Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. We're taking your questions, send them to radio@wallbuilders.com. That's radio@wallbuilders.com. Foundations Of Freedom Thursday is our chance to dive into those foundational questions about the Constitution, the Declaration, the history, Founding Fathers. Of course, it'd be in the 250th great year to talk about those things. So be sure and send us your questions. Radio@wallbuildiers.com I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. You can find out more at our website wallbuilders.com and if you need to catch up on any radio programs you missed over the last few days or weeks, you can get those at wallbuilders.show or on any of the podcast apps. All right, David or Tim, we got quite a few questions here. First one's in from Paul, and it is a constitutional question. He said, I read Article VII of the Constitution. I'm trying to find where it's dated back to the Declaration. I am not sure if I understand this point. Thank you. So I think he might be, I think we talk about this in Constitution Alive, David, where we basically talk about how you tie the Declaration and the Constitution together. And of course we have talked about JQA's quote about, you know, the Declaration being the foundation you build the house of the Constitution on, but there's also this attestation clause in Article VII I think he's talking about. 

David Barton [00:01:19] Yeah, and it really does go back to the fact that when you try to separate the Declaration of the Constitution the Constitution doesn't work Well three great examples on that will go back into the slavery era when slavery was going on the anti-slavery people said wait a minute the Constitution is based on the Declaration, the Declaration says all men are created equal they're endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights including liberty. And at that point in time particularly 1830s and 40s, Democrats in Congress after Andrew Jackson said, wait a minute, we didn't take an oath to uphold the Declaration, we took an oath to uphold the Constitution, and the Constitution doesn't say anything about that. We saw the same repeat of that with the life debates in the 1960s and 70s, when pro-live people said, Wait a minute the Declaration says there's inalienable right to life, and Democrats said, well, we didn't taking an oath or uphold the Declaration, it's the Constitution. It doesn't anything about life. And then we saw it even in 20 years ago with same-sex marriage before Bergerfeld and the 10s, there are 2010s where it said wait a minute, the Declaration says the laws of nature and nature's God, that's really clear that you have opposite gender marriage not same gender marriage. And again it was don't don't quote the Declaration to us it's just the Constitution so if you take the Declaration away from the Constitution, the Constitution can essentially be made to do anything there has to be a value system on to space. And so that was part of it, and then there's reasons for that, and we'll read Article VII here in a minute. 

Tim Barton [00:02:48] Hey, and let's clarify too, when you say, just for people that might not have connected all the dots, when the laws of nature, nature's God, so that's very clear, then that marriage is a man and woman. Well, it's very clearly because the laws and nature are what's revealed in creation. There's only two genders, and those are the ones that get together, and the laws of nature's God is what's been revealed in the Word of God, the Bible, which tells us that it was male and female, man and women He put together. And so when, when you're saying laws of nature and nature's God, the Founding Fathers believe in that dual revelation. I, these are things that William Blackstone, who did Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, he explained in great detail. So that was part of the common law. And so those are things built in when they are explaining the political philosophy, where they are coming from in the Declaration. Literally the first paragraph, they talk about the laws of nature and nature's God. That's the foundation that they're building on, even as they get into the fact that there's a Creator and we have inalienable rights from that Creator and that government exists to protect those rights, those come after they've already acknowledged there's the law of nature and nature's God. So when you're saying that we, we have these values outlined in the Declaration that would include traditional marriage or kind of the boundaries on sexuality, those are things that are outlined in the laws of nature and nature's God specifically. 

David Barton [00:04:13] And so when you reject the Declaration this is where people say oh it's a secular Constitution. No, it's not. It's only secular if you ignore the foundation of it. And so you know Rick you mentioned John Quincy Adams said those two can't be separated. It is 2 Corinthians 3 where one's the spirit of the law, one's a letter of the law. John Dickinson signer of the Constitution says the same thing. You can't separate the spirit of the law from the letter of law and the Declaration is the spirit and the Constitution's the letter. 

Tim Barton [00:04:42] Well, and Dad, I think it's fair to, and there are people that look at the Constitution, they're like, I don't see religious content in there. Well, you, for sure. You could say, okay, right ,if you read the manual for a Humvee or a Bradley tank or something else, it, it's going to tell you how it functions, but it's not going to tell you the main purpose of it. But if you go do a little research on why do we have Humvees in the military, why do have tanks in the the military? And I'm using these examples, you can pick things. The owner's manual or the operation manual doesn't always tell you the why it exists, it tells you how it functions. But the why is functions the way it does, this is where it was built on a moral foundation. This is why the founding father said that it only works with a moral and religious people. That super famous letter from John Adams. And I'm saying super famous in our conversations, especially we point this a lot in one of his most famous lines comes in that very short letter to the militia of Massachusetts where he says that our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It's wholly inadequate to the government of any other. The Constitution doesn't make you moral and religious, but if you're not moral and religious the Constitution does not work. So when people argue, well, the Constitution doesn't really have religion in it. Not explicitly, but again, it's like the operation manual for a vehicle is not going to tell you the why of the vehicle. It tells you how it functions, but oftentimes there is a very specific why for what they did and how they did it. And that's what the Declaration was. The Declaration laid out the value system and all of this is what you've been saying. The Declaration lays out the values system. So the Constitution, I can understand the argument where people go, I read it and I don't see religious content there, well sure. But the guys who created it actually explain what they did. They often wrote about even where they got those ideas from. And you can go back to the founding document that it's built on. And I think this is part of where you're leading into with the Attestation Clause or done in the year of our Independence, et cetera. 

David Barton [00:06:56] And that is where it's leading, this article said, and by the way, one other thing I'll add to that, Tim, that you mentioned or we're talking about is that in trying to get the two documents back together, after those examples, like with slavery, they said, hey, the Constitution doesn't say anything about the right to liberty, it's significant that after the Civil War, Congress started imposing the requirement that to be a state coming in, and we're taking, you know, the western states, the Utah's and the Colorado's, et cetera, their Enabling Act, which is the legal authorization to become part of the United States, required that they had to uphold both the Declaration and the Constitution. It's like they said, hey we're tired of you separating those two documents, we're now going to tell you you've got to uphold both of them. That's the way it was supposed to be and for some weird reason you guys have rejected one and so that that's part of it. Now Article VII, here's what it says and so having covered what we all covered and talking about the way these two connect, here's what Article VII says, now remember the Constitution Convention 1787, they write the Constitution 1787. It's ratified in 1788 and it goes into effect in 1789. Washington's President, we have Congress and Senate. Here's what Article VII says, "it's the very last clause of the Constitution, it says, quote, done in convention by the unanimous consent of the state's president the 17th September in the year of our Lord 1787 and of the independence of the United States of America, the 12th, that is the 12 year, in witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names." So what happens is that they didn't just say we did this in 1787, they said we did in 1787, which is the twelfth year of our independence. Now, here's the deal. What does independence refer to? Because the war started in 1775, not 1776. The War, we didn't get our independence, so 1781, when Cornwallis laid down his arms and it was official in 1783, the only thing that happened 12 years earlier was writing the Declaration of Independence. That's what happened in 1776. And so they date it back to the Declaration. We've done this in 1787, which means this is the 12th year since we did the Declaration, so the Constitution actually takes itself back to that date. Not to the start of the War, not to end of the War, not the official treaty that gave us independence. It takes us back to the Declaration and that's what's in Article VII of the Constitution. 

Rick Green [00:09:25] Well it's a great question and it helps to tie it all together. That's really why we do these Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs. I really appreciate the question and good history as well there. All right, so next one comes from Todd. He said, if current leadership has indicated that if the congressional Democrats return to power in the midterms, they will enact the removal of the 60 vote threshold to override a filibuster, why should the current Senate majority not do that now and enact common sense fraud prevention policy such as voter ID, that could prevent the reversal of power? Seems like a lot at stake not to act while the opportunity is still available. Well guys, I think we have another listener with a problem of common sense and actually using their brain. So we just have to dismiss the question out of, too unusual these days. But before I toss it to you, David, I gotta say, man, one of the things that I think causes people to respect the program and respect WallBuilders is the intellectual consistency. You have been so consistent on this which caused me to be consistent on it but you were the one that taught me this and you have always been against this minority rule that is allowed to happen as a result of the filibuster. And it didn't matter I mean it could be a 50-50 Senate It could be you know, no matter what the breakdown was Democrat or Republican in control You've remained consistent on what the actual principles of what the Founding Fathers believed were and why this is so bad. So anyway, I just want to set up your answer that way before, I don't know where you're going with your answer but I just want to applaud you for setting the tone on this for 30 years now being consistently consistent on it. 

David Barton [00:10:58] Well, first off, the reason that you can't get the Republicans to do it is the Senate is not nearly as conservative as the House is. And so, they don't want to lose power and they don t want to put themselves in having to vote for a bunch of hard issues that would make it tough on them in elections. And so the Senate likes to take the middle of the road and they have a lot more bipartisanship over there even though their philosophies are opposite, they still cooperate in a lot things. And that's not to throw the Senate under the bus. That's just to say that most Senate members, if they were in the House, would have moderate to liberal voting records. And that it's just very different from what you have in the house. So what happens is they say, hey, you know, there may come a time when we'll be in the minority and we wouldn't want the Democrats to run over us. But it also keeps them, and I've talked to several of them, and it keeps them from taking hard votes. Once I've talk to a conservative, and why can't you get this done? And hey, there's a lot of Republicans that don't want to go on the record with really hard votes, so if we just have the 60 vote threshold, then there's a lot of stuff we don't have to do, and that makes it easier for reelection. So, part of it is that. However, there's another part where Republicans said, look, if we were to cram all this down the Democrats' throats, the chances of us retaining the House in this midterm is like one to 50. So unquestionably, the Democrats would come back in in the next term and cram it down our throat. And that's not good for America if the Democrats are unimpeded. They have the House, they have the Senate, and they cram it down our throats. That puts everything that Trump's doing at a loss. And so that's the other thing that they're talking about is we don't want to do it now because we don't think we can keep the House. Now, having said that ... I just got out of a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson and with Majority Leader John Thune. And Mike Johnson is very strongly optimistic, and I'm gonna say if he were laying a bet, he would lay the bet on the fact that we're going to retain the House. He thinks this will be the third time in 90 years that the party in power retains the House, John Thunes thinks the same thing as well. So, they're the guys that have the numbers and do the polling and the polling now is better than it was 10 years ago. But also, I was doing an account just the other night, looking at Alabama and all these states are coming on board and right now, except for California, all the other states are creating Republican districts. And if you take California out of the mix, it looks like Republicans can gain from eight to 10 states just on redistricting. Now having struck down Virginia's law, California kind of canceled out Texas. But then you've got things like Tennessee adding a Republican seat. You've got Alabama looking to add a Republican's seat. You've Indiana that looks like they're gonna do the same. You had four Republican seats just added down in Florida, assuming the elections go as the way the numbers would suggest. And so that's a picking up of eight to ten, which that could very easily be the difference in this election. And so Trump, all the Republican leadership, House and Senate very bluntly believe that they can retain the power. And if that happens, they can institutionalize what has happened. And Gavin Newsom is the next Democrat possibility for president. They don't think that's going to go over with America well, so they think they could get another president, whether it be Marco or Vance or whoever it is. So they're very optimistic about this. But back to the original question, there's just not nearly as much courage in the Senate as there is in the House, not as many conservative folks over there, and they just simply don't want to do it. They give the excuse that we don't want it to be done to us like we do to others. 

Tim Barton [00:14:47] Well, one of the things I think is worth noting as optimistic as Mike Johnson and John Thune are there's obviously a long way to go before the election. There's a lot of things in play, but one of things that I feel strongly about, and I'm in my forties, but I feel like people in their thirties and forties, this is resonates true, if you don't pass the SAVE act, there is going to be a lot of discouragement, a lot frustration. And you're going to have a hard time getting people to show up to the polls and there are still a very strong anti Donald Trump contingent. And levels of irony, if you don't pass a SAVE act, then there are some states where you suspect there will be great amounts of fraud. Whereas if you pass the save act some of that fraud might be minimized, which actually strengthens your chance, not just of encouraging voter turnout from the Republican side but minimizing potential fraud from the other side so, in my mind as much as they are creating some opportunities and there is a add a bigger gap chance now for Republicans to pick up seats and a lot of these states. If leadership doesn't give them, give the people something to motivate them and excite them to go to the polls it's still in my mind going to be a challenge. Now I, I absolutely think that there is a great chance and likelihood that we do win the midterm. I'm just recognizing that they got to start doing something that can give the American people something cheer for more so than just what President Trump is doing. Cause President Trump is doing a lot of stuff strategically, a lot of executive orders, there's a lot of great stuff happening from the White House and some of his top guys. But Mike Johnson's gotten several things to the House at this point. We're just waiting on the Senate to finally get something done. And to me, that's going to be a pretty significant piece of the puzzle as to what happens in the midterm elections. 

Rick Green [00:16:53] Well, it's really encouraging even to hear that. And just thinking about the redistricting things that have fallen into place in just the last few days and weeks, the Supreme Court decisions, both at the U.S. Supreme Court and of course Virginia's Supreme Court, the shocking one. Well, not shocking, everybody that followed that at all and had any hope for the rule of law to be upheld really believed that the Supreme Court would have to find that way. I do have to ask y'all before we go to break, are you surprised that the Democrats are actually talking about firing their own Supreme Court in Virginia just because they upheld the rule of law in that Virginia Constitution? I mean, how far do they go with the power grab to literally annihilate the rule of law? 

Tim Barton [00:17:34] Well, it's not surprising to me, although I appreciate the softball of a question. And Dad, I know you have thoughts on this too. It's not surprisingly when they're talking about adding as many justices on the US Supreme Court as they need to. 

Rick Green [00:17:45] Well, that's true. 

Tim Barton [00:17:46] To be able to get their stuff done. So, so they are, they are revealing the cards in their hand right now, right? If you're playing cards at a table and they're literally showing you the cards in their hands saying, look, if we get power, we will do whatever we need to do to make sure we never lose power again. So we will stack the courts as hard as we need too. And there are levels of irony. When you look at, for example, as you mentioned, Rick, the Virginia state Supreme Court that struck down this crazy map, because a lower court judge already told them like, you can't do this. You literally are violating state law for what you're trying to do. The Supreme Court of Virginia, their state Supreme Court upheld it. Well, their State Supreme Court is not made up of a bunch of Christian conservatives. And so, the idea that they would look at, at Democrats who believe they should uphold what the actual state constitution, what their actual state laws said, and because they did that, they need to be removed and put people in that will just support whatever their whims and will and wishes is, regardless of what the law says. That shows how dangerous the ideology of the left really is that they're not, they're not fighting for the rule of law. They're fighting to win in spite of the law. And ultimately remove the law. When, when people accuse president Trump of being a fascist or communist or whatever else, this is what fascists do, that they get in power and they remove laws arbitrarily, they stack the courts to make sure that nobody can oppose them that is what the dictators do, not what president Trump is doing. So no, I'm not surprised, Rick, that they're doing this. But it should be very revealing of how dangerous this ideology actually is. 

David Barton [00:19:31] You know, the thing that struck me about this whole fiasco with the court, and by the way, on the Supreme Court of Virginia, you had justices that were appointed both by Democrats and by Republicans. And the decision had both Democrat appointed and Republican appointed that ruled that this was an unconstitutional map. So what I have noticed in the last six months is, and I'm not sure this helps, But what we have now with Democrats is a very clear example of what democracy looks like, and what we have with Republicans is very clear examples of what a Republican, a constitutional republic looks like. So Democrats, majority wins everything all the time, there's no laws except that we make right now, and it is a pure, as Benjamin Rush said, as John Adams talked about, a democracy is a mobocracy. And you've got a mob mentality. Their passions are stirred. And in a Constitutional Republic, everything takes a while so that those passions cool down and you actually use your brain. Now, that's assuming Democrats have a brain, and I'm not sure that that's in there either. I guess maybe we could do some x-rays and see, but they don't act like they have a brain and they are so passion-motivated, so hate-oriented. And so right now, we're going to do it and fix it and retaliate and get you. And this is the best example of why we are not a democracy. And why I have objected and will continue to object to the use of the word democracy with America. It's not the American democracy. It's the American Constitutional Republic. And this is why the Founding Fathers, they hated democracy more than they hated dictatorships, more than the hated totalitarian, more than hated monarchies. They said that democracy was the worst of all forms of government. And what we're seeing right now with this kind of reaction is exactly why they gave us the Constitutional Republic. So that people couldn't run over other groups just because they didn't like what was there. 

Rick Green [00:21:30] Yeah, we're watching mobocracy as the Founders refer to it. Quick break, guys. Of course we're gonna break late today. Sorry about that. We'll be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:22:45] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us today. Final question of the day comes from Dwight. He said, guys, on multiple occasions, David has mentioned how judges can be removed for quote, bad behavior. Why aren't we seeing this? Judge Boasberg comes to mind. What does it take to remove one of these judges? Thanks for your show. It's my favorite podcast. Dwight, thank you very much for that! Share it with your friends and family. All right, guys. What about removing judges for bad behavior? 

David Barton [00:23:09] We've covered this before, but there's no subject covered more often in the Constitution than that of impeachment, the removal of a judge or removal of an elected official, particularly appointed officials, but six times. Nothing's covered in the Constitution six times, impeachment is. And so, this has been used a number of times to remove judges. It's a difficult process. It takes a majority of the House saying, hey, we want this guy gone and here's why. And then the Senate sits as a jury and two-thirds of the Senate has to say, yeah, we want this guy off the court. It's very hard to get two-thirds of the Senate to agree on anything. So, there have been 90-some-odd different impeachment proceedings. There's not been that many impeachments, dozen or so impeachments. It doesn't happen that often. But Boasberg is a guy that I have looked at for a long time and said, this dude is one that needs to be impeached. And what he's done, I mean, he's been knocked down by Democrat and Republican elected officials and Presidents. I'll just go back for a while but particularly, he has shown himself to be a partisan hack. When Trump was in the first time, he protected Clinton over the questionable emails and all the security stuff there. He wouldn't let that happen for her, but he would do stuff against Trump. He blocked all of Trump's expansion of work requirements for Medicaid recipients. So, the stuff Trump was trying to do, he said you can't do. When he was trying to do stuff that would hurt a Democrat, he said, you can do that. Then more recently under Biden, He's the guy who approved the tapping of 10 U.S. Senators and one House member Republican phone. So, he said it's okay for those Republicans to have their phones tapped. Unbelievable that you would do that with all the constitutional protection, given the members of Congress, even above citizens. And then under Trump this time, the Alien Enemies Act. When Trump used that, which was enacted by John Adams, he said, you can't do that. You can't send Trin de Aragua, gang members, terrorists out of the United States. You have to keep them here in the United States. Trump sent them out anyway. Then he held Trump in contempt and started trying to prosecute Trump himself. The U.S. Court of Appeal for D.C. overturned him and said that he was engaging in a clear abuse of discretion. And he turned back around and went after Trump even after the Court of Appeals knocked him down. Trump's trying to clean up the Federal Reserve. He's protecting the Federal Reserve. I mean this guy has gone item after item is a partisan hack and even the other judges point that out but try to get a Democrat to get rid of a judge that's punishing Trump and that's helping them and that is going to be a really hard thing to do. So Boasberg would be a great example of that if you could get it done. He's the judge that I think may be the worst in the federal system at this time, but you're not going to get two-thirds of the Senate to go along with it. And the House recognizes that it's a waste of time. So it's kind of a loss politically, and it's not possible politically, although I think he should be impeached. 

Rick Green [00:26:09] Yeah, it's a tough call because, yeah, just impeaching him, even if you don't get the conviction, at least sends a signal, right? And then at the same time, they got to decide political capital and all those things. So, you know, we've got good leadership over there. And I respect Mike Johnson a lot. I think the strategy is usually on. So, yeah. I'd love to see more of these impeachments, but I'm sure they have, you know, they've calculated all those thing you just mentioned for sure. Hey, great show today, guys. Appreciate y'all answering those questions. We can get more of those next Thursday. If you send them into radio@wallbuilders.com and don't miss tomorrow. We've got some good news coming your way on our Good News Friday program. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.