Foundations Of Freedom Thursday Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:07

It's Thursday, which means it's Foundations of Freedom Thursday here on the Wall Builder Show. Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. We're taking on hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. And on Thursdays, we let you pick the topic. But you got to send in an email. You do that at radio at wallboulders.com, radio at wallbuilders.com. And you can pick whatever topic you like. It can be a question about some of the things going on in our government right now. It could be something around the world. A lot of people ask about constitutional application to some of the things that are happening, or maybe the meaning of a phrase in the Constitution. So whatever's on your mind, send that into radio at wallboulders.com. We'll get to as many of those as we can today. I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And first up, guys, is Tim.

A Claim About The Pledge

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Well, another Tim. Tim Bonnell sent in a question saying, I'm a biblical citizenship coach with a question about Christians repeating the pledge of allegiance to the flag. It was brought up that it wasn't created until the late 1890s by a socialist trying to ensnare Christ followers under blood guilt for lifting up an idol pledging allegiance to an image that represents an entity. Does wall builders have a position on this? I couldn't find it specifically on your website. Thank you. Tim. Tim, thank you for sending in that question. I don't know, guys, that sounds really scary. So what is the uh the I I know it is, you know, it was I think we talked about the pledge with Bill Federer or somebody recently in terms of when we added, you know, under God 54 with Eisenhower and all that, but I don't know when it actually started. So was it a socialist and were they ins ensnaring Christ followers under blood guilt for lifting up an idol and pledging allegiance?

SPEAKER_03 1:40

Well, uh we can go back and I can tell you the story of it, and I'll I'll just tell you right up front. This is one of those things that we see very often, unfortunately, oftentimes out of the conservative community. Not not I'm not talking about this coach, I'm just talking about the rumor. And it's a thing where I'm reminded in the Bible where the scripture says, don't call everything conspiracy that they call conspiracy. And so I've heard this multiple times about saying the pledge is a conspiracy to subvert kids to socialism and their pledging not to the nation but to a different island. And it's the exactly what he brought out is what I've heard several times. So let me just take take back and let's look at how this goes. So a guy named Francis Bellamy is the one who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance. He was born in 1855, so before the Civil War, when he was 24 years old, he became a Baptist preacher in New York. So he he ended up working there for a number of years. He got active with the YMCA, Young Men's Christian Association, which I don't think the see much applies today to that organization. I hope they come back to their roots. But he got involved with YMCA, and so in 1885, he took a that's six years after being in New York, he took a church in Boston. So he went to a Baptist church in Boston, and being a Baptist church in New York and Boston probably indicates he was part of the American Baptist, and that would be the anti-slavery side of the Baptists. The Baptists divided uh Civil War era or pre-Civil War era over the issue of slavery. So Southern Baptists had been pro-slavery. They're not now, obviously, but they're the they're they're the much more biblically conservative now, but then they were pro-slavery, and the American Baptists

The Real Origin Of The Pledge

SPEAKER_03 3:20

were the anti-slavery, mostly Northern Baptists. So in 1891, because of his views on socialism and they did not align with what his church believed at that time, he left and went to work for a magazine. It was called the Youth's Companion Magazine. It was a magazine for young people. You know, when I I Rick, I don't know if this is your generation, Tim. I know it wasn't yours, but when I grew up, the the boys' magazine was called Boys Life. You know, that was the magazine we had and had cool stories for for boys and adventure stuff. And did you did you have that at all, Rick, in in your era?

SPEAKER_02 3:54

No, David, that was that was uh that was before my time, but had it been my time, don't forget I I read on a third grade level, so I would have been reading like the comic book version.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

Did they have comic books for boys' life or well they they had a whole lot of pictures, so you would have done okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Was Spider-Man in there? I don't know. I'm kidding. No, it really was. It was it wasn't uh wasn't at least not in my circles, it wasn't by the time I was uh old enough to read.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

Well, so Bellamy goes to work for this magazine, and this is 1891. Now, the big celebration coming up the next year, 1892, is Columbus. That's the 400th anniversary of Columbus. And back then, Columbus was still a hero. He he he hadn't been attacked by the woke forces of of America. And so he was a big hero. And so the the editor of this youth companion magazine said, we need to do something for kids to really drive home patriotism and make them feel real patriotic about the country. And so he said, you know, we've got so many immigrants coming in because the 1880s, 18, 1870s, 80s, 90s was a huge wage of immigration coming to America, particularly Chinese immigration. And he said, We've got so many new people coming in who don't understand America, don't know our roots, don't know the country is really special. And so he said, we need to come up with something that will promote patriotism both for the immigrants and the Native Americans that are here and that have been raised here. He says, it would be really good if we could get every single school, every classroom, put a flag up in their classroom. That'd be a real patriotic thing to do. Let's have flags in schools and flags in classrooms. And so he in the magazine he announced this and he said, hey, here's a competition. You kids can engage in this. And if you if you'll help raise money with your neighbors, we'll send you flags that you can buy flags from us cheap. And so that year there were 25,000 flags that went up in classrooms across the United States. So kids are getting it engaged and they're doing things to earn these flags and have them to the school. So now the interesting part about this celebration for 1492 is the 400th anniversary was not celebrated until 1893. It was a 401st year. They missed it because they were building such a big building. It was going to be a big World's Fair in Chicago, and the building they were building was so big they couldn't get it finished in time. The building, and think about building back in the 1890s. The building was 31 acres under the same roof. So you're building a building back then, 31 acres under the same roof, and it took them longer than they thought. And so they they actually had the celebration 400th anniversary of Columbus Day in 1493. But what happened? He's got this thing going with the kids now. We've got a flag in the classroom. And they decided that there should be a ceremony that goes with that flag, that every day the kids should have a ceremony where they can honor the flag and think about the flag and think about what it means. And so maybe there's some kind of an anthem we can come up with. Maybe there's some things they can sing or say that will help reinforce the flag. And he's he asked Francis Belliny, who's working for him, he said, Can you come up with a phrase or a rhyme or a poem or something that the kids can say that they can recite to the pl to the flag, and we can start every day looking at the flag and saying something to the flag. And so on September the 8th, 1892, in the Youth Companion magazine, they published the words to the Pledge of Allegiance. Now it's interesting, it's pretty close to what we have now. I'm going to read you the words they had then. This was the pledge in 1892, and say it yourself as you go through and you'll recognize the words that are different. If you just hear it, you think it's the pledge. But there's really significant differences. Here's the wording, 1892. I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation and divisible, with liberty and justice for all. So what happened is this is the way they had it for about 30 years, and this is what the kids would do.

How Congress Changed The Pledge

SPEAKER_03 7:48

And in in 1923, they changed the words of the flags because they said, you know, we've got so many immigrants coming in that when it says I pledge allegiance to my flag, they might be thinking of their flag in Russia or in Ukraine or in France or in Italy, or they might be thinking of their own flag. And so they changed the words to the flag of the United States, which is the way we say it now. So in 1923, they said I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States, and so that's where it was in 1923. And in 1924, they said, Well, let's go ahead and add of America. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, which is the way it is today. And so in 1942, that became part of the flag code, and that's now part of the U.S. flag code. And so interestingly, the way you said the pledge back then was when you said I pledged allegiance, you had your hand on your chest. And when you said I pledge allegiance to my flag, you took your hand and you swept it outward, pointed toward the flag. Well, that's the way they had done it. I pledge allegiance on the chest to the flag, your hand went out. And when you get in the 1930s and 40s, that starts looking like a Hitler salute, which is sweeping Europe, the Nazis. And so they said, Oh no, no, no, let's not do that anymore. And so what they did, they changed it in 1942. Congress changed it. And so what they do, what you do now is you put your hand over the heart and it stays over the heart while you pledge. And so that's Congress getting involved in this. And in 1954, Congress added the words under God to the pledge. So this is how the pledge came about. Now, there's no idol here, there's no conspiracy here, there's not a foreign God that we're pledging to. Congress is involved in this. The guy who who came up with the original words, there's they're changed significantly since he did it. And because he's a socialist, I mean that's not good philosophy. But you know what? If I had a dentist that was a socialist, I could trust him. I I wouldn't expect him to be doing something to my teeth just because he's a socialist. He might have a different philosophy, but that doesn't mean he's going to try to do something to me. And so while we disagree with socialism back then, and while socialism back then is not the socialism of modern today, you know, we we didn't agree with it then, the pilgrims didn't agree with it, but it is not the Marxist socialism we have today. It's it's a lot more communitarian, it's a lot softer, but that doesn't change the fact that Bellamy is not the guy who had the impact on the pledge. He just came up with the original words. The pledge was done by the nation, it was done by school children, it was done by Congress, it's done by the U.S. Flag Code, and there's nothing sinister or or dark about it. So that's just one of the conspiracies that goes uh about the flag and it's been going for decades. Uh hopefully, if you hear this, that'll kind of put an end to it. If you got a question your mind, it's really a simple thing, really a very uh honest and pure thing that they intended and wanted to do. It was all about raising patriotism in the country, which was the objective.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

I I um the biggest takeaway for me there, David, is it almost sounds like uh who they're going after, this Bellamy guy, if he has some socialist views, okay, but he's not the guy that was pushing this. He's not the guy that came up with this right this need for patriotism. He's almost like a hired gun writer. It all it'd be like hiring a musician to put a melody to your lyrics. In his case, he was hired to kind of put the poem together for the concept that the other guy was saying. What was the other guy's name? I missed that.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

He he was the one that ran. Yeah, James Upham was the guy who was the editor and the publisher of the Youth Companion magazine. And he hired Bellamy as one of his writers, one of his guys, and he said, Hey, can you come up with the words? You're right, Rick. It wasn't even Bellamy's idea to come up with it, it was James Upham's idea on the 400th anniversary of Columbus. Let's celebrate America and let's celebrate Columbus. Let's be patriotic. I mean, that was the whole drive and desire of Upham. And you're exactly right. Bellamy was simply hired. He was one of the hired employees. He wasn't hired to do the pledge. He was a hired employee and a writer for Youth Companion. And he asked him, hey, can you come up with some wording that would be good for this little anthem we want to do with the flag? You're exactly right, Rick.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

It'd be kind of like uh if you're in the movie business and you need a good screenwriter to take a novel or whatever it is that you're going to turn into a movie, you know, that screenwriter is might be of you know very liberal or have very different views, but they're one of the really skilled people at taking your novel and actually making it where it's you know ready for a script to be put on screen. It doesn't mean their philosophy. Now, of course, you do have to be careful to make sure people aren't slipping in their philosophy. But man, just looking at the words, even back then of what he wrote seems seems to me the same spirit of um you know that was intended in terms of patriotism and that he didn't try to slip in any kind of nefarious socialism and anything like that.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

Yeah, it was innocuous, it was very bland, and it was always looking at the flag. The kids are looking at the flag, and they're it's a patriotic act, pledging allegiance to the country in which they live. There was nothing nefarious there at all. There was never any other pledge to some idol, some bathomet idol that, you know, satanic or whatever. That was never it. And so that conspiracy comes in when people don't know what actually happened and where it was. And that's why that conspiracy's hung around for a good while. But there's no grounds for that. Um when you look at what happened. I mean, Rick, you laid it out really simple. It was it was a guy who was hired as a writer, and he came up with a very innocuous wording. There's nothing sinister in the wording he came up with. It was changed several times by Congress and others, and that's how we have what we have today, and there's just nothing sinister about it.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Well, like you said, simple, third grade, comic book level. That's what I need. And uh so so that works. All right, so hey, by the way, uh Tim, thanks for sending that in. We appreciate the question. It is, like David said, something that I I've, you know, people have said, or I haven't heard it quite that way that Tim sent it in, but I've definitely heard something about a socialist was the one that came up with us. So that was a good education today. Uh that's why we do Foundations of Freedom Thursday to get these questions that are out there and be able to dig in a little bit. We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back with more of your questions here on the Wallboulder Show.

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SPEAKER_01 13:57

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Transactional Gold And Silver Explained

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Welcome back to the Wall Butter Show. Thanks for staying with us. Foundations of Freedom Thursday today. Gene has the next question. He said, I've heard shows on transactional gold and silver. I've read on a website on the topic and explored the website of a metals depository. If one has a transactional metal account, does one deposit fiat dollars or metal? Is the balance tracked in ounces or dollars and updated daily according to the market price? And can residents of states that have not enacted transactional metal participate across state lines? And why would one spend the metal instead of fiat dollars besides it being technically cool or like Gandhi said be the change you want to see in the world? I only kind of get it. Thank you. Thank you for your decades of important and significant work. Okay, Gene, lots of questions in there. We need like four programs, so I'm gonna recommend our friend Kevin Freeman, who comes on the program quite often and has a show called Economic War Room, which you can get a lot of different places. I, of course, prefer to watch it on patriotyu.com. But uh um Kevin is the absolute expert on this. I think Tim and David and I picked up some stuff from him. We certainly agree with the constitutional provision that allows for states to do this, and and we're supportive of the um effort to get transactional gold passed. And I don't know what we're up to, guys. I think it's five states maybe now. I know Sarah Oakabi signed it in Arkansas, and we did it in Texas, I think Oklahoma, Utah, I'm not sure how many, but uh, but great question. You guys want to add anything to that before I send them to uh to uh Kevin's website?

SPEAKER_03 16:26

You know, I I I don't know all the details, and you you brought that out, but I am struck by the fact that the the Constitution said gold and silver, and they did that specifically because of what happened during the revolution in the Continental Congress when inflation went through the roof. When you have gold and silver, that's that's fixed. If we still were on the gold and silver standard, we could buy a house today for what we paid for one 200 years ago. I mean, there's just not the inflation. So it's the inflation stuff, and inflation is theft for sure. I don't understand how it all works as far as you know, you have a credit card with your account, and it takes the value of gold. And man, if you look at the value of gold right now, you're gonna get a lot for your money right now because inflation is so high, and that's when the the value of gold goes up as a counter that so there's some good stuff to it, and I think it is five states, but I I don't fully understand all of it, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Yeah, and I think, guys, one of the things we've heard Kevin talk about many times is that you can still use a credit card, you can still use your fiat currency, but the difference is there's a backing behind it. Uh, and so as opposed to what arguably the U.S. government has done when they've printed more dollars and not had more gold, that's what has brought a lot of the inflation and changed a lot of uh the the value of things in our culture. And so when you have something that is gold backed, that that is part of what makes a difference. But again, Rick, as you said, our friend Kevin Freeman um has has really led the way on this. Uh and he goes to state legislators, he uh gives briefings, he testifies as an expert on this as they've been endeavoring to do it. So we definitely know some about it, but not nearly as much as our friend Kevin, who literally wrote the book on this.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

That's right. I forgot to mention that. He literally wrote the book. It's called Pirate Money. Uh, you can get it uh on Amazon or at uh Economic Warroom. I will try to just summarize real quickly some generic answers to the to the question. It is very much like a credit card, and you do you basically you put gold and silver um on at a depository. Like Texas has, we have our own bullion depository in Texas now, and you can have it there, and it essentially draws off of that. And yes, in answer to your question, um, Gene, it does go up and down. You're you're basically your account. So it's more like a debit card off of your bank account that your bank account goes up and down depending on what other deductions you're taking out of it or deposits or whatever. It's very much like that, but the fluctuation is in the price of gold and silver, and then you can use it at a you know convenience store anywhere else. And your merchants, they don't know any different. It looks just like a regular, regular credit card. So it's got a lot of benefits, and as you said, you know, it's backed um so that it's not just a a fiat currency. So really good question. Appreciate that one, Gene. Thanks for for sending that in. Next one comes from Heidi.

The Iroquois Claim Put To Test

SPEAKER_02 19:05

She said, Um, Ken Burns and other historians make a big deal out of the Iroquois Confederacy. Was it truly influential in the U.S. Constitution's formation? And what would be academically historically honest resources for this aspect of history? I do not want to discount uh appropriate contributions, but something seems not quite accurate. Thank you for your help. Um well, uh Heidi, your your first instinct at the beginning, Ken Burns, at that point, you should be definitely um questioning. So and I just have to get, I say that because of some of the things we've seen. Uh it's not all bad. We love the fact that they create stuff about the founders and create interest in the founders, but man, some of the stuff that they put out, including that recent documentary uh about the uh revolution, not good. So what do you guys think about the I don't know much about this one, Iroquois Confederacy?

SPEAKER_00 19:55

I I think you were correct when you said the stuff they create, uh, because a lot of these narratives are things they have created. Uh one of the things that that we often will ask when somebody makes a claim is what proof they have, right? What what is the source you are pointing to? Um we we've seen things even this this week with that professor who was on with Katie Kirk saying, like, look, Katie, this is this is like a no-brainer. America was not founded on any kind of Christian principles or Christian ideals. And and he's making these claims without giving any proof or verification. And and this is the reality of what happens in so many of these claims is people they will make a very aggressive assertion and they want you to try to prove them wrong. Well, that that's not actually how it should work. How do we know it was based on the Iroquois Confederacy? And you might see people say, Well, I think Benjamin Franklin referenced it one time, and that's where you go, okay. So if that's true, Benjamin Franklin references it one time, and and that's the evidence we have that all of the other founding fathers, when they come together, so when when, for example, James Madison, and we've talked about this a lot, but James Madison is considered the father of the U.S. Constitution because he came with some of the greatest proposals, the largest proposals, and even though when you start going down and breaking down the details, even though the majority of his recommendations were not approved, he was the one that that came with the most to the table every single day. It was his leadership. James Madison had nothing to do with the Iroquois constitution. He wasn't the one that ever really talked about or promoted it. So again, if if we're saying that our constitution was based on theirs, what evidence do you have? And again, if the one thing you're gonna point to is Benjamin Franklin, that that's not really good evidence for any kind of support of the claim. Now, not to digress, Dad. I know you have a lot of notes on this, so instead of me just winging it, uh, why don't you read us some of what you have from the founders?

SPEAKER_03 21:55

Yeah, here and this is a man, this is a charge I've heard for my whole career. That founding fathers pirated their ideas from others. They weren't original ideas. We know that's nonsense because of even the book we talked about before that they did at the University of Houston to go back to the Founding Fathers and see who they quoted, where they got their ideas. The number one source of the Bible, the number two source was Montesquieu, then Blackstone, then Locke. The Iroquois, Iroquois writings, and they have writings, they didn't appear anywhere. So here I'm going to read you a typical claim made by Burns and these other guys. And it says, Key evidence that this influence of, and he's talking about the influence of the found the air corps and the founding fathers. He says key evidence includes Benjamin Franklin's 1754 Albany plan, which modeled colonial union on the Iroquois Confederacy and his published works on native governments. Franklin and other leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, frequently engaged with Iroquois diplomats and admired their political stability. All right, there are two things that Ben Franklin writes about the Iroquois, and they're really simple. One was in a letter he did to 1751, and one was in uh in in one of their speeches given by an Iroquois chief that he published in 1744. So here I'm going to summarize Franklin's letter from from 1751, because this is what they say, oh, the Iroquois, they got the ideas from there. In Franklin talking about all right, the Albany Plan of Union is back in the French and Indian War, and that's really the first attempt to help America become a United States. Uh there were all these different colonies. We had a common enemy back then, was the French, and surely all these colonies can come together to fight with the British, which we were against the French. So the Albany Plan of Union was saying, hey, let's have like the European Confederacy. Let's all work together against a common enemy. Instead of Pennsylvania being separate from Virginia, being separate from Carolina, why don't we all have a common goal here to work together? So in that plan of union, here's what here's what Franklin wrote in the lead up to that plan of union. He's telling a guy named James Parker, he said it would be a, and by the way, the Iroquois also called the Six Nations. There were six Indian nations that came together, and that was the Iroquois Confederacy. And so Franklin says it would be a very strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages, and I'm just reading his words, if six nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union and be able to execute it in such a manner, and then it has lasted for ages because they started their their plan of union back in the 1400s. So when Franklin's writing this, they've had uh a a Iroquois government for about 300 years, he says, and would be able to execute in such a manner that it's subsisted ages and it appears indissoluble. And yet that a union like this should be impractical for ten or even a dozen English colonies. Are you gonna tell me that the Indians who don't have any education can't read, etc., that they can do better politically than ten or twelve English colonies? And that that's what he's saying. He says, to whom it is more necessary and more advantageous. It's more important that we unite than that they united, but they did it. Surely we can do it. And so what he's what he's saying is, surely if these guys can do it, we can do something like that. He did not point to the Iroquois Confederacy as a model for it, because among other things, they had several things the Founding Fathers did not agree with. Um they they had, for example, they did have a bicameral system and they had checks and balances and they had freedom for for speech and religion, but they did not have the will of the majority, they did not rely on consensus, and they had hereditary leaders. You didn't elect your leaders, you didn't choose your leaders, and they did not use majority rule. So if we're going to follow the Iroquois Confederacy, we have to throw out a whole bunch of stuff that we use in our Constitution. And if you read Franklin's letter, all he's saying, guys, surely we can do as well as the Iroquois did, and that's the basis of this whole nonsense, and that Washington or Jefferson talked about how great this is. It just doesn't exist. This is another one of those myths that they've taken completely out of context to take credit away from the founding fathers and the sources the founders cited. So a second myth of the day, the Pledge of Allegiance is a socialist subversion, and the Constitution came from the Iroquois. Neither one of those is correct.

Key Takeaways And Send Questions

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Man, what an education on Foundations of Freedom Thursday, folks. You got to send in your questions. You hear these kind of things. Great place to get them answered and get some good research on it. Uh, you can send those questions in to radio at wallbuilders.com, radio at wallbuilders.com. We appreciate you listening on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Don't miss tomorrow. We got a lot of good news to bring your way on our Good News Friday. You've been listening to the Wall Builders Show.