him, I haven't lost ground. If I get something positive out of him, I've gained ground. And so we keep looking at elections as an event, and they should be looked at as a process. When you see an election, this is not the only time you're going to vote. This is a vote in a series of votes that you will cash for the remainder of your life, and you want to be moving closer to that objective every time you vote. So you're not gonna have a perfect person.

And, by the way, when you look at a platform, a platform represents the team on the field. It is not just Trump. It also represents the senators, it represents the others. And so I guarantee you that while Trump wrote this platform or I'm not going to say Trump the consultants for Trump wrote this platform. I was on the platform committee. They came in, they gave it to us and said here's what we're going to do. What is usually a five-day process turned into a 35-minute process. We did not have input into that platform. It was consultant written.

That does not reflect, for example, the attitude of Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri. It does not reflect the attitude of Michael Cloud, Congresswoman from Texas. All these other Republicans. That platform may not be what we want it to be, but that doesn't reflect the attitudes of the team on the field. And so when you look at the Republicans on the field, it's really important. And the other thing I would throw in is the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Okay, so do I expect Trump now, having changed the platform, that he will no longer appoint constitutional judges who actually read the constitution? Of course he will. Is he going to keep doing things to help? Is he going to put Planned Parenthood in charge? Of course he's not.

Tim Barton

Well, and to that point, this is one of the things that I think is also worth addressing a little bit. I don't know that President Trump has really changed his position necessarily. I think that now it's being stated differently politically. I think he's looking at it maybe more pragmatically than from a moral kind of issue-driven perspective, because they're thinking what do we need to do to win? This is what we need to do to win. But I'm saying this I don't think Trump was super pro-life his first term.

I think he appointed people and worked with people who were super pro-life. I don't think necessarily he's less pro-life this term than he was before, because from his moral kind of bearings, I don't know that we have evidence other than his first term as president to see really much about him that makes me think this guy is super pro-life or really fully understands the issue, which we could go back and talk about his first term and where he was saying things that didn't really resonate with a pro-life community. And then there are people that got around him and gave him some advice and he changed some of his language and vernacular. I think this is a lot of newer territory for him than most people realize, because for many of us that we have been pro-life for decades. We know the language, we know the nuance, we know the conversations, we know our position very well. I think Trump is not as strong on this position, but I think he is looking more pragmatically of how can he win

Maybe, and I'm not saying this is right, but I think it's where he's coming from. I think he's saying how can we save the Republic? And if you look at the 2022 election, the number one issue that people identified was a driving factor for them in the election was the abortion issue and, unfortunately, the reason we didn't see the red wave, for example, is there was such a significant percentage of pro-abortion people that voted. And I think Trump looks at 2022 and says, well, if that's the majority of people are voting, then we need to have a political position that maybe brings more of them onto our sides, that we can win to save America Now. With that being said, again, I think he's being pragmatic. But, dad, back to your point, I don't think that he's going to now appoint judges that are not pro-life. I think that's the kind of judges he will continue to appoint, even though he might be saying something from a more pragmatic perspective, thinking it helps him win. I don't know that he's fully changed that position.

David Barton

And Tim to your point about pragmatism that he saw the 2022 election and said, huh, the nation may not be as pro-life as I thought it was. I may be surrounded with those people, but it's not as pro-life. Maybe I need to move my spoken position. If he did that and he did, I think Christians are largely to blame for that. And here's the explanation In 2020, the number of Christians who voted decreased by 20 million evangelical Christians, who voted in 2020, but did not vote in 2022. And that 20 million that voted that were Christians. They're largely pro-life voters.

And the fact that 20 million largely pro-life voters Christians, professing Christians stayed home in 2022 is part of him reading the tea leaves and saying, well, the nation's not as pro-life as I thought it was. So don't get mad at him for that. Get mad at the 20 million Christians who didn't vote, who sent that message politically to our leaders that we're not a very strong pro-life nation because pro-life people got their heads handed to them in 2022 election. No question, what was supposed to be a red wave, with so many good pro-life candidates getting elected, did not happen. It wasn't even a red trickle, it was barely a red drop. And that goes back to 20 million evangelicals who decided not to vote in 2022, to have voted in 2020. So the answer to that question it's very disappointing what happened to the platform, but it's also very understandable and I point at consultants but I don't point at Trump as saying he's going to radically change Tim. You're exactly right on that. He is who he is.

Tim Barton

Well, and I would again go back and remind. I mean, the options are either you vote or you don't vote. And if you vote, then who are you going to vote for? And it's either Trump or Kamala. And this is where, again, if, if, dad, strategically, we look at this like you're commenting and say this is the first step of a 25 year process, well then let's take the first step and I think it's very clear between Trump and Kamala, which is the better first step of a 25-year process.

And then we have to work the ground game to say, ok, how do we make sure next time the platform has stronger pro-life language? How do we make sure next time our candidate for president is very clear on this life issue? And how do we start winning more of the life conversation in the culture so that we don't have elections where the number one issue people are voting on is in favor of abortion? How do we win the culture? I think this is where we start thinking long term Right now. It's the first step. Who are we going to? We have to vote, who are we going to vote for? And then, how do we make sure we are never in this position again going, I'm choosing between two people and neither one is strong on the issue of life, or maybe one is not nearly as strong as they should be on this issue of life. We have a lot of ground game to do to make sure that we're not in this situation on this issue in another four years.

Rick Green

All right, guys, I have to figure out how to say this. So you just gave me two huge epiphanies and I love you guys, but we've been doing this together for a couple of decades now and so I kind of think like y'all a lot, and so a lot of times I can almost predict what you're going to say, and so I don't have an epiphany every day. We do the program. Was that a nice way to say that? I don't know. Anyway, you just gave me two big ones, though, man, I have never thought about saying you only have two choices the way you just described that. Tim, that's big. We need to be doing this in every church with every Christian friend of ours. That's hesitant at all. You only have two choices, and I don't mean the two candidates. Christian friend of ours, that's hesitant at all. You only have two choices, and I don't mean the two candidates. The way you said that your two choices are vote or not vote and obviously not voting is being the wicked and slothful servant burying the talent. So voting, okay, I'm going to go vote Now your decision. Who is the lesser of two evils? And go down that whole description. I'd never thought about starting the conversation with vote or not vote, I just hammer people for not voting. So that's one.

The other epiphany is, David, what you said about when we vote. It's not just this election or what that person's going to do in that term. It's the beginning of a 20, 25, generational, really 25-year process of getting good things done. Year process of getting good things done. Guys that right there, anybody listening, right now you need to be sharing today's program because that's a breakthrough moment of how to think about this and how to win people over to get off the couch, to not just complain but actually get in the game, to actually get into their citizenship. Recognizing number one your choice is either to vote or not to vote. And how do you win? An argument of saying not voting, without being the wicked and thoughtful servant. And then two, once you decide to vote now, what do you do with the choices you have? Ah, so good. And to think generationally about it, where we're headed.

So anyway, not saying I'm ever bored on the program or not learning on the press, not what I'm saying. I'm just saying this went way beyond. That was just big for me. I'm like head exploded, got to. That was just big for me. I'm like head exploded, got to go to break so that I can process this. As RFK said the other day, let it settle in my bones. I love that phrase. All right, we'll be right back. Folks, you're listening to the Wall Builder Show on Foundations of Freedom Thursday

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back to Foundations of Freedom Thursday. All right, it's settled in my bones a little bit. I'm going to steal that from both of you guys and you get credit one time, and after that it's. I came up with this idea about the. Anyway, I'm just excited.

You're going to give me credit one time. That's awesome.

1: 15:31

I love it All right. So thank you very much, nathan, for the question. By the way, that was a really good question and a lot of people are thinking and wondering exactly what you were. So a lot of times, folks, when you send me that question, you may think I'm the only one. That's one. No, I'm telling you, thousands of others are thinking the same thing and that's why we love Foundations of Freedom.

Thursday, sergio's got the next one. He said is there any literature from the founding era on the topic of abortion? I understand that the founder strongly believed in the right to life as illustrated in the Laws of Nature and Nature's God quote from the Declaration which they later specified as an inalienable right. With immigration and abortion being prominent issues in the upcoming election, it would be insightful to understand the perspectives of our founding fathers on these matters. Additionally, any information on their views regarding immigration would be greatly appreciated. Ok, guys, so really I guess two different questions, but in the same vein. We sometimes think of these issues as only being modern day issues. Were these two issues, abortion and immigration, issues that the founding fathers addressed as well?

David Barton

Yeah, Rick, the Bible says there is nothing new under the sun. And there is nothing new under the sun. Immigration was even an issue back in the days of King David and King Solomon. The economy was so good in Israel that people were moving into Israel from all over the place, and so even at the time of King David and King Solomon, there were immigration laws and issues that were dealt with there. Moses did that as well. Moses laid forth several immigration issues back in Leviticus. So none of this is new. And the same with abortions.

Abortions seem to be a new issue because it's been since 1973, roe v Wade, et cetera. Really, all that changed that period of time was the physical method by which the abortion occurred. The fact that there have been abortions is not new. Back in the laws of Moses it actually deals with what happens if you damage an unborn child. Even at that point, medical technology being what it was, you didn't even know you were pregnant until maybe three months, pregnant, two and a half, three months. But if you damaged an unborn child, there were penalties back in the laws of Moses which meant that it was happening at that time. So what you find historically going back, there's a lot of records of abortion. As a matter of fact, I was checking recently there's probably several dozen judicial cases on abortion in the 1600s, particularly out of Massachusetts, and these cases on abortion in the 1600s it was not physical abortions in the sense of surgical, like we do now or have been doing. They were chemical abortions. You would take a series of chemicals that would abort the child, which is where America's headed right now. That's part of I think 73% of abortions now occurring in America occur as a result of taking pills that will destroy the unborn child, the embryo. And this is one of the things that even is now a campaign issue, because, since about one-third of American states have banned abortion, kamala Harris is saying well, we'll make sure that you can get mail-in abortions done in your state. No, no, no. My state, Texas, has banned abortions, as has Louisiana and so many others, and we banned it because we think you should protect unborn lives. She says, well, I'll make sure the entire nation has access to abortion and we'll mail you the pills that you need. No, no, no, you need. That's not what you can do, but nonetheless, this is back to where abortion has typically been. It's chemical type of abortions.

So it is not surprising that the founding fathers themselves talked about this back in their day. A good example is James Wilson. James Wilson is a signer of the Declaration of the Constitution. Of the 200 and so founding fathers, only six guys signed both documents. He's one of the six. He is the second most active member at the Constitutional Convention.

He is often called a father of the Constitution.

He was very intimately involved in what happened at the Constitutional Convention the final product and then George Washington appointed him as the original justice on the US Supreme Court and while he is on the Supreme Court he started offering the law lecture for students, kind of an early form of law school.

And so in 1791, he was teaching law school there while he's on the Supreme Court, and those law books came out in 1808, published, and so we have the 1808 version of his law books that were published, and in there he talks about the fact that human life as soon as you know that there's life in the womb, he says by the law that life is protected. And they go through and talk about how that the right to life it's a God-given inalienable right and government of course exists to protect the amenable rights. They laid all that out in the Declaration of Independence and I've gone away from saying right to life. I've now picked up a new phrase the right to be born. You have a right to be born, and that is what we're debating now. Wait a minute.

Rick Green

David, Wait a minute. I can't handle another epiphany today. That's like that's another good one. Okay, sorry, go ahead go ahead.

David Barton

Can you name any mammal species in all of nature? Because we're told in the declaration, there are the laws of nature and of nature's God. And so if I go to the laws of nature, if I ignore the Bible and don't care what the Bible says, I just look at natural law and I look at nature. Can you name any mammal species in nature that, once there is a pregnancy, they terminate that pregnancy before birth? And the answer is no, you can't. You have a right to be born under natural law. Natural law gives you a right as a mammal to be born once there's a pregnancy. And so that's why I've now moved into saying not right to life, but right to be born. And so the founding fathers recognized you had a right to be born. And that's James Wilson and, talking in his law books, said once you know that there's life by the common law, that life is protected.

Tim Barton

And this is something we spent a lot of time going into. Dad, you have a teaching on this. I think it's called Exceptional. We had a DVD. I think it's only available in MP4 now, but this is something that there's a lot of writings from the founding fathers. And dad, all you're saying is changing the terminology for a current understanding of modern vernacular. It's like taking maybe a King James phrase that people might not know and giving it maybe kind of like the New Living Translation, the amplified version that the English Standard Version spin. So you know, oh, that's what we're talking about, because for the founding fathers, when you're saying Dad, the right to be born, when they're saying a right to life, that's literally what they're talking about. And there's many other examples. I know we have more on the website and I'm only wrapping this up a little bit because I know we have more questions we want to get to.

But this was not a confusing issue in the founding era. This was one of the fundamental and amenable right to lives. Every founding father that referenced amenable rights when they itemized them, when they listed any, they always listed a right to life. This was a fundamental right. No founding father disputed this notion and yet today we don't understand what that means anymore, and we also are disputing where our rights come from if it's the government, if it's somebody else, because in a secular culture, if there is no God, there can be no God-given rights, and therefore this notion of the right to be born, the right to existence at all, is not something we recognize. But the right to be born certainly is something the founding fathers identified when they talked about the right to life.

David Barton

And guys, before we go to the next question, let's hit the immigration issue as well, because this was a big deal for the founding fathers and it's also a big deal because the founding fathers were of the founding fathers. A number of the signers of our documents were themselves immigrants. Of the 39 who signed the constitution, I think it was nine that were not American-born. They were immigrants who had come in, and it is very interesting that the immigrants who came into America were, at the Constitution Convention, the ones that were the most adamant in raising the most strict immigration limits. One, pierce Butler, who signed the Constitution. He actually said that you should not be able to vote in America until you have lived here for 14 years. Now the Constitution settled on five years, but he said you shouldn't be able to vote till 14 years. He said I came here as an immigrant and if I'd come here and been able to vote when I got here, I would have turned America into what I left, because all I knew was the country I came from and all I knew was how to vote like we voted there and think like we voted. He said it took me a decade to learn how to think like an American and learn how to understand my rights and protect those rights and defend those rights. And this was the same thing with many founding fathers.

Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant. He was in the West Indies. He was not American born, he was an immigrant and he was very adamant that we have to have strictures on immigration so that when you come to America there are laws that you have to follow and before you can vote you have to understand the system. So all the things we see now, where that we have open borders and there's no requirements, and we see all these things where states like California they're allowing illegal immigrants to vote, what that does is it takes the country down to what those countries were they left. We've become like every other nation in the world, and so those that come here now come because we're different, but they don't understand what makes us different. They just know we're different, and so they get here and then over time, we can teach them what makes us different and how to understand our constitution. They don't understand a written constitution. Most of them come from places that have a new constitution every 6, 8, 10, 12 years. They don't understand the principles in ours and so the founding fathers put so much thought into that, and when we observed what they had done with immigration, we had a much healthier system.

Now there's so many immigration waves we've had in America. We had Irish immigrants, we had Chinese immigrants. We had all these different immigration waves over the decades, but they were all controlled under the same thing that we welcome you, you can be part of the process. You come here legally, you understand that we're a law-abiding nation, you understand our constitution, you understand our principles. You live here five years and get used to the way things work, and then you can become a contributor in our political system, and so that's why I think it's nine years. You can't be a US senator unless you've been here nine years. You can't be a US congressman unless you've been here five years. You can't vote unless you've been here five years. Those were just not mean revisions that were put there. They all had a reason for being there, and so immigration is something our founding fathers definitely dealt with.

Tim Barton

Well, and to clarify, when you said you can't vote unless you've been here five years, that's because that's how long it takes to become an American citizen going through the process. So if you've been here illegally for five years, we're not encouraging you to go vote right now. Pray for the elections, work the process to become a legal US citizen. But, dad, to your point, they definitely believed in having boundaries and parameters and helping navigate the immigration issue.

Rick Green

I'm confused, guys. I thought it was if you've been here five minutes and you came illegally, you get to vote. I thought that's how the new system worked. That wasn't something that would have been supported by the founders.

Tim Barton

Well, in California they're wanting to give you money to buy homes and all kinds of other stuff. So it depends on what state you live in, maybe.

Rick Green

Yeah, yeah, All right, folks, we are going to get to more of those questions. It'll just be next Thursday when we do that. So make sure you don't miss Foundations of Freedom Thursday next week and tomorrow. Be sure and tune in for some good news that will encourage you. Good news Fridays every Friday and you don't want to miss it tomorrow. So thanks so much for listening. Today You've been listening to the Wall Builder Show.