Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. Thanks for joining us today on our foundations of freedom Thursday. That's the day you get to pick the topic. So please send us emails. We love hearing from y'all. We get so many cool emails. Sometimes it's just comments, but a lot of times it's questions for our foundations program. So send those onto radio@wallbuilders.com radio@wallbuilder.com I'm Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton. And we'll just jump right into your emails. And here's one of those comments. This one's from Carol and I'm going to try to say this guys. I think it's Paola, Kansas Paola. We're not supposed to have Paola in radio guys. Something, I don't know. I remember something about that. Okay. She said, dear David, Tim and Rick, I've listened to your show for years and appreciate your wide range of knowledge and wisdom. However, as the wife of a, okay, I'm going to try it. Numismatics, Numismatics; a person. She said she gives the definition a person who studies or collects money, coins, and often tokens. I feel compelled to correct you on something. The United States has never made pennies. England had pennies, we have one cent coins. I really enjoy your show and appreciate all your good work. I just had to share that piece of trivia. Carol, God bless you. That was a great correction that we needed because we do not want to be like those Tories. We don't ever want to like the British, right guys? 

David Barton [00:01:19] I tell you, this is so cool. And man, I struggle over to, I know it, I read the word. I think it's numatista. I don't know, but as someone who is in the coins and, and, you know, money, et cetera, and we were talking on the program about how that the government is going to stop printing pennies. Or I said, we're going to start making pennies because it costs more to make the pennies than you, you get from having pennies and she's got a great correction. It's a one cent piece. It's not a penny England has pennies We got one cent. That's great. I love that correction. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that Carol. 

Tim Barton [00:01:54] What's crazy is my brain says, no, we've read penny on that coin. It definitely says penny on there. It's so interesting that my mind doesn't even comprehend that it's not a penny. It's a one cent piece. 

David Barton [00:02:09] Yeah, when you read it on the coin, it's one cent. That's exactly what it is. I love it. 

Rick Green [00:02:13] And I think if I remember right guys our conversation about that was because of somebody writing then so I forget who it was But thank you whoever that was for getting that conversation even started for us. In fact, here's another comment. That's great from Jennifer. She said I listen to your podcast every day and I've read both of your American story books I've learned so much about early American history I'm interested in learning about the 1900 specifically World War one and World War two Are there any books that you recommend that would cover this time period? Okay, Jennifer I just have to tell you you've read American Story one and American story two, there are 472 American Story books planned. They're just all still in David's head. And so eventually, no, I think you guys are pretty close on three, aren't you? And how far, like what are the dates for what you're going to do with American Story 3?

David Barton [00:02:59] Yeah, American Story Three is gonna be called a World at War, and it does deal with the World Wars, really interesting, and I think we would have been moving toward the printer about now, except six weeks ago, something came up related to the wars, and we found some documentary evidence that was declassified in the late 1970s, and it completely changes the narrative on one piece of the war, what I've been taught, what I heard. And we spent the last six weeks going through government documents, going through declassified stuff. And so it's going to have a section in there that'll go, wow, I never knew that. And certainly that was me. So it's gonna be out in a couple of months, maybe a few months, we hope. But anyway, we were right at the end of it when we got sidetracked on that six week diversion, Tim's laughing. What you think months, may be years. Is that what you think? 

Rick Green [00:03:47] Laughing just watching Tim's face because it's just like watching my son's face like I'm optimistic like you David and then Tim and Trey are both the realist that that are going like okay dad we've been here before we've done this before and the realistic date and then David and I are over here going no we can we can pull it off we can get it done by that sorry, go ahead.

Tim Barton [00:04:08] We've almost been done with this book all year long. And we keep, and in fairness, like we keep finding things that are very valuable. It's also worth acknowledging that we were gonna try to be more chronological. And then dad, you were having to wait for me on things. And you said, I don't wanna wait for you to write these things. Let me just start writing some of these other things I know about. And you started writing on World War II and I couldn't get you to stop. And you're like, no, let me just go. Let me, I'm finding these new things and this guy's amazing. And then one of the biggest challenges as we continue to do research is not just finding the story. It's trying to find the parts that we can cut out of the story because there's so many amazing parts and pieces. And we don't want to leave anything out but we don't have a multi volume set when we're trying to make this an easy understandable narrative and again in story form so names dates and places are important but it's not. It's not the main thing that you should be learning and taking away from World War II necessarily. Now, if you don't know the name, Hitler or Eisenhower, Patton or FDR or Truman, like there's a few names you probably should know. They're important, they're decision makers, they did things. However, big picture, we wanna make sure we're not just emphasizing. The dates the places and dead people were telling their story and when you start telling their stories again like a guy like Paton easy example because there are so many fascinating parts of the story a guy  like Eisenhower McArthur again just amazing parts of their story and trying to reduce that down and say man how can we leave this part out will be tell this part of me to include these details over here and that is certainly one of the big challenges but. The, the research team working with my dad are, are assuring me we are approaching the end of the majority of the components of what they think is needed. Uh, and then I have the privilege of being able to, uh, just be an editor once it kind of comes together, um, on the backside. And so I still get to, to be a part of it, but definitely not, uh like I have in some of the other portions of the book where I was writing sections of it. No, this one I am just going to be an editor on the back side and they have been bragging about how amazing these stories are I have waited till it was largely put together to go through and review and add edits to it So I am super pumped to learn from some of these things as you guys have been updating on like you mentioned six weeks ago finding this and being like you're not going to believe this like we knew parts of this but how much there is on some of these things. And I'm trying not to say what it is to not give it away, but it is coming. And then after, after the World at War, we'll probably back up and we'll go from the abolition movement through reconstruction. So cover some of the civil war, some of, the major players in the abolition movement and reconstruction, get to Democrats taking over, undoing a lot of what happened in reconstruction, why it changed, how it changed. And then probably we'll pick up in sequence. We'll probably add in some things, like some, some Westward, you know, like a go West young man Westward adventure, Westward exploration. We'll Probably do some like, kids of courage. We can tell some of the noted, young people stories of like an Annie Oakley, a John Clem, a Bronco Charlie, et cetera. So there'll be spinoffs as well, but we'll try to have a definitely four or five volume chronological sequence and then some independent highlights as we go. So Rick, not to downplay how many volumes there might be in my dad's head. I don't think it's hundreds, but it could be a dozen. We'll see how this all goes. 

Rick Green [00:07:53] I was picturing, actually as you said that, I've got this cool set of Churchill's history books and it's like that, you know, I forget it's 12 volumes or something that he wrote and so I can envision that for you guys and the American story. I do have to ask you a couple of questions about this because I'm genuinely curious. You know, obviously Wabler started with David with your Revolutionary history interest and diving into those things and that was initially what God told you to study and somewhere along the way you started getting some really cool artifacts from people that were sending in. Even Bill Garnier from Band of Brothers sent you his helmet and signed it. He was a fan of yours. And you started gettin' these flags and just a lot of cool World War II posters and that sort of thing. Was that, for you, was that where you started, not shifting your focus, but started becoming more interested in that piece of history and that time in history? Or have you always been interested in the whole 250 years history of the country? 

David Barton [00:08:49] You know, it's not history that gets me so much as the stories. I'm more interested in the stories and when I started seeing the people and I started saying, what would I have done in his shoes? What would have been my response? Could I have pulled off what they pulled off? You know, Herschel Williams, who got the medal of honor, Iwo Jima. I mean, what he did and what he went through, I, I cannot visualize me ever doing that ever having the courage to do what he did and,

Rick Green [00:09:17] He's the one with the flamethrowers, right? 

David Barton [00:09:17] He's the one with the flamethrowers, and man, what he did was just pretty unbelievable, but then I kept finding story after story like that. And so there's 340 medal of honor recipients and, and I can't say winners cause you don't win the medal of Honor. You, you, you earn it because of bravery, courage, et cetera. And 340 in World War Two, and we're going to take maybe a dozen of them and kind of explore their stories, but kind of introduce you to and one of them. I mean, one of these Medal of Honor guys is the guy who actually started the super bowl and you know, who knew that he was a world war two vet and that he is responsible for the superbowl. He started the AFL and got it to merge with the NFL and they got the super bow going between the two and it's just a lot of guys that you go, wow, that's, that's really fun stuff. And so that's what we tried to do is take the side of it that exposes you to what they went through and therefore you learn about the war by seeing the battle through their eyes. And what they did. And so we'll have the Pacific theater, we'll the European theater, we'll we'll will have the submarine stuff, the Navy stuff, the Air Force stuff, the Army stuff. So you get a feel for what it would have been like in any of those areas. And then what it was like even domestically with all the spy rings that we discovered here in America and what was going on domestically that people just don't even know about. It's pretty fascinating. As it turns out, I didn't know this Alaska was attacked by the Japanese and the American government kept that from coming out to keep people from being scared of the East coast was attacked. By the Germans, the Germans actually got off their subs at night and we'd go to Coney Island and ride the rides at Coney island and then go back to their subs and sink American ships during the day. It is crazy stuff that went on. It's crazy. 

Tim Barton [00:11:03] Well, that is you're saying that you have been always intrigued by the stories. I, I do think maybe to, to part of Rick's question, what got you into some of this is obviously as someone who's grown up around Hollywood and movies and stories, uh, you know, going back, there were so many good World War Two stories, so there were already things we kind of knew, but, but I would say really 2014 when the standards came out for the AP that we're showing America in a really negative light, there have been specific things along the way that caused us to go, wait a second, we, we can't let people lie this blatantly about things that are fundamentally not true and I'm going to pose this as a question because I think that's part of what I can see. In the years that I've been working with you where there have been shifts, you know, Rick, as you're kind of saying, we're not changing focus, but we're expanding the focus. We're adding more things into the story that we are telling. But oftentimes we're expanding because we see very, very much the intentionality of those that are anti-American being revealed and certain parts of the American story where. Dad, I would think that's part of where we would say, now wait a second, let's go back, let see, are they being honest? And the more research we did, the more we realized how dishonest at times they were being. But also, like what you've discovered for so much of what you put in this book, not only was there intentional dishonesty, there's also been misrepresentation, maybe not even with great levels of intentionality. Just because the story hasn't been accurately portrayed, but when you go back to the original document, you're going, wait a second, that's not what it says at all. And one of the examples that we love to use is like the death of George Washington as kind of an easy finger pointer, where if somebody looks up how did George Washington die, usually you'll find online it says he died of a throat infection, that they'll give it a name like epiglottitis, that's what he died off. But you go to read the medical journal and you're like, wait second. They BLEED this dude. 

David Barton [00:13:08] I've got to point out we've got the medical journal from the doctors who treated him who wrote the reports published in that journal. And so this is a medical journal, from the guys who treated Washington. Go ahead, Tim. 

Tim Barton [00:13:19] Yeah, it's a medical repository. So it's, a medical report that's printed it's the literally the year after Washington dies. And, but it's only a matter of months, cause Washington dies in December, this is printed the next year. And so it's it's been a matter of months and it has in their, their account of what they did. And again, you read their account and they believe this dude over a third of the blood, almost up to half the blood in his body, they literally are giving him poison. They're dehydrating him. I mean, so many things at the end, they're like, Oh, he died of a throat infection. It's kind of like, if we go back to like 2021, and someone was shot in the face, and they're like, oh, this dude died of COVID. Well, he might've died with COVID, he didn't die of COVID, he died because he got shot in his face. Well, that's George Washington. He might've with a throat infection, he didn't die because of the throat infection. But what we would point out is if we're getting a story this wrong, when there's not a political agenda, there's not a critical motivation behind it to say we would want to misrepresent this for our purposes, if we are getting the stories wrong that don't have an agenda behind them, what do you think is happening when people really are intentional about trying to mis-portray the story? And so there's some of both of those things in what, again, World War Two and what you have done and discovered, some things where people have intentionally been dishonest, but then some things... Where people have just kind of flat out misrepresented or misunderstood what was there. But dad, let me go back now and kind of allow this to be framed more as a question. Is that part of what you see that's led us to expanding some of what we have done and steadied is a response to where we've seen some egregious attacks? Cause again, I know you love the stories, but I didn't see us going some of these directions until we saw some of the blatant lies even sixty nineteen project let us tell more the story of jamestown and let us know more the store the abolition movement we found out so much more of the anti-slavery movement in America that we had before because it was a response to the lies being told by the sixteen nineteen project and again twenty fourteen the lies about a World War Two America being in evil nation etc. Is is that something that you see or is there something else behind it. 

David Barton [00:15:22] No, no question that we got involved in World War II, largely because when the nationwide standards came out for AP testing, David Coleman, who's called the chief architect of Common Core, what a miserable failed philosophy that was for 24 states that used it. They couldn't get out of it fast enough after they'd been in five or six years. He's the guy that redid the AP standards and the AP content, and that's your top history kids in America. And so going through the AP course, which is done solely by the SAT board, that scholastic board that he was over, when we saw what he put about World War II, there was only really four paragraphs about World war II. As much as they're happening in World War Two, how can you out of 162 pages of standards only have four paragraphs? And in one of the paragraphs that mentioned four things, and they were misrepresentations of what we knew to be World War two. And that's when we said whoa, whoa, let's look at this deeper. 

Tim Barton [00:16:22] And specifically now those four things were all the four things that were negative and critical that America had done or participated in. And there was no mention of Hitler, there's no mention of the Holocaust, there is no mention of Pearl Harbor, there was mention of D-Day. There's no mentioned of Eisenhower or Patton or Nimitz or MacArthur or FDR Truman. Like none of the names that you should know, but four of the key things they wanted students to take away were about how America had been bad in World War II, which of course, if you take a course and you cover World War Two and you come out learning that America did a lot of bad things, but not. The other bad guys involved and give some context and comparison. Like that's a crazy take. And yet that's what they did, which led us to get involved. And for those that might know and be concerned and care, the AP has revised their standards a couple of times since the standards now are far better than they were in 2014. They're still not great. They are far better. It's still very anti-American in a lot of ways, but at least it does Acknowledge the bad guys and that America was not the instigator etc etc. So it's way better But that is part of what led us to getting involved and expanding and telling more of these stories. 

Rick Green [00:17:33] Well, as we go to break, uh, just the guy you mentioned, David Herschel, Woody Williams, we had him on the program four years ago, in fact, and he passed away yet less than a year after that, but you remember that we had him on because we saw that article where he went to the swearing in of his great grandson, who was also going into the Marines. I was just looking at the notes and I, I had forgotten that story. 

David Barton [00:17:53]  He was the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from World War II. When he died in 2022, he was the last of the 340 that had received the Medal of Honor. 

Rick Green [00:18:03] What an honor that we got to have him on the program. So cool. And then Tim, just to your point about, you know, the Holocaust and everything else, perfect timing, God's timing, of course, that y'all are having this book come out now when there's all these crazy things going on, you know with people like Candace Owens and others, where they're literally starting to question the Holocaust and just all this crazy stuff. So I just love the fact that yall go back to the facts, go back the history and you bring it forward, but you tell it through these amazing stories. Looking forward to it. Okay, quick break, we've got some questions from our audience. For our final few minutes today on Foundations of Freedom Thursday, so stay with us, you're listening to The WallBuilders Show.  Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show, foundation of Freedom Thursday today. And our next question comes from Senator Daniel Emrick in Montana. He said, currently since the 17th amendment was adopted, all senators are elected in the states. However, the state legislatures or executive are tasked with filling any vacancies. And just to clarify, he's a state senator and he's talking about U S senators are selected in the state, but the state legislatures are the executive are task with filling in vacancies, so I assume he's saying the people elect that U S senator because of the 17 th amendment. But if there's a vacancy, the legislature or the executive depending on the state fills it. And they said, now since it is common for the voters to petition for a recall election for elected officials, could the state legislatures pass legislation to give them the ability to recall U.S. Senators, thus instituting a measure of federalism back into the system by having the senators accountable to the state legislators once more? Would this be within the limitations of the 17th Amendment? So I think guys, just if I can understand you, I think he's basically saying, if they had a recall petition, the legislature could do that and essentially have a reverse of the original constitutional election of US senators through the state legislature. You'd have a way for the state legislator to remove them instead of actually putting them in this place. I think that's what he's saying. What do y'all think? 

David Barton [00:20:58] Yeah, and what happens when you go back to the way the Founding Fathers set up the Senate, the Senate was to represent the states and the House was to represent the people. And that was the 9th and 10th Amendment Corollaries. So with the U.S. Senate back under the Constitution, it was the state legislature that chose the senators from the state. So therefore, the states, the US senators were accountable to the state, not to the voters. The House of Representatives, that's the voter side. And the state legislature side, and this was to protect federalism, so that if you had guys in there that were appointed by the state legislatures, you're gonna make sure the federal government doesn't get over in the state legislative business, and there you have a separation of powers between the feds and the state. So what happened was in 1911, 1912, they came in and said, no, let's elect our guys from the Senate. And there was some corruption. You started having people try to buy their way. We'll finance all these state Senate races if you'll make me the U.S. Senator when you get there. And so there was kind of that corruption, but that's been going on, you know, since forever, as long as people are involved still goes on now, it just doesn't happen through the same mechanisms. And so at that point in time, they came up with the 17th amendment that said, okay, you're going to elect your U.S. Senator is the same way you elect U.S. House of Representatives. It can be the people at large that do it and it'll be across the state. So what happens is if you're Marco Rubio and you're the senator from Florida and Trump says, hey, I need you as secretary of state. You have now left a vacancy in the US Senate. And so the governor now fills that. But what if it went back to the Senate selecting your senators? And so what happens with that when you go back and Senator Emmerich mentioned recall elections. Now recall elections is something that It's interesting but it's only practiced in 20 states. Most states do not know what a recall election is when it comes to senators and others. And for several states you can't have a recall election. For example, if you look at Alaska they can only have a call if there's a mental incompetence or misconduct. It's got to be something big. It can't be displeasure with how they vote or anything else. One of the states actually calls for a trial before you and have a recall. So most of the states don't have any kind of recall mechanism to be able to do anything with it and really getting back to where that you had the states with more power over the federal government would really help. And that would take, you know, there's no need for 400 agencies in the federal government when the states are doing what they're supposed to be doing. So it would definitely downsize the federal government. It's a good idea, but getting it back into the hands would require a constitutional amendment. Which goes back, it's like the prohibition amendment we had and then repealing prohibition. It took a constitutional amendment both times. So to repeal the 17th amendment, you would have to get two thirds of the House, two thirds to the Senate. And what was really tough before and going to the 17 amendment, the sitting senators in the Senate didn't wanna lose the way they were being appointed. They didn't want to give it to the people. They wanted to keep it with the states. And that's why it took really about 40 years to get the 17th amendment passed. Because the senators weren't interested in changing the way they were put there. And so you have the same thing going back. If you said, hey, we don't want you to run statewide on a campaign statewide. We want you just to be chosen out of the state legislature, the Senate choosing you. There's going to be massive opposition of the senators who don't feel like they would be chosen as particularly in states that might be purple. And you've got, you know, a guide, maybe the legislature is Republican and you've gotta US senators, Democrat. There's no way he's going to vote for the, and be the same thing for Republicans in a, in a blue state. There's not way they're going to go for that change. So it would be a really interesting change. It goes back to original intent much more, but it would be really, really, difficult to accomplish. And recall is a great, great look at doing that. That's a way to hold legislators accountable to the people. But most States are not familiar with that process. And even changing that process would be tough since you're talking more than half the States don't even know what recall is. 

Rick Green [00:25:09] Yeah, I mean, I love the creativity and the idea of at least having accountability, right? That's the whole idea is that you can hold those U.S. Senators accountable some way instead of them just doing what they do, which is, you know, I'll promise this and I'll bring this money and I essentially buy votes with our tax dollars whenever they come home and campaign on those things. And you know it'd be nice if the legislature could hold them accountable. So it'd been an interesting way to do it. But you're right, David. I mean, it really would take a constitutional amendment to do it the right way. And, and the difficulty of that, getting that through the Congress itself is, virtually impossible. You can do it with the convention of states, probably. And that's one of the, you know, I, I think I watched the, one of the, one, of the homeschool debate groups did a 17th amendment debate one year. And so all these kids across the country were debating the 17th amendment and whether or not to repeal it. And I think that educated more people and more families than pretty much any discussion I've heard on the 17 th amendment. So that was good, but people do need to understand why the founders set it up the way they did, why the 17th amendment was so bad. Also in 1913 was the 16th amendment and the fed. So really bad year guys. 

David Barton [00:26:12] And by the way, Rick, I didn't explain real clearly, but let me do one comment. Senator asked, couldn't you do a recall from within the state? And since that is changing the process by which you're put there, you really couldn't do that even without a constitutional amendment. So I failed to link his idea with that, but you can't change the way the constitution does it through the state. You have to change the constitution to change what the constitution does. 

Rick Green [00:26:36] Yeah, being in and run around that amendment. Alright, well great questions from everybody send them in to radio@wallbuilders.com. Thanks so much for listening to theWallBuilders Show.