Digital Programmable Currency? on Foundations of Freedom Thursday:Today, on Foundations of Freedom Thursday, we focus on a couple listener questions- Has Biden signed an executive order to convert our currency from paper to digital? At a Christian school in Vermont, A girl’s basketball team forfeit for having to play against a biological male. A lawsuit was brought against them. What can be done?

Air Date: 5/4/2023

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

Restoring Faith in America

Transcript:

Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture, it’s WallBuilders. We’re taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I’m Rick Green, America’s constitution coach here with David Barton and Tim Barton. Tim’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. David’s of course, America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. You can learn more about all three of us and the organization at our website, WallBuilders.com , WallBuilders.com . And then also WallBuildersLive.com . That’s the radio site, if you need a list of all the hundreds of stations across the nation where you can catch the program. Or if you just want to catch up on some of the podcast and the recent programs over the last couple of weeks that you might have missed. You don’t want to miss those good news Friday programs, we’ll have a good one for you tomorrow. And then you also don’t want to miss the interviews Monday through Wednesday. And then of course, today, we’ve got foundations of freedom. So we’ll be taking your questions. And there’s of course, more of those in the archives at the website as well. And let me ask you to also come alongside us there at the website, you can make a donation, that’s a great way to team up with us, it puts fuel in the tank, we’re able to add stations reach more people do more of our pastors conferences, our youth leadership training or teacher training, all the different things that happen throughout the year. When you donate a WallBuilders.com , you are helping to restore America’s constitutional republic. So please consider that. Check that out today at WallBuilders.com . Alright David and Tim, we’re ready to dive into those foundations of freedom questions. Others can send them in to [email protected] , which Kenneth has already done. And he said lately, the news channels I’ve been following on Instagram have been updating me that the White House has been publishing that President Biden signed an executive order to convert our currency from paper to digital. I was wondering if you guys have anything… have heard anything about this? Or have have any of our representatives heard about this? Is it true? Has Biden overstepped his role? According to Article One, Section Eight to coin money, regulate the value thereof and fix the standards of weight and measures is there, for the federal government. Also, to my understanding, the Federal Reserve is a private entity separate from the government. But that created fed now. Okay, so he’s got a lot of questions about the money supply, about this whole idea of being able to convert from paper to digital, and I don’t know, guys, if it’s convert from paper to digital at this point. I think what they’re talking about is adding digital, right?

David Barton
Well, it’s going to be convert from paper to digital, eventually. You start with adding it, and then you get rid of the paper. So it’s been going on. We’ve been right in the middle of this across the nation. There’s what’s called the Uniform Commercial Code and it’s come out this year in about 23-25 states, there abouts. And it lays the groundwork for being able to convert to a digital currency or add a digital currency. Now, just to be upfront, on the website, even for Treasury Department, it says they can’t do it unless they’re authorized by Congress to do so. But Biden is pushing it. He’s moving in that direction. And by the way, just one of the reasons… I guess let’s take the same kind of systematically. Digital currency- does it exist? No. Is bitcoin and cryptocurrency digital currency? No, it is an asset. It is not something you can go into a store and redeem for a loaf of bread or a gallon of gasoline or anything else. It is an asset…

Tim Barton
Now, wait a second. If somebody wants to give me a Bitcoin, I will buy you a loaf of bread. I will redeem it for you for a loaf of bread, I will take care of that.

David Barton
For a third party, you can do that, but you’re not going to go in and have it recognized. So it is an asset just like if you have investments in a bank account or something else. So cryptocurrency is not a currency despite its called that. It is an asset. So to be able to have a digital currency, the problem we don’t like about that is under modern monetary theory, digital currency is what they want because it allows the government to control all forms of currency, because they’ll go from a paper currency to digital, and then they make a programmable digital currency. And that’s where the real problem is. Programmable currency is not a good outcome.

Tim Barton
It’s definitely not. As you’re saying they will. I mean, this is something that certainly we speculate is part of the goal and intention. It’s not something right now that… They’re not saying we want programmable currency so we can shut down people we don’t like. They’re not saying that out loud.

David Barton
If you explain program currency, how that works, how they would shut down…

Tim Barton
Right. Well, if you read between the lines, you might think this is what they’re going to do and programmable currency is like what they do in China, having a social credit score, that if you come out against what the, in China specifically, you come out against what the Chinese government, with the communist leaders, the dictator says, then they can say, okay, well then you can’t buy a train ticket, you can’t buy a plane ticket, you can’t buy these groceries, they literally can evaporate your finances where you have nothing you can use. You can’t spend, you can’t go anywhere. And part of it is related to they have a surveillance state and then passports. There’s just so much involved in this, in this Communist China regime. Well, people are fearful that’s what would happen here in America. And there’s arguably a reason for people to be fearful of that, given what we’ve seen from Democrat positions. And certainly, I mean, even in Canada, when you saw what dictator Trudeau did in Canada with the truckers saying, hey, we’re freezing their bank accounts, we’re not letting them access the money. Even to get gas to drive home, because they came on the Capitol to peacefully protest. We don’t allow that here. This is the kind of stuff we’re seeing happening around the world. And as now you have Democrats, and certainly with Biden advocating, we need to go to digital currency. There is a legitimate fear that if you don’t have any tangible money, if you don’t have tangible assets, it’s it’s all electronic, and then the federal government controls that electronic means of your money, that they then will be able to play favorites and pick and choose and shut people down when somebody steps out against what the government is advocating or mandating. So if you’re a Christian, you believe that marriage is between a man and woman and you believe what the Bible says that God made them male and female, and that really is simplified and that there’s an XX and there’s an XY and right like, biology is not that complicated. If you hold that position, then the government might could view you as extreme and say, hey, that’s hateful, bigoted, racist rhetoric, and therefore, we’re not going to let you spend your money. We’re going to penalize you for holding those positions. This is not as far fetched as some people might think. And this is where there is a fear of having a government controlled digital currency, which is part of what Biden is advocating, they’re not advocating for shutting down people they don’t like yet, but they are advocating for a digital currency. And that would open the door for some levels of censorship. And that’s part of what the fear is.

David Barton
And they also believe that digital currency will be able to handle things like inflation, because if you remember back, when Biden took office, gasoline went from $1.79 a gallon on average up to about $3.29-$3.39. So that’s a lot of inflation. That means your dollar doesn’t go as far. And inflation is caused by not enough supply and too much demand. And after Biden shut down so many of those oil resources that were available and stopped the drilling and other things, it just… There wasn’t as much available and so prices are higher. What they do is on digital programmable currency, they say, well, Tim, you only need to buy gas every Monday because you just don’t need gas that much. And so what they can do is with programmable currency decide what days you can buy certain things and how much of certain things you can buy. And that then reduces the demand which drops the price back down. Now, this is part of what’s happening in, as you look in Europe, they’re having what they call 15 minute cities. 15 minute cities, everything you need is within 15 minutes of you. You can walk there in 15… You don’t need a car for anything. Man, we don’t need those fossil fuels. That’s just destroying the planet. And so we’re creating cities where that anything you need, you can walk there within 15 minutes, and those are called 15 minute cities. Now, there’s a lot of legislators in the EU very concerned about that movement. But again, this is kind of like programmable currency. And if it’s all digital currency, then the government controls it. You may think you have it, but they’re the ones that redeem it and they’re the ones that decide the value of everything else. So it really takes the free market out of it.

Tim Barton
And as you’re pointing out, like, let me go back to the 15 minute cities. This is not a good thing, because you kind of make that a little bit open. It’s not a good thing at all, because the government is one that controls in a socialist sense, the means of production. The government controls who owns what property and who can go where. And so freedoms are lost significantly living in these government controlled cities, where the government has all of the means, all the access, all the power individuals are subject to.

David Barton
What if you want to take a vacation? Welll, I’m sorry, if you can’t walk there in 15 minutes, you don’t need a vacation, because that’s way too much fossil fuels. But I want to take the family to the Alps and go skiing. I’m sorry, you don’t need to go skiing in the Alps, because you just don’t… And it really is a shutdown of so much of what we’re used to doing.

Tim Barton
Well, and part of that too, to connect the dots, is because they say you don’t need a car, right? You don’t need a car, you live in this 15 minute city, so you don’t need to have access to be able to go to these other places because you’d be burning fossil fuels. So if you want to go on vacation, you are very limited as to how you have access to some of those vacations. How do I get to where I want to go? Can I get to where I want to go? And how am I making the money I need for this? It’s the government again, kind of the socialist idea, the government controlling the means of production, the government controlling property, etc. But let’s back up to this digital currency. Part of… I mean, dad, you’re talking about their argument is, well we can help control inflation if we controlled all the money. Well, that’s dangerous for lots and lots of reasons. I don’t trust the federal government in that capacity to make those judgment calls. But this is also where not only can… could they control inflation, which is part of their argument. But we also recognize that they can promote their ideology with this programmable currency. Because as you mentioned, maybe they say hey, you only need to fill up with gas in your vehicle every Monday, but they also could say, to protect the environment, right? So for environmental justice, not only can you only fill up on Monday, you can only have 10 gallons of gas because that is all that you’re allowed to burn based on the environmental protection and all you’re going to do.

David Barton
You only get a certain amount of carbon credits.

Tim Barton
This is where there’s a danger. Now let’s back up the initial question, is this what President Biden has done? No, President Biden has not done this to this point. What he’s done at this point is only created a mechanism that in the future, this kind of stuff could happen through that mechanism. The mechanism that he opened up is only a digitizing of processing of some things financial. So it’s certainly not at this point that… there is still no such thing as digital currency, which Dad, you pointed out, several minutes ago, when we started this conversation, that that does not exist yet. But before there could be digital currency, there had to be a platform where you can house and manage digital currency. This is that platform. So this is, and this is why there’s a lot of people nervous about this. Because as Biden is advocating for a central bank, digital currency, there was no way to do that until now. Now that there is this platform, now there is the means for the introduction of a central bank, digital currency, which is the federal government controlling our digital assets, all our money. And even if this comes in, right, this would not happen overnight. They wouldn’t take all of our money overnight. It just opens the door for more government regulation, for more government control of our lives of our property of our assets. And that certainly is a bad thing.

David Barton
And back to the original question, as well. A lot of states are fighting digital currency, it was felt that the Uniform Commercial Code which more than half the states… it was given to the states this year for them to ratify and pass. And a lot of states looked at it and said, oh, man, this is like a building code. Yeah, well, this is not our stuff. We’ll ratify it, sure. Everybody needs to have uniform commercial code so we can all do business together, all 50 states. But then we started finding out no, there’s a lot more to this, not only is it poorly written, this is a mechanism to open the door for digital currency. And so what happened was Kristi Noem up in South Dakota was the first governor to say, No, we’re not doing this in South Dakota, we’re not going to go this route.

Tim Barton
And partly too, it was great to see Kristi Noem veto that. But partly too, it wasn’t just digital currency. It was programmable digital currency, in this version of the UCC, because they said that there would be people that control the currency and control where it’s used and how it’s used. And you go, wait a second! Why should anybody be able to control my money other than me, that’s crazy. But that was part of the language in this year’s UCC, which is part of what led Governor Noem to say, no, we’re not going to do this. And then many states after that move, said, okay, we’re going to table this, we’re not going to do this right now, we’re sending the UCC back to the drawing board, so they can revisit this. And we’re not against a uniform commercial code. We’re against bad things in the Uniform Commercial Code, and certainly programmable currency is a bad thing.

David Barton
And it was really cool that DeSantis, as you can imagine, was early on in this and he vetoed it in Florida, as well. So we’ve had governors do it. Tim, as you mentioned, a lot of states, once they found out what’s in it, pulled it down, and not even going to consider it this year. Next year is where the rest of the states are supposed to consider it. But there’s going to be a whole lot of states consider it next year, because a lot of states didn’t want to consider it this year. And so with what has happened, the other thing that has come out, is a lot of states are now passing a specific five word amendment that says we’re not going to have digital currency in this state. And that creates legal hurdles for the federal government to have to get through, to lead to lawsuits, which is what they want. They want to get this in federal court. So even the federal government acknowledges Congress is going to have to do this. But that’s not a guarantee, when you saw what happened with the National Defense Authorization Act. And we heard on Monday with Frank Gaffney that they put an entire bill tucked in there. And that opened the door for all sorts of bad stuff that congressmen themselves didn’t want. So that’s the kind of stuff we’re watching about and don’t want to happen. And that’s why they’re putting those five word provisions. So in your state, check your legislator, see, if they’ve done anything with the Uniform Commercial Code, if they have, tell them kill it, don’t do that. And make sure you get an amendment in there that digital currency is not going to be recognized in the state. Because if you kill digital currency, you have killed digital programmable currency. You have to kill the horse on which the rider is going to be, if you don’t want the rider to come in on the horse.

Tim Barton
And we’re not saying kill horses.

David Barton
That’s right, we’re not.

Tim Barton
That’s not the suggestion right now. But dad to also remind people, we’re not against a uniform commercial code. So when you say, if your state has a uniform commercial code, kill it. It’s not killing the code that we are as interested in, as much as the programmable digital currency, that is what needs to stop. And just like with so many pieces of legislation when it’s a huge bill, and we probably remember the infamous statement from Nancy Pelosi that you need to pass it before you find out what’s in it. That is the worst advice ever. You always want to know what’s in the bill before you pass it. And in the UCC bill that came out this year, there’s very bad stuff in it. So find out if where your state stands on the UCC, this year’s version of the UCC, and if your state has done anything other than kill it or table it, you need to let them know this is bad. We need to change it. We need to fix it as soon as we can to say our state will not do programmable digital currency.

Rick Green
Alright guys, great answer and great question. Ken Osborne, thanks for sending that into us from Washington state. When we come back from the break, we’ll get David’s question from Vermont. So stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
Hey, this is Tim Barton with WallBuilders. And as you’ve had the opportunity to listen to WallBuilders Live, you’ve probably heard the wealth of information about our nation, about our spiritual heritage, about the religious liberties about all the things that makes America exceptional. And you might be thinking as incredible as this information is, I wish there was a way that I could get one of the WallBuilders guys to come to my area, and share with my group, whether it be a church, whether it be a Christian school, or public school, or some political event or activity. If you’re interested in having a WallBuilders speaker come to your area, you can get on our website www.WallBuilders.com. And there’s a tab for scheduling. And if you click on that tab, you’ll notice there’s a list of information from speakers bios, to events that are already going on. And there’s a section where you can request an event. To bring this information about who we are where we came from our religious liberties and freedoms, go to the WallBuilders website and bring a speaker to your area.

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. We’re taking your questions today on this foundations of freedom Thursday, and the next one’s coming from Vermont. David asks, greetings from behind enemy lines. So for all you folks that are in those kind of left wing states, we don’t consider your state the enemy. But we do feel like when I jokingly say behind enemy lines, we do feel like you’re kind of stuck back there with a leftist government. But anyway, great line. Thank you for saying that. And we appreciate you still listening behind from behind enemy lines, David. Alright anyway, David said, first of all, thanks for your ministry and the work you do. I pray the Lord will continue to bless and strengthen you as you persevere. Please take a look at the article I’ve linked which describes recent events in Vermont between a Christian school and the Vermont Principals Association, which is the governing body over competitive sports and other activities in Vermont schools. Interesting guys, I didn’t realize that the Principals Association, we have UIL here in Texas. He said do you think there’s any legal recourse that can be taken by Mid Vermont Christian School? I don’t have personal dog in this fight. Yet I do take this affront against Christian principles by the Vermont principals meeting principals of the schools, personally. Thank you and God bless you always, David from Jeffersonville, Vermont. Well, David, thank you, God bless you. Thanks for standing strong, as you jokingly said, behind enemy lines. So David, Tim, what actually happened to this Christian school? What was it that the Vermont Principals Association did to them? And then what can they do about it?

Tim Barton
So guys, my recollection is, this is the situation where there was a girls basketball team. It was a state playoff, and they were, at this point in Vermont, all the schools are kind of competing against each other. So Christian school, this specific one was competing these other public schools, charter schools, right, whoever kind of is in this league, but the school they’re competing against, was a higher seated team, but they had a biological male, who identified as a female playing on the girls team. And this Christian school said, we’re not going to put our girls through that. We’re not, wait, this isn’t a coed game, right? We’re not going to do that. We’re protecting our girls. And so they forfeited the game rather than play the game against a biological male. And this is where the state decided to penalize them, and say, well, if you’re not going to play against these transgenders, then you can’t play sports with us, anymore. And again, this is my understanding. I haven’t looked at this in the last several weeks, but it’s my understanding, from what I remember when this unfolded. And so they’re removed from the ability to compete in athletics, if they don’t allow their girls to compete against the biological males identifying as females. And this is something that certainly that we would expect, there’s many religious liberty organizations, that would be more than happy to take this case on, I know that they’re already appealing this, they’re already represented. I don’t at this point, remember who it was, that’s representing them. But from a constitutional standpoint, this certainly is is not permissible to penalize a Christian school for believing in such things as male and female.

David Barton
Yeah, over the last four years, the Supreme Court has made really, really, really, really clear that you cannot penalize people for practicing their religious beliefs. And that’s what’s happened in the school. And so David, you know, Tim says, he thinks there’s a law group involved. But David, you got connections, if they’re not involved, tell them to get First Liberty or tell them to get Liberty Counsel, or tell them to get Alliance Defending Freedom. This should be a very easy case for them to win. And hopefully they know that and hopefully, they’re challenging that. They can’t win it if they don’t challenge it. And this goes to something we’ve talked about in recent weeks, as well. The Supreme Court over the last four years has essentially dumped 7,700 In previous cases, but that doesn’t make any difference unless we walk through the door they’ve opened. They’ve opened the door, we have to go through and fight. And they are now defending things that we haven’t been able to do in 60 years, we’ve just got to go fight for it.

Tim Barton
And guys it’s also worth noting that this was not a situation where a Christian school was aggressive and confronting somebody they didn’t believe in. They just said, hey, we’re going to forfeit the game.

David Barton
That’s right.

Tim Barton
Right? So by them saying we forfeit, literally the other team won. They gave the other team the win. And for giving the other team the win, they get penalized? It makes no sense at all, because part of the argument would be, right, that they were showing this hateful bigotry against the school. So by giving the school the win they were being the hateful bigots? It makes no sense at all. But these are the kind of accusations that come against them. And Dad, even as you’re mentioning some of the religious liberty law firms that we would highly recommend, it made me chuckle to myself a little by thinking, you know, there’s a lot more of our legal friends out there, whether it be a Pacific Justice Institute, or the American Center for Law and Justice, and all these different groups that are out there that would love this case. And I thought, you know, if we start naming… we’re going to have friends listening to our program being like, hey, guys, you left us out, we want this too. So it’s…

David Barton
Yeah, Thomas Moore. And you’re right, there’s so many others that are great.

Tim Barton
What a great problem now that there are so many good groups out there who are fighting to defend these situations, and specifically, these Christian schools, who are not doing anything malicious or aggressive. And they’re the ones being penalized. There are so many good groups out there. So Dad as you mentioned, David, if you know of more details of this case, by all means, reach out to them, let them know, great groups out there, we’re happy to be put in touch with them too. And can connect them to some of our friends in the arena. But certainly, this is not something that we expect to stand legally in America, this might go through a couple year lawsuit. But certainly we would think the Christian school would win this one, significantly, at the end of this outcome.

David Barton
And by the way, we mentioned that there’s really 7,300 precedents, the courts overturned, and said, hey, these were wrongly decided. This is bad stuff from the Supreme Court, we’re doing it differently. And this is just for everybody to know. You need to be aggressive with this. The court has said, look, we’re peeling this back, so you know what you ought to do? You ought to go at Christmas time and tell the city, hey, we want a nativity scene out in front of the courthouse. And they’ll go, oh, we can’t do that. Oh, you can now. This is something you can do. And there’s a great website up on this, called restoring faith and America. First Liberty did this. And they’re listing to kind of things that you can do. You know, Tim, just this week, you testified on a bill in Texas to put the 10 commandments back up in every single classroom in Texas. Couldn’t have done that five years ago. We can do that, now. That’s why the bill is going forward. We’ll see if it passes. But it’s going forward, simply because the Supreme Court has said, yeah, this is the kind of stuff that’s back on the table. The Commissioner of Education [for] Oklahoma’s trying to get prayer back in schools. I mean, this is a different ballgame. But we have to be willing to be aggressive and take this stuff forward.

Tim Barton
This is the kind of stuff that as we have these discussions and conversations, Dad, as you mentioned, the Restoring Faith in America website is a great place for people to learn more about this. And this is not the only place they can learn more about this. But this is a great place to kind of get some initiation to some of these thoughts. Because when we look at so much of the attacks on religious liberty over the last several decades, it really stems from just a couple of Supreme Court decisions that came from activist courts back in the 60s and 70s, and arguably a couple of cases early 80s. But I mean, really, since the early 80s, we’ve seen so many attacks on religious liberty in the public arena against individuals based on some of these bad cases from the Supreme Court. And because we now have a Supreme Court that is made up largely of originalist, meaning they believe in the Constitution as it was originally written…

David Barton
Well They actually read the Constitution for the first time in a number of decades.

Tim Barton
A novel concept, and the majority of them probably could even define what a woman is, as opposed to maybe the most recent individual. Nonetheless, this is something that now having individuals who believe in the Constitution, who actually, Dad, as you mentioned, read the Constitution. They know what the First Amendment says, that Congress shall make no law, meaning the only individuals, the only group limited is Congress, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, meaning for individual citizens, that Congress can’t prohibit their free exercise. But if you understand the First Amendment, it was to limit Congress not to limit We The People, or specifically in some of these cases, to limit Christian schools in Vermont. That is not what the law says. And this should not be upheld, if we will finally find people that have the courage to stand up and push back against these unconstitutional decisions.

David Barton
And hopefully that Christian school is doing that because if they do, they should have a very big win.

Rick Green
Alright folks, don’t forget to visit WallBuilders.com today make that one time or monthly contribution. Thanks so much for coming alongside us, not only as a listener, but someone that helps us to expand This message, you know, keeps our training programs going… When you make that donation, there’s so many different areas, that makes an impact. It’s the radio program, but it’s also the pastor’s briefings, It’s the teacher training, the student training, the legislator training, I mean all the different things that we’re doing here at WallBuilders to literally rebuild the walls. In fact, I was just reading Nehemiah the other day and thinking about all the challenges that he faced and how all the attacks came, which of course we’ve experienced here at WallBuilders, how people undermined and lied and distorted what was being taught and we of course deal with that and go through those kinds of things, as well, but also, how important it was that the king fund it and that others came and funded. It took funds, it took fuel in the tank to do those things. Exactly the same way today. So if we’re going to rebuild the walls, if we’re going to look around and go wow, look at the reproach, look at the despair and the repairs that are that are needed. If we look around, and we see that then we need to do something about it. And whether it’s your life, your fortune, your sacred honor, we need to give all of those three- a little bit of our time, little bit of our money and of course, our reputation to be engaged to be a part of the solution to actually do things in our community to make a difference. Another thing that stood out to me in that reading of Nehemiah again was just how they did, they rebuilt the walls right there by their homes. They rebuilt the walls right where they lived and you can do the exact same thing in your community. So last thing I’ll ask of you today is to become a coach and host our biblical citizenship in modern America. You can do that at BiblicalCitizens.com , BiblicalCitizens.com . Alright folks, have a great one. We’ll have some good news for you tomorrow. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.