Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for joining us today. Rick Green here with David Barton. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. If you'd like to be a part of the program, you can send questions into radio@wallbuilders.com, radio@wallbuilders.com. We love getting your questions. We love diving into some of these. You know, sometimes it's obscure areas of the Constitution or the Declaration or some piece of history, or maybe even somebody we don't remember or talk about much. So, send those questions in. I love learning on Thursdays and tossing these questions out to David and Tim. So, David, you ready for the first question today? Can I be the audience today for the first question? No, no, no. You're the expert. I get to be the one asking questions. So, I can answer questions. 

David Barton [00:00:43] So I can answer questions, I can't ask them? Is that the way this thing goes? 

Rick Green [00:00:47] Well the problem is if you ask, I won't have an answer 

David Barton [00:00:50] Well, that's alright. I have an opinion on this one. I am fully, I am full of exercised on this. And I don't mean exercise, the athletic term of a sweat and the sports. I'm, I'm really stirred up over this one. Article came out, a new article it came out and it deals with a federal judge and his name is James Boasberg, U S district Court for District of Columbia. Do you recognize that name or know anything about him? 

Rick Green [00:01:18] Man, I do recognize that name. I'm trying to remember it was multiple cases about two years ago. And then again, last year, and a lot of it was overturned, you know, saying that Trump couldn't do certain Executive Orders or actions, but I can't remember which one specifically. 

David Barton [00:01:34] Yeah, he is a judge that has, he really went after Trump's immigration stuff. When Trump started putting people out that were criminals and problems, he's the guy that ordered that the planes be turned around in midair on the way to the country and brought back to the United States. And when Trump did not turn the planes around, he held Trump in contempt and started trying criminal proceedings and whatever stuff against him. 

Rick Green [00:01:57] That's right. It was the yes. Yes, I remember that now. 

David Barton [00:01:58] I don't know that we've, you know, Samuel Kent was a really activist judge 30 years ago that we put our sights on and he was just crazy. He, he decided that since he was a federal judge, there's no other checks and balances on federal judges. He has the final word and he, he tried to rule like, I don't know, King, I think King's had more concern for the people than that federal judge did. Uh, they tried impeachment proceedings. He eventually was convicted of crimes and removed from the court, et cetera. As I recall, so it was a bad deal for him, but he was just a not a good person. And that's where Boasberg is. Boasberg thinks and because he's a federal judge and, and by the way, even things were mentioned earlier, the stuff he was doing on immigration and, and not allowing Trump to, to send people out of the country or back to their countries, even if they were here illegally, um, even at that point, the U S Supreme Court jumped in and called him down, overturned him. The DC circuit court overturned them on several occasions. Backed him up and said, he's out of bounds and he's still continuing to move forward. So, it's like there is no accountability for judges like this if they don't have a bit of personal integrity. And what he's done is Marco Rubio has started throwing out people who are here on visas that are taking their opportunity to be in the United States to send all sorts of disinformation back to their home countries. So they're here to collect and gather information and send it back and make America look really bad their home countries and You know, that's the kind of stuff we saw even, and I know we're at the right, the last end of FIFA, but we saw all these FIFA people came in and said, man, we thought the United States is gonna be really bad. What we've learned is if you wanna love America, just go see it. If you wanna hate America, just watch the news. And so even in those foreign countries, they were getting all this bad news about America and they got here and they fell in love with the country and how great it is. Well, that the kind the folks that, or the kind a correspondence that that Marco Rubio has been trying to throw out of the United States. We have no obligation to let people come here on visas, journalists or anything else. We have no obligation to do that. And if you're going to come here and lie about us and make us look bad and try to stir up bad stuff about us, which causes terrorists to want to attack the United States because how poorly you report the news. I mean, I'm really ticked off over this and my emotions are coming through. But what happened was he struck down Marco Rubio's order and said, you can't do that because these foreign people who come here under temporary visas, have a First Amendment right to free speech. Now, think about that for a minute. If you're not here, if you are not a citizen of the United States, this federal judge has extended the first amendment protection of free speech to everybody in the world. Our Constitution is for citizens. The rights in the Constitution are for citizens; they do not protect people in other nations. They protect the citizens of the United States first and foremost. This is not a global Constitution. This really ticked me off to see this guy stick his head above water again. And go after this. So, I know it's Foundation of Freedom Thursday. This is a good time. I'm gonna encourage people to go back and get a book that we wrote a couple of decades ago on this very issue called Restraining Judicial Activism. And it's because back in the '90s and the early 2000s, we had a bunch of activist judges that were trying to run the nation and we're starting to get some of those guys back now. Now we'll say, I'm really pleased with the Supreme Court and how well they did on calling down some of the judges in the last two or three years. Especially immigration stuff as these judges like Boesberg tried to run immigration rather than let the President run immigration and the Supreme Court did a good job of slapping them around and saying get back in your spot. We're not the legislature, but you still have these radical kind of runaway judges. And so, this guy in DC, man, he is just creating all sorts of havoc. When I read that article today, it just really ticked me off. And so, I just wanted to point out that this is exactly why we have three branches. This is why we have checks and balances. If one branch can tell the other two what to do, then we might as well be back under Great Britain and the King and the Crown, who could tell the judges what to and tell the Parliament what to. We just now have an imperial judiciary who can tell us all what to, and that's absolutely unacceptable. And so hopefully people will rise up, talk about this, educate people around them on this, get Constitution Alive and all the things we have there about the branches and restraining judicial activism. But I'm going to encourage people to go back and grab that book. If you haven't read it we did it again a few decades ago because it was so important then will become an important again now. Citizens need to know what the Constitution says and what the Founding Fathers said about keeping judges like Boasberg from taking over and running public policy. It's just unacceptable. So that's my tirade. Again, I'm ticked over this. And so, I get to ask the first question I asked myself, there it is.

Rick Green [00:06:51] You should be. And when you say exercised, I mean, honestly, it's the, it' a sense of justice within us where we know this is not right. I mean just from a, I meet anybody out there that's listening that may not have, you know, I may not be steeped in constitutional law or any of those things or the history of it, but just think about it this way. Who would you want to make this decision? Like who gets to decide on this issue? Some unelected federal judge at the lowest level, all the way down at the district judge level only covers a little bitty part of the country. Or the team that was elected by the whole country for this very issue. Like the immigration issue was the number one issue that people went to vote for. So who should be making that decision? I mean, that just, I don't see how anybody could say they think that judge at the lowest level should be the one to be able to thwart that policy. And of course, the Supreme court took this up. What was that, David? Last, earlier this year, last year, there was a couple of those cases.  

David Barton [00:07:43] Earlier this year, they've already taken it up this year. They’ve given their decisions on it, and this guy's ignoring them because he disagrees with them. This is radical stuff. 

Rick Green [00:07:51] True tyrant, yeah, true tyrant. And everybody else is wrong, right? He's, you know, total narcissist. He's right. Everybody else is wrong. No, I'm glad you mentioned that. I had, I had not seen that one, uh, this week. And, and, man! This is why we need impeachment. This is what was it? Hamilton that said; impeachment is a bridal in the hands of the legislature? It's in the Federalist Papers. I can't remember which one said it, but, you know, you just think about that and you're a horse guy. I mean, that's literally your, it's a way to reign in a, an out of control judiciary. And I think, what are we up to? It's only like 20 or 21 judges that have been impeached in the whole history. We need to do that more often. I mean, when these guys get out of line, you got to show them that you'll actually use the constitutional provision designed for this. 

David Barton [00:08:34] Yeah, the Founding Fathers talked about impeachment and removing judges as as being the, really the signal. It was the warning for all the others don't get out of line. And this, another great thing for here we are on Freedom Foundation Thursdays talking about constitutional principles. We've all been taught in school for the last 60 years that there are three co-equal branches of government. Founding Fathers would go through the roof that they heard us saying that today. Just going back to the Federalist Papers and the Federal Papers of course was their commentary on what the Constitution was all about. But Federalist Paper 78, it says that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power. Now, if you're saying beyond comparison, it's the weakest, you can't have three co-equal branches if one is... It's like saying that that all football leagues are the same, the NFL and the Pop Warner Pee-wee League there they're all football leagues and so they're all...  That they're not the same ... If one is beyond comparison the weakest it does not even compare to the others. And that's where the Founding Fathers put the judiciary, it was there to ensure the rule of law .. But it was not there to tell the other branches what to do or even in the sense of of being equal with them. They made sure that everybody in America knew that and this is what they wrote when they were urging Americans to ratify the Constitution. Hey Americans, as you ratify the Constitution we just want you to that the three branches are not equal. That the Legislative and the Executive which are elected by the people are much superior to the unelected judiciary. Beyond the comparison is the weakest. And man, trying to get folks who have graduated from law school to understand that, trying to give judges on the bench to understand that. They think they are the final check and balance, final word and they are not. So again, you know, I'm all stirred up over this I hate seeing tyrants. It's just it's craziness. And to strike down Marco Rubio's attempt to keep from stirring up other nations against America when it's based on lies and propaganda, and they're not citizens of the United States, and this judge is giving them the constitutional protections that belong to the citizens of United States when they're trying to destroy the country and the Constitution that gives those rights. That is, I don't even know how you can arrive at an interpretation like that unless you are absolutely, completely deceived. And now I'm gonna get biblical for a while where the scripture says, talking about Satan, it says, the pride of thine heart has deceived thee. And I think that's what happens with some judges. They get so proud and cocky of where they are, they get deceived about that power they actually possess and they start acting like tyrants. But Boasberg, man. And by the way, they've already got impeachment stuff going on in the house, but it can't go anywhere because the Democrats are supporting what he's doing in trying to make Trump look bad and America look bad. They don't like America. We've seen now, it's interesting, even this week, the polling coming out on how communism is growing within the Democratic party at such a rapid rate. Communists do not like America, they want to destroy America. And so we really are at a crucial time. We have some great leaders. The people are moving the right direction, but man, we've got some threats in front of us that are gonna have to be dealt with. 

Rick Green [00:11:51] Yeah. And gee, I wonder, I wondered David, who it was that went from. They're not equal branches. This is the weakest branch. I wonder who would have wanted to elevate themselves. Like who would've worked hard, especially through the law schools over literally a hundred years to just constantly elevate the court, elevate the core, give the court more and more power and then, and then perpetrate this total lie that it's three equal branches, of course, it was the court. And, and man, I could tell you in the legal world that it is very much a high priest of the law mindset, like they the arrogance is off the charts. They think everybody else is stupid. They think they have to protect everybody and can't even, in many ways, explain their opinions. Or, I thought this was great, Clarence Thomas the other day talking about why in the world these judges write these opinions with all these fancy words and they take a thousand words to say what could have been said in one sentence. And he was just talking about the importance of just being simple and writing it in a way that everybody can understand it. That's that kind of in that same vein of this arrogant mindset that they're better than everybody else and that they should be elevated. So yeah, I don't blame you for getting upset about it. I think honestly, bro, it's also the fact that we're seeing the practical destruction that is taking place from these decisions. I mean, I'm just walking through the airport this afternoon in Seattle. And I'm going, wow, I didn't even know if I'm in America anymore. I mean it is, it has allowed for a total dilution of America and the and the value system and it's it's It's gonna take, I mean, this is gonna be very difficult to overcome 

David Barton [00:13:25] Yeah, I'm gonna back you up for a minute, because you're talking about law schools teaching this, which they did. Here's the question I got for you. Where did the law schools learn this? 

Rick Green [00:13:33] Yeah, what started, what initially started this change, rather than understanding it the way the Founding Fathers did? Was it a pretty immediate effort from the judiciary, or was that generations later? 

David Barton [00:13:47] No, I think it didn't even come from the judiciary. I'm going to back up to a philosophy that I've seen the same every time it's appeared in history, and that is progressivism. Progressivism always says we need to reject the past and embrace the future, which needs to be different from anything in the past. They don't look at the lessons of the past, and learn from mistakes and keep the good stuff. It's all bad. And the other thing I've noticed with progressives is not only do they hate history; they are absolutely convinced that they're the smartest people in room and everybody else is so dumb and has to be led by them.  And so, they're always looking to accrue power more to themselves, move power in their direction, get rid of all history. History is always a hundred percent bad. You can't learn anything from it. All it does is drag you down. And that's, that's what we had going in the following the, the introduction of secular Darwinism, which eliminated the concept of a God that has any control over the people. We're just always evolving and therefore, as a result, you can learn nothing from history. You know, we always say, if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. Progressives don't believe that because history never repeats itself because it's never the same. We people are smarter than any generation before us. We're always progressing and they as progressives are the leaders. Now, progressives got a hold of the law schools and they got ahold of the judges and they hold of universities. They've got a hold of the media. They got ahold of everything they've ever touched. And it has the same tint on it. So they, all of those institutions have great disdain for history and for the American people, whether it be the media, whether be in government, whether it be an education. And for me, it all goes back to that whole concept of secular progressivism and that's what came before the law schools came. And that's where I see it not only affecting law schools, but it affects, look at, you know, look at Biden, look at Democrat politicians who think that they're the parents in the room and everybody else is stupid kids. Yeah. They have to be the adults to tell us all we need to know. Cause that's why they pass so many regulations. Cause we just are not smart enough to know how to do things ourselves. That's just always the characteristic of progressivism to me. 

Rick Green [00:15:56] Yeah, it's the antithesis of self-government and they had to elevate the court because it wasn't a popular enough policy or belief, so they needed the courts to be able to do it. Kind of this elitist, we're gonna run the show and just this handful aristocracy almost that would run and everything and they couldn't do that through the legislatures or the Congress, they had have the courts. Now they have a much deeper hold now, or I guess a foothold. Within Congress and state legislatures than they did back then. But they had to first do it through the courts because it wasn't popular. So, yeah, man, crazy, crazy crazy. Well, hey bro, let's take a quick break. We'll come back and start on our first question from the audience instead of... David gets no more questions today, folks. We'll be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:17:48] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Now we get answers from David, not just questions. Okay, David, here we go. This is, this is Bethany. I love this question. I was just reading this before the show. She said, I really appreciate your show. Can you give details on Richard Stockton and when and if he recanted from signing the Declaration of Independence, may God continue to bless you and your families may also continue to bless America. Psalms 33 12. So, I love the question because I always love bringing up Signers and Founders that may not be as popular today. And people don't necessarily know who they are. So Richard Stockton, did he act? I know he was one of the guys that was captured. I don't remember if he actually, I didn't know that he recanted. So, did he recant? 

David Barton [00:18:30] Yeah, that's a great question. It is part of today's attack on the goodness that often exists in history. Because if he went through all he went though, and by the way, I mean, right at the end of 1776, hardly was the ink dry on the Declaration when his neighbors turned him in. And he was living in New Jersey. New Jersey and New York were two loyal estates. The pro-British people all over the colonies, from all 13 colonies move to New York and move to New Jersey.  It's a safe place because that's where the majority of the British military was throughout the Revolution. So if you were a loyalist and patriot, let's say Charlottesville, Virginia, if you're a loyalist and somewhere a patriot in, I don't know, Pennsylvania, wherever, you had a tendency to move to New York and New Jersey because that's we're going to get the most protection from British ships, officials and military. So, he was a legislator. He was the speaker of the house in New Jersey, and that's where all these pro-British people flooded in. And they really, they captured him in bed one night. He was sleeping in his own home. They came in, took him out. They said, hey, here's one of these traitors you've been looking for. He's one the guys who signed the Declaration. You gotta deal with him. So, they threw him in a jail first, and then they moved him to the provost jail over in New York City, which is, it was a death cell, and they just abused him, no end. He went for weeks and weeks. They would starve him at long periods of time. They kept him in freezing temperatures without any way to stay warm. They were doing all sorts of things that we would consider torture by any measurement. And so, after about, I guess it was several weeks in prison, some people let Congress know that one of their members was being tortured. And by the way, to put this in perspective. There's about 200,000 American soldiers throughout the American Revolution. Of those 200,000, 7,000 were killed in battle, but 18,000 died as a result of being imprisoned. So, they weren't killed by bullets. They were killed by mistreatment and abuse in prisons, which means you're two to three times more likely to survive the battlefield than you are to sell out of a British prison, which is just an unbelievable thought. So, Congress found out, they sent Washington to capture some British leaders. And start abusing them and mistreating them until they let go of Richard. So, they let Richard out, but his health was broken. He was crushed. He was never; he never regained his health. He died not long after that. He died a premature death. And so, what happened was when he left the prison, he signed what was called a parole. And a parole says that, all right, if you'll let me out, I won't actively take up arms against you. Well, people today especially Progressive say oh he recanted he realized how wrong he was for standing up against Great Britain and he recant at his pledge. He did not recant his pledge. He signed the parole as a matter of fact there were a number of Signers, all the signers in Georgia actually, signed parole with the British. They were made prisoners of wars. They were treated and abused and the British said look We'll let you out of the prisons as long as you won't pick up a gun and shoot at us, we won't keep you in prison. You can live but you just can't shoot at us. So, Time's X, you're out of the war. They said, okay, we'll do that. Well, that didn't keep them from organizing and helping and doing other patriotic stuff. They just didn't pick up a gun to shoot. So that's what Richard Stockton did. He did not pick up the gun, the remainder of the War, he did not shoot at the British, he did NOT recant, and he ended up dying prematurely before everything was all ended and settled as a result of the abuse and mistreatment he went through. So, the, the, again, the current progressive narrative is here's one of the guys who didn't believe in America all that strongly. He wasn't all that committed. He, he recanted his decision. There's not a single sign or who recanted this decision. There were about five of them that exchanged the, the keeping of their life for not doing anything active and fighting against the British. But that's a whole different deal than recanting. None of them recanted. 

Rick Green [00:22:43] Man, that's so good. I did not know the details of that. And, you know, that was of course common. Even we would, we would let soldiers go that we had captured. And as long as they promised not to fight again. So, it was a kind of a common practice back then in a way with regular soldiers as well. 

David Barton [00:22:56] Well, you know, it's interesting, Rick, because you mentioned that, and this is one of the interesting things that happened. Our first major American victory is the Battle of Saratoga. In the Battle of Saratoga, we had between six and eight thousand British prisoners we captured. So that's our first major victory. And you're looking and saying, what are we going to do with six to eight thousand British prisoners? We don't have any place to keep these guys. What are we gonna do? And so, we, we did the same for British. We told them that, look, if you guys will just not shoot at us anymore, we'll let you keep your guns and you can go home. And so, they all agreed to that. And so, we were taking some 6,000 over to the board. I think it was in Boston to put on ships to send them back to Great Britain. And then Ben Franklin, some others had second thoughts. Wait a minute, these guys work for the king and the king is not going to recognize that they're out of, he's gonna send them directly back into battle. So they decided, okay, what we need to do is, is create some places for these guys to stay. So they marched them, they really, they became neighbors of Thomas Jefferson. They marched them from New York all the way down to Charlottesville, Virginia, and got them set up on farms down there and let them do farming, let them raise their families and let him be part of the community. 

Rick Green [00:24:13] You're kidding me? Wow!

David Barton [00:24:13] No, no, they were all prisoners of war, some 6,000 there in Charlottesville. And Thomas Jefferson worked hard to make sure that they had all the blankets that they needed. They had the food they needed, that they were treated right. If there were Americans in Virginia, Charlottesville, that were angry and wanted to do and retaliate, Jefferson wouldn't let them. I mean, the way we treated the British prisoners was with honor. And so generally, we would simply take their word. And if they gave their word, we'd let them go. But then we recognize that, well, these guys don't control their own destiny. The king does. And the problem we had with the Revolution, why they treated us so bad and everybody else so good, was if they treated as a foreign nation and recognized prisoners of war, then that's in essence recognizing that we are a separate nation. 

Rick Green [00:25:01] Interesting. 

David Barton [00:25:02] So they called it a civil war, and they called us gorillas and rebels and insurrectionists. We were anarchists from their position. We weren't. We were principled. We laid everything out. We used their system to argue through, and it just came to the point where that wouldn't work. So they recognized that if they treated us as prisons of war, because they treated the French, the Spanish, the Italians, all the other nations they fought, they treated them with respect and treated them as well as you can expect to be treated in war. They did not do that with Americans. And so that's why the casualty rate is so high. They did want to send the signal that we recognize you as an equal, that you're a separate foreign nation, because that would be like acknowledging your independence. And that's what was so brutal for American prisoners throughout the American Revolution. 

Rick Green [00:25:52] I just had this image, David, of the prisoners of war from Saratoga in Virginia, you know, working the land, enjoying the South. They were basically like the soccer fans from around the world that came to the U.S. For the World Cup and said, wow, this is a pretty cool place. So they basically got a little bit of a vacation down south in the southern hospitality of Virginia. 

David Barton [00:26:13] Exactly right, which is why so many of them decided to stay in America 

Rick Green [00:26:16] That was my next question. I was gonna ask you I wonder if there are people that can trace back their heritage to those guys That initially fought against us and they were like, hey, this is kind of a cool place. I'm staying 

David Barton [00:26:26] Yep, that's exactly what happened. That's a great comparison of the FIFA. The rest of the world figured out that we're not as bad as they were all told. 

Rick Green [00:26:34] Good stuff good stuff. Okay. We had a lot of other great questions, but we're gonna save them for next week We're out of time for today. Don't miss Good News Friday tomorrow. Have a great day. And thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show