Welcome And Listener Mail

Rick Green 0:07

Welcome to the Intersector of Faith and Culture. It's the WallBuilder show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. It's Thursday, Foundations of Freedom Thursday. You send in the questions radio at wallbuilders.com. That's radio at wall builders.com. Of course, David Barton, Tim Barton, myself, Rick Green. We're all three all over the country right now. Last week of the election, of course, most importantly, encouraging everybody to go vote. But we're also going to dive into your questions for today for Foundations of Freedom Thursday. And the first one's actually about one of our topics earlier in the week, or maybe it might have even been last week. And I love this. Al sends this in and says, I found this series earlier this year on Prime Video. Like Rick said today, I watched the first episode and half of the second episode before I came to the conclusion that Rick wrote in his email to his son. Of course, he's talking about the Sons of Liberty series. He said, Their worldview portrayed was negative about these brave men, and I stopped watching it. It reflected the worldview taught in our colleges, and I had no desire to quote drink the Draeno they were offering. So obviously, Al has been listening to our other programs where we said, just because you like don't like Diet Coke, thank you, uh Chad Connolly out there, don't drink the Draeno. Anyway, he said, in contrast, your book, Lies, Fortune, Sacred Honor, gives a complete picture of each of the signers. I've read the book twice, and I'm so inspired by the honest portrayal of each founding father. Listen every morning, and I'm encouraged by WallBuilders out. That's one of the best emails we've ever gotten. Clearly, you listen to the program every day because you referenced two different ones there. Uh, David Tim, great to have listeners like that, and great to have confirmation. And of course, Live Fortress Sacred Honor available right now at wallbuilders.com.

Why Founders’ Stories Still Matter

Rick Green 1:45

And right now is a perfect time to go get a case of them and give them out as Christmas presents this year. So anyway, all right, guys. Well, I don't know. Y'all might want to comment on that before I dive into our first question. Go ahead.

Tim Barton 1:56

Yeah, Rick, that is uh great that somebody uh is able to give us confirmation of what we suspected with Sons of Liberty, but also, man, what a review for Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honor. Uh, super grateful that uh they enjoyed the book, and it is something that we really hoped and prayed people would be able to read through, learn the stories, and ultimately, just like we do with some of the heroes of the Bible, that we look back and celebrate how God used them, imperfect as they were and did great things through them. We wanted to help people recognize that's that's very similar to what God did with the founding fathers of America, specifically the guys who signed the declaration. Uh, and so it's a great group for people to know more about. And I am I'm grateful that uh already twice he's been through it, checking it out. So I appreciate the the response and love that people are learning the true story of the founding fathers.

Rick Green 2:49

All right. Well,

Behind The Scenes Travel Radio

Rick Green 2:50

we'll get to uh some of our questions. And by the way, folks, just just uh we don't usually talk a lot about what's going on behind the scenes. I just want to give a shout out to the wall builder Show producer. Justin does an amazing job when we're in airports or cars or wherever we're coming from. He takes all of these crazy pieces and makes us sound at least halfway sane. I don't know about sane, guys. That may be the wrong word, but he makes it sound better. Let's put it that way. So, anyway, thanks to our producer Justin, uh, especially during this crazy travel schedule we've got right now. So, anyway, uh thanks to our um uh listeners for sending in the questions. If you want

DSA Platform And Ending The Senate

Rick Green 3:25

to send one, radio at wobblers.com is the place to go. Okay, next one is from Patricia. She said, as senators were originally chosen by their state legislatures to represent and protect the relative autonomy of their state, and the 17th Amendment has weakened that responsibility, wouldn't the desire of the Democratic Socialists to get rid of the Senate put a death knell in the relative autonomy of the state? That is, wouldn't their realized desire effectively erase state borders and distinctions, thereby making us one homogenous whole, and really create something like an Athenian democracy? Wow, great question here, guys. Great question. What do you think uh gets accomplished if the Democrats, Democrats, Socialists of America get their way?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

They said what they want to accomplish in their platform this year. They got together, they passed their platform, and they've now got candidates running everything from Congress endorsed candidates all the way down to local candidates, and they said, well, the Constitution has to go and the Senate has to go. And so at that point, saying the Constitution has to go, now you've gotten rid of federalism. And federalism is the distinction between the state, the federal, the local, and the individual forms of government or levels of government. So already the Constitution, if you can take it out, you've lost that. But the Senate is one of the expressions of that separation of powers or levels of federalism that exist. And so they they want nothing but a pure democracy. And that's what founding fathers like Benjamin Rush and John Adams called a mob acracy. There has been no pure democracy in the world that exists. As a matter of fact, I just got through writing some uh research stuff on the seven major forms of government. And currently, at this point in world history, there is not a pure democracy anywhere in the world because they can't exist very long. There are some forms of pure democracy in areas of Sudan, in areas of Etrea, some some nations that are in complete turmoil and have no stability. There are a few local areas that have pure democracy, but they never last long. So the desire for these Democrat socialists, and see this is the issue with them, either they don't know history or they believe that they can change history at their own will. Because there's nothing in history that supports what they want to do as being able to continue a nation. It always ends in disaster. It always ends in disaster, regardless of the era, regardless of the of the country. And so either they they want that and they want the turmoil, or they're just absolute idiots believing history has nothing to teach them and that they can change history at will. So it's really crazy, but her question is spot on. But yes, this is what they've already said they want to do. Um and she's understanding

Why Pure Democracy Collapses

SPEAKER_00 6:10

exactly what the consequences of their declaration would be.

Rick Green 6:14

Yeah, and Tim, I mean, you know, this is one of those things at Patriot Academy that we always ask the kids, right, if you could recreate the world, what would it look like? And would you want uh pure democracy or would you want to have, you know, federalism and let each state decide how they want to govern themselves, that sort of thing. So you really have to get people to think through the unintended consequences. And of course, we've we've all we've all complained a lot about the 17th Amendment, 16th Amendment, Federal Reserve, all the stuff they did in 1913 that really moved us down that road towards pure democracy and away from being a much better constitutional republic. Uh, but that's why we educate people, right? Tell me that's why we need to teach them these things so that they can recognize how dangerous these bad ideas are.

Tim Barton 6:52

Yeah, there's no doubt. When when you have a generation that has been fed platitudes, that's been fed slogans, that's been told that socialism is good, and they're not taught history, Dad, to your point. That they they don't study and know this, that they're not doing actual critical analysis of what nations have done. And then to compound it further, when when these young people have grown up in a society and generation where everybody gets trophies, they they learn everybody's a winner, and so we're gonna win no matter what. Let's just do something that we like, don't worry about the consequence, don't don't think about cause and effect because that doesn't really apply. We all get trophies no matter what. I think there's a lot of uh of contributing factors to this. Certainly, academia has promoted these ideas, but yeah, I'm looking at the DSA uh platform right now, and they literally call for drafting a new Constitution. And in the new Constitution, it's the working class democracy. That's where they lay out in this new Constitution, there would be no Senate, there's no electoral college. They replace the president of the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to the Congress, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, it really is that foolish that they are embracing the things that ultimately have never benefited any nation financially, uh, as far as having more financial prosperity that's never benefited nations by giving more uh individual liberties and freedoms to the citizens. And yet, again, because most students are taught to memorize and repeat, most students are given trophies and awards, regardless of what place they came in. I I think this is the exact intended consequence of what Marxists have been hoping for when they have started controlling education. So, this is Rick, to your point, exactly why

Teaching Kids To Think Critically

Tim Barton 8:40

we have to engage the rising generation, having honest conversations, helping teach and instruct them, asking good questions to challenge them to think through is their position sustainable? Is it worth supporting? What will it ultimately produce? And it's one thing to tell people they're dumb for believing something that is, in fact, dumb. It's an entirely different and more winning strategy to ask them questions and help them discover that truth for themselves. And that's exactly what we do with the students. Just ask them questions. And once they realize how broken the system is, we don't have to convince them to not support it. They never want to support it because they know how broken it is and that it never works, regardless of what the platitude is. So that's exactly why we have to engage the rising generation and have honest conversations and ask good questions to help them discover what is fundamentally true.

Rick Green 9:29

I was just I was just watching a video today on social media, and the guy was saying, okay, what do you do when you're dealing with someone that has a dumb position? Well, you don't tell them it's a dumb position. You ask them, you know, how did you come to that conclusion and how did this logic get you to that conclusion? The whole video I'm thinking, Tim Barton's been saying this at Patriot Academy for at least 10 years. Exactly those same questions to ask people. And uh so true, man, so true. And others actually they need to be doing that as well with their kids when they come home with crazy ideas from from these uh indoctrination camps we know as college campuses and and the like. So, all right, well, let's uh let's take a quick break. We've got

WallBuilders 250 Years Resource Page

Rick Green 10:05

more questions coming from the audience when we return. You're listening to the WallBuilder show.

Tim Barton 10:12

Hey guys, this is Tim Barton from WallBuilders. I want to let you know about a special landing page we have on the WallBuilders website. If you go to wallbuilders.com, there is a little box that says WallBuilders 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 telling 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, a shirt to wear, or other wall builders products to read. This is the place to go to celebrate 250 years.

Museum Of The Bible Sparks A Question

Rick Green 11:15

Welcome back to the WallBuilder show. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Next question up on our Foundations of Freedom Thursdays from Alex. He said I was at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., at one of their permanent installations at the beginning of what they have on the second floor, impact of the Bible. I had an opportunity to more than casually read the descriptions and information relative to each item on display. I was so moved by the richness of the Christian culture of the day back during pre-colonial and colonial times. As a result, I'm inclined to think that when the term, quote, religion was used, it referred to the denomination of Christianity. Today we think in terms of Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, am I correct? So one thing that really caught my attention was reference to the time when after Maryland was established as a state for Catholics to settle, that some Protestant religious endeavors were targeted and actually took over the state. I was wanting to know how Maryland was taken over by Protestants. Not that I have plans to take over by Neck of the Woods, as it is very Catholic-centric. Thank you. I uh I loved going through your museum in Alito a year ago. I got to hold and practice using a real colonial era firearm. Alex, well, first of all, thank you for visiting our museum in Alito. Thank you for even uh sending in this question. Two parts to this, guys, I think. Number one, was the term religion in the First Amendment and even just in the vernacular of the Founding Era generally referring mostly to Christianity, or were they thinking all religions on equal footing? And then secondly, uh I uh what was the kind of turning point for Maryland turning Protestant

“Religion” Meant Christian Denominations

Rick Green 12:50

from originally being Catholic?

SPEAKER_00 12:52

There's no question that when you read it in the Founding Era documents, religion means denomination of Christianity. It doesn't mean a religion outside of Christianity. When they talk about that, they call it by name. Uh they will call the what they call the Hindus or the the Muslim, the Islam, they call it by name. When when they talk about religion, it's are you of the congregational religion or are you of the Baptist religion? Are you an of the Anglican religion? Religion was denomination. The one religion was Christianity. And anything outside of that, they called it and identified it by name. So as you go through their writings and as you read what they they wrote when they were talking about religion of the First Amendment, and you read the state ratification debates when it went to the 13 states to ratify the Bill of Rights, there is no question that the term religion in the First Amendment, the term religion in the Constitution, like there shall be no religious test, that meant you can't require everybody to be an Anglican or a Catholic or a Baptist or a Presbyterian or whatever. There's no question that in their writings and in all the debates around the Constitution and its ratification, religion meant which denomination of Christianity are you. If they got into the more global religions, they called them and identified them by name, as Thomas Jefferson did when he wrote his 1777 Statute for Religious Freedom in Virginia. He called the other religions specifically by name, and religion in general is Christianity.

Tim Barton 14:22

Yeah, and Dad, uh following up, uh recognizing certainly the, as you're pointing out, the ideas of religion were most intimately in the American colonies tied to what we would know as denominations. That's very easy to Show, as again, you're pointing out. But then the second part of the question, which I I also appreciate the caveat, uh, that you know, this is not trying to get information of

How Maryland Shifted Protestant

Tim Barton 14:45

how to overthrow the Catholics in the region, but looking at Maryland, uh, how did how did Maryland go from Catholic to Protestant? And I really appreciate the caveat that, hey, I'm not trying to get information of how do we overthrow the Catholics. That's great. Uh, but the reality is Maryland was uh initially founded as a Catholic nation or colony, uh, because England had gone back to Catholicism uh kind of in this time frame. Uh, you go from King Henry VIII is the one that introduces the Anglican religion really to the world, but then that becomes the the the official uh Church of England is Anglican. But England goes back and forth uh under some different kings and queens between the Protestant religion and Catholicism, and it goes back and forth a little bit, and it was actually during one of these transitions over in England. Uh, there was a revolution, and in Maryland, it kind of followed suit. Now, Maryland did not exclude Protestants from living in Maryland, so there was a growing Protestant population in Maryland, and then I think it was uh I'm looking on my computer, it says it was a Protestant revolution of 1689 called Cood's Rebellion. It sparked the glorious revolution in England that deposed the Catholic King James II, etc. You can look up more of this and see the connection, but it was in that time frame when they and Maryland said, you know what? In England, they're going back Protestant, we're gonna be Protestant in Maryland as well. And there was a large Protestant population already there. Uh, and so they were able to kind of make that transition in Maryland, but it was following some of the tensions and the transition back and forth in England from going Catholic, Protestant, back and forth. So that that that's a little bit of the background, mostly uh interestingly, maybe some parallels today, uh, where there was uh a growing migration of people into a Catholic colony that did not fully assimilate into Catholicism. And over time their population grew enough that they were able to encourage the shift to Protestantism. Now I say interesting connection because uh this is actually what Muslims have done in nations for literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Uh, apparently the Protestants tried that and it worked for them in Maryland as well, where they they moved in as a minority, they lived there, uh, they were part of the system, and when they grew their population, eventually they were like, hey, we're gonna take over now. Uh and that's kind of what happened to Maryland. Dad, I know there's more nuance and detail. Is there anything else you want to add on that?

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, what I would add to it, and Tim, you're exactly right, is founded as a Catholic colony, but there were more Protestants that arrived in the colony than Catholics. Very early on, some Catholics arrived. Uh, Cecil Lord Calvert, the Lord Baltimore, they they were bringing Catholics because they were being persecuted all across Europe. So it never really took off as a Catholic colony, and so many people came in Protestants and they changed it to a Protestant colony. And it's interesting that the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence was Charles Carroll, and he lived in Maryland. And he worked very diligently to keep religious liberty in Maryland because many of the Protestants wanted to eliminate Catholics from being protected in Maryland. And so it's interesting that he and another signer of the Declaration, Samuel Chase, also from Maryland, they kind of went back and forth at each other between Protestant and Catholic, whether each should be protected.

Tim Barton 18:09

Well, and Dad, to this point, if if people want to go back and read some of the early colonial charters and really more specifically, uh skip past charters. When the founding fathers separate from Great Britain and they write their early state constitutions, those are the ones to go read. If you go read the early state constitutions, we've talked about this before, how virtually every state Constitution, actually everyone has religious acknowledgement, but uh the majority of them, I think it was maybe 11 that had some level of religious requirements, but I think it was nine of them that actually have explicitly, you must be a Protestant, um, oftentimes even a Trinitarian. And there was a couple of them where they said, and we're not gonna let Catholics run for office here in our state. So literally, there were there were specific portions of state constitutions that exempted the potential for Catholics to run for office, and that is literally some of the friction that was going on in America, which also then makes it a big deal, Dad. When we look back at Charles Carroll of Carrollton and recognize that he was willing to align himself with people that many of them were very anti-Catholic. And by the way, as we're saying this, we could say the same things about some of the congregationalists being very anti-Anglican or the Anglicans being very anti-Baptist. This was not exclusively Protestant versus Catholic. There was a lot of tension between a lot of different Christian denominations as we know them today at that time. But it is worth pointing out that there literally were colonies that said, we will not allow a Catholic to hold office here. And I'm saying that to highlight what you're talking about. Some of the tension that was there uh was a very real and serious thing in early America. But the fact that you have guys like Charles Carroll Carrollton, who is working for religious liberty in Maryland, uh navigating that transition with all that's going on with a Catholic foundation and now being Protestant, a lot of stuff there. But certainly he is one of the noted founding fathers who actually lived to be the last surviving signer. If you want to know more, then get the book Lives, Fortune, Sacred Honors, and find out more about him. He really was remarkable for lots of reasons. We have a handwritten letter from him where he was writing a family member. They were asking, now that he's lived a really long time, I think he was maybe 89, 90, 91 years old when they uh wrote this letter to him. And he wrote that the letter we have as his response back. The family member was asking him if he was prepared to stand before God in judgment. Are you ready to meet God when you die? And he wrote a letter back. And in part of the letter, he says, On the mercy of my redeemer, I rely for salvation, and on his works, not on the things I've done in obedience to his precepts, uh, which is very similar to Ephesians 2.8.9. Anyway, there's several really great quotes uh and and

Catholic And Protestant Political Fears

Tim Barton 20:55

details we have from him in the book Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honor. So he's one of many of the guys that signed the declaration that today have largely been forgotten, but should be remembered and honored for their contribution. And he was a really cool guy.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Yeah, Tim, you're right. He's a great guy and is so spot on that even the Protestants didn't get along with each other. But there's an element of this that I think is really important to understand historically that we really don't cover much today like they covered it back then, and that is the political ramifications of Catholics versus Protestants overall. Because if you go back to English history, you know, there were there were Catholic kings, there were Protestant kings, but w what the founding fathers or what the early American colonists, I can't say founding fathers, what the early American colonists pointed to was what was called the Glorious Revolution. And that was William and Mary, when they came to the throne and they moved Cat they they moved England away from Catholicism and they restored a republican form of government in the sense that England got to elect leaders and other things. And so what happened was over the time, what you have is Catholic viewpoints politically would often lead you to have like a pope politically, one person in charge, like a king or queen. Whereas the Protestant viewpoint is no, no, no, you get to choose your own leaders and and it's uh I mean it's kinda like the difference even with Baptists today. Baptists, if there's 40,000 Baptist churches, there's 40,000 Baptist viewpoints on what Baptists should do. They don't they they could never have a Pope because of the individualism, and that's where a lot of the colonies were, and that's why there was conflict over Protestant versus Catholic, was the political ramifications of how that Catholics often would have a centralized form of government, whether it was in the church or in the nation. And Protestants often had a much more uh decentralized form of government where the people had much greater role in the government, and that's also part of what goes on. So it's it's not like religious hatred per se, although there was, but it was the political consequences that they looked at, and they didn't like the political consequences, and that's part of what the controversy was.

Rick Green 23:17

They're almost for having a dictator at this point, as long as it's a Christian, in order to bring order. I've been listening to some of Jeremy Boring's podcasts on this and the guests that he's had to, you know, fight back against this and push against this. But I wonder, David, if that's not, you know, part of that um, you know, different view of the best way to organize.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Well, there's no question that when you have a single leader, if that single leader can be good, they can they can solve a lot of problems. They they can say, hey, we're doing it this way, I'm the ruler, this is my opinion, this is what we're gonna do. And there were kings even in Israel that like King David that would do that. But you had other kings that didn't have that motivation, and and sometimes having a good prince, and and there's some early books in the 1680s and 1670s on on having a good prince, a Christian prince, but it's just hard to keep that form of government to maintain freedom when you give that much power to individuals. And and those who want a Christian kind of prince may think that's an easy fix, but it's hard to get power back after you've given it to an individual. And that's what history clearly teaches.

Tim Barton 24:21

Well, and this is why, guys, too, that even during the revolution, I'm looking now, uh, there were slogans like no king, no pope, uh, no king or no popery was slogans because they identified oftentimes the the Catholics, the kings, and the pope being synonymous. Uh, even Thomas Paine's uh pamphlet, 1776 Common Sense, this is a quote from it for monarchy in every instance is the popery of government, not like the popery smell good, but like the Pope, the popery of government. So even Thomas Paine identified this was something that they wanted to get away from. Not a singular head that they had to subject themselves to, but the opportunity to have freedom

Banana Ball And A Quick Wrap

Tim Barton 25:00

of choice and elections.

Rick Green 25:02

All right, guys, we got uh we got time for one more. Um, this one actually just to read, because I think it's interesting. This is Lori. She said, first, continued thanks for all that's all calf, guys, you do to help save America and to inspire me to keep on trying as well. Even when it's sad news on the broadcast, they are all good news to me to hear people working hard to right America and protect future generations. My fun question today is for baseball enthusiast Rick, so Texas once again reigns supreme as banana ball champions. Okay, so the Texas Rangers didn't win, but the banana ball champions are the Texas Tailgators who won the title this year. And she asked, Have you heard of them? Can you accept them? They are quite talented, both baseball-wise and entertainment-wise. Many love Jesus, prominently display crosses, etc., on themselves, and they host worship services before many of their games. They are fan forward, as they say. But I was just wondering if Rick would want to recognize them, how he feels about how they have changed the game of baseball. God bless you all. Try to get some rest between all your visits, and I get to see David next week in Harrisburg, and I'm excited. Lori, thank you for sending that in. Yes, yes. In fact, um, my uh my wife took some of the grandkids and they went to a banana ball game. Uh, one of the kids I coached for a little while, or that one of my boys played with, I didn't get to coach a lot on that team, but um, he's actually the uh the ninja umpire that you see out there at uh uh on the field. I love it. I I think it's great. I think it's good for baseball. I think it's great for the fans, it's fun. Um, and yes, congrats to the Texas Tailgators. It's not not not the same as the Rangers winning the World Series, but it's kind of cool. So, yes, very, very entertaining. Out of time for questions today, folks. We've got more in the queue. We'll get to them next Thursday on Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Don't miss tomorrow. Good news Friday, gonna be bringing you some good news. You don't want to miss it. Thanks for listening to the Wild Lover show.