Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's Thursday. That means we're taking your questions. Foundations of Freedom Thursday, we call it around here. I'm Rick Green with David and Tim Barton both. And we're going to be throwing a lot of questions their way, as many as we can. Be sure and send yours in to radio@wallbuilders.com. Radio@wallbuilding.com, Foundations Of Freedom, meaning we want to get foundational questions about how the Constitution works, the foundation of the Declaration, maybe you've got a question about biblical application to what's going on. Anything in that vein, send it into us please, radio@wallbuilders.com. All right, let's start guys. First one up is from Daryl and it's about judges. He said, David, you've said judges have not lifetime appointments. Heritage guide to the constitution, page 236 says, otherwise explain please. So, you know, I'll throw in here real quick, David. I love the heritage guide to The Constitution. It's great. There's an online one where you can pull articles for a certain thing. So it's, it is a great tool that Edme's put together years and years ago, and they've updated a few times over time. It doesn't mean it's perfect though, and sometimes some of the things can be misinterpreted, and sometimes, some of people they throw in with some of their articles, I'm not too sure about. But yeah, so let's, I guess let me ask you first, historically, what did the founders intend with regard to judicial appointments and that language of good behavior? 

David Barton [00:01:19] Oh, man, don't go back to original intent. Yeah, I mean, that-. 

Rick Green [00:01:22] Oh, I'm sorry. Actually, what they thought doesn't matter. What does Katanji Brown Jackson think? That's all that matters. The latest Supreme Court justice appointed is the only opinion that matters, I think, maybe. Somewhere that's written. No, no, no. I don't think that's a good plan. 

David Barton [00:01:36] Yeah, we have a long record of going back to original intent, and we do that with with everything we can historically. And so if, and I respect heritage and they do so much good work, but I will tell you that the clear language of the U.S Constitution does not give lifetime appointments and so you have the constitution, but then I went back and dug around a little bit more and have now what the founder said when they were writing the constitution. 

Tim Barton [00:02:03] Well, and dad, if I can interject, because it does not say lifetime appointments, however, if you had good behavior, you could stay there for a lifetime. 

Rick Green [00:02:11] That's a great way to say it, Tim. Yeah, that's a good way to do it. 

Tim Barton [00:02:14] Because I mean and I'm saying this the way that it's interpreted now is that you're there forever because nobody today seems to be able to interpret what good behavior is because we live in this subjective world of You know like the the grocery store version of morals you go to the grocery Store and you just kind of pick off the shelf what makes sense for you You put it in your cart and you're like, this is what good morals is There's not an objective standard that we point to anymore However, I mean we have friends like Kelly Shackelford or Matt Staver or Mike Ferris all of them I've heard say things like lifetime appointment and that always kind of makes me Brussels and it's because I'm sure what you're going to do with the founding fathers, you know, their view was not that you're gonna go have retirement and die on the bench. That's not the point of the judiciary is to be somebody's retirement program, even though that's so often how it's used today, but as long as they had good behavior, they could stay there in theory for their lifetime. Even though that's certainly not what the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote that those words so dad let me let me throw it back to you 

David Barton [00:03:17] Yeah, they had some really good discussions on this at the Constitutional Convention. And I pulled out some quotes here from three of them. John Dickinson is one, Alexander Hamilton is another, and then James Wilson. And Hamilton, of course, is one of the authors of the Federalist Papers. James Wilson was the second most active member of the Constitution Convention, and he's an original Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. So not only did he upright the Constitution, he's on there to help implement what they wrote and what they intended. He was part of that debate. And then I went to two other commentaries in the Constitution very early. One was William Rall, who is kind of the anti-federalist view. He represented the anti federalist viewpoint at that time, which was a big reason we got the Bill of Rights. And then you have Joseph Story, who is kinda the federalist guy. That'd be more like the John Adams and the Alexander Hamilton and John Jay kinda guys. So went through all of them and it's real clear. And just going to the Constitution itself, it says the judges. Both of the supreme and inferior courts shall hold their offices during good behavior. It does not say lifetime, it says good behavior, now the question becomes what's good behavior and how long is that? So this is where in the debates, I just read you the final version, this is what happened after they went through the debates and agreed on it. But during the debates John Dickinson, he said I don't think the words good behavior are really what we wanna go with because I think you need to have it where they can be. Removed by act of the president and the house in the Senate. If Congress wants to remove a judge, it should be able to. And the convention voted it down. So no, we don't want that where that a political group can come in and remove a judge. And so as you go through Alexander Hamilton, he says, well, you don't wanna have a temporary commission. It's gotta be more than temporary. And they pointed to the States. And James Wilson was one who did this. He, he obviously mentioned was on the court, but he said, look, he said in Pennsylvania, He said, we have elected terms of office for our judges and they know how long that elected term is and they no coming up to it. And he said, a lot of times, because they have that elected position, they're not independent. They don't do what they really need to, they do what need to to keep the next election, to keep themselves on the court. So they don't always do what the best thing is for the constitution, they do it the best things is for getting reelected. And then on the other side, they said, but if you leave someone on the bench forever, you could never hold them accountable. If they have a lifetime appointment, what if they start doing really bad stuff, and if they have lifetime appointment and know they're not accountable, then they're gonna do bad stuff. And so they said, all right, if they're under too short, it's bad stuff if they are under too long, it is bad stuff so let's put it between. Let's make it as long, Tim, and you said it right. If they keep acting right, they can have a life time appointment if they'll do stuff along the way. But if they decide they want to ignore the constitution or if they wanna politicize the judiciary, and start making it into a political arm and decide that they're gonna start legislating for House and Senate, et cetera, then you can get rid of them. That's why there's been nearly a hundred different impeachment. And by the way, the way you get rid of judge's impeachment. And there's nearly a 100 different impeachment investigations. You've had a number of judges removed off the court for doing various things that were not appropriate. So probably in 98% of the cases, it's gonna be a lifetime appointment or at least until they choose they wanna retire. But they don't have a guarantee that it's gonna be a lifetime. They've got to act right if they want it to be a life time. And so that's where I think Heritage misses it. They're looking at the way it's worked out and the way its worked out, it seems to be lifetime because most judges serve that way, but it's not guaranteed to be lifetime, you've got a check and balance on that branch. You don't want any branch that's not accountable in some way to the people. And that's why they laid out all three branches the way they did. 

Rick Green [00:07:09] Yeah, to be fair, I'd say, you know, this is one article in the, in the heritage guide, which they have multiple articles and multiple people that comment on this stuff is one particular person that had made this statement, I think is what, Daryl's referring to there. And, and, and David, I thinking what you point out is so important. I mean, even when Hamilton talked about impeachment, when he talked about the court and he talked about, you'd never be, have to worry about the court being a threat to your liberty. But then he explained that, he said, that's only if it never gets over into these other two branches. If it doesn't make law, like the legislature is supposed to do, if it doesn t try to be the one enforcing law like the executive is supposed to do then you don't have to worry about the court. So it has neither the power of the purse of the sword, all that that we teach in Constitutional Alive. And so, you know, if had stayed that way, you might find ourselves siding a little bit more with Hamilton than with a Jefferson, say, on this debate, but it didn't stay that way. And the court is definitely outside of its boundaries and needs political pressure and I think solutions to get it back in this box. I can't imagine guys that most average Americans think when they, if they could remove the personalities and the emotion that they would say in a vacuum that a single district judge appointed to the lowest level of the court system should have the power to overrule the president of the United States on a policy that the president ran on and that the American people elected him on. And of course we got several of those happening right now. The obvious one being the removal of these gangsters and rapists and murderers. And so it's kind of coming to a head, this whole question of how do you deal with rogue judges? And I think the Trump administration's really gonna probably push back on that more than anybody in our lifetimes. 

David Barton [00:08:46] Well, this is also a problem of education because through the number of years that I've been working with law schools and judges and others and doing legal training, do continuing legal education for judges, et cetera, you've had a period of time where the judges were taught for probably 40 years that look, you're the source of justice. You've got to do what's right. You have to decide what's the president's going to be wrong and the Congress going to wrong. So you need to do it's right and what we're seeing now. Is that we're having judges like the ones you're talking about that are saying, hey, I disagree with that policy. Oh, that doesn't matter. The question is, what does the Constitution say about that policy? And so what we're seeing now is a bunch of judges that have politics that are very progressive and they don't like the direction Trump is going, but that's not the issue. The issue is, does the constitution prohibit Trump from moving in that direction? And the answer so far has been no. And that's why the courts, the upper courts continue to uphold Trump's policies because they've taken time, and I've been really pleased with how non-activists they've been. Pierce activists, because they're really doing things that need to be done, but they're siding federal laws and they're citing the Constitution as the basis of why they're doing what they're going. And that not what a lot of these judges are doing that are striking it down. They're just saying, no, no no no, that's not appropriate. You can't deport people. You've got to let me say whether you can deport them or not. No, that's not your, your role judge. And you're exactly right, Rick. And, but what we have now is about 40 years of bad judicial education, bad law schools. We're now figuring out how woke the colleges have been. You know, Trump just said, all right, that said Harvard, you get no more federal grants because you're just loving that you're so bad. 

Rick Green [00:10:29] What in the world are we doing giving them eight billion dollars anyway? I mean, they got all those, you know, they only have 

David Barton [00:10:35] They only have 53 billion endowment. Right, right. They need, they need eight to 12 billion a year from, from we, the people. Cause at 53 billions, are you kidding? You know, he has said that and, and already there's lawsuits filed on that. And there's going to be a judge say, oh no, you can't keep, you can keep from giving money to, to universities. But if we'd done this 40 years ago with our law schools, we wouldn't be where we are now. So we're gonna have to live through a few more years of these wacky kind of law graduates that are making the court, unless we can really get a turnaround in the American people to say, we're not gonna keep putting people into presidency who are activists who don't like the Constitution. So if the next two or three presidents actually can be pro-Constitution people, well, you got a real good shot at having 90, 95% judiciary being what it's supposed to be. And that's constitutional rather than political. But that's a big if, you know, for sure. That's up to the people. But it really is that problem that what we have now as judges that are not concerned about upholding the Constitution, a lot of them are. But a lot, and that the ones we're talking about right now, are not. They have a political agenda they want enforced, and they think that's why they were put on the court, was to pursue their political agenda. 

Rick Green [00:11:55] Hey Tim, before we go to the next question, address this whole thing of, you know, sometimes everybody seems to think the founders all walked in lockstep total agreement on everything, and this is one of those where they greatly disagreed. I mean, you had Madison, Adams, Jefferson, all of it, kind of all over the map and Joseph story. I mean there was great debate about this and even Jefferson himself wiped out a ton of the courts with that 1802 judiciary act. It wasn't impeachment. He just zeroed them out and did other ones. We sometimes think if you could pull one quote from one founding father saying something, that that means they all wanted that. So could you just talk a little bit into that and that it's okay to have debate on some of these things? 

Tim Barton [00:12:32] Yeah, it's actually interesting. Somebody asked us not long ago, dad, I think, I think you and I were doing something together and there was Q&A, and somebody was asking about the deep state and said, when did the deep state really start? And part of the answer was, well, this idea of there being kind of underpinnings of government people that were trying to sabotage the other side and do their own thing and own agenda, that pretty much starts with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, right? It wasn't deep state back then, it was shallow state because I hadn't been there long enough to be deep. But these things are not brand new and certainly. 

David Barton [00:13:10] Tim, if I can go back, I mean, the answer that I started with was deep state started with Lucifer. You know, Lucifer had a conspiracy to overthrow God. So that's your first deep state is, you know, God's government is going to be overthrown. But then going to American America stuff. Yeah, it was John Adams and Jefferson. So back to where you were, Tim, the deep state was started when the state was started, right? 

Tim Barton [00:13:31] That's right, dad, one of the things you pointed out in answering the question is that really this is more of a heart issue than anything else. But when it comes to the fraction in government, again, Jefferson and John Adams were the very easy examples because theirs was so evident. It was so evidence that when John Trumbull did the very famous painting of the presentation of the declaration where the Committee of Five is bringing the declaration, many people have drawn attention to this, but if you look down, John Adams and Jefferson, their feet are overlapping. Literally, John Trumbull is showing that one of those feet are being stepped on by the other because that was just kind of the friction in the dynamic of their relationship that was so well known. Even the painters depicted that. And so, Rick, to your point, this idea that there was this great, unanimous consent among the founding fathers really wasn't so. The reason I think sometimes we think that is when you read the declaration, and it's the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America, what they concluded when they did the declaration, John Hancock said they would only include in that what was unanimously agreed to by the body because they put anything else in there, the king might be able to come in and pull them apart by their own local separate interests, which is a very valid thought. But the final draft wasn't the original draft. There's definitely some significant changes, and those changes came through a very stringent debate process. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, One of the issues he cared the most about was the grievance against the slave trade, arguing for the humanity of everybody that was enslaved in Georgia and South Carolina opposed it so it didn't get included in the final draft. That was the one that was so important to Thomas Jefferson, but all of that to say is that they disagreed in so many areas. They found common ground on some very essential truths where Jefferson said, we owe these truths to be self-evident. They found common ground in in some self-evident truth, but apart from those self-evident truths, they debated basically everything else. And even they debated to the extent of what some of those inalienable rights were and how far they went and how they were applied. They were all independent thinkers. They were trained to be thinkers, not just learners, not just memorizers and repeaters. And they were very good thinkers. And when you have a lot of independent thinkers that are very intelligent thinkers. They will often come to very different conclusions and at times it can be a a very bold and strong uh contradiction of ideas that leads to some great disagreement and certainly that is the case when we look at the founding fathers they had core values and core principles we hold these truths to be self-evident there was core truth they believed in but beyond that core truth they had a lot of opinions and ideas and they certainly did not always get along 

David Barton [00:16:15] And just to kind of really close this thing, point out that once they agreed on what the Constitution said, and not everyone, it was not unanimous, but once there was agreement from the group on what Constitution said they did not violate that. And neither Jefferson nor Adams violated that Constitution. They both did things that were quite different from the other, but they were both constitutional in what they did. Jefferson wiping out those judges, that was completely allowable. The Congress and the President can go in at any point in time and change the jurisdiction of judges because the Constitution says that it's Congress that establishes all of those judicial areas. And so what happened, we talk about the differences, don't think that that meant that they were twisting the Constitution like a thing of wax because it was not. They abided by the Constitution, they did not go against it, and that's what today's judges are not doing. There may be differences of opinion on how we interpret it, we see that with the Supreme Court, even sometimes between conservatives. You know, Alito and Thomas were different the other day on how they saw something. But that doesn't mean it's unconstitutional. But what we're seeing from some judges is, I don't care what the Constitution says, here's what I'm gonna do. And that's real different from the Founding Fathers. 

Rick Green [00:17:26] All right, quick break and just a public service announcement. Clarence Thomas is never wrong. I just want to make that very, very clear. So if there's any disagreement with any member of the court, no, I don't know that I've ever disagreed with him. I've been watching, I've in watching. I'm sure there's going to be a time when I will. But anyway, quick, we'll be right back. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:18:50] Welcome back to the Wallbuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundation for Freedom Thursday. Hey, for our final few minutes today, guys, let's stick with this judiciary issue because I've been wondering about this one too, and we had several questions in this vein and people have been asking me about this. What about due process, due process due process for a lot of these folks that are being deported? And I think underlying the question is, does a non-citizen, especially one that came in illegally, deserve what we think of as due process under the constitution, do they get all the bill of rights, you know? Trial and and confront your accusers and and bring witnesses and yada yada. Yada going through the whole nine yards Um, that's the essence of of how i'm kind of compiling these multiple questions from some of our listeners Do process for illegal aliens that are being deported. What do you guys think? 

Tim Barton [00:19:32] Well, I know all of us have opinions on this because we all do media interviews talking about this very topic. But I do think as you look back at original intent, certainly the founding fathers believed that every single individual, regardless of the nation, they had an alienable rights, that they believe the people in France and Italy and England, anywhere in the world, they have an alien able rights, but it's the role of each individual government to protect those rights for each citizen. Part of why that matters, the constitution says, we the people of the United. States so that the government we have in America is designed to protect the animal rights of the American citizens 

David Barton [00:20:10] And I'm gonna point out, it does not say we the people in the United States, it said of the United states. And there's a difference between being physically in it and being a citizen of it. 

Rick Green [00:20:21] So, yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:20:21] This, this idea that, that is, is being enacted now where people are saying, wait a second, all of them that came here illegally, meaning these illegal immigrant aliens, even these MS-13 gang members, they're like, no, they, they deserve due process. Let me give the analogy to hopefully paint a picture of how stupid this argument is. If my neighbor, one day I'm at work, I come home, my neighbor's in my house and my neighbors like moved into my bedroom. I'm like, what are you doing? He won't leave. I call the cops, the cops show up. And I'm like, this dude is not. Part of my family he should not be here and the cops say okay now I hear what you're saying but we're gonna have to go through due process right we're gonna we're going to have to have a trial and while we are awaiting the trial well we can't kick him out of your house while we're waiting for the trial he has to stay here while we have the due process trial and this could take years so you just need to learn a little bit more. 

Rick Green [00:21:12] And you've got a serving of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with Cheetos and milk. Just, I don't know why that's on my mind. Maybe I'm hungry, but yeah, serving meals the whole time. You got to pay for his college. You got it. 

Rick Green [00:21:22] Did you really just, is that really your diet? Did you just confess to that? 

Rick Green [00:21:28] Well, he said, I was thinking back to my teenage days, whenever, I don't, for some reason, when Tim said in my room, I just imagined like a teenager hanging out in the bedroom all day who took over your house. So I was, I, was channeling my teenage Rick Green. Wanting my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Cheetos and, and, uh, yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:21:44] Uh, and now we've derailed, but as long as we derailed as long as we've, derailed let's just point out probably the Cheetos you were eating back then didn't have all of the food dyes that the current ones have. Right. So even as unhealthy as that was probably not as unhealthy as it is today, but not to digress anymore, right? Like back to this thought, this is how ludicrous what's happening right now is from some of these very leftist liberal Democrat judges. They're saying no, you have to house them. You have to protect them. Even if we can prove like, I can be like, hey, look, here's my mortgage. His name's not on the mortgage. I did not invite this person to my house. This person came in illegally, removed this person from my house, and then, by the way, if we actually have law enforcement try to remove them and a judge says, wait a second, nope, law enforcement, you can't do that. You have to leave them alone until we've gone through due process rights. This is how ludicrous this is when It's very clear these are not American citizens. These are people that came here illegally. They violated and broke the law to be here. And now we have these judges suggesting that we are not authorized to be able to remove them because of due process rights, which again backing up the Constitution applies to U.S. Citizens, not to non-citizens, especially in these scenarios. That the U.S. Government exists to protect the inalienable rights of the American citizens, not to protect inalientable rights of every other citizen of every nation around the world. That's not the way the Constitution is written, and certainly it's not how it should be applied. Even common sense would show us that. 

David Barton [00:23:19] Now, having said that, and I totally, 100% agree, there's one other aspect to look at. Congress does pass laws dealing with immigrants who are in the nation and what rights they do and don't have, and therefore, if you're going to deport them, you have to follow the law that's set up for how to deport then, but that doesn't mean they have constitutional rights of due process. The only due process they have, it's what's given them in federal laws, not constitution, but federal laws. And so if a federal law says, hey, before you deport, you take them to an immigration judge or whatever it says, you gotta do that. That's what the law says. You have to uphold the law. But it doesn't say anything about you have the right to a trial by jury, you have, you know, that's just not part of anything that goes with rights for immigrants. And we had some other questions, Rick, as you mentioned in this, and one said, hey, seems like back in the times of the Bible, Jews had certain rights and Romans had certain right, and that's exactly right. Now, if you remember with Paul, he said, Hey I'm a Roman which kept him from getting beat. And the other Roman soldier said, are you really a Roman citizen? Wow, we had to pay a lot to be a Roman. He said, no, no I'm a native born Roman citizen. And he had a different set of rights than everybody else under the Roman empire. Not saying that that's the American thing, but there are examples where there's sometimes even within a nation, there's different levels of rights depending on whether you're a citizen or not. I'm curious guys. 

Tim Barton [00:24:40] Do we have any biblical evidence that that Roman guard, did he get like a gold visa for $5 million? Like how did he, how did it get in? Yeah. 

David Barton [00:24:51] Yep, for sure. The point is there, and this is something we're hearing a lot, and somebody else asked about, is this affected by the Alien Enemies Act? And so if there's a federal law on the books, and Trump has cited that law as part of why he's doing what he's going, that federal law gave him the authority to remove these people out of the United States. And that's the law he's used. That law has not been overturned. It's been modified at times, but that hasn't affected. The modifications don't apply to what he's doing. So he is following the Enemy Aliens Act of 1798, passed by Thomas Jefferson. And by the way, it was also used in World War II. FDR used the Enemy Alien Act after we got hit at Pearl Harbor. And he looked at people in the nation who may not should have been here because of philosophy. I mean, that's a law that we've used a number of times in America. 

Tim Barton [00:25:37] Yeah, and to add to the point of being used a number of times, it was used in the War of 1812. I mean, as you go forward, virtually every conflict when we had a conflict with another nation, it was used during that conflict. So it's not just this is a really, really old law that he pulled off the dustbin, the bookshelf, and had to, you know, dust it off to use it. No, this has been utilized multiple times. And one of the brilliances, as Donald Trump pointed out, you know, when people were talking about the immigration issue in Biden and Biden says, I need Congress to pass a new law. And he says, Trump says, no, you just need a new president. What he was saying is you need a president that would enforce the law. And what Trump has done is work to enforce the law, not inventing new ideas, but enforcing the laws that are already on the books. 

Rick Green [00:26:17] Alright guys, what I really enjoyed about your answers today is we did both the logical, just common sense, you know, look at this example of what we're dealing with, and then the statutory, constitutional, the historical piece to that, and the biblical as well. Folks, that's how we approach things around here, the biblical, the historic, the constitutional. Send your questions in and we'll address your questions from that perspective as well! Send them to radio at wallbuilders.com. Thanks so much for listening to this Foundations of Freedom Thursday on The Wall Builders Show.