Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders show, taking on those hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective love Thursdays because foundations of freedom Thursday, you get to drive the conversation by sending in your questions. We appreciate all of you that have been sending in questions. Be sure and email them to us radio at wallbuilders.com. That's radio at wallsbuilders.com and if you don't want to send in a question, but you just want to get some good materials, go to wallbuilders .com and just kind of peruse the site there. There's a lot of great resources for you. Some things you can get for your family, for yourself, you can send your pastor off to one of our pastors briefings, young people, our youth trainings in the summer, teachers trainings, you name it. We got all kinds of fun stuff going on. So check it out there at wallbuilders.com. And then if you've missed any radio programs over the last few weeks, you can always catch up with those at wallbuilders.show. Oh, by the way, wallbuilds.com, great place to give of your life, your fortune. Yep, that's right there in the declaration. We're talking 250th here. They had to pay for the war. Well, if we're going to win the culture war and get the culture back to a place that honors God, got to have some fuel in the tank. So thank you to everybody out there that's been making those contributions. If you haven't done that, think about investing in freedom by investing in WallBuilders right there at wallbuilders.com. I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton, and we're going to jump right into the questions. His first email that we got actually not technically a question, but a pretty interesting suggestion guys. Bill said, I was listening to you discuss the idea of changing June from Pride Month to Family Month. I love the idea. However, if there's pushback, another suggestion would be to move Pride Month to September. After all, pride goes before the fall. I get it, Bill, I get, that's pretty good. That's pretty, we'll float that right up there with Congress and Mary Miller who joined us yesterday talking about making it Family Month! My first question is coming from Joe. He said, I was wondering about unalienable rights. There's three listed in the declaration. It also says among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So does the among these extend into the bill of rights? That would make 13 unalientable rights, rights that can't be refuted. Then to get into original intent, both documents being founded on God-given rights, we would need to find out what God, of course, the God of the Bible. So the 10 commandments would be the foundation of both documents, making theft or murder not protected. Pursuit of happiness. In other words, somebody couldn't use their pursuit of happiness, including murder or theft. Would this be a proper understanding? All right guys. So Joe is, is kind of opening up this question of what are unalienable rights and how far do we go with regard to listing those specifically rather than just life, liberty and pursuit of happen. 

David Barton [00:02:47] Yeah, you know, it's a great, I really love what Joe did in laying out the thinking there. All right, there's the declaration, it gives certain rights and it mentions inalienable rights and the Bill of Rights protects inalienneable rights. So they're God given rights and what God are we talking about? And if it's God of the Bible, then the Ten Commandments would be the basis of that and on it goes. So the series or the logic, the way he put it together is the right way to do it. I would amend a few things, so let me back up to it. So when you go to the Declaration of Independence, and by the way, if you hear weird stuff on the backgrounds, because I'm sitting in the middle of an airport in Dallas, Fort Worth right now, trying to get out to Washington, D.C., but nonetheless, if you look from, let's just start from the declaration. Joe's right. That's the right place to start. And it talks about natural law and it talks about the laws of nature and of nature's God. So that precedes actually the inalienable rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. So when you go back to natural law, that the founders talked about that extensively. Uh, they relied on William Blackstone and others about that. So the whole concept you've got there of natural rights is rights that you see in nature. So when look at those nature, right, do you have the right to be born in nature? Anything that's pregnant is going to go through to natural birth, unless there's a murder along the way. Any time that interrupts that maybe, you know, maybe a lion kills the pregnant deer or something. But short of that, you're going to have the right to life. You're going have the ride to self-defense. Everything will try to defend itself. You're gonna have the write to property. You're to stake out stuff that's your home. So there's a lot of inalienable rights there. And that's why, as Joe points out in the declaration says, among others are life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Well, when you get into the bill of rights, it's really not 10 rights there. You have just really 17, 18, 19 there, depending on how you break it. For example, the first amendment gives five different inalienable rights. So it's one amendment, but there's five rights. And then when you gets the second amendment, even though the second amendment is about the right to keep and bear arms, there's two inalienneable rights there, one is the right of private self-defense and the other's right of corporate self- defense. So in, in the second amendment. It gives you the right to defend yourself and then it gives you the right, to join with others in a militia type situation and defend whatever that group needs to defend. And the same as you go through the, the other rights. When you get down into, uh, for example, the due process rights. I mean, you got several in some of the amendments, the, the, right to trial by jury and the right to confront your accusers, et cetera. So really you get into 17 or 18, depending on how you count it in the bill of rights. And then pass that You actually have founding fathers talk about other natural rights. So anytime you see them talk about natural rights, they consider that to be an inalienable right. So that's why in the bill of rights, the night that 10, the amendment said, look, we didn't cover all the inalienneable rights. And if there's others, they belong to the people or to the states, depending on what kind of right they are. So the founders, even in the, in the Bill of Rights acknowledged that there's more than just what they listed there. I went throughout things like the natural right of expatriation. And the founders wrote about that to a great degree. And probably nobody's heard of it today. Didn't know what that, we don't know what that is, but the, the ride of expatriation, they said was the ride to move freely between the States and the United States. You, you have the right to go from Oklahoma to Texas and from Texas, Louisiana and Louisiana, the Mississippi, you say you have the right travel freely between the states, even though the States themselves are separate entities. They call that the ride at expatriations. And so deer are going to jump the fence. They're not going to stay just in one pasture. And, and that's kind of that concept. It's a, it's a natural right, the right to move and to travel, et cetera. So, uh, you get into all of that and the philosophy is exactly right. Now, when you get to which God are we talking about? The creator, it is the God of the Bible. That's irrefutable. Uh, the writings of the founders on that make it clear. And so how about the 10 commandments and, and, and how does that fit in? Tentamamus, I think, for, for... And as, you know, as... As Joe pointed out, wouldn't that be like, you couldn't say murder or, or theft is my understanding, the pursuit of happiness. And so I was reading an article today where that there's this guy who's been traveling around stalking pastors and his deal is Jesus told him to kill these pastors and so he kills them, he butchers them very badly and that's his understanding of his religious liberty. He's going to heaven for doing this. And that's what he says, which is totally wrong. How do you measure? I mean, he's got a measurement that that's his, if you will, his pursuit of happiness is his pursuit of what God's told him to do. So he calls you have to have an inalienable measurement and that measurement is God's word. But it also goes back to what Washington said, religion and morality. 

Tim Barton [00:07:44] Yeah. And let me point out too, when you're saying that he has in his mind, the religious liberty to do that. I mean, I think we got to clarify. He believes he has a religious mandate to do that. And that's very different than religious liberty. A religious mandate, God told you to do something. And of course, I think he's crazy. I don't think God told him to go. He actually was crucifying pastors. And we read the same article. He made a crown of thorns and put it on a pastor's head as he was killing him. He said he wanted to kill every pastor and priest. He was going to target Christians as long as he was free. He was gonna do that. Well, he would think that was his religious mandate, but that is very different than religious liberty. And this is also part of what the founding fathers understood with that natural rights or inalienable rights. God doesn't give you the right to abuse someone else. In fact, the very first civil ordinance God ever gave to man, God gave to Noah after the Ark lands on Mount Ararat where God tells Noah, if man sheds blood, by man, his blood will be shed. The reason that capital punishment... Entered, where there was a death penalty, was to take out the people that were literally taking away someone else's inalienable right to life. So if someone comes and murders, then that person has forfeit their inalienneable rights, whatever else there might be, right? They're going to pay the highest penalty possible for doing one of the worst things they could have done by taking someone's inanielable right of life. And so just to clarify, for anybody listening, We're not confusing what he with this murder we're talking about would view as a religious mandate, with First Amendment religious liberty. So when you say this is his religious liberty, well, not to confuse the founding father's view of religious liberty with what this crazy guy thought was a religious mandate from God, which clearly was not. 

David Barton [00:09:31] And that's why I think it's important that Joe hit it right. You got to go back to something like the 10 commandments. You have to go to something that is fixed. You don't get to have your opinion on what your particular right is. There has to be fixed outside judgments and standards. But I think Joe really got the philosophy right from top to bottom. You know, there's some more specifics in there, but the overall thought, the way he laid it forth, I think is exactly the right way to look at it. Which starts with the declaration. The Declaration leads you to the Constitution, but the Declaration takes you to God, and so you can't interpret the Constitution or the Declaration without God nor our rights, and God gives you fixed rights and wrongs and things like the Ten Commandments, and that's brought into the equation as well. So all of that goes, I think, into understanding original intent and doing original Constitutional and Declaration and Founding Father interpretation. 

Rick Green [00:10:24] Great question. Well, great question. Thanks for sending that one in. Darrell's got the next one. We'll try to get at least started on this one before our break today. He said, when the Supreme court declares a law unconstitutional, is it therefore made void and unenforceable and if so, do the powers of the judiciary reflect here a final check on Congress? Generally, my textbook says, yes. What do you say? All right, Darrell. Great question 99 out of a hundred law professors. Liberal of course out there in the country would say, yes, you got it right. I'm guessing all three of us are probably going to agree that shouldn't be the way it is, but that's kind of the way we've been acting for the last 90 or so years. 

David Barton [00:11:02] Yeah, there's no question that the Supreme Court does not get the final word on what's going on. It is one of three branches. It's not a co-equal branch according to the founding fathers. It is the least of the three branches and so that's why even to this day at the top of every judicial decision, it says the opinion of the court. It doesn't say the law of the Court and if the Supreme Court has the right to overrule law and make its own law, then why do we have a why do we let people to office? Why do we send others in? If you can have Unelected justices are those who are appointed and very hard to remove, not accountable to people. If they get to make the law, then how are we a constitutional Republic? How are we at representative form of government? Where are the people in all this? So I, I mean, this is one that as you pointed out, Rick, law schools, all the encyclopedias, Wikipedia, fine law, all those are going to go through and say, yeah, this is it. If you go back to the founding fathers, that was not it. And that's why the federalist papers itself originally said that judiciary is the weakest of three branches beyond comparison is the weakest. It's not co-equal at all. So the way it's done today clearly is the court gives the final say. Now, look at where we are today. We have a president of the United States, but right now he cannot do a single thing unless the courts give him permission. There's more than what is it? 130 lawsuits now have been brought against all the things he's done. And so the courts are getting the final word on everything Trump gets to do. Final word on immigration. He's doing stuff and the way Matt, you can't do that till the courts sign off on it. So at this point, we, why did we elect a president? Why didn't we just ask the courts what we should do with immigration? What we should with Iran? And why, why didn't, we just asked the courts, what we should do at Harvard, bringing in people who violate immigration laws. And what should, why should we? So, I mean, at this. If the courts get the final words, then what do we do with everything else? Um, and I think what we're seeing right now with the Trump administration is one of the greatest examples of how far we have taken this philosophy to where the president can't do a stinking thing now without getting permission from a court somewhere, and it has to go to court for the court to find out whether what Trump did is right, why have the elections? So I would say that Rick, you're right. We all, we all three would jump on the side of no, that's not the way that we would interpret under original intent, that for sure. 

Tim Barton [00:13:31] Well, and I think specifically, you can add in Article 3 and Section 2 and Paragraph 2, it lays out that the jurisdiction for the court, there's a little caveat at the end of that paragraph. It says, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make, meaning when you look at the jurisdiction of what the court has, Congress has the authority to come back and say, you know what? Uh, we're not going to talk about that anymore. We're not gonna let you rule on that. They literally can take away certain topics and issues from the quote unquote jurisdiction of the Supreme court, which means that the Supreme Court comes back and says something unconstitutional. Congress actually as the superior, more powerful branch, as explained in the federalist papers and by many founding fathers, they actually, Congress can come back and say, because you got this so wrong, we are not letting you do anything with this issue anymore. Or they can remove it from. The US Supreme Court's jurisdiction, and therefore, they can go back and reinstate whatever law they wanted to pass, et cetera, limiting the jurisdictional power and therefore the court of court oversight of the US Supreme Court. So again, to reaffirm kind of Rick and Dad, what you already said, what we would probably wind up on the other side, it's not that the Supreme Court can't issue an opinion, but if you read any Supreme Court decision, all it will say at the top is the opinion of the court. All they can do is give an opinion. They are not the ones that ultimately can Determine or establish or enforce what is constitutional or constitutionality and actually Congress has the power to Remove things from their jurisdiction or from their purview if they think they're going the wrong direction now Congress has not done that It's certainly not in our lifetime that I could point to Congress has really kind of weakened themselves and neutered themselves in some extent where they are a very weak branch Arguably the weakest of the three right now when they should be the strongest most powerful of the three is laid out in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. But this is certainly something that Congress has more authority and power over these kind of topics and issues than most people realize. 

Rick Green [00:15:38] Yeah, it's unfortunate that they don't do it more. I think the, in fact, the only two times I can think of off the top of my head, you got to go way back. You got to back to the civil war and habeas corpus, or you got to go all the way back to The Alien Enemies Act, which of course, Trump has, has used for the deportations, but that was another positive exception where Congress positively accepted that issue from the courts and took it away from them. I think David, you know, this whole thing where they're The courts are so out of whack and they're trying to micro manage the president is going to turn out to be good because I think it's waking up a lot of people to realize this is absurd. We have these district judges that are overruling the president of the United States. And I really encourage people die further into this. David and Tim and I go deep into this and constitution alive and biblical citizenship. And the courses you can get at wallbuilders.com. Uh, but it is definitely, I would say, you know, we we've been 100% consistent in that no matter who was on the court, who had the majority, who was it, who is president. It's really about which branch should have that authority and jurisdiction and power and how to have those checks and balances. And as you said, David, they're not co-equal branches. They're intended, the courts intended to be the weakest branch. And of course, Congress, the most powerful. So really good stuff. Fantastic question. I love the way our listeners are thinking and the types of questions that they're asking and how they're thinking through this. And of of course disagreeing with the textbook. I'm always for that. If the textbook is wrong, be willing to challenge the status quo. Very quick break, we'll be right back. We got more questions from you in the audience here on our Foundations of Freedom Thursday. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show.

Rick Green [00:18:12] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show, thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Next question out of California, and Rick in Monterey, California said, hey, hi gang, there is a Marxism, I think he means that there's a flavor of Marxism making its way through the church. How do you refute this creating of Marxist? These people work really hard at making the Bible say some pretty wild things, even as crazy as saying the Bible says there's no God. Rick, thanks for sending that in, man. I, before you guys even answer, I highly recommend Megan Basham's book, Shepherds for Sale. She's got the receipts on what Rick is saying and just how bad the leftism and Marxism is that's being pushed in a lot of the evangelical churches and funded by Soros, by the way. 

Tim Barton [00:18:54] Yeah, Rick, Megan Basham did a great job. I've seen her many interviews and now other people have followed that same kind of receipt based research to point out that there are in fact, unfortunately, a lot of pastors that have taken money and actually some pastors come out acknowledging they were offered tens of millions of dollars if they would promote certain LGBTQIA + agendas. And include those in some of their programs, et cetera. And so there certainly is becoming far more evident, much more exposure to some of the corruption happening inside the church. You know, guys, one of the things that I've not been able to do this yet, you have. You've been able go over to Asia Minor, now known as Turkey, and do a tour of seven churches of Revelation doing one of those kind of biblical study trips. Our friend Omer Eshel. Has done their strips and at one point we probably will try to take a group and go do that but I say that because I'm reminded a little bit of some of the admonishments from Revelation when the churches are called out or praised for things they did right, for things they do wrong, for where they should be, where they shouldn't be and it certainly seems that Marxism has infiltrated a lot, a lot of churches today. There are actually some denominations that are having to deal with the reality they might go through a church split because of some of this Marxism that is infiltrated literally and I don't want to call out the denomination although I'm very familiar with it there's the denomination where there's an entire segment of the denomination that's saying we're going to leave this denomination because this denomination will not acknowledge critical race theory and DEI and this specific denomination would generally be viewed as a very theologically conservative Bible-based denomination And yet, when you have a large contingent... Of a large percentage of churches inside of this denomination who are saying we're going to split off because of critical race theory and DEI because the overall denomination doesn't acknowledge it, but we believe it to be true. This is how prevalent Marxism has become in our culture. It's being taught in our seminaries. This isn't something that's just happening in universities where we frequently caution people be careful where you're sending your kids where Jesus gave one of the Greatest admonishments, what is it? Profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul. And there's a lot of parents that have thought it's going to be so beneficial for my kid to go to college to get this education. It's going to set them up and life to have these certain potential job opportunities because of the degree because of the college they went to and they don't recognize that in many cases, it's costing the soul of their kids. Now, not that these kids can't be right reclaimed and not that they can't rededicate their life to Christ, but literally they're going to universities where Teachers and professors. Humping them with this secular propaganda with anti-God, anti-Christian, anti Bible and anti-American, anti Founding Fathers, all of this kind of woke nonsense that's been going on. And these students are leaving, denying faith, hating parents, hating America, and I don't think enough parents have paid attention to it, although we are now seeing more and more people wake up to it with universities or equally. I know probably for many people listening today, if you listen to the wall builder show and some of the other conservative outlets, you probably hear people call out the churches for not having the courage and boldness, for not standing up and teaching the biblical word of God, et cetera. But I think most Americans aren't aware at how much Marxism has infiltrated the But the reality is Marxism, unfortunately, is all throughout the church, including in what used to be considered very theologically conservative denominations. 

David Barton [00:22:46] Yeah. And I would point to that one of the things to look at, uh, to see if Marxism is getting into your church is whether people are talking about groups. Now remember the scriptures and scripture says for God, there's neither male or female, there is neither Jew nor Greek. There's, it goes through, everybody's the same. Marxism will identify groups and they will find groups. And that's what Tim was talking about with DEI and others, this group suppressed or this group needs this tree. That doesn't happen. And the only. The only real exception I can find in the Bible that is God does treat Israel different from other nations. They get treated different, but that's a covenant He made with them. But outside of that, everything else, it doesn't matter what your color is, it doesn't matters what your gender is. His principles work, his standards are the same. You don't have an out on the Ten Commandments because you happen to be from some oppressed group right now. Everybody responsible for it. And so anything that starts breaking people into groups, not a good deal. There's only two groups, as far as I can tell, in God's domain, and that's those who know him and those who don't know him. And that's as far it goes. It's not based on language, it's not on age, it's based on anything else. And so that's that Marxism creeping into the church when we start getting the gospel past that simplicity. 

Tim Barton [00:24:07] Well, and Dad, to affirm that, that's what Matthew 25 teaches, right? One of the parables of the sheep and the goats, where one day, right, all the people, all the nations are gathered before him and he's going to divide them. The shepherd would separate the sheep and the goat, the sheep on his right, the goats on his left. And he'll turn to those on his right and say, come you blessed to my father. And he goes through the list for I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was naked. You clothed me. I was sick. You covered me. I was in prison. You visited me. And they say, well, when did we do any of that? And he says, and as much as you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did to me. He turns to the goats and it's the exact opposite for the goats. That you didn't do any of this. And they're like, Lord, when did we not do that? We, we would have done that. And he said, in as much, as you do not do it to, the least of these my brother and you did that to me, and I say that to affirm what you are saying that. From literally the teachings of Jesus, God looked and he gathered all the people in all the nations and he divided them, not based on their race, their class, their creed. Not based on their sex, male and female, it was based on how they had lived their life. And this is where we might say he judged them more by the conduct of their character than by whatever DEI critical race theory metric might be applied. And of course, there's multiple examples and I think there's three different times in the Pauline Epistles where he talks about, in Christ, there is no male and female, there's no Jew, Greek, no Scythian slave, free barbarian. We are all one in Christ. That is a consistent theme and so affirming your point, anytime you see in Christianity, the idea that we should segment and put people in groups, that is completely unbiblical. 

Rick Green [00:25:48] Yeah, guys. I mean, and this is, this is why we became a more perfect union as a nation. I mean it, obviously there was slavery. There were, you know, discrimination against various groups early in the nation's beginning, but we fixed it before other nations did. We got it right. And today America is the most free country in the world. And, and it's based on this biblical idea. We have continued to say, we're not going to judge each other based on the color of our skin, but the content of our character. And we're not going to judge each other different, Jew or Greek, rich or poor, um, whether you're, you know, what your education level is, all of that. And that's why blind justice is so important. That's why it's so important for us to get back to this biblical foundation and not allow Marxism to take over, especially in the church. So very good question. Thanks for bringing that awareness to us. Thanks to all of you that sent in questions today. If you want to sit in one for next week's foundation of freedom, Thursday program, email it to radio at wallbuilders.com. Thanks again for listening to the WallBuilders Show.