Dems Have Failed the Black Community for Too Long – With Ken Blackwell: Which is more important: leaders or laws? When is America going to see the failure in blue-run cities and states and say “enough is enough?” Tune in to hear former Mayor Ken Blackwell explain how the Dems have been failing the black community for far too long.

Air Date: 07/22/2020

Guest: Ken Blackwell

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.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

This is the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, and we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy and faith and the culture, today specifically talking about the result in your community, depending upon the types of policies that are invested into your community, a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective on all of these things.

We’re here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim Barton is with us, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And I’m Rick Green, America’s Constitution coach, and a former Texas legislator. You can find out more about us at our websites, we’ve got two of them. Wallbuilders.com is our main site. That’s WallBuilders, that comes from the scripture in Nehemiah that says our rise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach.

You know, I used to say, well, we’re dealing with the foundations and we’re not really having walls torn down. But when you look at all the statues being torn down across the country, in some ways, you could definitely say the culture is falling apart around us. And therefore, what we’re about WallBuilders is rebuilding those foundations, bringing back that biblical, historical and constitutional perspective in order to restore the culture. So, wallbuilders.com is the one website.

Then the second one is wallbuilderslive.com, now that’s our radio site. That’s where you can get a list of all the stations where the program can be heard. And even more importantly, you can get archives. So, you can go back and listen to programs from the past weeks and months. There’s a wealth of information, great interviews there, great questions from our audience on those Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs, a lot of good news on those Friday programs.

There’s just a ton of great information. Go check it out at wallbuilderslive.com. And please consider making a donation there at that website, wallbuilderslive.com, it’s a great way for you to support what we’re doing, which means you’re supporting the Constitution and the restoration of these founding principles.

Alright, David, Tim, later in the program, Ken Blackwell is going to be back with us. We’re really looking at cities across the country. And you know, we always talk about this in terms of our founding principles and the founding documents that that’s a formula that produces a result. It’s a cause for the effect of prosperity and freedom. You got to have a formula to produce that.

Isn’t that also true even in terms of your current leadership, not just your foundational principles in your Constitution in your State or nation or whatever it might be. But whoever the leadership is, and whatever principles they practice as they’re leading that city or State, that’s going to have a real effect on the kind of state you live in and the kind of community you have and whether or not you actually do have prosperity and freedom or less of those things?

Interesting Discussions of the Founders

Tim:

It really does. And guys, this is one of the interesting discussions even back in the Founding Era, about was it more important to have good leaders are good laws? And this was one of the debates you can go back to, was it William Penn, who talked about that even though?

David:

William Penn and John Locke.

Tim:

Yeah. So, even though William Penn is the guy who said that good laws can be good, but good leaders are better, because if you have good leaders, they won’t tolerate bad laws and they’ll make sure you always have good laws. But then you have you and I’m saying founding era, founding fathers, right, so you can go pass William Penn and John Locke and even jump for to the founding fathers when they’re doing the Constitution and they’re having these debates about how big government should be and we need to respect the rights of men.

And this is where, I think was Madison who talked about and one of the Federalist that if men were angels, we would need no government. And so, part of the challenge is to find a government that can control the evil passions of man without becoming so big that it’s destructive to them as well.

And so, you see this same reality in front of us is, we want to make sure that we have the freedom of the individual, but not so much freedom that there are no moral restraints or constraints. And in the midst of this, Rick, as you pointed out, you definitely see different ideologies from different leaders, that even though you have sometimes really good laws when it comes to the Constitution and sometimes those have been perverted by courts who have changed thoughts and ideology of it, but you can have a really good foundation of law in the Constitution. But we’ve had many bad people in our history that have perverted it.

And even if you look in the nation today, where you have so many cities, you have mayors who are suspending federal law, you have governors who suspend federal law, whether it be immigration and sanctuary cities or the Second Amendment or right, we can kind of go down the list, so you really do see that, even though it’s important that we have really good laws, if you don’t have really good leaders, they won’t uphold and enact a really good laws. And it does kind of take us back to what William Penn said that even though good laws are good, having good leaders might be even more important.

The Guidebook

David:

You know, one of the things we can point to very quickly on this to make a point is every federal official takes an oath to uphold the US Constitution. That is the guidebook, everything stems from that, that tells us how to operate and what to do. And yet, do you see any difference in the policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama? And were there any difference?

Tim:

Not as much as there maybe should have been.

David:

Maybe so, that’s right. So, let’s go the other way. Can you see any differences between Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump?

Tim:

Absolutely. Between Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan. Absolutely. Between Donald Trump and we can go back to Jimmy Carter, you can look at some of these guys and you see a very sharp contrast.

David:

But how can that be? They have the same Constitution. They all swore to uphold the same laws. How do you get something so different when you have this? And that goes back to your William Penn argument. He said, you can have great laws, well, we got a great Constitution, but if you don’t put the right kind of leaders in, it’s not going to work. And you really see that on the city level especially.

Tim:

Well, I would even point out, I know you’re going to make the point of city levels and it’s going to be relevant to the interview we’re about to have. But you’re seeing this even in some of the lockdown orders. You’re seeing it in in perspective of some of the governors and some of their policies.

Certainly though, if we go beyond this coronavirus pandemic to just cities in general and their operation when it comes maybe to some of the local businesses and some of the local regs or even some of the violent crime and I think this is where cities, outside of coronavirus, this is where cities become much more clear at how much difference a leader can make in that city.

Comparing Leadership Policies

David:

We saw that even here in our local area. In the DFW area, which is the Dallas Fort Worth area, those are kind of sister cities. As the protests were going, as there were riots and other things, as you got in Dallas, you saw them go for quite a while. You really saw. That’s where you started seeing the pallet load of bricks show up and other things happen. And so, there was some violence and some things over there.

And then as it moved over Fort Worth, when they started to have violence, they got shut down. And so, then you see the violence erupt again over in Dallas. So, it’s interesting that you got to sister cities, but two very different responses from city leaders that produce very different results.

Tim:

Yeah, guys, you know, in the midst of this conversation, it’s an interesting thought that we see a lot of tension between black and white, but sometimes in the city, the real tension or the real problems are not necessarily just a black and white. Sometimes the bigger problem, is it red or blue? Because that seems to be sometimes where the bigger issue is, is which way did the city go and what does that leadership for that city do to help indicate some of those problems?

Rick:

Well, in fact, Ken Blackwell, who’s had been a mayor of a major city and secretary of state of Ohio and held these different positions. He’s been watching this across the country and he’s going to address this issue of when you have blue leaders, Democrat leaders, those cities do not do as well with regard to prosperity and freedom. Ken Blackwell, when we return on WallBuilders Live.

Virtual Patriot Academy

“Teach the rising generation to be free”, that’s what John Jay told us to do. You can help raise up a new generation of patriots that understand a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective and they’re trained to lead. Patriot Academy, the last one is happening for this year in the first week of August. It’s a virtual academy, you can do it from anywhere in the country. You got to be 16 to 25 years old to participate.

And you got to go to patriotacademy.com today and get signed up. The deadline is just a few days away. So, get signed up today and it’s a virtual Patriot Academy. But even right there in Zoom, they’ll have House floor sessions, committee sessions. They’ll learn the legislative process. They’ll learn a biblical worldview of government. They’ll learn a Founding Fathers philosophy of government jurisdictions. They will help restore America’s constitutional republic.

Help us raise up those patriots. If you’re a young person listening right now, you have a great time of fellowship, meeting other young people from across the country that love God, that love our country and want to save our nation. Be a part of the solution. Check it out at patriotacademy.com. Patriotacademy.com

Moment From American History

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. After the final victory at Yorktown, the Continental Army awaited the outcome of peace negotiations with the Great Britain.

Pastor Israel Evans, a chaplain in the army proposed to George Washington, but they build a structure where church services could be held during the months of waiting. Washington approved the plan and urged his officers to ensure that the soldiers attended service. Pastor Evans further knew, if we were to secure the liberties they had fought for, sound education would be crucial.

He declared, “Every parent and every friend of the freedom of his country ought to be attentive to the improvement of our youth in the principles of freedom and good government, and then the people will stand fast in their liberty for a long time.” Our schools today need to return to teaching the principles of freedom and good government in order for America to survive and prosper.

For more information about pastor Israel Evans and other colonial patriots, go to wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks so much for staying with us. Ken Blackwell is back with us. He was mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio State Treasurer, Ohio Secretary of State and ambassador of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and we love having him on. Ken, good to have you back, brother. Thanks for some time today.

Welcome Ken Blackwell

Ken:

Hey, Rick, good to be with you, sir.

Rick:

Great article with Bernard Kerik, former police commissioner in New York. You guys basically saying look, Democrat party has been making promises to black Americans for decades, hasn’t fulfilled them. You just look at the cities that the Democrats are running. Fantastic article. We’ll send people a link to it. You know, why are they still allowed to do this when you look at those failing cities run by the leftist, run by the Democrats, when is America going to say enough is enough?

Ken:

Well, you know, Rick, Bernie and I, we started with the Washington Post database, we figured that the left wouldn’t argue with the Washington Post database, that’s just the citadel of the liberal mainstream media. And that database indicates that 1,003 people were shot and killed by the police in 2019.

And this occurred in the country of 328 million people in a year during which police had approximately 30 million contacts with members of the public and made approximately 10 million arrests, 600,000 of which were for violent crimes.

And so, we wanted to take a look since they were making this charge of systemic racism, just the figures are portrayed. And of the 1,003 people killed by the police, 405 were white, 250 were black, 163 were Hispanic and, and 185 were recorded as unknown ethnicity. Only about 55 of those 1,003 individuals were on 25 white suspects, 14 black suspects and 11 Hispanic suspects and 5 others.

And so, we thought the evidence was pretty clear that there wasn’t a systemic racism problem within safety forces, police forces across the country. When you looked at the numbers, the real systemic in there the reality is that black men and women are being slaughtered in cities and communities of color around the country and numbers they can only be compared to war zones in Iraq and Syria.

Dem-Run Areas are Failing

And so, we started to take a look at those cities and many of those cities, had mayors and police chiefs who were black and their officers were representative of the communities they served. And so, we started to raise the question, you know, where is the dare election of leadership? Should the blame be placed on the streets and cities of these jurisdictions being unsafe and lawlessness prevail? And lo and behold, we found that when we looked at the cities with the most damaging numbers, they were run by Democrats.

Rick:

Interesting. Interesting. And of course, then Democrat policies and typically Leftist policies that actually create more crime. Now, I mean, why would their response to all of this be if we have this out of control crime, we want fewer police that doesn’t even logically make sense?

Ken:

Well, and that’s why you know, when you start to look at where this nonsense is coming from, is coming from Black Lives Matter incorporated. And Black Lives Matter incorporated is run by a bunch of socialists and Marxists. Period. And their whole initiative is to let lawlessness prevail and to radically transform America. And now is the time for Americans who understand that while we’re not a perfect nation, we’ve put 244 years against making it better, making it more perfect as Lincoln suggested. And as a consequence, we don’t need radical transformation. We see what communist and socialist and Marxist-inspired countries around the globe and throughout history where they ended up and that’s on the ash bin of history.

Rick:

Yeah, the evidence is right before us for sure. You guys basically give a plea to say, hey, you’ve given the Democrats a chance decades now, it’s failed in these cities, give Republicans a chance. What are you asking them to do?

Resembling a Warzone

Ken:

Absolutely. We were saying we need a change in leadership. Again, we drove the numbers and drove folks to the numbers. Recently in Chicago, 18 people were shot and killed within 24 hours, they did this day in the last 60 years. Another 21 people were shot dead in St. Louis over recent weekend and 7 people were shot and killed and Brooklyn and 10 minutes. Again, I go back that this resembles a warzone in Iraq or Syria.

Rick:

Yeah. Yeah. What would you… and impossible to do this in just a couple of minutes together, but I’m going to ask anyway? How would you summarize the difference in philosophy if the Democrat philosophy continues to run the cities versus if you have a Giuliani type philosophy that really radically changed New York save the city, really? But how do you summarize what’s difference in those?

Ken:

Well, the difference is, you know, one approach is to expand the welfare State, the other approach is to create communities of opportunity. Giuliani basically said, I’m going to change New York from a killing field to a field of dreams. And that’s what we have to do. We have to understand that, I’d like to say this, Rick, capital is a coward. Capital does not rush towards lawlessness and violence.

Capital that we need to invest in these cities will only come into the cities once there’s a rule of law and safe streets and environment. And so that’s the difference. You continue to see the deterioration of the cities, because one, these are cities that make a fundamental mistake. They think that our basic and fundamental human rights are grants from government not gifts from God.

And the Left and the Democrat Party, they have in fact been trying to chase guide and faith out of the public square for decades now. And if in fact, you don’t put a harness on government and you don’t realize that you can’t destroy the moral foundation of the country and expect to construct and give life to Bible of cities of opportunity and growth and safe environments where we can raise our families and prosper.

Rick:

I love how you put that “capital is a coward”. That summarizes the whole issue of… As I was watching these cities burn, I was all I could think about was, how long is it going to take for people to be willing to come back to these communities with their businesses? Because at this point, I mean, when that mayor of Minneapolis basically said, let it burn and had the police stand down, that was a decision that will harm those communities for years to come.

Capital is a Coward

And I’ve read where some of the riots in the 60s that some of those places, it took decades for the economy to come back and you just summarize why, because capital is a coward and people want to know it’s safe when they go back. So, if you had the city say, okay, we’re throwing out the Democrats and the Leftists that created this situation and we’re going to have a major change to a better philosophy, could you speed up that time that it’s taken in the past to recover from these kind of things if you had a major change in leadership?

Ken:

Oh, absolutely. Because at the end of the day, we know that great cities like great nations are not the products of great government. They’re the products of good people doing great things together. And so, when you begin to empower people and you create an atmosphere that appreciates another basic fact of life and that is families are the incubator of liberty.

And so, you have to create environments where families, not government, raise children, and in fact, instill in them the dignity associated with work. Once you begin to try to expand the welfare State, you chase God out of the public square, what you get are a bunch of humanoid, you know, that never, never get outside of the area prescription of the welfare state. And you get the perpetuation of these cities that now modern day plantation.

Rick:

It is much more simple than we sometimes think, right? I mean, it’s garbage in, garbage out. It’s a formula that produces these results and we know what the good formula is, we know what the bad formula is. We just got to choose a good formula.

Ken:

There you go.

Rick:

And the parties are nothing but vehicles to implement those formulas. You know, it’s not Democrat good, Republican, bad or vice versa. It’s literally a vehicle, look at the philosophy and the formula, that’s what you want to put in your community to get exactly what you just described, Ken. 

You give me hope when you talk about this, because it reminds me what our mutual friend Bob McEwen always says these principles only work every time they’re tried. So, if we’ll try, if we’ll put them in place, they will work. The article we’ll get to folks. And best website to follow you and kind of the things you’re doing these days?

Family Research Council

Ken:

Yeah. Frc.org, Family Research Council.

Rick:

We love those guys too. Frc.org is the place we’ll send folks. Then Ken, thank you so much for your time today.

Ken:

God bless you, Rick.

Rick:

Stay with us folks, we’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Handgun Defense by Day, Constitutional Knowledge by Night

Hey friends, Rick Green here. I know there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in America right now, but we know God is sovereign. We also know that “duty is ours, results are God’s”. And that means we do our duty. You know, Proverbs 22:3 says “A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions, the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.”

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Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Back with David and Tim now and thanks to Ken Blackwell for joining us today as well. And guys, of course, we’ll share that article that he co-wrote with Bernard Kerik, the former commissioner of police there in New York. But I mean, the data does not lie. And it’s not just one city, it’s across the country as he points out. And you would think that at some point, the black community is going to say, hey, you know what, let’s go back to Republican leadership. We thrived under Republicans.

David:

There are certain characteristics, it really seemed to pop out of those deep blue cities and especially the ones that have been that way 30 or 40 years. I mean, the educational level is so much worse there, the dropout rate is higher, the literacy rate is higher, the juvenile problems are much higher, crime rates tend to be higher, the economic is so much worse, unemployment so much higher, family stability is worse. There’s so many things you can point to.

And you would think that someone would say, there’s a pattern here. If you do as Jesus said, and if you judge a tree by its fruits and if you judge the city by its leadership and if you judge the city by the policies of leadership and actually, you’ve got a whole pattern here that really points to the same thing across the United States. And it’s not a good pattern.

Black Communities are Waking Up

Tim:

Well, and specifically, when you’re talking about judging a city by its leadership, I think more accurately is you measure the effectiveness of the leader by the fruit of the city. And so, looking at those leaders, you know, guys, I’m seeing more and more black leaders in some of these communities who are waking up and saying, you know, we’ve got these Democrats try a long time and they’ve promised help us for decades and we really haven’t seen the results of their promises coming to fruition.

And I think there’s more and more people starting to see some of the lack of fruit when it comes to many of these blue leaders, so to speak, right, these Democrat, very liberal leaders and we’re saying this not necessarily because we’re anti a specific politician, but there are certain policies that do not produced good things.

There have been many times in in our careers over the last many decades that we’ve had some very good friends who were Democrats, but those Democrats were generally with us on some very basic moral issues when it came to being prolife and pro-marriage and religious liberty in Israel. And it seems today that there are very few Democrats who still are supporting some of those basic moral traditional value, Christian issues. And you do see this differentiation of policy.

And you know, dad, as you mentioned, but if you’re just judging the tree by the fruit, there’s not a lot of good fruit when it comes to measuring some of the behavior and the violence and the issues and etc. Rick, you mentioned we’re going to share this article from Ken Blackwell and it’s fascinating going through seeing the way he laid out stats. And actually, even just listening to this interview, the way he’s spewing off these numbers, I was thinking, is he reading these numbers in front of him? He’s got to be, because he knows them so well. And I don’t think he was. I think he just had learned them and knew them that well.

And when you look at the numbers, it’s hard to argue with the numbers. You can argue that you don’t like a policy. But once you’ve been able to see what that policy produces, and you can measure the numbers, at that point, it’s hard to be in favor of a bad policy anymore.

Moral Clarity and Policies

David:

Well, for me, it was a really epiphany moment when he said that capital, meaning your investment kind of money, he said capital is a coward. It runs some conflict. I thought it’s exactly right. Nobody goes to the civil war zone and says, oh, let’s go invest there, it’s going to be great profits. You want stability.

And when you’re looking at some of these cities that are really in some ways, they’re civil war zones, I mean, they’re burned over regions, capital is a coward. You’re not going to get the economic investment there without the stability and without the workforce and without the higher level of morals and family.

And so you know, that was a great point as well is this really becomes a self-destructive kind of cycle. As you really implement the kind of policy without any kind of morals or clarity or right and wrong or any sense of drawing lines and boundaries, it just continues to spiral downward and then you lose your economics as well. Because who wants to invest in a war zone, which is what a lot of these cities have been? So, there was a lot of good stuff from Ken on this. And really, is good stuff for us to consider and to share with others, as they’re thinking about city leadership and they have elections coming up this year as well as presidential elections.

Rick:

Well, folks, we’re out of time for today. Check it out at wallbuilderslive.com. You can get more of our programming there in the archive section. And that’s also the place to make your donation, wallbuilderslive.com. Contribute today and you are helping to save the country, save the Constitution, you’re helping to equip pastors and legislators and young leaders, there’s so many of different things that we’re involved in to help restore that foundation that made America the greatest nation in the history of the world.

Dems Have Failed the Black Community for Too Long – With Ken Blackwell

Come alongside us, we sure would appreciate your help. I know most people tell me today we realize there’s a problem, we realize the culture is falling apart, but we don’t know what to do to help. We can help you with that. We’ll inspire, equip, you know, we’ll get you the tools that you need to be the catalyst for restoration of these biblical and constitutional principles in your community.

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We sure appreciate you listening today. You’ve been listening to all WallBuilders Live.