Tim Barton [00:00:07] Welcome to The WallBuilders Show. This is the intersection of faith and culture where we look at today's current topics from a biblical, historic, and constitutional perspective. My name is Tim Barton. I'm the president of WallBuilders. I'm joined by my dad, David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders. And if you've been listening this week, you know that our good friend, Rick Green, who is our co-host is in Hawaii right now. Yesterday, his youngest son was married. Today, he and his wife are enjoying the beach. Now that all their kids are married. And so all they have to do now is fund all their grandkids, but their kids are out of the house, victory lap celebration in Hawaii. And yesterday, Dad, we spent time talking through the, the end of the shutdown in the Senate. We know today the house is going to be voting on at the time that we are recording this. The house has not yet voted. So depending on. What station is playing this program? Or when you listen to it on podcast, there might already be other information that we have not provided yet. We will cover more of that as the week goes on. But also we had notes yesterday. This was totally my bad. I had notes to make sure we talked about Veterans Day. We wanted to appreciate and honor veterans. There were some stories and friends, that we wanted to highlight and. It wasn't until we were done that I realized, oh my goodness, we didn't cover veterans day. So Dad, we need to back up. First of all, thank you to all veterans. But you said you wanted to maybe tell some stories in that respect as well. 

David Barton [00:01:38] You know, it's kind of fun even just getting the history because while we've had military and we've military things going on all the way since the early 1600s, we really didn't do Veterans Day until after we had two World Wars. So it's really 20th century is when that becomes a holiday despite the fact we've had so much military significance and so many serve across our history. And it's significant when you look at the World Wars, Unless you went through something like World War II, and that's a declining population that had been through that, it's hard to really kind of depict how global that war was. I mean, they called World Wars, but in World War I, you literally have more than half the nations of the world fighting each other. And so in World war II, you had, sure, you had the big four Allied Nations and the three big Nazi nations, but essentially two thirds of the World was at war. I mean, even little nationals in San Salvador, they sent 500 soldiers to World War II. That's a bunch of their folk. And so it really was a global war in that sense. And so how we got to what we celebrate as Veterans Day, it took both World Wars literally to do that. If you go back to World War I, which it was so massive that when it was over, they said, this is the war to end all wars. There'll never be a war this big again. And hopefully we'll never have anything like this. And then here came World War II that was even bigger. When they, and there was no, it's a strange thing, but World War I, you didn't have a surrender of the Germans and you didn't have a surrendered of the other side. Everybody just agreed to stop fighting. We've killed enough, let's be done with it. And so it was called an armistice. And so, it was Armistice Day, is when we're all laying down our arms and technically, you could say that the Germans and the others lost in that war because they were about to get crushed when they said let's just call it armistices. Kings X timeout, whatever it used to be for kids. But what happened was on the 11th hour of the 11 day of the 11th month, which was 11 o'clock on November 11th, 1918, no more shots were fired after that. That was the time of the armistice. And so everybody's kind of coming home at that point in time. And one year later on the one year anniversary of the end, or the armistice of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson talked about what had happened a year earlier. And then as time went on and you've had millions of lives lost by the time you get to Calvin Coolidge, little later down the road, Congress said, you know, that was such a big thing that happened back then that that world war, why don't we issue an annual proclamation saying that we should stop on November 11th and, and just remember what happened at that point in time. So that's what they did in 1926. And then In 1938, Congress made it an official holiday, so it was Armistice Day, because at that point we haven't had World War II, clearly, and so it's not Veterans Day. It's just all about World War I at that point. But when we get into World War II and we're now in a war that's bigger than World War I, which nobody thought was possible, during the war, World War II, veterans said, hey, why don't we expand Armistice Day to honor everybody who's fought? All the veterans, whether they're alive or whether they are dead, because Memorial Day really is just honoring those in the military who have given their lives. But Veterans Day was, let's include those, but anybody who has worn the uniform at any point in time, let us honor that. So he actually took a bunch of folks to General Dwight Eisenhower and he said, hey, why don't we work on making this into National Veterans Day? And so he individually started leading celebrations a couple of years after the war, and they kind of picked up steam. And so as it started picking up steam, when Dwight Eisenhower becomes president, he actually signs a bill that says, hey, let's make Armistice Day into Veterans Day. And so, he signed that bill, and it became Veterans Day, and that's what we have now. So that's kind of how we got here and that's what Veterans Day is. And we've had so many tens of millions of Americans serve at some point. And so that's, what we do on Veterans Day, is look back to every war, every generation, every person who served. That's, that's who we honor on Veterans Day. 

Tim Barton [00:06:05] Well, one of the things we've done over the last couple of decades on this program is we've actually interviewed a lot of veterans along the way. For anybody interested in those, you can go to wallbuilders.show and look for some of those old programs. We actually had some CDs back in the day. We compiled some of those from the different branches of government. I know those are gone now. At some point, we'll probably put those in some kind of MP3, make them easier for people to find and download if you want to get those stories, we had lots of stories from guys from World War II. Really World War II up to present, all kinds of veterans, some of our very good friends, some incredible stories. And Dad, I know we can get into some of the veterans stories, but, but also, I went to Walmart, earlier this week, I have two girls, a six year old and a four year old. And I went into Walmart and I was going to buy them, like some coloring books and I realized that Walmart was totally out of crayons. And then I realized, Oh, it's cause the Marines bought them all for their celebration on Monday. They were hungry, and so, I am kidding, kind of, a little bit, a little bit. But on Monday was the 250th anniversary of the Marines. 

David Barton [00:07:16] Now I got to intervene. If you don't know anybody in the Marines, anybody in the army knows that that is an army insult for Marines. So the crayons that that's, but the Marines have there's coming back at the army. So Tim's got army brothers in the military. 

Tim Barton [00:07:30] I have a lot of marine friends and so, you know, whether I had brothers in the army or not, I'm picking on my marine friends, the, the crayon eaters, right? They, they were the ones who were really good door kickers. They're, they're going to charge into battle, but they, they were not always the sharpest knife  in the drawer by their own acknowledgement and admission. That's not, that's not just, no, that not just me! That my Marine friends, they gladly embrace and wear that. They're awesome. And not to, I mean, really, we can't go too far down this because, you do have a vice president, JD Vance, who was also Marine and he graduated Yale. Like he's, he's kind of a big deal. But not to digress, we also neglected on Monday to say happy birthday to the Marines. So happy birthday, to the marines and happy Veterans Day. Dad, I was also thinking some of the stories that we have told and actually we have many that we've written coming up in the new book, which at this point we're probably releasing it next year just because it we wouldn't be able to get it out for Christmas so we'll just probably release it next spring on World War II. And we get into telling some of the stories of some of these incredible heroes and it kind of got me thinking  Knowing again, this week you have the Marine's birthday. And by the way, again, many of our good friends, friends of the program are Marines and so we appreciate all of them, but Marine's Birthday, it's Veterans Day, so a lot of fun military, acknowledgement, celebrations, memories this week. And it made me wonder Dad, who is historically one of your favorite Marines, cause I have, I have some thoughts. But I know you have spent more time researching and studying many of these individuals than I have, so who is one of your favorite Marines? 

David Barton [00:09:24] Even before that, let me back up for just a minute and kind of go back to the Marines themselves because they really were kind of the first branch formed officially. And so just for background, just in case folks don't know it, I mean, back in November of 1775, now remember Lexington and Concord, we call them battles, they were kind of skirmishes. They happened in April of 1775 and we really, we don't have anything together at that point. That's why it was churches and pastors going out to kind of hold off the British and keep them from taking the town and taking stuff from the town and keeping arms and supplies. And so after that, Congress says, hey, maybe we need to get something a little more official here. So they start trying to create a military. And so it was back at that point, it was on the 10th of November of 1775. The Congress established the Marines. So here we are. Just one day before Veterans Day was the 250th birthday of the Marines. And it's really interesting because it was not a big group when it was formed. It just, it was two battalions. They said, let's kind of try this. And you know, we associate the Marines with the Navy. They're, they're kind of the fighters, the soldiers for the Navy, but it was literally, it, was nearly eight years later before we established the Navy. So we had the Marines... And we had battalions and marines out there before we ever came up with the Navy, which is kind of a fun part of the history. But if you go back to the marines, just two small battalions, and they started recruiting in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, and so that's kind of considered the home. And when the war ended in 1783, so this is 1775, the war is over in 17 83, That's kind of when when they really got connected so closely with the organized Navy itself. But prior to that, we didn't really have a Navy. We had privateers. And so these were just soldiers who would be on ships or with ships or wherever they could. And so they literally were kind of like army guys that that were at sea is what it amounted to. And so it's, it's just interesting to see how they came about and how they got founded. And, you know, Tim, you mentioned that we've got this book that'll be coming out next year. I was really intrigued as I was going through to see that in Europe and in World War II, people may know that there were two theaters. There was a complete World War going in Europe and there was a completely World War going in the Pacific. So America literally was in two World Wars at the same time, massive fights on both sides. And so we had to fight on two fronts. We had commanders in chief over each front and nearly all the battles in the Pacific were fought not by the army, but by the Marines. I mean, the Marines were really the guys who came on the beaches, they landed, they looked just like the army coming to shore D-Day at Normandy. And so in Europe, it's the army that's doing the fighting. There's some Marines, but it's primarily the army. But in the Pacific battle, it's nearly all Marines until really the last battle, Guadalcanal. And that's because the war was over in Europe. And now with the war winding down in Europe we start sending soldiers Army guys over into the Pacific and so as you get to that last major battle is Kind of the first time that the army really shows up in great numbers And and so I I had not really thought about the fact that all those war movies I see in the Pacific It's not the it's not your army. It's the Marines. I mean there there are the guys that are there acting like the army 

Tim Barton [00:13:09] Well, in so many of the famous John Wayne movies from World War II or depicting World War II, he's actually a Marine, right? The sands of Iwo Jima, the flying Leathernecks. You can go through a list of them. And he is depicting a lot of those things going on. Now, not to digress, we need to take a break. We're going to come back from the break. We do want to tell a couple of stories. I do want go back to maybe who is one of your favorite Marines, cause I know we tell a couple of those stories. And I'm curious where you're going land. I have some thoughts and suggestions as well. And Certainly we want to talk a little bit about what's going to happen in Congress with the vote in the House, what it might look like, and what's gonna happen maybe this week in funding going forward. So we will come back to all of that in just a moment. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Tim Barton [00:14:59] Welcome back to the WallBuildesr show. This is Tim Barton, the president of WallBuilders. Join with my dad. We've been talking about some of the noted Marines at military history as this week we are remembering our veterans. We're so grateful. Everybody listening, whether you are active duty veteran family that was part of the military, we're, we were so grateful for the people that very similar to the founding fathers, when they pledge their lives, fortune, sacred honors, we know our military does that on a constant basis. We are so grateful for our military family extended all those people serving around the world. We're so grateful for you. And of course, this week is also the 250th anniversary of the Marines as if they needed one more reason to be obnoxious, but at least, you know, this we have somewhat of a justification for it. And so, before we get into maybe, Mike Johnson and what's going to happen in the house later today. And again, we're at the time we're doing this program it's early morning. And so there's not been any votes in the House yet, depending on when you listen to this. They might've already voted and then we'll come back and talk about that tomorrow. But as of now, this is the morning. They have not had any votes yet. And so what we expect might happen. What, what we might see from that. But Dad, as, as we were going to break, I was asking about maybe who, when you look back at the Marines in general, And at this point, there's 250 years of marine history, but we do have a book you've been working on. I've been just reading and doing some edits on, very minimal on my side. You have done pretty much all of this. We have an incredible team at Wall Builders helping with them in the midst of this as well. But there are a lot of noted marines in World War II. And certainly, we could not even include them all in the book. There's too many of them. So, who are some of the Marines that you look at and just think, man, incredible stories, people should know these stories. And maybe what is one of your favorite stories or who is one your favorite Marines? 

David Barton [00:17:00] Man, that is, all right. That is hard. I don't know that I can pick one. It just, in doing the book, there's just so many and we really told the story of a number of Medal of Honor winners, but I mean, there's the Marines on the air side, there's Joe Fossus who was the ace of ace in World War II. There's the Desmond Doss, you know, conscientious objector or who now did what he did? 

Tim Barton [00:17:29] Let me pause for a second because if you join the Marines, you're not a conscience objector Desmond Doss was in the army. 

David Barton [00:17:36] All right. Oh, you were right. You're right. That was part of that late arrival. Good call!

Tim Barton [00:17:40] Because every marine is like no, bro We know we're signing up for right. We want to get on the front lines and do some work. I actually was thinking about this because Desmond Doss, obviously, amazing story. Hollywood did a pretty decent job with that movie that came out many years ago, because also I thought about other noted Hollywood movie stories that highlight some incredible heroes. And so you have like a Sergeant York, but he also was Army. There have not been as many noted heroic stories told that I can remember from Hollywood of the Marines, other than obviously like some of the John Wayne movies or some that kind of cover Marines in general, but not as many of the heroic individuals independently. Anyway, not to digress, let's come back. You are mentioning some of these really noted stories or people that should be known more well recognized. 

David Barton [00:18:38] There's two that kind of jump at me, one is Woody Williams, Herschel Williams. He was on Iwo Jima and Iwo Jima, man, was that a brutal bloodbath. It was largely because of Iwo Jima that we became willing to use the atomic bomb because the way they fought at Iwo Jima, the way their casualties were multiple times higher than what we're predicted. The Japanese just absolutely refused to surrender under any conditions. They, they go down killing as they die. At that point, it was so bloody and it's hard to understand. And by the way, you mentioned the John Wayne movie Sands of Iwo Jima. I just happened to see that come on again, like a week ago. And so I just watched it. I hadn't seen it in a long time nominated for four Academy Awards. It was done shortly after World War II. So there's so much is still in people's minds at that point. Having been through the war. But it's on Iwo Jima where they raised the the famous flag raising that you see the the Marine Corps Memorial of those Marines raising the flags and the six guys that raised that flag at Iwo Jima three of them were killed before the battle was over and so there were only three of the six flag leg raisers left alive. But in the movie with John Wayne when it shows them raising the flag at Iwo Jima they they actually had those three guys raise the flag so the guys that rose the raise the flag in the battle are the guys racing the movie, which was just awesome. 

Tim Barton [00:20:05] The ones who had survived, which is also really cool. Some of what, was it John Ford? What was the director's name who did a lot of some, Henry Ford? What was that guy's name? John Ford. 

David Barton [00:20:14] It was John Ford, he was in the military, yep. 

Tim Barton [00:20:16] So John Ford used oftentimes many veterans in some of those movies, and certainly that was something that to try to keep a level of historic accuracy. They also had a lot of advisors for some of these World War II movies, but I do remember John Ford. I don't know why I thought Henry Ford other than, I don't know, Model T. I don't know what I was thinking, but John Ford, really incredible director and obviously did a lot of noted John Waynes along the way. But Dad, to this point, you have not mentioned one of the guys that I know you know, that I think is one of the coolest stories who is left out that you haven't mentioned yet. 

David Barton [00:20:57] So back to this thing with Iwo Jima, during the movie, what I was struck with was how much actual Iwo Jima footage they used. They would cut back and forth in the movie between the actors and the scenes to actual war footage. And one of the things that was very vivid there was the use of flamethrowers. And they had a lot of footage of flamethrowers, and they're showing the actual footage, not the movie footage. They're showing actual footage. In Iwo Jima 92% of the American flamethrowers were killed. Because the Japanese that that flamethrower would chase them out of the caves and so they've targeted those guys. Well, Woody Herschel or Woody Williams Herschell. Woody Williams is a guy that survived that he was a flamethrower there became a Christian afterwards, he was a great guy. I think he he's one that goes really high, but maybe John Bachelon is the guy. 

Tim Barton [00:21:44] That's the one I was thinking of. 

David Barton [00:21:44] I mean he and a group of 50 he had I think 16 or 18 guys in his unit. He's the gunnery sergeant in charge of them. They stood off 2000 Japanese and at the end of the battle, he's down to three guys left and no Japanese left. So to take 16, 18 guys against 2000 and eliminate all of them. And by the way, that's the Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, those are the two battles that were so bloody and fierce. That's why we were willing to use the atomic bomb because we were just tired of losing Americans at that level and at that kind of Japanese willingness to kill themselves. That's probably the two I would choose is Woody Williams and John Basilone, those two. 

Tim Barton [00:22:27] Well, and we didn't get into Joe Foss. I mean, there's so many other guys. And this is World War II because we expanded it beyond World War II again, you know, so many noted people. And we've had the honor over the years of interviewing some of these incredible heroes. In fact, some World War Two veterans, Marines, veterans of World War two, so we've been so honored and blessed over the years to be able to have some of these conversations. 

David Barton [00:22:53] We actually interviewed Woody Williams, Herschel Williams, was one of the guys we got to talk to before his death, and it was quite amazing. 

Tim Barton [00:22:59] Yeah. So I highly encourage everybody, as much as we encourage people to go learn stories and study the history. You know, this week, you might look up and look for some fun military stories, learn some of the, the price of sacrifice that has been paid, the commitment, the dedication,  just incredible. And obviously if we see the military around us, thank them, but Dad, I do before we, we finished the program. I'm trying to go down the list of things that we should be talking about. And we haven't gotten to some of the things from the Supreme Court.  I mean, there's a lot going on this week that is worthy of discussion, but certainly if the house then votes to say, hey, let's get this funding done. It's going to go come back to the Senate in the midst of this. It's going allow the government to reopen for a, a smaller amount of time, they're going to have to still have some of these fights and there's going be more votes. We talked yesterday about the, affordable care act, Obamacare. They're going to have that vote in December. And I actually am fully supportive of this being independent so that we can have a more honest conversation about what's going on and what's happening. What are you maybe expecting in the house later today? Do you think it's going to be a close vote? Do you think Mike Johnson has everybody lying? I mean, they've had 40 something days to prep for this moment, right? So you would think... Like, hey, we're ready to go. Are Democrats gonna try games and shenanigans? Is there gonna be some kind of house filibuster? What do you think's gonna happen? 

David Barton [00:24:30] I think that it'll probably go okay, simply because we've not heard any discussions of Trump having to make calls to Republicans. And that has happened the other times when they were, and remember, the Republicans only have a couple vote margin here. So they've got to all stay together. And it does not seem that anyone has decided to change their position on things because we're not hearing about calls from the White House. So I think it may be smooth. I didn't think that when we first heard from Mark Wayne Mullen, they were gonna move this over to the House side. I thought at that point in time, it might be really difficult. And the way they've broken the 12 bills out with three in a batch and the nine individual ones they'll have to deal with, there's still a lot of stuff that could happen. And this only, you know, for the other nine, it's not necessarily extended because they're gonna have to start again in January on all this stuff another time. And so it's coming right back at them. So I think they're tired of the 40 days or, you know, 43 days now, a 44, whatever it is. I think, they're to that. I think that they want to move on because it's all going to start again in just a few weeks, probably, unless they can carry this through longer than they think they can. 

Tim Barton [00:25:38] Yeah, it would not surprise me to see some Democrats posturing grandstanding to making a scene to giving some kind of speech, mostly so they can, you know, have their social media moment. They can look good for their constituents, but I tend to agree with you that, you know, the fact they've had this long get ready, that there really shouldn't be many surprises on the house side. And the fact that we haven't heard any rumblings from, for many of our friends or from the news in general, it does seem to indicate that this. Ought to move pretty quickly today but this certainly is something that we can all be praying for today uh that man god help these guys get get their work done and help the American government get back to running and actually maybe even better and correct some things going on. Lots of things we should pray for so keep praying for this government. Tomorrow we are doing Foundations of Freedom Thursday, Rick Green hopefully be back with us. And we will navigate and answer any questions you have and obviously for any more you can go to the WallBuilders Program- WallBuilders.show you can go to that backlog get more stuff. But that is all for today. We will talk to you tomorrow.