Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. This is The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for joining us today as we discuss the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton. And later in the program, Tim Goeglein is going to be join us, going to talk about his book, Stumbling towards Utopia, how the 1960s Took a Wrecking Ball to the American Family and How We Could turn it around. David and Tim talking about turning it around, man, we this is a massive change in Washington, DC about to take place, but it really is across the country. There just seems to be an appetite for, hey, it's been very painful going down the road of Marxism. What can we do differently and talk about differently? President Trump is making some appointments that I'll be honest, I never thought we would actually see. This is this is getting fun. 

Tim Barton [00:00:52] Yeah. Not only is he making a lot of appointments, just the sheer volume of the number he has. I was reading an article maybe yesterday that was highlighting that this is five times faster than what Biden or Obama had done when they nominated their people. And so he is he is picking some absolute warriors, as we've already covered on many shows. And we might get into that a little bit more some today as well. But just the sheer volume of the people he's already chosen, the way they're getting lined up to hit the ground running on Inauguration Day really is encouraging. A lot of reason to expect is going to be very different. We just finished up our our pro-family legislative conference that we do every year in Dallas. And one of the speakers we had is one of our good friends. He's a sheriff, and he was explaining that he's already heard from Tom Homan, who's the border czar. Let him know, hey, when I get in, here's some things we're going to do. And they really are going to find some of these illegal immigrants, especially ones that have broken laws and some of these gangs. And they are going to get them and they're going to deport them. So there's already so much happening, you guys. This is kind of a different direction from what we had initially talked about going out. Some is listening an assembly line. But I just want to throw out in the midst of it looking like it's going a different direction. I saw so many posts yesterday. I thought it was a really interesting thought about the potential for Biden getting us in World War Three before Trump even gets there with authorizing now the use of these American made long range missiles over against Russia, etc.. So as encouraging as it is what Trump is doing, there's also reason to be very prayerful that it doesn't get even crazier around the world before he gets there. And so we don't need a derail on that other than it just popped in my head. But who Trump is picking the volume of the picks is really encouraging. 

David Barton [00:02:52] And it's kind of intense book, Rick you just read, it was taking a wrecking ball and he's kind of doing the wrecking ball in the other direction. He's wrecking ball. The destruction that's been done and the quality of the people he's put in, so many of them are top people in business, are top, top people in government. They're top people in business. And businesspeople that are top like that usually don't put up with the nonsense and really the poor performance in government. So I really look for some real different structural things happening inside. It's going to be a really good revolution and good sense. 

Tim Barton [00:03:22] One that I would point out too, that certainly some top business leaders, whether it is a Elonor Vivek or a few others we can name, but then these are noted leaders in fields and industries as well, because you wouldn't look at Tulsi Gabbard and say she's a noted business leader, but she is a very competent individual who loves America, wants to defend America. And so having her as director of national intelligence or even Lee Zeldin at the EPA with what he's been doing, having Kristi Noem as secretary of Homeland Security, there are several of these picks or even Doug Burgum with interior secretary. There are several of these picks that are people that definitely have a very good and at times diverse background. But they have a level of competency coming in and a lot of their competency is not inside of the swamp, which I think is one of the the main things that that Trump really wanted to make sure he stayed away from was I get more swamp in DC. Let's get people that will expose the swamp that will clean up, drain that swamp and get America going back the right direction. Certainly with so many of these picks, it seems like that's exactly who he's chosen or why he's chosen them. 

David Barton [00:04:33] Well, you know, the other interesting thing that struck me is and the left side has gone crazy over this. Look at all the billionaires he's put into office. How did they become billionaires? Because they were really, really good at what they did. You know, the people that make 100,000 or whatever in government, those are the efficient people. And he's taking people. And if the biggest complaint you have is that they make too much money in the private sector, how did they do that? Because they provided a service that met a need that people wanted, the people chose. And so that's the biggest complaint you can come up with, and they're supposed to alienate them. I love the fact. That we've changed the rhetoric that must all you can complain about is not their performance, but how much they've made in the private sector. 

Tim Barton [00:05:13] Well, and this is such gaslighting too, because there's nobody in their right mind is going to look at Elon Musk and go, this guy's a crazy far right extremist. No. Elon Musk has been the hero, the darling of both sides for his invention is technology. I would say the left loves him because of his electric vehicle program, and many on the right love him because of the space program. This guy has just been a hero to everybody. I do think it's also a level of irony that so many people thought that they were going to virtue signal by getting an electric vehicle that a Tesla. Now that Elon came out and supported Trump, they have funded the guy who's supporting Trump and giving the money that campaign. So it's a little funny to me, but that's your point. Some of these criticisms, I think so much of his gaslighting and and a lot of is coming from those media outlets that nobody is watching, but they're using these things as talking points that also Democrats can talk about. Well, it's being reported X, Y or Z. And even though that's not that's not true and consistent with the American people, it's it's just part of the game that's played between media and some of the big tech and and these politicians now not to get go in the wrong direction because we do want to get to our good friend Tim gag line and spend a little time talking about his book and really some of the his suggestions of what can be done. And because we're talking about President Trump and what President Trump has done and who he's appointed and what he's going to do to make a difference. But there are some practical things that everyday Americans can do, and he is going to give us some ideas and suggestions. So definitely excited to hear from Sam in just a minute. 

Rick Green [00:06:54] I guess we could take a quick break. We'll be right back. Tim Goeglein, our special guest. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:08:06] Welcome back to the well-being of show. Thanks for staying with us. Always good to have Tim gag line with us. Tim. Love your brother. Appreciate you coming on, man. Thanks for your time today. 

Tim Goeglein [00:08:13] Rick, It's a real joy. Love being with you. Love, WallBuilders, love everything you do. 

Rick Green [00:08:18] Well, you guys are I mean, the culture is desperately in need of what you're taking in in terms of the message. This new book, Stumbling toward Utopia, how the 1960s turned into a National Nightmare and How We Can Revive the American Dream. I think people realize that. They realize the family has been under attack and fallen apart. The culture has fallen apart, and we need the formula. We need to get back to the things that made America great in the first place. So you've been in this fight for so long and seen the negative changes and now looking for ways to bring us back to those foundational units that make a society work well. So thank you for the book, first of all. And by the way, great article, The Daily Signal Will. We'll share that with our listeners today as well. 

Tim Goeglein [00:09:00] Well, that's great of you. And may I tell you, I believe very strongly as an inveterate optimist that that the best days for America are truly ahead of us. I believe them that we will see an American restoration. By the way, I remember being on a WallBuilders program ten years ago and predicting that we would see the overturn Roe versus Wade in our lifetimes. That's right. I mean, it continues to be a colossally important cultural marker of the pro-life movement. But I wrote Stumbling toward Utopia, Rick, because people want to understand how in the world did we get into this mess? And what I show, what I demonstrate in stumbling toward Utopia is how the moral and social revolution of the 1960s has arrived at our front doorstep. And it seems to me that if men and women of faith want a better way forward, if we want to have a very serious discussion about renewal and regeneration, we have to know how we got into the place we are. And that's what I seek to do in stumbling toward utopia. 

Rick Green [00:10:15] Stumbling toward utopia. And you give, you know, one of the stats that that you cite there really gives the whole picture. 73% of kids were living in a traditional two parent home 64 years ago in 1960 with a mother and a father. By 1980, it had dropped to 61%. And then by 2000, 15, 46%. So we're not quite to half of that, but man, we're getting close. And and that means all kinds of downstream societal problems. When you don't have that two parent home, when kids are not getting both the mom and dad and the influence that happens there, when family is not the priority. And really most of the negatives that we could talk about within the culture, we could point back to that one issue. 

Tim Goeglein [00:11:01] I could not agree more. Family, marriage, parenting. That's where it's at. And the way that you have a vital, energetic, forward looking country culture and civilization is by a thriving family. In fact, I would say show me a thriving, confident family. And I'll show you a thriving, competent country. And the fact is, right now, Rick, we have the lowest marriage and fertility rates in the history of the United States. And we owe that to the 1960s, this radical revolution that was imposed on the American people. And what I show in Stumbling toward Utopia is that this was not just kind of an evolving. Really? Is that how it happened, that this was meant to happen by progressives who had a plan and imposed it on our country? And by the way, that's not an overstatement on the law and the legal system in our country. The damage they have done, the progressives to our Constitution, the damage done to education, popular entertainment, it all is at the front doorstep of that radical mixture of the 1960s, the so-called Woodstock generation, the so-called Age of Aquarius. So the question and stumbling toward utopia is twofold. How did we arrive here and what can men and women of faith, practically speaking, what can we do for a revival and restoration in our great nation? 

Rick Green [00:12:36] And knowing you, Tim, there's an answer to that, right? Is not we're not just complaining here. We're not just saying, here's the stats, here's the problem. Right? Answer those questions and you show us that there's a roadmap. Hey, God gave us a roadmap. He gave us an instruction manual to turn this thing around. 

Tim Goeglein [00:12:53] May I tell you, democracy is not a spectator sport. You know, a lot of our fellow Christians, conservatives, traditionalists, they are feeling despair. They are feeling discouragement. And we know that as Christians, that discouragement and despair is a sin. It negates the hope of Jesus Christ. Hope is real. You know, I'm a sailor and I know I have to set the sails and God provides the wind. Look what we have happening in our country. We have a booming, colossally successful homeschool movement. We have record numbers of Christians and conservatives who are running for the school board in this ongoing cultural debate over whether boys should be in girls sports and whether men should be in women's sports. We are winning that debate. So it seems to me it's about engagement. It's about getting involved. But it's not the expectation that Washington or Silicon Valley or Wall Street can solve these concerns. They are cultural concerns before they are in public policy and in politics. So we have to engage. And this is the answer. Christians and conservatives, we have to engage as never before in the church, in our communities, in our schools, in the place where God places us. That is how cultural and frankly, that is how spiritual revival and renewal will happen in the United States of America. 

Rick Green [00:14:31] Amen. Amen to that. You know, they give so much hope, though. You know, Tim, if you if you don't know that those solutions are there, you can see why people are despair and in despair. Right. They're seeing the destruction. They're seeing all the negative. And if they think there isn't an answer, ah, that there's a you know, we're too far gone or it can't be turned around. Right. So so this gives them hope. And then the the generational mindset that it's not an overnight solution. It takes time. These things, you know, require effort over a period of years, not just one election or are, you know, just one season. This is this is something where we have to think incrementally. We have to think long term and we have to stay the course. Right? 

Tim Goeglein [00:15:11] We absolutely do. And by the way, we have wonderful examples. How about Saint Paul? How about Saint Peter? How about Moses? How about Ezekiel? How about Esther? You know, they were people who are comfortable with the fact that human nature is fallen. Human nature is broken. We all live in broken times. And then we have to ask ourselves the serious question. Well, how does cultural renewal actually happen? And I show in Stumbling toward Utopia that the so-called Great Society of the 1960s, right, where government was going to lead us toward the perfectibility of man. It was going to leave us toward, you know, utopia. We know how ridiculous and how failed that is. So we have to learn that progressivism is about this fake view that man and women are perfectibility. We are not. There was only one perfect man. God, man. Jesus Christ. It's not about social engineering. It's about getting involved. At the most local level there is and building upward from there. 

Rick Green [00:16:26] Hey, man. Hey, man, that's the. That's the ticket right there. Tim, I. While I've got you. Well, first of all, for the book, where should people go to get the book? What do you recommend there? 

Tim Goeglein [00:16:36] You know what? It's available everywhere. It's available at Amazon. It's available at all the places where people love to get their books. And I'm very happy to say that the book is doing well and it's available in its traditional print form. It's also available in audio form. In fact, I was walking through an airport just two days ago. My friend and I had a group of people say, We're listening to your book. It's very heartfelt. So we are very much in the 21st century. Books are available wherever people like to go best. 

Rick Green [00:17:11] Tim, I love your optimism. It's it's it's it's iron sharpening iron in such a positive way, sharpening our countenance and just a happy warrior man like where Reagan told us we needed to be happy warriors out to take back our country in a world of freedom. So thank you for your attitude and for real solutions and for just continuing the fight and continue to equip families. I mean, that's what I love, is that you're equipping people to be the answer right there in their communities that, well, I should say. I mean, obviously Christ is the answer, but to be a conduit of that in their particular community. So God bless you, man. Keep up the great work and can't wait to have you back soon. 

Tim Goeglein [00:17:46] Thank you so much, Rick. We've got to go tell the new generation. And that's what we're doing and stumbling toward Utopia. And I so appreciate this conversation and dialog with you. 

Rick Green [00:17:57] Appreciate it, Tim. Stay with us. Folks. Going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton. 

Rick Green [00:19:09] Welcome back to the Barber Shop. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Tim Gaven for joining us. You know, you guys have men. David, you when was the first time you had him at a pastor's briefing? I remember the first pastors briefing I went to was, at least, I don't know, 15, 18 years ago. And he came and spoke at that. So we've had him on WallBuilders for years. 

David Barton [00:19:27] Well, remember, they served in the George W Bush administration for eight years, right? That's right. When he was in the administration, we would have him come over and we actually did pastors briefings in the White House. Tim would get us in the White House and we would do things there and the Executive Office building cetera. So we've been having him from the time of George W Bush presidency when he was in the OPL for for eight years there. 

Tim Barton [00:19:53] Dad, one of the things you were mentioning, too, I think it's worth bring it up and maybe talk about for a minute. You know, Tim Gettleman's book, Stumbling toward Utopia. But but overcoming so much of the devastation of what happened in America in the 60s. And you were pointing out that that's actually a lot of the inspiration that you had that God laid on your heart even to start WallBuilders. Tell us about that for a minute. 

David Barton [00:20:14] Yeah, it was The 60s is what got WallBuilders started. Although we weren't around in the 60s, we got started in the late 80s, but as a at that time I was a school principal and teacher and etc. and the Lord kind of sovereignly very providentially got us into information. I, by the way, I hated history, didn't like it at all. I was math or science teacher and that was my gig. I didn't like history because of what I had been taught in school. But in the 80s, we actually in the early 90s, we came across some actual original historical documents that I've been taught about in school, and those documents were totally opposite what school teachers had told me. So that's where we got into history. 

Tim Barton [00:20:51] And let me just for people that are wondering to do, sometimes you'll see that one of the documents and correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the documents was something that's really simple that a lot of people know about. Like George Washington's farewell address, in my recollection, was one of the documents because you'd always told or heard you'd been told that the founding fathers were these really secular people. They were atheist agnostics. Did they? They wanted a separation of church and state. They didn't want God in government. But if you read the farewell address, George Washington says that if you look all of the habits, all the dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are the indispensable supports. And there's only one time, he says, something is an indispensable support, meaning you cannot do it without this. And that's religion in morality. And and for people that would say, well, no, Washington is a atheist, agnostic or deus or whatever the accusation might be, Well, there's no way that an atheist, agnostic and deist is going to be saying the most important thing to the success of a nation is having religion, morality. And then he goes on to say that in vain, with that man claiming true view of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars? And so the document you're referring to, these weren't necessarily even like hidden documents. It was just things that you hadn't really taken time to read or paid attention when you maybe maybe you'd have read that back in middle school or high school. I don't know. But you didn't pay attention if you had. And then when you read that as an adult and you realized, wait a second, this would seem to be inconsistent with what they were saying about George Washington. And that kind of spurred you to go read some other original documents. And the more you read, the more you found the inconsistency with what you had been told as opposed to what they had actually written in their documents. 

David Barton [00:22:37] Yeah, it was that. And the other was I had been told that not only were they the atheist, agnostic, dia, secularist, but they were also extremely immoral. And so Washington here expounded on religion and morality. The very two things that I was told he was against. I was actually told by my sixth grade history teacher that Washington had 26 illegitimate children. He never had a single illegitimate child, and there's no evidence he ever had an affair with anything. As hard as the left has tried to prove that they've never been able to, but they just make the claims. So that's that's one of the things that got us started. The other was I found an original Supreme Court case. Where is your decision? The US Supreme Court said, look, if you're going to be a government school, you're going to teach the Bible in government schools. And I'd been told they were secular. And so now here's the Founding Fathers and Bible schools and all the stuff. So I got a started. But that was after we saw in the 60s, because what got me going is the math. The science guy was came across this the decision of the court in 1962, 63 to take the Bible and prayer out of schools. And then I started looking at 47 statistical indicators and culture after that. And we found that once we took the Bible out of schools, out of the culture of violent crime, increased, 694% had been decreasing for decades, it would suddenly skyrocket. Teen pregnancies went up over 700%. They had been declining for decades. Everything turned in the wrong direction. And so it really was a wrecking ball in the 60s that the court put in when it said no more religion, morality in public life. And so what Tim has documented is so well, but he's also got that really hopeful aspect. Know what he was doing it looking at all the things that were going right, right now. And we're coming back from that and we're been able to leave the sickos behind. Is such a good, good look. But it was the sixty's that got us. what in the sixty's. It was looking at the sixty's they got us started. And proving that it was a wrecking ball and that's some of the charge we still have in the book. Original attempt. We show some of those charts that we did back on the sixty's. There's no question. So Tim has really done a great job of showing this going the other direction and how now what we can do and how we can get our families back and we can get this back on track. We can leave the 60s bar in our rearview mirror, which we need to do, and it's time to do that and get this nation going the right direction. 

Tim Barton [00:24:49] Well, and guys, one of the things that we have the privilege of doing is usually every pastors briefing that we host, one in April, one in September in Washington, D.C. he's usually one of the people that will come and speak. And we are always blessed. He is this eternal hope for us. He's so optimistic, which as Christians in a lot of ways we should be because we know God's on the throne, we know we win. But every time we're around him, we are so encouraged. And I'm saying this very specifically, because if you want to be encouraged, you need to get it read his book. His book will encourage you. He's going to, of course, show some of the challenges and problems, but he's going to show what can be done and in the reason to be hopeful about doing this and the results that come when you do it God's way, when we restore some basic things to the foundation of America. So if you want to be encouraged, this is one of those books that will give you practical action steps and you will be encouraged in the midst of it. 

David Barton [00:25:43] And by the way, you need to be encouraged because when you get discouraged, you want to sit down and quit. You need to not sit down and quit. That's exactly what will cause this stuff to be victorious. The wrong direction will lose. You need to be encouraged. And that's what Tim does. Tim You're exactly right. Tim Gaghan is a great encourager, but it's not Pollyannish. It is genuine encouragement based on statistical evidence and what's going on. And so it's really good to have genuine basis of encouragement, which is why this book is great. 

Rick Green [00:26:11] Yeah, you can get it pretty much everywhere, bookstores everywhere. And if you even want to listen to it, you can do audible. That's my way of doing books these days anyway. Stumbling towards Utopia by Tim Gag Line Stumbling toward Utopia, how the 1960s turned into a national nightmare. And most importantly, this what David and Tim were talking about how we can revive the American dream. We need that hope, folks. We need actual action steps that you can take and ways that you can get engaged. But if you're searching for the book online to purchase it, just search for stumbling toward Utopia. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.