Constitutional Defense Of Your Family And Freedom Part One – You are the first line of defense for your family. What does Constitutional defense look like? How will you protect them and your freedoms? Do you know where to start? Tune in to hear the answers to these questions and more today!

Air Date: 05/30/2022

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live, where we take on the hot topics of the day, from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Thanks so much for joining us.  

My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. It’s my great honor to work for WallBuilders and host this radio program along with David Barton, America’s premier historian, our founder here at WallBuilders, and also Tim Barton, he’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And you should invite these guys in to speak in your community. We love coming out and sharing the truth of America’s founding, of how the constitutional republic should work, and how to restore liberty and most importantly how to be good biblical citizens.

So you can book a WallBuilders speaker at our website, wallbuilders.com. Check that out today. And while you’re perusing the websites, wallbuilderslive.com, wallbuilderslive.com, that’s our radio site, that’s where you can actually jump back over the last couple of days, or weeks or even months and look into the archives of what we’ve been airing here on WallBuilders Live. Which means you can catch up on all these great interviews we have with folks that are arguing cases before the Supreme Court or members of the US Senate or Congress or state legislatures or people that are on the ground testified in the school board meetings, Constitution coaches.

I mean, we have the opportunity to have guests on military veterans, from World War II, from every war. I mean, it’s incredible the people that were able to get on this program, and get to hear their stories, ask them questions. It’s just amazing. I am super blessed to get to do this program. And I hope you feel blessed when you listen to WallBuilders Live. But if you go to wallbuilderslive.com, you jump into those archives, you can find a lot of great programming in there that you may have missed on days you weren’t able to listen. That is also the place where you can make a one-time or monthly contribution. We would sure appreciate that if you would consider doing that. It allows us to reach more people that look true.

It’s hard to find in America, right now, you’ve got a lot of folks out there just flat out spreading lies. There’s not a nice way to say it. I mean, they are after a Marxist agenda. They’re pushing a Marxist agenda. They’re after my kids, your kids, the culture, and certainly the children of America, and they’re willing to lie to get them. And so it’s vitally important that we speak truth and that we get that truth in as many hands as possible.

So here at WallBuilders Live, we’re always looking at those foundational principles from a biblical, constitutional and historical perspective. But we’re also getting people to really understand what it means to be a good citizen, what is a biblical citizen. We put about 100,000 people last year through our biblical citizenship class. And that has just been amazing. We’ve got over 10,000 coaches now hosting these classes in living rooms, in churches, in libraries, you name it. And it’s a great time. I mean, honestly, when you sit in one of these classes, you go once a week, and for eight weeks, you have the chance to get to know those other people. But I tell you, you realize you’re not alone. You realize there’s other people that care about the country, that care about the future of the country, they want to restore liberty, they want to preserve American and not destroy America. And once you realize you’re not alone, and that there are people that are raising the banner and others that are willing to rally, it gives you hope. There’s just something special about what’s been going on in these classes.

So this idea of teaching people to be biblical citizens, what does the Bible say about being a good citizen, about how to treat your neighbors, about how to form your society and then what does our Constitution here in America say about how to do that properly. That’s what we do here at WallBuilders. And we really enjoy getting to do it. And we appreciate you being willing to listen. So check out the website today, wallbuilderslive.com.

Let’s get into our programming for today. We’ve got a special program coming to you throughout this week. So this is going to be a five part series. It’s called Constitutional Defense of Your Family and Freedom. This is actually a presentation that my kids and I did at our constitutional defense course. This is actually the opening night of our constitutional defense course where we talk about the foundational principles of America, we talk about the need for people to study the Constitution, study the Declaration, we go into a lot of those foundational principles.

And we zero in on the Second Amendment and the importance of this, what the Founding Fathers called the palladium of all of our other liberties, this important palladium of our other liberties and how important it is for us as citizens to take this seriously, and to take the responsibility to do this ourselves. In other words, it’s not up to the government or the police to protect us. It’s our responsibility to protect our families and protect our homes. That was the Founders’ view as well. Not saying we shouldn’t have policemen. Obviously, I’m a back to Blue kind of guy. But it is very important for us to take the first line of protection. We had to have that mindset. And that requires having a mindset like Proverbs says, of not being that fool that walks blindly on and suffers the consequences, but being the wise person that foresees danger, and takes precautions.

And so we’ve been doing this for years, we’ve taken a lot of people from WallBuilders Live. A lot of listeners out there, many of you right now listening, thank you for coming with us, I know you enjoyed it because you told me you enjoyed it. But we’ve taken a lot of our WallBuilders Live listeners and the Barton family goes with us. And we go out to a place called Front Sight Firearms Training Institute and it’s in Pahrump, Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas, drive in, fly in however, you got to get there. And we spent a few days together and fellowship out at this amazing facility, is a 500 acre facility, 75 range, is the best instructors on the planet.

And believe it or not, most of the people we take with us have never shot a gun, never touched a gun. It’s incredible what happens. It’s a phenomenal experience. So, consider coming with us. And we’ll mention this few times throughout the week and opportunities and ways for you to come with us. It’s not as expensive as you would think. In fact, we have anonymous donor that has made it possible for some WallBuilders Live listeners to go for free. We’re going to cover your tuition completely, has been paid for by somebody else. So we’ve got a handful of those. I think the numbers 10, I’ll try to confirm that after our break. But you got to be one of the first ones to get online and register for it.

So you got to go to constitutioncoach.com to do that. Constitutioncoach.com, click on the links. You’ll see a video there with Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire. There’s one with Todd Starnes, he’s been out there with us, and others. And you can learn more about the course and what we do. But if you’d like to come with us and train and learn how to defend your family, these instructors at Front Sight do the training during the day on handgun, and then I do the Constitution training at night. So you get both. You get the intellectual ammunition on how to defend the Constitution and then you get the physical training to defend your family in the moment should something bad happen in your community or at your home. God forbid that it would. But if it does, we need to be prepared. We need to be that wise person, Proverbs talks about.

Okay, I’ve talked quite too long about this. I get excited about this. This is one of my favorite topics. I’m really on a mission, if you will, to put as many people as possible through this course. We’ve taken over 5,000 people with us out there to go through this course with us. And the mission is I want to have a sheepdog, a God-fearing, Bible-believing, well-armed, well-trained, tinder warrior, male or female, in every restaurant, in every shopping center, and Walmart and grocery store, and all the places where these mass murder events happen. I want to have someone there that is able to stop the threat because it’s a citizen that’s been trained and is ready.

I want to have more and more good people, good families, prepared unable to defend their home should the wolf come knocking at their door. And that requires being a sheepdog. And so that’s what this training does. And I’m telling you, if you’ve never touched a gun, don’t worry about it. Come on out with us, you will enjoy it, you will have a fantastic time. If you go to the website constitutioncoach.com, you can watch some of the videos and you’ll see some of the stories of others that have come that have never done anything like this. And if you shot your whole life, trust me, I grew up on the ranch, I thought not only this training, I’m a type A person, I’ll step up. Oh boy, boy, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And by noon of the first day, I realized I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And they made me so much better, so much more mentally ready. I mean, I just can’t even begin to tell you.

So I’m going to stop talking about that. Let’s jump into the presentation. Again, it’s called Constitutional Defense of Your Family and Freedom. And this is the presentation that we did out there at Front Sight. It’s actually the first episode and we got a really cool box set on this that takes you through the entire course. But we’re going to share that first episode with you all throughout this week; so, all five programs this week, diving into constitutional defense of your family.

Let’s get into that presentation when we come back from the break. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

WORLD WAR II VETERANS

Hey, friends, if you’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live for very long at all, you know how much we respect our veterans and how appreciative we are of the sacrifice they make to make our freedoms possible. One of the ways that we love to honor those veterans is to tell their stories here on WallBuilders Live. Once in a while we get an opportunity to interview veterans that have served on those front lines that have made incredible sacrifices, have amazing stories that we want to share with the American people.

One of the very special things we get to do is interview World War II veterans. You’ve heard those interviews here on WallBuilders Live from folks that were in the Band of Brothers to folks like Edgar Harrell that survived being Indianapolis, there’s so many other great stories you’ve heard on WallBuilders Live. You have friends and family that also serve.

If you have World War II veterans in your family that you would like to have their story shared here on WallBuilders Live, please email us at [email protected], [email protected]. Give us a brief summary of the story and we’ll set up an interview. Thanks so much for sharing here on WallBuilders Live.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Here we go. We’re going to jump into Constitutional Defense of Your Family and Freedom.

Constitutional Defense of Your Family and Freedom

Rick:

Freedom, everyone says they love it, most even saying that they would fight for it. But how many of us can even define it? Let alone know how to defend the freedom we love? The time has come for every American citizen to learn about our constitutional freedoms, and then do our part as good citizens to defend that constitution, especially our Second Amendment rights. Front Sight has teamed up with constitution expert Rick Green to bring you an entertaining and educational program that will equip and inspire you to defend your family and your freedom. This is Constitutional Defense.

I’ve been training people how to defend themselves with firearms for more than 30 years. I could not do that training, nor could any of us live out that training, if not for the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, the Second Amendment and indeed the Constitution itself must be vigorously defended if we expect to maintain these critical rights.

So in addition to providing you with world class firearms training, Front Sight now offers you expert training on the Constitution. Armed with this knowledge, you can be even more effective at defending the founding document that makes all of this possible.

Brad:

Welcome to Front Sight’s constitutional defense course, where you will learn how to defend your family’s liberty for the long haul, not just in the heat of battle. We’ll be taking you into Front Sight’s classroom where you’re going to learn from our constitutional expert. He’s even going to take us to the very place where the Constitution was framed. However, we’re going to start this program with a roundtable discussion to give you some insight into the purpose and the goals of Front Sight’s constitutional defense course, and also to introduce you to our expert instructor, Mr. Rick Green, who is also a Front Sight first family member and a handgun distinguished graduate.

Rick, thanks for teaming up with us to bring us this information to our members,

Rick:

Man, it’s my pleasure, Brad, it’s an honor to be with both you guys here at Front Sight and get to team up with Front Sight, super excited about it. Because I get excited anytime anyone is willing to take time to actually study the founding document and start diving into what made America so great and unique and most importantly, start asking the questions, what can we do to make sure we’re taking this freedom we’ve been given and actually passing it on to the next group coming behind us?

Brad:

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Especially since you and your family have a way of taking what many people consider to be fairly drab subjects, history and law, and literally bringing them to light.

Rick:

We try to. I hate boring history, right, nobody wants to just memorize dates and names. Let’s tell the stories about how we got here.

Brad:

Well, you guys do a great job. It’s very inspiring. Alright. Also joining us is longtime first family member, Eric Rogers. Eric, tell us what you think our members can expect to get out of this new series?

Eric:

Well, first of all, I think this is a great partnership. I mean, I’ve been training here a very long time. We all know that Front Sight is the absolute best at training people in how to use firearms right. I think that’s a unanimous decision there. And now that I’ve learned more about you, Rick, I understand that there’s probably no one better than the United States in teaching us about the Constitution, about the Bill of Rights, about what they mean, about how important they are, and particularly here since we’re here at Front Sight, the Second Amendment, right, that’s a big one.

Rick:

I was a little worried when you said now that I’ve learned more about you, I thought you were going to say I’m out of here. But thank you… Thank you, man.

Eric:

No, definitely. And so, the Second Amendment is obviously really important. I also am really impressed with your family, right. I’m impressed with your kids. I’m impressed with your wife. I’m impressed with your interaction with each other, and how you team up to teach us this stuff. So we’re honored to have you here and we’re ready to learn.

Rick:

Man, I’m looking forward to it.

Brad:

Alright, and just wait till we combine your family’s love of the Constitution in the Second Amendment with some serious firepower out on the rain.

Rick:

Wait. Wait. You guys are saying we’re not just going to sit around, break out the old books and spend time in the classroom?

Eric:

Oh, yeah, you know what? I can predict that there’s going to be some serious firepower, there’s going to be some serious liberty and freedom going down range.

Rick:

I love it.

Brad:

Alright, hold on there. Before we get to exercising those Second Amendment rights, we need to make you work for it a little bit.

Rick:

I’m willing. I’m willing.

Brad:

Some people would say that, look, the Second Amendment’s been in place for 230 years, roughly, give or take. Why is there even a need to discuss it? Why can’t we just get to the range and start exercising those rights?

Rick:

Right. No, I think it’s a great place to start our classes, even to start thinking about why is it so important to study the Second Amendment, not just live out the Second Amendment. And the reason is because we always think of the Second Amendment protecting our right to keep and bear arms. We forget that it’s also our job to protect the Second Amendment through our activities as citizens; to make sure that it’s still the law of the land; to make sure that we continue to have those rights. The only way we can do that is actually studying those rights and studying the documents where they’re found.

Brad:

That is a concept that most of us have and certainly that I’ve had my whole life and that the Constitution exists. It’s there. It says what it says. So what work do we have to do? So I think that that’s really important. And that kind of brings us back to our earlier question about, you know, what people are going to get out of this series. And I guarantee people will learn a ton, certainly important history that they’ve maybe they’ve never heard about before. They’re going to be entertained. And that’s interesting too.

Because like you said, sometimes these subjects are thought of as drab or maybe a little boring or that’s… Absolutely not, you know, particularly when you’re talking about it. You know, you bring it alive, and you use great examples, and you get the humor in there and it really helps. I mean, I think that’s really important. And I think it’s important that we all through this exercise, get inspired to be good citizens, which I think we all want to do.

Rick:

Man, I couldn’t agree with you more, I think that’s really is the purpose. Because a lot of times frankly, we’re spoiled, we enjoy the liberty, we enjoy the blessings we’ve been given, and we forget, there’s a burden with that. With every right, there’s a responsibility. So while we enjoy the right to keep and bear arms, we enjoy the right throw that lead down the range, we need to understand what it is that’s protecting it, and then take the actions that are necessary to do exactly that. So that’s really what we’re going to do in the course is deep dive into how does citizenship really work? What can we do to preserve these rights?

Eric:

I have a quick comment on that. And that is that it depends on where you live, maybe. Because you live in Nevada, or Texas or someplace like that, which is a little more free, a little more open. Maybe you did take those for granted. But I live in California, and so I see the erosion.

Rick:

Yeah, you’ve seen the infringement. You’ve seen a little by little start to take away your right to keep and bear arms.

Eric:

Yeah. And it starts as a trickle and then it’s a full river. And so I see that, and I’m looking forward to you helping us learn what to do in order to reverse that.

Rick:

Well, this really fits Brad with your talk on moral and ethical decisions and using deadly force. Because you talk about the difference between morals and ethics, the fact that society decides what the ethics of that culture, you know, what they’re going to be. And fortunately, for us, the ethics of the founding of our country back then the society said, hey, right to keep and bear arms is essential, it’s part of the laws of nature, we want to make sure it’s part of our culture. It’s been that way for 230 years. But sometimes you can feel that sand shifting, right? I mean, things are changing, and the attitudes are changing out there. And so it’s up to us as citizens to influence what those attitudes are. Otherwise, we’re going to wake up, and society is going to decide, hey, you guys no longer have the right to keep and bear arms. We’re just going to let the government take care of that. No longer do you get to defend yourself.

Brad:

So basically, you’re saying the way to prevent that erosion of liberty, then is to study the roots of that liberty?

Rick:

Exactly, right. No, it’s exactly right. And I would say I kind of stole that line, I would say, because John Jay is the one that really said it, he was our first Chief Justice, and he said, every single citizen ought to study the Constitution. Not just read it, but study it so that we can teach the rising generation to be free. So as these kids are coming up, now we got to know what our rights are, teach the next generation what those rights are.

And then he said, If we know our rights, if we’ve actually studied, if we found it in the Constitution and understood where it came from, then we’ll be ready, we’ll recognize when those rights have been violated and we’ll be the better prepared, he said, to defend and assert those rights. Which means if we know those rights, we know where they came from, we know what the founders actually meant with California or the federal government or whoever starts infringing on them, we can say, well, whoa, wait a minute, we know what our rights are. We can stand up for those things peaceably, right. We just engage in the process. At our fingertips, we got everything we need to peaceably assert, as John Jay said, those rights. That’s what we’re going to learn how to do.

Brad:

Well, and I think that it was important about that, there’s social media today, let’s bring it to the current times. You know, you see these posts and things and people start arguing with you. And if we’re equipped to not just say, well, it’s right there, it’s in the Second Amendment and read the text, but actually have the arguments, have the background understand what the founders were talking about.

Rick:

You could say, we’re going to give people ammunition. This is a different ammunition than what we’re usually going down range.

Eric:

I mean, just talking to you from the time we’ve been together, I already have way more arguments way more ammunition to be more effective than that.

Rick:

I love it.

Brad:

Alright, gentlemen, so let’s take this opportunity then to take our viewers directly into the training with Rick in the classroom. And throughout this series, we’ll be going into the Front Sight classroom, we’ll be going out onto the ranges or even going to go to the cradle of liberty itself. That’s obviously Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

For today’s session, we’re going to start on that part of the Constitution that is most near and dear to Front Sight first family members, and that is the Second Amendment, without a doubt. Front Sight members get their firearms training by day and their Constitution training by night.

Rick:

Great match, man, get them both at once.

Brad:

I think it’s wonderful, absolutely. Alright. Well, then let’s head into the classroom where Rick, you’re going to load us up with some constitutional firepower.

Rick:

Let’s do it.

Brad:

Alright, let’s go.

Constitutional Defense of Your Family and Freedom

Brad:

He is an attorney and a former legislator from the state of Texas. He is also a Front Sight first family member and a handgun distinguished graduate. Please help me welcome our guest instructor for the evening, Mr. Rick Green.

Rick:

Thank you, brother. Yeah, I’m going to use that one. Thank you, man. Appreciate it very much. Alright. Okay, you guys ready? Did anybody get to throw some lead downrange today? Yeah? Anybody? Alright. Tomorrow, you’ll shoot a lot more than you did today. You got some great stuff, so we’re getting started. But it’s going to get even better. We’re going to load you up tonight with intellectual ammunition so when you get back home, you can do battle with your neighbors family, whoever it is, that’s wanting to get rid of the Second Amendment and destroy our Constitution. You’re going to learn how to restore our Constitution to make sure that it’s protected for future generations.

I don’t know about you guys, I love Front Sight. I have been coming for about six years now. I consider this the “Disney land of gun owners.” This is where our family would rather vacation here than anywhere else. We love coming out the Front Sight. It’s been an absolute privilege for us to get to train here, get to know so many folks and get a chance to prepare our family for defense. I really appreciate Brad being a part of this as well.

I remember the first time I saw Brad, he didn’t have any idea who I was. I was sitting in the very back there with my son, Trey. And we came and we just sitting back there watching, and learning from Brad, there wasn’t videos at the time, we were watching him give those lectures live. And we just learned so much. And so now I get to team up with him and go to these historical places has been really cool, a great opportunity for us, and just exciting to be a part of this.

I’m thankful to Dr. Piazza for allowing us to do this. He loves the Constitution, wants to see the Constitution protected and defended. And he knows that you as members of Front Sight or for those of you that are here for the first time, that in learning to use your weapon and learning to exercise your Second Amendment, learning to defend yourself and your families, you’ve also got to begin to defend the Second Amendment itself, to defend the Constitution. It’s under great attack today.

Dr. Piazza understands that and that’s why he wanted us to be able to do this. So we’re thrilled to be able to team up with him and team up with Front Sight. I’m a little bit surprised that he’s letting me do this, frankly, I mean, to let a Texas politician have the stage for a little bit. But I am a recovering politician. Just for those of you that are wondering, I am now two years clean off the ballot. So my wife is quite happy about that, would much rather us be doing exactly this than running for office.

So we do tend to think of politicians in a very negative light. What we’re going to talk about a little bit tonight is what to look for in leaders that will defend the Second Amendment. First thing you got to look for is not politicians, but patriots. A politician is only thinking about the next election, a patriot is thinking about the next generation. And by the end of this evening, you’re going to learn how you can help to raise up an entire generation of patriots that are willing to defend not only the Second Amendment, but the entire Constitution and how to lead effectively. In fact, you’re going to hear from some of those folks tonight as well.

I want to jump right in, first of all, to why I started becoming a patriot, I believe, and patriotic about what we have here in America. I, like, many of you maybe grew up a little bit spoiled when it came to freedom, just the idea of we get to enjoy the blessings of liberty, but we don’t really sometimes think about the burden that comes with that. We don’t accept the burden. We don’t invest our time in a way that will defend that freedom. Typically, most of the time, we just enjoy those blessings and we enjoy being free. That’s certainly how it was for me.

But I went to a dinner in 1994, it was the last public speech that Ronald Reagan ever gave. And as we’re waiting on President Reagan to come out, they were playing some of his speeches. They had screen just like this right here, and they had him going all the way around the room. And they were playing the speeches of Ronald Reagan, we’re waiting for he and Margaret Thatcher to come out. And they played this particular speech. And if you recognize the screen right there, that’s point the hawk France, point the hog, wherever you want to pronounce it, but it’s point the ho, it’s where our Army Rangers, 225 of Rudder’s Rangers… Any Aggies in the room? I know Nathan Macias is back there. Yeah. So these were Rudder’s Rangers and Rudder’s Rangers, in taking those cliffs, that was the beginning of DD, that was the beginning of taking back an entire continent for freedom.

Well, here’s Reagan, it’s the 40th anniversary. He’s standing there atop the cliffs, the monument is behind him. And seated around him, you can kind of see in the picture there were about 15 or 20 of those Rangers that were still alive at the time on the 40th anniversary. Of the 225, only 90 survived the mission. Here’s 15 or 20 of them seated around Reagan. And Reagan starts to recount the horrific, yet heroic events of that day, starts reminding them what it was like and talking about how one would fall and another would take their place. He’s going through the whole thing. And the camera starts kind of panning across these tough old Army Rangers, every one of them, tears welling up in their eyes as they’re taken back to those days of sacrifice.

Here I was I was probably 22 years old as I sat there and watch this on the screen. My dad’s on my right, guy on my left was a man named George McCormick, and Mr. McCormick was a bomber pilot in World War II. He was a great patriot, great American. And I’m sitting there, I’m watching this on the screen and I happen to look over at Mr. McCormick as Reagan is taking us back to those days of sacrifice.

And right there at that dinner, everybody in their tuxedos, Mr. McCormack just got tears running down his face. And instantly it suddenly hit me for the first time in my life: I began to understand the personal sacrifice of the man sitting next to me and that he had made that sacrifice for me.

Rick:

Alright, friends, got to interrupt our presentation on Constitutional Defense of Your Family and freedom because we’re at a time for today. So we will be back tomorrow with part two. We’re going to play it all throughout this week. You don’t want to miss it. And by the end of the week, you’ll be able to get all five pieces of the program on the website at wallbuilderslive.com.

If you would like to join us and actually go out for this live class, you get the presentation, the constitutional training and the handgun defense training, then visit our website today at constitutioncoach.com, constitutioncoach.com.

Thanks for listening today. We’re going to pick it up right where we left off, so don’t miss tomorrow. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders Live.