Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture is the WallBuilder show taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical Historical and constitutional perspective and its foundations of freedom Thursday, we sure appreciate all of you that are sending in questions to us if you haven't sent one you've got a question about the declaration or the Constitution or history or biblical application of the timeless principles of Liberty send that into us at Radio@wallbuilders comm as radio@wallbuilders.com. Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton. Guys we've got lot of good ones. This one is about The intolerable acts. Okay, so he's Britain said can you guys take some time during your radio show to talk about the Articles of Association of 1774 that were in response to the intolerable Acts. So, let's see 1774 so we're already past the 250th. I was kind of it's kind of fun to do everything on the 250 but we're a year behind. But anyway, so this was this is great though to get the background a lot of things that end up leading to the 250th leading to The Declaration of Independence. What do you think guys? 

David Barton [00:01:07] Yeah, this particular act doesn't get a lot of coverage, but it is super important in the overall building of America as an independent nation. And building us as an infinite nation, I'm gonna kind of go back a little bit as we often do to the scriptures and say, well, when Israel was becoming a republic, when they were taken out of slavery and became an independent nation, one of the things God told them in Deuteronomy seven also Exodus 23 was look this can be a step-by-step process is gonna be a little but little it's not gonna happen all at once and so what happened with America prior to the American War for Independence. We were 13 separate nations We talked before it's kind of like being in Europe It's France versus Spain versus Germany versus Italy that they don't think alike They don't act alike We even had border wars between our own colonies here because they just didn't get along all that well but now we have a common enemy. And so with the intolerable acts, now Great Britain is starting to put his thumb right in the middle of our neck and squeeze and put his foot down on us. And we're saying, hey, wait a minute, maybe we need to work together here because we're all having a similar attack. And so it's kind of like a Baptist saying, you know what, even though we're Baptist and love being Baptist, this is a time when we ought to work together with some of the Presbyterians and some of The Methodists and some the Catholics and others, becasue we've got some big cultural issues going on in the nation right now that are larger than just our theology. And that's kind of where they got to. So in 1774, they create what's called the Articles of Association. And it kind of says, hey, let's let's all work together in this general big goal that we have of making sure that we remain a free independent colonies. And as time goes on and we get a little comfortable with each other and decide, well, you know, Maryland is not as bad as I thought it was. And Georgia is really not the crazy folks. Then the next step they take is 1777, and that's what the Articles of Confederation. And at that point in time, they're going a little further and saying, okay, now let's work together with military stuff, let's get together some other stuff. But it still took them four years before they all agreed together even on that next step. They started in 1777 but they didn't approve it until 1781. 

Tim Barton [00:03:15] And dad also, as you're mentioning this, it's worth pointing out that when you look back at the Intolerable Acts, also known as the Coercive Acts, some of those were initially just a response to the Boston Tea Party. They were going after Massachusetts, but then they said, oh, but there are things that just so everybody knows, coming from the Great Britain side, where we're still the ones in charge. And so there was the Quartering Act, which applied to all of the colonies. They said for any of our colonies, if we send over troops, you're responsible. If they want to come... Stay in your place and you're going to take care of them and there was a response from Britain, which led to initially the articles of association. And then obviously the buildup, when you're talking about that, the articles of the confederation, when 1777, you already have the shot around the world, you have the battle of bunker hill, you have the unfolding of the revolution. You have the declaration of independence in 1776. And so at this point, we have, we've really been forced together in a lot of ways. And in that unison, it led to the acknowledgement we wanna work together. But under the Articles of Confederation, 7077 is when they were initially drafted. It wasn't ratified until 1781, but they said, we're gonna kind of follow this outline we have. And so really they were kind of operating under the articles of confederation even though it wasn't officially ratified and passed until several years later. But what they recognized is that when we have a government way away from us that has the authority in their own mind to tell us everything we're gonna do, how we're going to do it, why we're we're do it. We don't like that. And so when they all came to the table to work together, they had the same idea. We want to make sure nobody else can tell us what to do. And so under the Articles of Confederation, there had to be a unanimous consent to get anything done. The powers were so limited of what the American government under Articles of Confederation, what the Second Continental Congress and the Founding Fathers were able to do. It really wasn't much. In fact, one historian noted, I think he said it brilliantly. They had the power to say anything they wanted, but they didn't have the power to enforce anything they said. So, so they're able to come up with these ideas, but all of this, just reminding the background, the reason they, they found unity is because they had an enemy that instead of just attacking the people of Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party, targeting them saying, you're the bad guys, they wanted to flex their muscles and say, okay, not only are we coming after them, which that was the majority of the Intolerable Acts, they had other things that they included in the Intolable Acts and said, we're gonna apply these to all the colonies. And so really Great Britain is the one that caused the American colonies to come together. And Dad, you've talked often before, it was that the foundation of the First Great Awakening. It was people like George Whitefield with his very famous father Abraham sermon that was so influential to founding fathers. When the founding fathers first got together, September 6, 1774, the opening motion from Thomas Cushing was to open with prayer. There was debate over that because they were so divided in their religious sentiments, very strong denominational perspectives. And it was Sam Adams who said he was no bigot. And as long as his local pastor was someone that, that feared God and would uphold difficult standards. He said, let's bring this guy in. And so it was the first great awakening that laid the foundation for that unity. But ultimately it was Great Britain that caused America to become unified, starting with the Articles of Association, then the Artacles of Confederation, as you mentioned, originally drafted in 1777, but it wasn't ratified for many years after that. 

Rick Green [00:06:53] Alright guys, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Folks, you're listening to Foundations of Freedom Thursday here on the WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:08:06] Welcome back to The WalBuilders Show, jumping right back into our foundations of freedom Thursday today. 

David Barton [00:08:11] So 1781, that's when the Articles of Confederation get approved, but that's also when we won the battle that ended the Revolution. That's when we win the Battle of Yorktown. So essentially, now that we've got our independence, we approve these Articles Confederation and then that becomes the launching platform for the next step. And that is, you know, we've really worked together really well here as states and we've maintained our sovereignty and we're still independent states, but we really have a lot in common. And that leads to the Constitution. So 1787, the Constitutional Convention, and these states are not gonna give up their independence, but they are willing to work together. And so the Constitution says, here's 17 enumerated powers that we're all willing to get together on, and everything else is gonna be we, the independent states. And so that's the start of our Constitutional Republic, where we have a Constitution that governs us in many areas, but we're sovereign in other areas as well. And so the whole process we have now, and we're the longest ongoing constitutional republic in the history of the world, it all starts back with the first governing document for the nation, and that's the Articles of Association. And it doesn't really govern, it just is a compact that says, you know what, we've got a lot of stuff in common together, we're not enemies, we can work together and do some things. And that's really where the Constitution and America begins. Is with that agreement to start working together and fighting common things that we could fight as common enemies, but still maintain our unique sovereignty and distinctness. 

Rick Green [00:09:44] Had a couple of takeaways from from that timeline in that history the first one going back to where you started David Is that the people in Georgia aren't as weird as we thought I thought that was a great line. So right anyway, so all of our friends at Georgia's we just we love you anyway Um, no, but but think about how long that timeline is, you know, we're so immediate gratification today That took a long time to get from just beginning to meet together as Tim said to pray together To go through ideas and try different things to finally get to the point of the constitution. I mean, even in our biblical citizenship class, Tim takes us all the way back to the Boston massacre. If you go from the Boston Massacre all the to the Bill of Rights, I mean that's 20 years, two decades to get to point where we finally had those, you know, everything in place. So just a good reminder for all of us today is we're having a reminder of the 250th and all those things. We're rebuilding liberty right now and it's not gonna happen overnight. I mean we're havin' to correct a lot of things that took decades of tearing down. It's gonna take time to build it back. So just a great reminder as you go through that timeline. And then I had a curiosity question, David. 

David Barton [00:10:49] Hang on to that Rick, let me respond to that because that goes back to those verses, Bible verses we talked about at the beginning. Our experience is no different from that of Israel in many ways. And God says, I'm not going to give this to you all at once. I'm going to it to you little by little. And that's the way he always works historically. That's what he declared would be the way that he would work. And so here we are today seeing some changes, but we're still not anywhere close, we're closer, but we're not close to where we need to be and want to be as a constitutional republic. And that may still take another couple of elections, but we don't give up. I mean, think what would have happened if the founding fathers gave up after 1774. So to your point, that's a biblical principle, it's a historical principle that it does take a while for us to get comfortable with one another, to get adjusted to the changes we make. After we're comfortable with the changes in the article association, let's Take another step. After we're comfortable with the changes in the Articles of Confederation, let's take another step after we are comfortable with that, the constitution. Now we can work together and have more trust. And that, that just is the often repeated story of history. So if you think that an election solves a problem, it may start the beginning of solving the problem, but it's not going to solve the problem. And Rick, the point you just made is brilliant on that aspect. 

Rick Green [00:12:11] Well, and sometimes, you know, it's different people that end up finishing the task than the ones that started. And then sometimes there's a thread of people that are there through the whole thing. You know, I was thinking about the John Quincy Adams thing and, you know, Lincoln taking up the torch when Adams dies and it's years later. And, you now, that too took 30, 40 years to get to the end result. But then sometimes, there are people that are through the thing. I was thinkin' as you were namein' all those documents, I remember you teachin' this in one of the classes, but I can't remember where it is. I think it was Sherman, but there was a guy that actually signed all four documents. So talk about a thread of somebody that's there through the whole, whole, you know, saw everything and Tim mentioned Sam Adams, you know, he was there all the way back to the Boston massacre and then signs the declaration, big force and pushing all that through, but not there for the Constitution. So it's, it's a mix of people that, you know, might come into the fight towards the end, but take up the torch and then those that are with us through the whole thing, it wasn't Sherman that signed all four of them? 

David Barton [00:13:07] It was, it was Roger Sherman of Connecticut who signed all four of those. And actually was an active guy in all parts. He was not only a signer, but I mean, he's on the committee of five to draft the declaration and he's actually the third most active member at the constitutional convention when they do the constitution. So he was not on there across that span. He was, he was an act of participant and gave us a lot of the ideas that we still enjoy today. 

Rick Green [00:13:34] I'm sure he was an atheist or agnostic or. 

David Barton [00:13:37] Yeah, that's why he wrote the doctrinal creed for his denomination in Connecticut, evangelical kind of congregationalist up there. And as an atheist, he did a really good job of laying out the biblical doctrines and the biblical positions for evangelicals. So he's one of those amazing atheists that we had back with the founding fathers that did so much good religious work for us. Of course, all that is tongue in cheek. 

Rick Green [00:14:00] For any new WallBuilders listeners, if you're not a long-time listener, you may not be able to tell that we're dripping with sarcasm right now. So we have fun with that. Anyway, so all right guys, we need to take a break. We'll take a quick break. We'll come back. Gilbert Ramos has our next question. It's about the 14th Amendment. Stay with us. You're listening to The WallBuilder Show on Foundations of Freedom Thursday. 

Rick Green [00:15:27] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show thanks for staying with us on this foundations of freedom Thursday. Gilbert has the next question. He said what was the 14th amendment created for and what has the court done to it that Trump was trying? What was to change how it was to be applied so guys this could be 15 programs Just doing the 14 th amendment not sure which part you want to zero in on obviously Trump's dealing with the you know birthright citizenship question, but there's a lot more to the 14 them I mean guessing that's the part though that Gilbert's talking about 

David Barton [00:15:57] Well, I'm going to tell you that in my opinion, the 14th Amendment, what is now called the selective incorporation of the 14 Amendment, is the biggest thing that has the biggest factor in destroying the Constitutional America that we've known for so long. This is where the court said, you know what, if we can toward our face just right and if we stand on our left foot and lean to the right and put our arms behind our back, we think we can interpret the 14 amendment to give us control over every of the Bill of Rights. And that's called the Selective Incorporation. Took them 100 years to do that. And they, a piece at a time, started pulling the Constitution into the judicial realm. And in my opinion, this is what has absolutely destroyed the Constitutional Republic. Although, and I don't wanna say it that strong. That's, it's destroyed the original intent. There we go. The original intent of the Constitution Republic. And so we've been living under a lot of a judicial republic in the last 50 years, particularly. 

Tim Barton [00:16:55] Dad, would you said this is similar to what they've done with like the general welfare clause that that everything is for the general welfare of America therefore  they've expanded so much of beyond what the general Welfare Clause was actually about was actually regarding and they have misapplied that to justify to defend the fund basically any initiative they've wanted to do to some extent Is this like step two? The 14th amendment is now how they're doing that as opposed to what had been the general welfare clause? 

David Barton [00:17:28] Well, the good news is that this current court has been backing away from selective incorporation. And so just to back up and put this back in perspective. So you have the Civil War going on. In the Civil war, they passed the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery while the war is still going on, and so the war ends just a few weeks after that. So you now have slavery abolished, and all of these southern states that had so much slavery. The northern states had some slavery, but it was really in the south and in states like Georgia and states like South Carolina, you actually had more slaves than you had free people. So they're heavily dependent on slaves. And so the free folks had been running the life of the slaves, but now the slaves are free. And so in those southern states, particularly the former Confederate states, they said, you know what, slaves might be free, but they're not citizens here in Georgia or South Carolina or Louisiana or wherever it was. And so then the 14th Amendment comes in and says, look, a person that lives in that state is a citizen of that state and gets all the rights of citizens because what they'd done is they, okay, whites can keep and bear arms in these Southern states, but blacks can't. And whites can get married, but blacks cant. And whites get education, but black's cant. And so they went through after all blacks are free and said, well, that's fine. You're free technically, but we're not gonna let you have any opportunities. So that was the 14 th Amendment. And so the 14th amendment was incorporating all of those Bill of Rights to the former slaves and all people who lived in the States. And then the Southern States said, well, okay, they get all those rights, but not the right of voting. We'll tell you how to vote. And blacks can vote, but they just gotta do it the way we say. And so they came up with a dozen different ways that said blacks can't vote. But you know what? If there's 15 people in the ballot for blacks, they have to go to 15 different polling locations. You vote for sheriff on this side of town, you vote for your state representative across the county, and you go, it's ridiculous stuff. So the 15th Amendment came in and said, look, if you're in one of these states, everybody gets the same voting rights. So that's the 14th Amendment. And then suddenly you get into the early 1900s and the court says, well, you know what? We can apply this 14th amendment to all of the various entities of government. So what we're gonna do is we're going to put ourselves and charge the bill rights. And we're gonna tell you that the First Amendment, which guarantees free exercise of religion and mandates the government can't have a particular domination, we're going to apply that to the city government and say that the mayor can't say in God we trust, because that would be a violation of the establishment clause. Look, the Bill of Rights was passed by the Founding Fathers to make sure the federal government could not do certain things. And once the 14th Amendment was in place, and once you had a bunch of judicial activists on the court in the early 1900s, they started saying, you know what? We think the 14 Amendment applies to the 3rd Amendment, and it applies to 5th Amendment. And so they started incorporating it all the way down to the school board level, and that's not what those amendments were given for. The only part of the Bill of Rights that did not get pulled in under this judicial activism would be the 2nd Amendment. And so the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, has never been selectively incorporated by the court into this penumbra of the Constitution where the court tells you what the 14th Amendment means. So when you look at the 14 Amendment, what's called selective incorporation, that is where the federal government grew big. The federal government through the court started giving itself the right to do anything it wanted. And to apply the constitution against everybody else except the federal government. So now you have the federal governments saying, hey, you states can't do this and you cities can't this and you counties can't do this and your school boards can't do that, but we can. And so I guess the better part of that news is that literally the current court is backing away from that and starting to give a lot of stuff back to the states, a lot of stuff back to cities. They're getting the feds out of a whole lot of areas that the fed should not have been involved with. But that's how the 14th Amendment, which was purely a civil rights amendment for former slaves, guaranteeing them the same access to all rights everyone else in that state had. That's how it got it turned into being an anti-religious liberty amendment and an anti every kind of amendment. And hopefully that started to change and back up. And Tim, I mean, you mentioned right at the very beginning. That this is like the general welfare clause, which is exactly it is. General welfare clause said, hey, Congress is allowed to do this, this, this, and this, and if they do that, that's good for the general Welfare of America. And then the court stepped in and said, oh, general welfare. Well, we can also add, let's add welfare in general as something good for general welfare, and let's have Social Security. And they started adding all these programs saying that's for the General Welfair, where the Constitution says, all these specific things we just gave you, the right to copyright your own ideas, all the, this is for the general welfare of America. And so the court really took the general welfare clause and expanded that to become an elastic clause that covered everything under the sun, including lots of stuff the founding fathers never intended. This is what was supposed to be in the realm of the states. And so what you've got is through the general Welfare Clause and through Selective Incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment. That's what allowed the federal government to be the massive entity that it is now, micromanaging every aspect of life. I think we've even mentioned on previous programs that if people would agree to read 700 pages a week of the federal code, it would take them 25,000 years to read all of that code. And that's how much it's grown, and that was not the intent. 

Tim Barton [00:23:28] But that's also, those numbers, I bet those are 10 years old now. And I bet the federal code has grown significantly. So it now probably takes you more than 25,000 years. In fact, I think those numbers were done after Obamacare, I think. However, if it was done before Obamacare, Obamacare by itself would expand those numbers quite significantly. But, you know, guys, this is one of the things that we... Try to do remind people it's one of the reasons we have a foundations of freedom thursday programs they let's go back and see what was the constitution actually tell us what what is what is the declaration actually tell us? What does the foundation that we should be looking and pointing to in the midst of what we are doing because when you read the original documents it's often just very different than what the modern argument is when you can see post on social media from different congressional hearings. And there are some people in there that seem competent and some people that don't seem competent at all, but they will get very passionate and fired up and they will have debates about issues even even like the idea that republicans are going to cut some of the the funding for some of these different medical areas when the reality is that they're they're increasing funding for some of these medical areas 24 they increase funding But when you don't read what the bill says when you, don't, read what, the constitution says. Instead, when people just want to make their arguments and openly and blatantly lie about it at times to promote their agenda, this is how you get yourself in some of the trouble we've gotten ourselves in today. But dad, to your point, one of the good pieces of news is that there are people now, especially under the Trump administration, especially judges that have been appointed more recently by president Trump, there are people that are originalists saying, what does the constitution say? What, what is the actual proper role of the federal government? According to the Constitution, according to Founding Fathers original intent, and there is a resurgence of restoration of those basic values and principles, which is ultimately good news. 

Rick Green [00:25:29] Our folks who are out of time for today, you can get more foundations at our website wallbuilders.show, that's the radio website, and just scroll back to some of those other Thursday programs where we take your questions and dive into those fundamental questions about our foundations, whether that be the Declaration, the Constitution, today we even went further back than those to some other founding documents of America. And sometimes we just look at a biblical approach to some the things that are happening, or maybe a question about how President Trump or Congress or someone else's... Is dealing with the constitution and some of the things that are are being debated these days certainly with all the conflicts between the courts and the president and these district judges there's a lot of questions about the proper way to govern a constitutional republic like ours and the rules were there it's set in stone we got a great history and precedent on it but we need to know those things which you know I encourage you go Wobbubblers.com and get Constitution alive. Or maybe you want to get Biblical citizenship in modern America. Either way, get one of those two courses and start diving into what the Constitution actually says later this summer on July 4th. We'll have the new course Rebuilding Liberty and be talking about how to really do this right in preparation for the 250th birthday of the nation. Out of time today. Thanks for joining us today on the WallBuilders Show