Welcome And Listener Questions

SPEAKER_03 0:07

Welcome to the Wall Builder 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 at wallbuilders.com, radio at 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. And the audience gets to ask. Well, the problem is if you ask, I won't have an answer.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Well, that's hard. I have an opinion on this one. I am fully extra. Okay, let's try.

A Judge Blocks Immigration Enforcement

SPEAKER_01 0:55

I am fully exercised on this, and I don't mean exercise the athletic term of sweat and sports. I I'm I'm really stirred up over this one. Uh article came out, a new article that came out, and it deals with a federal judge, and his name is James Bosberg, U.S. District Court for District of Columbia. Do you recognize that name or know anything about him?

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Man, I do recognize that name. I'm trying to remember it was multiple cases about it two years ago, and then again last year, and a lot of it was overturning, you know, uh saying that Trump couldn't do certain executive orders or actions, but I can't remember which one specifically.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah, he is a judge that has uh he 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. That's right. It was the yes, yes, I remember that now. 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 did 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 I don't know, King. I think King's had more uh 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, uh as I recall. So it was a bad deal for him, but he was just not a good person. Uh and that's where Bosberg is. Bosberg thinks that because he's a federal judge, and he and by the way, even things you were mentioning earlier, the stuff he was doing on immigration and and not allowing Trump 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 D.C. Circuit Court overturned him 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 uh their opportunity to be in the United States to send all sorts of disinformation back to their home countries. So they're they're here to collect and gather information and send it back and make America look really bad in 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 who came in and said, Man, we thought the United States is going to be really bad. What we've learned is if you want to love America, just go see it. If you want to 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's the kind of folks that that the or the kind of 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 of how poorly you report the news, I mean I'm really ticked off over this and and my emotions are coming through. But 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 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 going to encourage people to go back and get a book that we wrote a couple 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, I will 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, uh, especially in immigration stuff, as these judges like Bosberg 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 D.C., man, he is just creating all sorts of havoc. When I read that article today, it just really ticked

Checks And Balances Versus Tyranny

SPEAKER_01 5:50

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 do and tell the Parliament what to do. Uh, we just now have an imperial judiciary who can tell us all what to do, and that's absolutely unacceptable. And so hopefully people will rise up, talk about this, educate people around them on this, get constitutional live and all the things we have there about the branches and restraining judicial activism. But I'm gonna encourage people to go back and and and grab that book if you haven't read it. Um, we did it again a few decades ago because it was so important then. Well, it's becoming important again now. Citizens need to know what the Constitution says and what the founding fathers said about keeping judges like Bosberg from taking over and running public policy. It's just unacceptable. So that's my tirade. Uh again, I'm ticked over this.

SPEAKER_03 6:46

And so I get to ask the first question I ask myself, there it is. You should be. And when you say exercised, I mean honestly, it's the it's a sense of justice within us where we know this is not right. I mean, just from a I mean, anybody out there that's listening that may not have, you know, may it 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 uh earlier this year, last year there was a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Earlier this year, they've already taken it up this year. They've given they've given their decisions on it, and this guy's ignoring them because he disagrees with them. This is this is radical stuff. True tyrant.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

Yeah, true tyrant. Everybody else is wrong, right? He's you know, total narcissist. He's right, everybody else is wrong. So no, I'm I'm glad you mentioned that. I had I had not seen that one uh this week. And and uh and this is why we need impeachment. This is well was it Hamilton that said impeachment's a bridle in the hands of the legislature in the Federalist Papers. I can't remember which one said it, but um, you know, you just think about that, and you're a horse guy. I mean, that's literally your it's a way to rein 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 um in the 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 that you'll actually use the constitutional provision designed for this.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah, the founding fathers talked about impeachment and removing judges as as being the the really the signal. It was the warning for all the others, don't get out of line. And and this another great thing for here we are on Freedom and Foundation Thursdays, talking about constitutional principles.

Impeachment And Federalist 78

SPEAKER_01 8:50

We've all been taught in school for the last 60 years that there are three coequal branches of government. Founding fathers would go through the roof that they heard us saying that today. Um just going back to the Federalist Papers, and the Federalist Papers, of course, was their commentary on what the Constitution was all about. But Federalist Paper 78, uh 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 coequal 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, they're they're all football leagues, and so they're all that they're not the same. Uh 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, uh, 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 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 understand 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 comparison is the weakest. And man, trying trying to get folks who have graduated from law school to understand that, trying to get judges on the bench to understand that. Uh 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 times. 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 the United States when they're trying to destroy the country and the constitution that gives those rights. That is I don't I don't even know how you can arrive at an interpretation like that unless you are absolutely completely deceived. And now I'm going to get biblical for a while, where the scripture says the 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 Boesberg, man, and by the way, they've already got impeachment stuff going uh on him uh in the House, but it can't go anywhere because the Democrats are supporting what he's doing and trying to make Trump look bad and America look bad. They don't care like America. Uh we 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 some threats in front of us that are gonna have to be dealt with.

SPEAKER_03 11:51

Yeah, and gee, I wonder, I wonder, 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 have worked hard, especially through the law schools, over, you know, uh literally a hundred years to just constantly elevate the court, elevate the court, 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 can 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, you know, uh protect everybody and and and and 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 you know a thousand words to say what could have been said in one sentence. And he was just talking about the importance of of just being you know simple and and writing it in a way that everybody can understand it. That's that 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 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 I'm just walking through the airport this afternoon in Seattle, and uh and I'm going, wow, I don'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 and it's it's it's gonna take uh I mean, th this is gonna be very difficult to overcome.

How Progressivism Rewired The Courts

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah, I'm 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?

SPEAKER_03 13:33

Yeah, what started what initially started this change rather than understanding it the way the founding's fathers did? Was it a pr pretty immediate uh effort from the judiciary or was that generations later?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

No, I think it didn't even come from the judiciary. I'm gonna back up to a philosophy that I have 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 the room and everybody else is so dumb and has to be led by them. Yeah. 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 the that's what we had going in the following the the introduction uh of secular uh Darwinianism, which eliminated the concept of a God that has any control over the people, we we're just always evolving, and therefore, as as a result, you can learn nothing from history. You know, we 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 a hold of the judges, and they got a hold of universities, they've got a hold of the media, they got a hold of everything they've ever touched, and it has the same tent on it. So they all of those institutions have great disdain for history and for the American people, whether it be the media, whether it be in government, whether it be in 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 why I see it not only affecting law schools, but it it affects look 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. And they have to be the adults to tell us all what we need to know, because that's why they passed so many regulations, because we just are not smart enough to know how to do things ourselves. That's just always the characteristic of progressivism to me.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Yeah, it's the uh it's the uh antithesis of of self-government and and they had to elevate the court because you know they did they it wasn't a popular enough uh policy or belief, so they needed the courts to be able to do it. The kind of this elitist, we're gonna run the show, and just this handful err you know aristocracy almost that would would run and everything, and they couldn't do that through the legislatures or the Congress. They had to have uh the courts now now they have a much uh deeper hold now, or I guess uh 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,

Break And America 250 Resources

SPEAKER_03 16:31

crazy. Well, hey, bro, let's take a quick break. We'll come back and and uh 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 wall builder show.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Hey guys, this is Tim Barton from Wall Builders. I want to let you know about a special landing page we have on the Wall Builders website. If you go to wallbuilder.com, there is a little box that says Wall Builders is celebrating 250 years of American freedom and independence. Click on that little box and it will take you to the landing page for 250 years of America. And on the landing page, there are several different little boxes you can click on. One of them is for events, it will let you know of some major events that are that are coming up that are going on that you can actually come and participate in. You can come here. My dad or I give speeches, tell them the stories about the birth of the nation, about the founding fathers, the faith connection in America. There's also a tab for resources that you can click on, and it will take you to lots of different speeches and sermons and documents and proclamations from the founding era. And then there's also a little tab that will take you to the wall builder store with lots of resources, all the things that maybe a hat you want to wear, shirt to wear, or other wall builders products to read. This is the place to go to celebrate 250 years.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

Welcome back to the Wallbuilder Show. Thanks for staying with us. Now we get answers from David, not just questions. Okay, David,

Did Richard Stockton Recant

SPEAKER_03 17:54

here we go. This is um this is Bethany. I love this question. I 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 He also continue to bless America, Psalms 33, 12. So I love this question because I always love bringing up signers and and founders that may not be as popular today and people don't don't necessarily know who they are. So Richard Stockton, did he act I I know he was one of the guys that was captured. I don't remember if he actually I I didn't know that he recanted, so did he recant?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah, that's a great question. Um it is part of today's uh attack uh on uh the goodness that often exists in history. Um because uh i if he went through all he went through and by the way, I I mean, right at the end of seventeen seventy-six, hardly was the ink drowned the declaration when his neighbors turned him in. And and he was living in New Jersey, New Jersey and New York were two loyalist states. Um the the pro-British people all over the colonies from all thirteen colonies moved to New York and moved to New Jersey as a safe place because that's where the majority of the British military was throughout the Revolution. So if you were a loyalist in Patriot, let's say Charlottesville, Virginia, if you're a loyalist in in somewhere in a patriot in, I don't know, Pennsylvania, wherever, you you had a tendency to move to New York and New Jersey because that's where you're gonna 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 they really they captured him in bed

Prison Torture And The Parole Myth

SPEAKER_01 19:36

one night. He w 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 of the guys who signed the declaration. You got to deal with him. So they threw him in a jail first, and then they moved into to the provost jail over in New York City, which is uh it was a death death cell, and they they just abused him uh no end. He he went for weeks and weeks. Uh they they would starve him at long periods of time. They kept him in freezing temperatures without any way to stay warm. Um they were they were doing all sorts of things that we would consider torture by by any measurement. And so after about I guess it was several weeks in prison, some people let Congress know that that one of their members was being tortured. And by the way, to put this in perspective, there's about two hundred thousand American soldiers throughout the American Revolution. Uh of those two hundred thousand, seven thousand were killed in battle, but eighteen thousand 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 some British leaders and start abusing them and mistreating them until they let go of Richard, and so they let Richard out. And 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 and so what happened was when he left uh 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 the progressives, say, oh, he recanted, he realized how wrong he was for standing up against Great Britain, and he recanted his pledge. He did not recant his pledge. He signed a parole. As a matter of fact, uh there were a number of signers, all the signers in Georgia actually signed paroles 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, times 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 So that's what Richard Stockton did. He he he did not pick up a gun the the remainder of the war. Uh he did not shoot at 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. There's not a single signer who recanted his decision. There were about five of them that exchanged the the keeping of their life for not doing anything active in fighting against the British, but that's a whole different deal than recanting. None of them recanted.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

Man, that's so good. I I I I did not know the details of that. And you know, and 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, um, with the city.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Well, you know, it's interesting, Rick, because you mentioned that, and th this is one of the interesting things that

Saratoga POWs And American Honor

SPEAKER_01 23:03

happened. Our first major American victory is the Battle of Saratoga. And 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, Um, what are we gonna do with six to eight thousand British prisoners? We d we don't have any place to keep these guys. What are we gonna do? And so we we uh 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 uh some six thousand over to the board, I think it was in in Boston to put them on ships to send them back to Great Britain. And then Ben Franklin and some others had second pilots. 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 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 and let them be part of the community. No, no. They were all prisoners of war, uh, some 6,000 there in Charlottesville, and and Thomas Jefferson worked hard to make sure that they had all the blankets that they needed, they had the food they needed, uh, that they were treated right. If there were uh Americans in 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 recognized that, well, these guys don't control their own destiny. The king does. And the problem we had at the revolution, why they treated us so bad and everybody else so good, was if they treated us as a foreign nation and recognized prisoners of war, then that's in essence recognizing that we are a separate nation. So they called it a civil war and they called us guerrillas 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 just came to the point where that wouldn't work. So they recognized that if they treated us as prisoners of war, because they treated the Fran, the French, the Spanish, the Italians, all the other nations they fought, they treated them with respect and treated them as as well as you can be expected 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 not 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 why it was so brutal for American prisoners throughout the American Revolution.

SPEAKER_03 25:52

I just had this image, David, of the prisoners of war from Saratoga in Virginia, you know, working a lot 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 uh down south in the southern hospitality of Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

So exactly right, which is why so many of them decided to stay in America. 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. Yep, that's exactly what happened. That's a great comparison with FIFA. The rest of the world figured out that we're not as bad as they were all told. Good stuff, good stuff.

Final Thoughts And Tomorrow’s Show

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Okay, we had a lot of other great questions, but we're gonna save them for next week.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

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 Wall Bover Show.