Good News from All Fronts – on Good News Friday

Air Date: 7/14/2023

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

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Transcription:

Rick Green
This is 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. Thank you to everyone out there, that has been supporting us. Thanks for your contributions. Thanks for sharing the program, you become a force multiplier when you do that, and we appreciate it very much. I’m Rick Green America’s constitution coach, and a former Texas legislator with the honor of serving here with David and Tim Barton, Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, David Barton, America’s premier historian, and our founder of WallBuilders, you can learn more about all three of us WallBuilders.com WallBuilders.com , that word comes from a scripture in Nehemiah that says, arise and rebuild the walls, that we may no longer be reproach. That’s what our job is, folks, we’ve got to rebuild the walls, right where you live, you got a job to do. Just like where we live, we’ve got a job to do. Every single one of us has a voice that needs to be heard, and we’ve got values that must be counted. That means engaging in the process. And when people do that good things happen. You know, you put good stuff in, you get good stuff out, you put garbage in, you get garbage out, well guess what a lot more Americans are putting good stuff in. And we’re getting some good stuff out. And that’s why we have good news Friday here at WallBuilders to share a lot of those good news stories with you. And so speaking of those good news stories, and a little pick me up at the end of the week here when we get to realize that when you invest in the culture, when you get involved, good things happen. Sometimes it’s decades of investing before you see it. And sometimes it happens pretty quick. So I don’t even know what David and Tim have in store for us. Let’s find out the first piece of good news from David.

David Barton
Going to Florida. And there’s been a lot of good news out of Florida this year. That comes with leadership, when you have good leadership, you often get good results. And DeSantis has done a great job there whether it’s ESG or whether it’s election reform type things he’s just done so well, including on religious liberty. And so this goes back to something that happened eight years ago, in Florida, there was a high school football playoff game. And it was between two Christian teams, two Christian high school football teams. And they were not allowed to say a prayer before the playoff game because the playoff game occurred in a state owned football stadium. And simply because it’s state owned they were told they could not pray as to Christian teams and the audience is there as a Christian school competition. And that has gone on for a bit. The lower courts ruled that hey, you can’t you can’t stop that have Christian schools want to pray that they can do that. But now they have passed a law in Florida that not only allows the Christian schools to pray, they’ve opened it up for everybody. And they have passed a law that says every football game can start with two minutes of comments. It just whatever those comments are, you choose the comments, which opens the door for school prayer. So you get to have prayer before he even the non Christian school football games in Florida. If someone wants to pray, now, it’s interested in me the Democrats fight that, a voluntary thing you can say whatever you want, anybody can say what they want when they’re selected to open the game with a two minute comment. And they said, well, you know, there may be some Christians who try to pray there and think of the Jews and the others that don’t have… Wait a minute. Anybody can. So it’s not cutting anybody out. And by the way, why aren’t you concerned when you guys talk about the LGBTQIA+ stuff, and I object to that you don’t have any concern over that, you’re willing to cram that down my throat. So it is just ironic to me that anything that seems… tends to be traditional, or traditional moral values, or traditional religious faith of any kind, and they think that’s cramming it down somebody else’s throat, but for them to do that agenda, they don’t see it that way. So that’s the irony. But the good news is, they now have the opportunity to have prayer back at football games in Florida. And this is so much of this is as a result of what we’ve seen in the last few years with the Supreme Court starting to roll back all of that nonsense that we had for 60 years. This is part of the wave the starting to develop. And that you’re starting to see a lot more activity at the state legislative level, and starting to promote, openly religious activities and participation available in religious activities, which is good news.

Rick Green
Hey, David you know, just and I know, it’s not foundations of freedom Thursday, but just thinking about the foundational principles behind that piece of good news, we had the case. Boy, it’s been probably 20 years, the Santa Fe case in Texas where the girl prayed at the football game. And the way they did it back then was you know, they elected a student and then the student got to do whatever they wanted exactly what this Florida law saying, Hey, you got two minutes. However, the students choose who they’re going to have or whoever the person is, they get to do what they want. From just a philosophy and foundational principle thing. That’s free market of ideas. That’s freedom of speech. And we shouldn’t be afraid if a Muslim kid gets elected or you know, somebody of a different religion gets elected, or they just want to do a poem or whatever, instead of praying a Christian prayer, that shouldn’t bother us, right? I mean, we should have, we should be okay with that we should be confident in our faith and allowing other people to express their faith and if that particular faith or that particular viewpoint is popular enough that the kids elect them, they’re going to be the ones that get to lead that thing so that seems healthy to me, rather than just shutting everything down? Am I viewing that right, or should we be saying, no, we don’t want certain things to be, you know, certain… And I’m not talking about a satanic prayer that’s different, that’s dangerous and bad for the community. That’s something I think even Jefferson would have said, you know, that subverts the public good. I’m talking about, you know, these guys that might want to get up and not do a prayer because they’re secular, but they just do a poem by Walt Whitman or something like that.

David Barton
Okay, so since you want to get into my second piece of good news, now, I’ll do that, and then come back and answer your question. So my second piece of good news…

Rick Green
I’ll be selling my crystal ball to the highest bidder on eBay later on today.

David Barton
Well, we can’t talk about your crystal ball from a biblical standpoint. You’re going to be in a lot of trouble with that one, bro. You did really well, before you did the Bible and crystal balls. That doesn’t go together. That just doesn’t work. But whatever you use, the second piece of good news is that the courts rule that Satanic Temple can’t be considered as a religion, in the sense that what happens… the Satanic Temple is probably right now more aggressive than Planned Parenthood in suing states that are passing anti abortion laws. They’re saying, look, our religion requires blood sacrifices, and abortion meets that ritual of blood sacrifices. And as a religion, this law violates our religious freedom, and that you’re stopping abortions. And we need that for our religion. And they have done this on several occasions, they have not yet won a single case. And I think that 10-15 years ago, they would have won a bunch of cases. So there is a definitely a tone change. But that’s good news that just because you have a belief doesn’t mean it’s a religious belief. It has more of a traditional criteria. And certainly the Judeo Christian philosophy that has been in America, since its beginning, is one that is recognized, should be recognized should continue to be recognized. And there’s other faiths as well. But the satanic ritual is by the courts, so far, not recognized as one, back to your question on a biblical standpoint, I think that a lot of Christians don’t even think about a verse that they like. And often, many of them have a plaque in their house, where they like Joshua 24:15, As, for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. And that’s a great declaration. But go back and get the rest of that verse in the context. You have Joshua, who’s taken over from Moses, they’ve led the children of Israel to the Promised Land, they’re about to go into the Promised Land. And Joshua really gives them a very clear, free market choice. Is it okay guys, here’s the border, we’re about to go in. Now you’ve got a choice. You can serve the God of the Amorites, on whose land we’re about to go. You can serve the God of the Egyptians, from whose land we came. Now, as for me and my house we’ll serve the Lord. So he lays out a choice, there. It is a free market choice that he gives him. Here’s what I’m doing. And a lot of Christians choose that part of the verse, which is really good, and we do choose the Lord. But we also need to remember that they had a choice even way back in Old Testament times. And in the same way the other example I’d point to is Elijah, when he confronts the prophets of baal on top of Mount Carmel, he’s got… he’s outnumbered 850 to 1, he’s out numbered 400 false prophets, 450 prophets of baal. He said, Guys, let’s have a competition to see whose prayer God answers. You guys pray, as long as you want pray as often as you want, do whatever you want with that prayer, you just make sure I get my shot. And of course, he won when he came to that competition, but that was again, open to free market.

Tim Barton
Well, it’s also pointed out that the end of the story of Elijah winning was the execution of all of the false prophets. So like even this notion, you know, obviously, the reason the Founding Fathers, even with the freedom of religion is that’s a biblical notion. God’s always giving people choice. But it doesn’t remove consequences for actions. And what we used to recognize in America is you have the freedom to choose things, but we still put certain limitations and bans, even criminalize certain activity and behavior, recognizing that those were negative things, negative consequences. This is certainly when you look at some of the satanic things, the notion of what’s being promoted today with the satanic temples and the satanic clubs being open in some of these schools that were… they’re trying to advertise for kids to come and join these Satan groups and movements. There’s no way that would have happened back in early America, or the founding era, because that was still at a time where adultery was against the law and you can be put to death for adultery in the early American days, there was no way they’re letting the Satan stuff happen. And I’m saying that to give context that as we look even at the notion of freedom, they didn’t believe in freedom without boundaries and limitations. And that’s also not a biblical idea that there was always freedom to choose. But there was always consequences for choices. And sometimes those consequences were very negative if you went the wrong way, but the reality, not taking away from the good news we are talking about with a lot of positive things happening.

David Barton
And Rick I got to throw one more in because the way you set this up…

Rick Green
Wow, Tim, that’s three in a row for David and yeah, I well, I mean, he’s the boss. All right. No, no, no, I think we set you up with the three like minded good news, or like category, good news, whatever it might be.

David Barton
Well, one goes back to and you were talking about shouldn’t people be okay with some competition free market stuff? Why are they threatened by Christian kind of stuff. And that tends to be really a mantra of progressives and secularist. They’re threatened by… they accuse us of trying to establish a theocracy. And they’re the ones trying to establish a secular theocracy. They’re threatened by our speech. And you know, we’ve got a free market. But this goes to a court decision where a federal judge has just ruled that the Biden administration cannot collaborate with big media to censor viewpoints they don’t like and this has been the federal government, the administration has been working with all these large platforms and saying, Hey, take down, these guys block these guys take these messages off, this is the stuff we don’t want to see. And the federal court said, You can’t do that. Here’s what I find amazing. Instead of just recognizing a free market of free speech, let the platform’s be out there have your viewpoints of its, you know, whatever it is, the Biden administration is appealing that decision saying wait a minute, it’s really important that we be able to center viewpoints. And so that’s just an amazing acknowledgement on their part that they don’t like free market competition. They don’t like people saying things that would compete and give people choice. And that’s again, a big indication of this is something that Judeo Christian faith has brought Biblical faith has brought a lot of freedom in a lot of ways. A secular progressive community brings a lot of oppression, and kills and cancels a lot of the freedom that we’re used to. So they usually accused us of exactly what they’re doing. And people don’t think about that. And so we get this brand of Christian nationalists who are trying to establish a theocracy. No, no, no, they’re the ones doing theocracy and it’s a secular theocracy and it does not have freedom or liberty as part of it.

Rick Green
Yeah, the difference in a in a Christian society and a society where the Bible prevails in terms of the level of freedom versus a secular society, where you begin to lose all those freedoms. Boy, that used to be something we would teach in our schools even. It’s why it’s so important for churches to talk about this stuff, and for individuals to talk to their friends and family about it. That’s the only way this education is going to come back about these basic principles and the difference in what you get in the culture if the Bible is infused or if it’s not. Alright, Tim, I think you should get to do at least one good news story before we go to break, man,

Tim Barton
I appreciate it. So at the top of my stack, I have one that is highlighting some of the blowback from Target’s campaign back in June and what was known as Pride Month, in which you know, guys, we’ve talked about the irony, when you are having a month celebrating… the notion of pride is already a sinful notion, right? The Bible tells us that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. So when you’re saying we’re… this is pride month, right? We’re prideful in what we’re doing. You’re already on the wrong side. And then when you are promoting things that are very clearly violations of basic biblical standards, and even things that are contrary to what has become the norm in western civilization for thousands of years. Nonetheless, one of the things that’s interesting is there’s a group of attorneys general being led by the Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and they are looking at potentially bringing lawsuits against Target for part of what happened and this is certainly part of the blowback and I think it can be an interesting discussion on some level that you know, Target if they would have realized what this was going to do. They might not have done it the extent they did, because they’re promoting an agenda sure, but they thought they would still make money. They thought they could be woken get away with it. And Bud Light and Target are some of the first ones that have really paid these heavy prices for being woke, where the slogan go woke go broke actually is starting to become a reality in some of these now instances but the Attorney Generals have come together and they identified that there was not only issues with this pride month potential harm to minors, what they identify quickly is there could be a violation of the state’s economic interests as target shareholders which I think is super interesting, but then they do get into the details of could there be a violation of the State Child Protection and parental rights laws. They’re reviewing that right now and I, you know, I don’t know that a lot is going to come from this but even if it’s nothing more than a shot across the bow, it is awesome that we finally have some attorneys general some conservative leaders who are upholding a standard a moral standard and are at the very minimum putting a company on warning that this is not acceptable behavior and hopefully it’s an example to every other major corporation out there not to embrace this wokeism and go the direction of Bud Light and Target which this is a aside from the Good News portion we’re talking about but I saw Bud Light has recently employed Ken Griffey Jr. To be a face celebratory, Bud Light they’re coming out with and I… this was not revealed in the article I was reading about it. But I’m very curious what they had to pay him as they are trying to do recovery like full scale right just stop the bleed as much as possible that you’re having to now go back to people who were dearly loved who are not controversial, who’ve been nowhere near anything woke and who take you back to the days of when sports was actually sports, right. With Ken Griffey Jr. When he was just this amazing hitter and a Golden Glove or whatever, you know, whatever all these accolades and awards were that he won, incredible athlete, but to see Bud Light reeling like this and now to see these attorneys general coming out against Target. It’s very encouraging to me what we’ve seen over the last couple of months.

Rick Green
Really good stuff and you know, my advice to Bud Light if you can put enough money together to hire Kid Rock, to now endorse you after it was his viral video shooting up all your cans. Ah, you might, you might have a chance, you might have a chance, but Ken Griffey Jr. Very good find for them. And like you said, very beloved American, so Good stuff, good stuff. Lots more good news for you, folks, we got to take a quick break. We’ll be right back, you’re listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today. And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil, and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things, like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation of a perfect people. But the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out, wallbuilders.com, The American Story.

Rick Green
Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us on WallBuilders. More good news coming your way. You know as kind of the driver here I got to decide. I got to decide. David had three pieces of good news. Tim only had one. Do I go back to Tim? Or do I go back to David? Wait, wait, I gotta pull out my check. Oh, wait Tim signs my… no Cheryl signs my check. Nevermind. Cheryl is not here. So I get to toss a coin. It’s Tim. I think Tim should get another one. Tim, you got one handy?

Tim Barton
I do. So, this one to me is intriguing. The headline says Trump pledges tariffs, stop and frisk and ban on gender affirming care. Here’s what else he’s promising if elected, and 2024. This came out in Forbes. And this came out just actually maybe the beginning of this week. And Trump is trying to be very clear that he is going to be very conservative if he gets to be the president a second time. And looking at what he’s saying related to tariffs and really even cutting off trade. Now, actually, the DeSantis came out and said cutting off trade with China. But Trump said limiting trade with India and China and any other country and posing out 100%-200% tariff dealing with what’s happening in those nations, birthright citizenship, he said that he would look at doing pardons for some of those January 6 political prisoners. Some of those who, at this point to our knowledge have not even gone before a judge that haven’t had the accusations haven’t gone to trial, right. Had their their basic due process rights revoked because of what was called an insurrection. He said, we go back to a mandatory stop and frisk. And this would be required in police departments nationwide. He said that he would work with Congress to pass legislation to punish doctors who provide gender, quote, unquote, gender affirming care to minors. He got into critical race theory, and he said that he would cut funding for schools. And so this is a Forbes article just outlining all the things he said he would do. And there’s a very long list of this. And the reason I think it’s interesting is one of the things that we have talked about is when you look at President Trump, his presidential term, he had a lot of really conservative leaders around him, many of them that we were friends with that we know very well, and we know they gave him a lot of guidance and a lot of insight on things that… the political landscape was very new for Trump. And because of the fallout of January 6, Trump was really abandoned by some people. He was really offended at other people and so many of those relationships have blown up. And we’ve kind of asked a question, how conservative will he be? And I think it’s still a little bit yet to be determined. But one of the things that has been pretty consistent with President Trump is when he said he was going to do something he by and large worked to make that happen. Now, sometimes he worked to make it happen by assigning somebody over something who didn’t do a great job. But he seemed to be a president who more than presidents, we’ve had in several of our more recent examples in the last several decades, he has seemed to be someone who’s kept a lot of his promises. And so to me, this is very encouraging some of the positions he is saying he will hold as president that, you know, again, he might not be our first choice, necessarily, we don’t have to get into that a lot right now. But and it’s something that if he gets the nomination, right, if he’s a Republican candidate, then it will become very clear, based on the policy of the two parties like this is the guy who needs to win. And you can have some great debates about is he the best candidate right now? And certainly, he’s got a track record, that’s very positive, and yet he has a lot of baggage. And at times, there seems to be a self destruct button along the way. But, you know, anyway, a lot of interesting conversation can be had surrounding this. But the fact that he’s coming out with some of these more policy related positions, and they are extremely conservative, is very encouraging to me. And I think it’s going to really require all of the other Republican candidates to come out with something similar, which means it’s just raising the bar across the board, or is what it is likely to do, which again, to me is very encouraging.

Rick Green
Yeah man, I think, Tim, you’re right on. And maybe part of what you’re saying, too, is it’s because of some of these candidates like DeSantis, right, because of what he did in Florida, it actually got done, as David was talking about earlier. You know, that’s forcing in some ways Trump to do this. And I guess the big question is going to be, you know, does he stay true to that, which he has a track record of doing, right? He did, like you said he did in office, what he said he was going to do. And so if he knows he needs to make those promises to get reelected, then and he makes them. I think he’ll follow through on those. And so yeah, we’ll see. But very, very good news that he’s taking those positions. And even like you said, with the J-6 guys and gals, I was just with a praying grandma, that the DOJ is going after who just simply, you know, walked the grounds and prayed and went into the Capitol, but literally like praying for the Capitol and everything else. And that’s still the kind of people they’re going after. And I think those are the kind of people that he will pardon, which I believe should be at this point, for sure. Alright, David, final piece of good news, maybe I don’t know, we might get two in. We’ll see. Go for it brother.

David Barton
This is a proposal you guys are going to have tell me which presidential candidate made this proposal. But it deals with immigration services. And so immigration services, the proposal is that there’ll be more English proficiency required and all immigrants coming in, that they have to demonstrate their English proficiency at a higher level than is required right now. Right now, they simply have to answer some words in English or questions in English that they’ve already filled out on their tests, like their address, their name, that kind of stuff. So the proposal is, hey, let’s hold up pictures of things from daily life and have them describe those pictures in English. Let’s have them talk about services, that happen in a community and have them describe that in English. And in addition to that, in addition to doing that, let’s also have more questions related to civics and government and have them answered in English. So it’s a whole lot more English proposal kinds of things, that they want to see more English proficiency among the immigrants coming in, which is a very conservative idea. And I kind of cheated on you. I wanted you to tell me which candidate I’m not going to make you answer that so you don’t get embarrassed. This actually is a proposal…

Tim Barton
from George Washington.

David Barton
Yeah, there you go. Actually it was…

Rick Green
I was stuck on the fact that David actually pulled back a question so we wouldn’t get embarrassed him. That’s the first time ever.

Tim Barton
This is the only time he’s cared about not embarrassing us. This is what… I don’t know what’s happening right now.

David Barton
Well, it is so you can be shocked and surprised. This proposal actually comes from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, says the immigration bureaucracy itself that is recommending more and… yeah, I haven’t heard a candidate say that. But for the bureaucracy just say that?

Tim Barton
So let me clarify the reason he didn’t ask the question. Is he said, what President and it wasn’t a president. That’s why he wouldn’t embarrass us…

Rick Green
So he knew we couldn’t get it right.

Tim Barton
He asked the wrong question. That’s why it was pulled back. I got it. I got it.

Rick Green
I think just based on that fake news, the way the question was asked, that Tim should get to give the last piece of good news if he’s got a fast one.

Tim Barton
I definitely can find something. This is where the next headline is where we’re seeing a little blowback from Ben and Jerry’s, who on Fourth of July came out and said that America stole the land and we need to give all this land back to the the natives. Come to find out that there’s an indigenous chief who wants a Ben and Jerry’s headquarters land that he claimed was stolen land and given back to the native tribes. So this is a, to me a great headline. And really just story in general, when you see the woke position, and one of the things that we’ve talked about, we have seen people discuss before is how the woke will eat their own. And this is, I mean, literally, when you… you know, Ben and Jerry’s, when they’re coming out and saying, hey, all the stolen land, we should be giving it back to come to find out that your headquarters is on a piece that arguably was stolen, and now they’re wanting it back. And you’re like, oh, hey about that, like our bad. We’re going to go ahead and keep this land anyway. It’s at least in my mind, very good news, that some of these individuals are having to deal on some level with the consequences of their ridiculous statements and policy. And it’s not ridiculous to say, if something was stolen, you should give it back. Like the biblical perspective is if you steal something, you repay seven fold what was stolen, that’s a biblical perspective. But the idea that we’re saying all of America was stolen, and everybody says it’s buying into some of these faulty narratives that is not correct. So it’s great to see blowback and it’s great to see them dealing with this. I love it.

Rick Green
All right. Our final piece of good news is that the left eats their own… ice cream. That’s right. They do. They eat their own ice cream, so they eat a lot of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. But this is hilarious to me that they called for everybody to give the land back and now people are calling for their land. I love it. I love it. Alright, folks, we’re out of time for today. Thanks for listening. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders it’s been good news Friday.