Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's The WallBuilders Show and it's a great time right now to still be thankful. I know you're you know, you're probably in your turkey coma right now. It's good news. Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, hopefully. Had a wonderful time with your family yesterday. Today, we're going to be jumping into some of the good news that we share on these Fridays, but you can learn more at our website. Wallbuilders.com today that's our main website mentioned yesterday the American story. What a great time to be studying that history from before we even became a nation. You can do that at our website. WallBuilders WSJ.com I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton and they're going to share a lot of good news with us. Let's jump in, guys, now. Yesterday, we actually talked about a lot of the things we're thankful for in terms of the nation, the trends, where things are going. I was actually thinking about even, you know, the fact that the culture is doing better is just good news in and of itself. And one of those indicators, sometimes it's the movies. You know, last week in the Bond horror movie, we had John Scanlon on last week to talk about it. I think they did over 5 million in their opening weekend, which is really good for a faith film, especially when they were up against big box office hits like Gladiator two and that that Christmas movie, Red One. So a lot of big stuff came out last weekend and yet Bonhoffer for its opening weekend did really, really well. So just another another sign that culturally good things are happening. So good stuff. What do you want to go what do you want to do first, David? What's your first piece of good news? 

David Barton [00:01:23] Well, talking about the things that we saw that we're thankful for yesterday, which part of that was that cultural change? I've actually got some stories with some statistics in them that kind of reaffirm the general trend we were talking about yesterday. And part of this is that it looks like that America is shifting back toward what used to be called their traditional family and the traditional family with the concept of two genders and the concept of parents over the children that there's parental rights, the parents have the right to raise their kids. You know, the Supreme Court decisions 1 in 1926, 1 in 1943, where the Supreme Court said it is the fundamental right of parents to direct the education upbringing of their children. And that's the way we had been in America since, you know, all the way I say you can go back to Adam and Eve with that one, but we're not that old. But as long as America's been there, we've had parental rights. And then in the last 5 to 10 years, those have come under direct challenge that your teachers know better, your counselors know better. People in libraries know better than parents do, etc.. And that turned out to be a huge issue, more so, I think, than anybody, except maybe Trump the sore in that. I was really surprised when Trump's three campaign ads that he ran, one of them was on the they them thing and transgender stuff and guys and women's sports. And he said, you know Kamala is for they they are Trump is for you. And he made the pronoun stuff and the gender stuff one of his top three issues, which I did not see that coming. I just, you know, I thought it'd be inflation, border, everything else. And so he did that. But it turns out that's where people were. And so there's an article here talking about the exit polling from the election that shows that parents who have children younger than 18 years old swung to Trump in a huge swing on the issue of parental rights and education that they get to raise their kids. And so here's part of the stats that, for example and by the way, typically the parental rights group have gone more toward Democrats. They did in the last election with Biden than went big to Democrats over Trump. But they swung this time and they swung to Trump in a big manner. For example, when you look at men who have children young and all the stats are for parents who have children younger than 18, so that could be 17.5 or it could be, you know, one and a half, whatever it is. You got kids that are minority age. They're not themselves legal adults yet. And among men, 60% of men with children younger than 18 supported Trump and only 37% of men with younger children supported Kamala. And when you look in total, women were not as high as the men on that. But nonetheless, they also want to. Trump. And so you look at parents and say, you know, that that's a fairly significant shift. And it's interesting that this is not long after the Biden administration came out with this thing that says, hey, if you're going after school boards and whatever. And the National School Board Association said that that was an act of terrorism and hate crime, If you were complaining to school board about what was going on, terrorism and hate crime. And so, you know, Biden administration doubled down on that legally as well. And that's just not where parents were and that's not where they went. And so the report does not go with that. Two more stories attached to that all in this thing of the shift on the culture is that there is a U.S. congressman out of Massachusetts name is Seth Moulton. He's been in Congress for ten years. He has voted three times now in Congress against protecting. Women and women's sports. He's been drilled in men and biological men and. And it's interesting that in this interview he did after the election and he kept his seat. But clearly, the Democrats did not do well. He came out in Massachusetts and he says he thinks that keeping men out of women's sports had been a violation of transgender rights. Now he's blaming the hard left wing of his party, of which he had been a part for shaming him and others who are saying that was a really bad idea. What we did with gender stuff, what we did was a bad ad essays calling out the Democrats for doing that. And he said, I have two little girls and I don't want them getting run over on a plane filled by male or formerly male athlete. And so he doubled down on those comments, even though he's voted three times for the bill that would allow that to happen. And so even on MSNBC, he was double down when they were attacking him. He said, look, I was just speaking authentically as a dad about one of many issues where I think we're out of touch with the majority of voters. And so he said, what's that? And I love this for Democrats. He said, We as Democrats, we're listening to the same group of people who told us to defund the police, who told us there wasn't a problem at the southern border, who told us that inflation was transient, whatever that means, and who told us that Biden was just fine and we're out of touch with the voters. And so here you got even Democrats saying, hey, we better move our positions back in a more traditional position. And so but he can't even get the head of the Democratic Party in Massachusetts to return his phone calls, which is interesting that a congressman can't get the state party chair to return his phone calls. So you've got Democrats doing that. And then this really caught my attention where that the losing candidates now Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader for the Democrats and helped fund all these campaigns and the Republicans took the majority in the Senate by a pretty wide margin. They want plenty of seats to have a very safe margin. And so Schumer met with all the losing candidates and the losing candidates told him they bleed. It was all the transgender ideology that got them toasted. The Democrats lost Montana. Jon Tester, Democrat, Montana, Sherrod Brown, Democrat in Ohio, they lost. They lost the Democrat seat to Casey in in Pennsylvania, etc.. And the Cantor's said, look, these are states where we banned men playing in women's sports. And Trump came into this state making that an issue, running ads on it. And you wanted us to double down on men and women's sports and gender stuff. And he said this. This is just not right. And they pointed out that the Gallup poll said that 69% of Americans think the sports should be segregated based on sex, which means they think there are two sexes. You can't segregate a team on sex if you don't think there's just two sexes. So it's just interesting to me that we're seeing this big, massive pushback even from Democrats. And Democrats don't buy Democrats, but bought into Trump's ads more than than their own ads, which is just significant. So I see that as really, really, really healthy in the nation. I was just captivated with the fact that parents who are raising kids want a voice over their kids and they want to be able to train their kids in the right values and not have somebody else inject that. That's really healthy. 

Tim Barton [00:08:29] That you I would wonder when you say that Democrats supported Trump's message more than Democrats message. Certainly some of them did. I mean, obviously, 22 million, whatever they voted for, Kamala, it Trump could not have won had there not been some some swing over from moderates. And certainly we know there were many Democrats that joined that kind of the MAGA movement as it was known, because you had Tulsi Gabbard coming over, you had Joe Rogan and Elon Musk and these former Democrats, RFK Jr, who are coming over to Team Trump. So it's definitely true. But I don't know that we could say it's the majority of Democrats. 

David Barton [00:09:01] No, it was not the majority Democrats. It was a big I think it was like 18 or 20 points among Democrats. It shifted toward Trump over that issue. And Democrats needed every vote they could get to maintain just a tie position. But they lost a lot of votes. At least the polling indicates that they lost a lot of votes. And so, yeah, that's a good clarification, Tam. It's not like, say, the majority of Democrats switched over, but it's saying that they lost a lot of their faithful base. And when you got a ten year, ten year veteran, Democrat congresswoman from Massachusetts saying this, that this was a losing issue and you got candidates telling Chuck Schumer this is a bad idea, that's some pretty high up stuff. That's not just low stuff. But yeah. Thank you for that clarification because you're right, I didn't I didn't want to imply that majority Democrats came over, but they did lose a big segment of their base and they couldn't afford to do that. 

Rick Green [00:09:53] Yeah. I mean, when they're admitting it after the election and not just shifting blame, they're saying, hey, we were we were wrong on the issue with the American people. They disagreed with us. It's such good news. I mean, that goes back to what we talked about yesterday on Thanksgiving, just the cultural shift that's going on. This should. Really good news to see even them admitting that. 

David Barton [00:10:10] And by the way, Rick, I got to jump in on that. We were kind of talking yesterday about how that MSNBC is being spun off, that they're just don't reflect an audience that's listening any more and CNBC, etc.. And so Comcast is spinning these things off. It's interesting that even as MSNBC is watching itself sink, their hosts were doubling down on the fact, well, Americans are just wrong on the gender issue. I mean, it's like they're completely tone deaf and they think that they and that losing percentage is like they're incapable of doing self analysis. They can't even look in the mirror and see what they really look like. And they're doubling down on how all of America is wrong except them. So it's just a weird time for them not to be able to knowledge the truth. But the the wave is coming. It is shifting. And I think we're going to see that what we've been seeing in the local school districts, etc., in recent years. I think it's now starting to reach a momentum point where we're seeing some bigger changes. 

Rick Green [00:11:06] Yeah, I think the courageous went too far and the folks in the middle are now paying attention. And this is where we really have a great opportunity to to convert a lot of people to the principles of liberty because they're paying attention. They're sick of the insanity. Tim, where you want to take us next, man? 

Tim Barton [00:11:20] Well, this one interesting title. The headline says Pennsylvania to Rescind Woke Teacher Development Standards Settles Lawsuit. So the breakdown, the Thomas Moore Society, they're a religious, liberty focused legal organization. They challenged the Pennsylvania Department of Education back in April of 2023 because that the Pennsylvania Department education had required that that school districts implement teacher professional development guidelines, that those on the outside paying attention. That's really woke what you're having them do they the Pennsylvania part of education called it culturally relevant and sustaining educational program framework and guidelines. Now, part of what was in those guidelines, and this is just a very small sample from the article and there's obviously much more in those guidelines. But what was pointed out, even in this little lawsuit, was one of the aspects of the guidelines. It instructed teachers to believe and acknowledge that microaggressions are real and take steps to educate themselves about the subtle and obvious ways in which they are used to harm and invalidate the existence of others. I can't believe that microaggressions like that's still part of the conversation and that part of their Department of Education in Pennsylvania was instructing teachers to learn more about microaggressions and to teach microaggressions to protect students from the the microaggressions that would harm and invalidate the existence of others. So microaggressions apparently make you not exist. And like, it's just it's so crazy. Which, of course, is why the Thomas Moore Law Center brought the the lawsuit against them. And to go even further on this, the guidelines encourage teachers to disrupt harmful institutional practices, policies and norms by advocating and engaging in effort to rewrite policies, change practices and raise awareness. Also urging teachers to engage in critical and difficult conversation with others to deepen their awareness of their own conscious, unconscious biases, stereotypes and prejudices. Ultimately, the Thomas Moore Law Center won this on some First Amendment issues where we're teachers were being compelled to to speak or not speak based on some of these microaggressions, etc.. And so clearly, it's a violation when you are compelling speech, that's a violation of the First Amendment. So the Pennsylvania Department of Education, they changed and they went to what is known as the Common Ground framework, which essentially encourages some of the same things, but it can't be required in school districts. So it's not that this problem is fully resolved, but at least they cannot mandate and compel school districts to embrace and teach some of this nonsense. So the good news is that teachers are not going to be forced to do this. But the reality is there's still much work to do because there's still a lot of this woke ideology, even in that kind of the settled agreement of going back to common ground framework, which encourages but does not require, which is good, but still, if we needed yet another reason to, for us to be able to tell parents, hey, public schools maybe aren't as safe as you think, they're probably not as good as you might have remembered when you were there. There's a lot of challenges and issues. If we needed one more thing to point to the fact that the Pennsylvania River of Education wanted to carry this through cords of making teachers teach about microaggressions because it would challenge someone's very existence, threatened their identity to exist. I mean, just craziness. But this is some of what's going on in public school. However, in this situation, the good news is there's groups out there like the Thomas Moore Society, which. We're able to bring a lawsuit and win this in Pennsylvania. That's the good news. But clearly, there is much work still to be done yet. 

Rick Green [00:15:14] I mean, what you're saying is, listen, they they took ground for decades and decades. So the rot in those institutions is deep. So it's going to take time to root out. It's going to take time to heal. It's going to take time to to get the good stuff in before we see, you know, a complete turnaround. But very, very good news. That means we're going to have a lot of good news to report over the next few years as we continue to be on offense and take ground. Quick break. We'll be right back. It's good news Friday. You're listening to WallBuilders

Tim Barton [00:16:37] . 

Rick Green [00:16:46] Welcome back to the Orbital show. Thanks for staying with us on this good news Friday. Jumping back over to David for his next piece of good news. 

David Barton [00:16:52] You know, this actually goes back to I guess the good news here is that principals always work, right? Principals always work. Bad principals always work, too. But you get the results, either good or bad. Those principals don't change over time. And I was read in a couple news article here that reminded me of George Washington, of all things, in his farewell address and the book that we did earlier this year, Bill in the Republic. It was the American story version, too. We went through the first seven presidents and it struck me that Washington's farewell address had a much bigger significance than what I had maybe originally thought. It was so important that that when his farewell address was done and it's Washington with all of his wise insights, and I don't think anyone would dispute the fact that Washington was a very wise man. He understood human nature. He understood what makes people tick. And he because he understood human nature, he knew what the enemy would do before they did it oftentimes. And he knew what his guys might do. And he just was a good judge of human nature and a very wise guy. And so in his farewell address, he said, guys, if we want to stay on track, here's some guidance for you and subsequent generations. Pick that farewell address up and you had to take a test on it in school for a number of years, for generations after after Washington, because it was so important. And one of the things he talked about was do not get into foreign entanglements, because even though you may sign a treaty with them on one thing, if you get down to them, you're going to have to pick up their fights and their pettiness and whatever they've got. And so just be super, super, super careful on getting into these international multinational kind of treaties. And so looking at the hostility that has kind of gone across the world for Israel and we saw it after Hamas and how many people went after Hamas, etc., it's interesting to me that the International criminal courts, the ICC at The Hague in Europe, they've come out with the arrest warrant that that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel President Isaac Herzog have to be arrested for all the war crimes they've committed against Hamas. Now, when Hamas is the ones that murdered 1200 people, a second biggest murder of Jews, I guess maybe in modern history, Hitler's got one and this is two. And so that's another quasi semi holocaust. And they're not going after the Hamas guys. They're going after the Jews for defending themselves and taking out the terrorists who did this. And so now and doubling down on this, you've had the European Union say, hey, every one of our member nations, we've we've signed a treaty with the International criminal courts and we have to enforce that. We may not like it, but we've got to go arrest Netanyahu and Herzog. And there's 124 nations in the world out of 193 nations, 224 that have said, hey, we signed that treaty and they're being told that you have to go help arrest Netanyahu. You have to help arrest Herzog because you've signed the treaty and you're part of the criminal court system. And you can't just pick and choose who the criminals are. You have to uphold the rule of law. And so you've got 124 nations being pressured into this. And and so, you know, going back to Washington, none of these nations, as some of these nations are pro-Israel, they're pro-Israel nations. And now they're in a position where they've signed a treaty that they're supposed to enforce, which says to go after Israel. And so you've had Viktor Orban, Hungary and Poland, all these other nations saying, well, we ain't doing it. We're not going after Israel. There's no way. And so it's creating this divide. But what's interesting is on the American side now with the new leadership, we have Mike Johnson in the House and Jonathan in the Senate, they have just put it on announcements that. All right, guys, anybody that goes after enforcing that order from the ICC, ICC is wrong. And if you go after enforcing that order, we will impose sanctions on your nation. So if you're going to try to enforce this, America is going to punish you for trying to do this, because this is the biggest ally we've got in the Middle East. So it's interesting that Washington I mean, wait, 200 and something years ago, this is exactly why you don't get into doing treaties like this and multinational treaties with a bunch of different groups because you don't know what weird things you're going to do in the future. Might be good at the time you do it. And this is not like signing a peace treaty in World War Two. This is a treaty for for moving forward. And so it's really good to see the Americans responding so forcefully to this. And if you do this, we will sanction your nation because you're not going to go after Israel. So I guess the good news is I was thrilled to see how accurate Washington's farewell address was, which I'll go back to a do a little commercial if you haven't read the book Building the Republic, The American Story, Volume two, you need to read it. There's so much wisdom in there and wisdom about Washington's farewell address. And when you do, you see that? How it applies to Daily news? The. Good for America, for standing for Israel, and hopefully a bunch more nations in the world are going to say, hey, we're not going to do the ICC stuff. We're going to stand with Israel. 

Rick Green [00:21:53] Hey, quick question for you, David, on the on the can I just the way it works in Washington, D.C., at this point, knowing that Republicans will have the majority in just a few weeks, I guess that's first week of January, because you mentioned like, you know, with Johnson and Thune, I mean, is it already kind of do do people already sort of start listening to who they know are going to be the ones sworn in in January? So do you think they're able to kind of flex some of that muscle right now? Are do the Democrats continue to try to slam stuff through and try to wield power that they're only going to have for a few more weeks? Or is it just kind of a mix of that? I mean, I just know people are wondering like what happens between now and then and even especially with other with other nations. Right. How are they looking at who they're going to negotiate with? I wonder how much is going on behind the scenes even with Trump in negotiation. 

David Barton [00:22:39] There is a ton going on behind the scenes, Rick. A good example is when you look at Trump, he's already said, hey, if Mexico if the present Mexico does not stop people coming across our southern border, we're going to put a 25% tariff on everything that comes out of Mexico being sold in the United States. Now, that is a whole lot of of stuff being sold. And so that would cripple Mexico's economy. And they're not talking to Biden. They're talking to Trump at this point. And so same thing with Trudeau. He said up in Canada, if you don't get that border shot, it's going to be 25% and that will be a tariff on everything you sell here. And already both of those countries are talking to Trump right now. He's not in office basically for, you know, another couple of months to speak of. But they're not calling Biden. They're calling Trump and saying, hey, let's work this out. And in both cases, Trump is taking their calls. He's talking to them. He's working it out. And I can just guarantee you, he's already had calls with Putin. He's already had calls with Ukraine. I mean, he's talking to these guys because they know that this is where the power is. And there's no question in my mind that actually it's as if Trump is in office right now when it comes to international affairs. And the same thing is going to be with Israel and everything else. There's it's great question, Rick, but there is no question that Trump is already in office when it comes to international relations. 

Rick Green [00:24:05] All right, Tim, you're taking us home, man. What's our final piece of good news? 

Tim Barton [00:24:09] All right, guys. Well, in all the time we have left. The next one of my stack, the title, says U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Calling for Gaza Cease Fire. This was an article from The Epic Times came out last week. And the essence of it, there's a 50 member council. They voted on a resolution proposed by ten nonpermanent members, and it was to require Israel like, hey, stop fighting right now. We have to have peace. You're not going to do bad things anymore. I mean, really crazy for lots of reasons. Not that we shouldn't be advocating for peace, but there's there were some components missing from that call the peace. So Robert Wood, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., he said Washington would support a resolution only if it explicitly links a cease fire to the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas, meaning the implication is that the cease fire did not require the hostages to be released. And this is why the United States vetoed the resolution that calls for immediate, unconditional cease fire in Gaza on November 20th. And to break this down a little bit. I would note that the United States believes the resolution would send a dangerous message to Hamas that there's no need to come back to the negotiating table, meaning the hostages they have, whether they're dead or alive or whatever it is that they you know, they just kind of finish do what you're going to do. It removes all the pressure from that. And so would criticize a resolution for failing to condemn Hamas for its October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel. And as he pointed out, it's inexplicable that more than 13 months since that day, some members of this council are missing the plot that they refuse to acknowledge. It is Hamas that instigated this conflict. And so instead of acknowledging Hamas is the bad guy, instead of saying, hey, free the hostages right now in Israel. But if they do that, then you need to stop this war, that that would have made far more sense than what happened. So the good news is, as bad as Biden has been on foreign relations, and as much as we are ready for President Trump, the good news is we did at least have enough common sense with our U.N. ambassador, with with Robert Wood there that the U.S. did veto this really bad resolution. So that is good news. 

Rick Green [00:26:23] Lots more good news at our Web site. WallBuilders.show. You can catch up on all the programs you might have missed over the last few weeks. And we're going to have some more of those pro-family legislative conference presentations also coming at you over December and January. So many good presentations. And we want to share those with you, our audience here on The WallBuilders Show. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great weekend. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.