Government Censorship, “Biblical” Slaves, Voting, & The State Department – On Foundations Of Freedom: Did the Biden Administration leave “Trump’s people” in Afghanistan on purpose? How do we deal with a rouge State Department? What is the Taliban doing with the military equipment the Biden Administration gave them? Does the Bible encourage slavery? Could women and blacks vote at the beginning of our nation? What is the proper role of government in collusion with Big Tech? Tune in to hear the answers to these questions and more on today’s Foundations of Freedom program!

Air Date: 09/2/2021

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

Listen:

Download: Click Here

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

Abraham Lincoln said. “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts; not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, we are talking about the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. 

And it’s Thursday, so it’s Foundations of Freedom Thursday around here at WallBuilders. You can get more of these foundational programs at wallbuilderslive.com. This is the day where we answer your questions about foundational principles regarding the Constitution, the Declaration, the founding of the country, maybe some policies going through Congress right now whether or not they’re constitutional, or maybe how we deal with things like the 25th Amendment, those types of questions, send them in to radio at wallbuilders.com.

I’m Rick Green, America’s Constitution coach and a former Texas legislator out of Texas. And I’m here with the premier historian in America, David Barton, he’s our founder here at WallBuilders, and also Tim Barton, a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. 

We would love for you to learn more about us at wallbuilderslive.com. Get some of the archives of not only those Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs, but other days of the week as well, including Good News Fridays. Almost every week, tons of good news there for you that will encourage you even in the chaos of this culture that is really a decay.

I mean, when you look at the crumbling of the culture around us, you really do need to know that the principles still work, and we can rebuild. But you got to do it the right way and have the right strategies and tactics to do so. And in fact, speaking of rebuilding, we would love to have you with us in the Dallas Fort Worth area on the weekend of September 17th and 18th. 

Mercury One American Journey Experience

If you’d like to know more about that go to patriotacademy.com./fundraiser. We’re actually doing a fundraiser for the Patriot Academy campus that is going to be built in Texas so that young people can come spend a year with us between high school and college and get a good grounding in biblical worldview, as well as constitutional jurisdictions, leadership skills, all of those things. And also, we’re building a mockup of Independence Hall. So you can come spend a weekend with us and get your constitution coach training, in that mockup of Independence Hall and all kinds of other cool stuff.

But if you’d like to spend that weekend with us, September 17th, Lauren Boebert Congresswoman from Colorado is our special guests that night. It’s Constitution Day, and we’re going to have a wonderful, wonderful evening. 

And then the next day on the 18th, we’ll have a Constitution coach training at the Mercury One American Journey Experience. Tim Barton will be our special guest on that and will be showing us through all those artifacts and amazing documents and just incredible things. So we’d love for you to be with us, patriotacademy.com./fundraiser.

Alright, David and Tim, let’s dive into some of those questions. The first question for this Foundations of Freedom Thursday is going to come from Sherman. And the question is “I was wondering who hired or appointed the majority of the civilian personnel left behind in Kabul? 

I believe they were left over from the Trump administration, and this is why the Biden ministration pulled the military out and closed the airbase before the evacuation. This was planned to happen just as it is. Has anyone asked this question?”

Well, guys, nobody’s asked this question yet. And I think what he’s basically saying is because a lot of these folks were put in there and encouraged by the Trump administration that Biden would have been as crass to just leave them just because they were Trump’s people. I’ve never heard anything like that. I think it’s just total incompetence. But what do you guys think?

An Interesting Take

Tim:

Well, I think it’s certainly an interesting take. It’s something that does not seem to be out of line with what the administration would do. But I don’t think that was specifically the case. I think there was a lot of incompetence. 

I think certainly things verge or borderline, or maybe even crossed the line into evil with some of the mishandling and the intentionality of the bad things done. But some of those private contractors have been there for 10 or 12 or 15 years. And so, many of those people even were there long before Trump was there. They was…

Rick:

So including when Obama was in office, and then frankly, Biden was vice president?

Tim:

Correct. So this is something that certainly they would have different directives, they would have different orders and rules of engagement and different things they’re doing under different administrations, but they wouldn’t necessarily come in and clean out house to have a different set of personnel based on what was happening in the engagements on the ground.

David:

And I’m going to go a little further and say that in most embassies that are the size of this one, billion building, billion dollar structure, it was certainly a hotspot of American policy. We had so much going on there. We had a big embassy staff there.

The State Department Swamp

And I would just almost certainly guarantee you that if it’s a typical big embassy staff, it has people from the Reagan administration, from Bush 41. It has people from the Clinton administration.

It has people from Bush 43. It has people from Obama. It has people from Trump. And it even had people from Biden in that administration. That is the way a typical embassy will work of this size where there’s this much activity.

So what you actually have is within the State Department, there is a group that just flat hates America, and there’s willing to embarrass the Biden administration as they are to embarrass the Trump administration or anything else. I mean, you got to understand you cannot fire people in the State Department, Justice Department, etc.

The way that the Democrats have set up hiring, you just can’t get rid of people. If you recall all the thousands that died in the fiasco a few years ago of the veterans department, all the bad medical treatment, thousands that were shown to have died, only one person got fired out of that entire fiasco. And it took a federal law to change the law to fire that one person.

So you’re talking people in the State Department, this is the biggest swamp in DC, this is where the most alligators are. This is where you have people who are open communists, open Marxist, open socialists, and they’re going to do everything they can to make America look bad, and they are incompetent, but you just can’t get rid of them.

So I don’t think this is as conspiratorial as saying this is all anti-Trump. Yeah, there’s some Trump personnel there, but there’s also Biden personnel there. You just got a state department that is rogue and has been. And that’s what at some point we’re going to have to deal with.

Biden’s Chaos

At some point, the American people are going to have to get fed up enough with this, that Congress will go back and change employment laws so that federal employees can be held accountable for bad behavior. And at that point, then I think we see some changes in the swamp. But at this point, the American people really are rising up, it’s very bipartisan.

They’re very dissatisfied with why this was handled. And that’s going to put pressure on Democrats as well as Republicans to make some significant reforms.

So is it fair to say, just as I’m watching this unfold that the incredible incompetence and horrible decisions to have the military leave before they had the citizens out, to not hold on to Bagram Air Force Base until they had everybody out, or even from now on, all of those kind of decisions, I mean, that’s at the feet of Biden, for sure.

But then the chaos during the evacuation that was so chaotic because of Biden’s decision was made 1,000 times worse because of those people you’re talking about, those entrenched bureaucrats, which you can’t get rid of that are just, frankly, anti-American.

David:

Yeah. Glenn Beck and I were talking about this last night. And I think that what has gone on in the latter stages of the military aspect of the withdrawal, and that is the Biden administration directly telling the military what to do, that side of it comes close to crimes against humanity.

When you have a group like the Taliban and ISIS and others that are so committed to murder and open murder, and what we’ve seen in the last few days with them using our Black Hawk helicopters to hang people, and even to tie people on the skids and land on top of Christians tied to the skids to crush them, that is crimes against humanity. And we gave them those Black Hawks.

The Nazarene Fund

Taliban now has more Black Hawk helicopters than 85% of the nations in the world, including our allies. And we gave them that. And we gave them 600,000 guns. And we gave them 200 planes. They’re going to use that to slaughter people. So that side is definitely on the Biden administration. But we back up to what was happening with particularly our evacuation efforts with Nazarene Fund, and people who’re supporting WallBuilders on the Middle East fund, that was the State Department making those calls.

You put those people back outside the fence, you get them out now, and the military did and that’s where the bomb went off. Or turn back that plane, don’t accept those refugees in Macedonia, like State Department call ahead and told those countries not to accept. We had 3,500 going to Australia, State Department call them said don’t take them.

So the State Department and not just the Biden administration, the State Department, the deep state, if you will, is what is also responsible for thousands of people not getting out of Afghanistan, I mean, thousands. We were looking at one point about 125,000-140,000 needed to be moved, and they’re saying that maybe we got out 80,000-90,000. So there’s a lot left behind and that’s on the State Department, not necessarily the specific Biden administration.

Rick:

Alright. Well, let’s move on to the next question. Gentlemen, it’s about US history and the Bible. And the question is from Lauren in Pennsylvania, “Thank you for taking time to educate Americans about US history. I really enjoy your podcasts and interviews.

My question is about the Bible. What do you think is the proper response to someone who claimed that the Bible supports slavery, especially since Paul encourages a former slave to return to his master? I sometimes wonder how to respond to this question. Thanks so much for sharing your invaluable knowledge.” Lauren, great question. Guys, what do you think?

The Bible and Slavery

Tim:

Well, I think it’s interesting to note that the Bible does talk about slavery. Slavery certainly existed in the era of the Bible. It existed in every single generation and every nation in the history of the world. To say the Bible encouraged slavery, I think might be a little different take. Certainly, if you go to the Old Testament, there were things in the Old Testament that you might could argue slavery was encouraged on some level.

Now, it’s also worth noting, if you’re going back thousands of years, then that’s a very different era than where we are today. And it was an era of conquest. It was an era of survival. However, one of the things that was unique about the standards of the Bible, when God gave the Israelites, the laws in the Old Testament, there were laws dealing with slavery, and there were laws dealing with the treatment of slaves.

Then what you see from the Old Testament laws is it required a better treatment of slaves than really any other law you will find anywhere in the world, especially at that time. And I talked about if, for example, a slave tooth was broken out, or if there was a level of abuse to that slave, that the slave had to be set free; that if the slave escaped, you could not chase down the slave.

And I’m saying some of the things specifically. Because when you look at some of the, the fugitive slave laws that happened in America, some of those laws that when you look at some of the Southern apologists from the Christian perspective back at the time before the Civil War, they argued with the Bible, the Bible allows and condones, and endorses slavery. But even the basic things that were happening in slavery at that time were violating commands that were very clearly written in Scripture.

With all that being said, one of the things that was also true when you look at the founding of America, the Founding Fathers who argued against slavery talked about that slavery came after the fall of man. And the reason this matters, because once you look at a sinful, fallen, broken world, there were a lot of things that were happening in a sinful, fallen, broken world that were not God’s original design. It was not part of the laws of nature, or nature’s God, it wasn’t God’s designer intent, which is why the abolitionist arguing against slavery said we need to get away from that.

Paul’s Writings

And so even if you look at the Apostle Paul’s writings, the Apostle Paul never encourages people to go own slaves. That’s not what he acknowledges. When instead, what he does is acknowledges that slavery did exist at that time.

And he said, all slaves, you need to serve your masters well as unto the Lord; all masters, you need to treat your slaves well. And so what the Apostle Paul did was acknowledge the humanity of the individual of the slaves, and challenge the humanity of the slave owners. But nowhere in the New Testament do you see the encouragement of people to go out and get slaves.

So certainly, if you go back to the Old Testament, you might can make the argument that slavery was encouraged on some level, and I’m saying make the argument because I’m not sure that’s totally accurate in all cases, but you might can make that argument. But also keep in context this was thousands of years ago. And God, consistently, if you go through the laws of the Old Testament, God always required the Israelites to live in a higher standard and a different standard than every other nation around them.

And that’s why even if you look at the laws of slavery, they were required to treat the slaves with humanity. They had to respect the humanity of that individual. And they couldn’t abuse them. If that slave escaped, they couldn’t chase them down and re-enslave them. There was a lot of things even in that era that were very different than slavery in the rest of the world. And God’s standard always was calling His people to a higher standard than everybody else.

David:

And then one of the things you see what that is the Old Testament, because Tim pointed out that was the age of conquest: what you normally did was kill your enemy, just wipe them out, massacre them. So to say them alive is an improvement over killing them all. Save them alive and they’re slaves instead of being dead. If you had a choice of being a slave or being dead, what would you choose? Well, this is a step up.

A Real Improvement

Now granted where we are today looking back, oh, slavery is barbaric. But as Tim pointed out, Bible gave very clear standards of treatment that elevated above any other nation in the world at that time. Nobody else had the thing that hey, if you end your slave, you got to let them go free; and if they escaped, you can’t go chase them down.

So this is a real improvement over what the world condition is. And that’s what the Bible does is continually elevate things.

And as a New Testament Tim mentioned, Paul, you know, even when Paul returned Onesimus, the slave to Philemon, what did he tell Philemon? He said, Philemon, you remember he is your brother, he is your equal, you treat him that way. And so there’s Paul’s taken a system where that in Rome you had 40% of the Roman Empire was slaves.

And here’s Paul going against that saying, there’s equality. So Paul is raising the standard. Whatever the world was at the time, they raised the standard.

But see, Jesus that the ultimate standard. Jesus said in Luke 4, I’ve come to set at liberty the captive. What I have done is I have come to end slavery. And that’s why you have the golden rule. You treat others the way you want to be treated. Would you like to be a slave? Would you like to be treated that way?

Well, you treat people the way you want to be treated. Jesus is the one who brought the real abolition movement into being. Everybody else in the Bible is raising it, making it better, getting closer to good. Jesus is the one who said, okay, here’s where the goal is and it’s liberty for everybody.

And that’s why you find it in America, the leading abolitionists were Christian leaders. They were often pastors, and they quoted Jesus, they quoted the standards that Jesus gave. John Quincy Adams says a great speech from 1837 where he quotes that passage both out of Isaiah and out of Luke 4 where Jesus says, I’ve come to sit at liberty the captives, and that was his motivation.

The Bible Produced More Liberty

So the Bible is what produced more liberty than any other book in the world, and it is what improve the world all along the way. It was not just a one-step, we’re going to get rid of slavery. It took a while to get people to think right and do that.

But the Bible is what did it. IT does not encourage slavery. And as Tim said, what they did was slavery in the South was a violation of many biblical standards. So they can’t use the Bible to justify what the Bible condemns.

Rick:

Great question, Lauren from Pennsylvania. Stay with us, folks, we’re going to take a quick break. More of your questions when we return and you can send your questions to [email protected] You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

PATRIOT ACADEMY

Have you noticed the vacuum of leadership in America? We’re looking around for leaders of principle to step up and too often, no one is there. God is raising up a generation of young leaders with a passion for impacting the world around them. They’re crying out for the mentorship and leadership training they need. Patriot Academy was created to meet that need.

Patriot Academy graduates now serve in state capitals around America in the halls of Congress, in business, in the film industry, in the pulpit and every area of the culture. They’re leading effectively and impacting the world around them. Patriot Academy is now expanding across the nation and now’s your chance to experience this life changing week that trains champions to change the world.

Visit patriotacademy.com for dates and locations. Our core program is still for young leaders 16 to 25 years old, but we also now have a citizen track for adults, so visit the website today to learn more. Help us fill the void of leadership in America join us in training champions to change the world at patriotacademy.com

—

President Thomas Jefferson said, “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves. And if we think they’re not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

When Could Women and Blacks Vote?

 Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Send your questions into [email protected]

Joe gets the next question. He said “It seems I heard you teach at one time that at the founding, women and blacks could vote. Women just didn’t because the men voted for the family. But if the woman was single, she could vote. And I believe somewhere along the line you taught that blacks could also vote. Am I remembering incorrectly or is that true? And if it’s true, when and how did it change?”

Alright, David, so Joe’s asking about, his question sounds like he interpreted what we’ve taught that everywhere in America both women and blacks could vote. So you know, did that happen everywhere in certain areas?

David:

Well, it happened everywhere in certain areas. And it happened to certain times. For example, you’ll find women voting back in the colonial days in the 1640s. But as Joe points out, and he remembered correctly, it was really more about families voting, and so kind of the head of the family would vote.

And if the man wasn’t there, then the woman would vote. So it wasn’t a thing that said, oh, women aren’t equals, they can’t vote, it was kind of like head of the family. And so families got to vote. And that’s where much stuff was, and there was a great emphasis on family.

The Family

Biblically, we understood that family was basis, well, a society, it’s the basis of the church, it’s the basis of education, it’s the basis of what goes on in government. Without a strong family, all of those other institutions are weak. So the emphasis is on the family.

And that’s why women could vote. Now, it was not until after the Civil War, and through the women’s rights movement, the constitutional amendment added that women get to vote every time in every election, and we no longer vote on the basis of families, we vote on the basis of individuals.

And so when we shifted in that system, where that individuals became the voice, and every individual had a voice, rather than every family had a voice, that’s when it really changed. And then as far as blacks voting, you know, it’s interesting you have to make a difference between free blacks and enslaved blacks, because in virtually every state free blacks could vote.

I think, at the time of the revolution, 11 of the 13 states had blacks voting. Now when you go to a state like Massachusetts, it didn’t matter at all what the condition was because Massachusetts in 1780 banned slavery.

So I think there’s a great history piece done by a colonel in the Civil War. His name is John Hancock, and he’s out of Pennsylvania. And he did a piece on civil rights and blacks. And he pointed out that there never was a time in Massachusetts history when blacks could not vote.

So from the very beginning, I mean, we’re going back to colonial days, we’re talking blacks had the right to vote. Now wasn’t that way in the south and other states, and at least two southern states didn’t let free blacks vote.

Is Government Colluding With Big Tech?

But generally, across the nation, free blacks could vote, and in many cases, you didn’t have slaves. And so that was an issue. Like in Massachusetts, they always had the right to vote.

So there was a lot more participation in suffrage, both women’s suffrage and suffrage with minorities than we often hear with history today. But yes, there are clear examples of blacks openly voting, and actively voting sometimes in fairly sizable numbers, and the same with women. But again, that was based on a family vote rather than individual vote.

Rick:

Alright, guys, last question of the day. And this is really kind of a grouping of a lot of people asking this question over the last few months. And it’s very simply, you know, “What is the proper role of government and collusion with big tech? This administration has really teamed up with big tech to silence any opposing view or anything that’s not part of their narrative on a myriad of issues, especially COVID, but other issues as well. And that is that in fact, infringing on constitutional rights?”

David:

Yeah, it clearly is. I’ve got here, actually, a transcript of a press conference. Jen Psaki is in that Press Briefing Room being asked about what’s happening with COVID and what’s happening on big tech platforms where they’re shutting down a lot of stuff. And even here with this program, we had Mat Staver on a couple weeks ago, and he was simply reporting on a law suit that he had just want in behalf of, I believe dental students in Alabama or somewhere else.

They were all forced to be vaccinated. And the law says you don’t have to be vaccinated. Because as he pointed out, all 50 states have medical exemptions for vaccinations, 46 have conscience exemptions, and 26 have religious exemptions, or whatever the numbers were. And for reporting those numbers of what the law said, and the case we won, we were locked out a week from YouTube, they wouldn’t let us say anything, add anything for a week. They took that interview down with Mat Staver.

“Flagging Problematic Posts”

So Jen Psaki is being asked about that, and she says, well, first, we’re in regular touch with social media platforms. Oh, interesting. The administration is talking to them. And these engagements typically happened through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team. And she goes on talk about it.

And she says in terms of actions, we’re working to flag information. We’re flagging problematic posts from Facebook. Now, wait a minute, the government is telling Facebook, these are problematic posts, and you need to take these down, you need to kill them… So what she goes on to point out is the government is helping censor this speech. Now, the purpose of free speech was to allow dissent.

Going back to the Bible, Proverbs 18:17, it says one side sounds good until you hear the other. And so this is what we faced in the American Revolution. The British had the king’s version and we had a different version over here in America. And so the king is reporting on what’s happening in the British press.

And by the way, the Founding Fathers were pretty merciless on the British press. They talked about how that they needed some alternative form of social media communication which for them turned out to be the committees of correspondence. But their thing was we can’t trust the British press. It’s got a British bias. It just carries a British message. It won’t give the other side of the story.

So the whole right we have of free speech in America was because the government was choosing winners and losers in the speech debate. The government was choosing what is the acceptable message. And here you got Jen Psaki actively saying, yeah, we meet with the social media platforms, and we flagged things for them. We flagged disinformation. No, it’s not disinformation, it’s just stuff that you disagree with.

Successful Treatments

And because you disagree with it doesn’t mean it’s false. I mean, we’ve still got this thing going on right now where you’ve got governors saying, hey, you need to mask toddlers, and that doctors are saying, wait a minute, you can’t mask toddlers, that’s really bad for them. Or you need to mask all kids in school.

And you get the National Institute of Health saying wait a minute, kids under 12 just essentially don’t get COVID. I mean, it’s so rare that you don’t want a mask. You create more problems with mask than without.

So even the government has different lines on this, but the administration is choosing which lines they want to choose and which lines they want to believe. And that’s really bad, not only for COVID-19, but for anything else that goes on. So constitutional protections, we’re not there to let the government tell us what we can and can’t say.

Rick:

Yeah. And just think about the danger of this. Because I mean, the Founding Fathers knew that you needed to have that arena of ideas, and you need to be able to access truth and get good information. And if one side was going to dominate, whether it was the British or anybody else, then you wouldn’t have that that iron sharpening iron, that countenance sharpening the countenance of another, you wouldn’t be able to correct lies. And we’re facing that.

I mean, think about how many people have died from COVID because of only one narrative out there and nobody talking about all the treatments. And I mean, there’s dozens of them. It’s not just Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

There’s all kinds of things that if given early have a literally 100% success rate. It’s crazy how good they’re doing with those things. Now Ivermectin got 60 studies, not 24. It was 24, just a few months ago.

We Must Talk About These Things

So it’s just crazy that we’re not at least talking about those things. You can say that’s like they say, in all the articles oh, it’s a dewormer, and they use the language so that you’ll stay away from it. Right?

That’s fine, you say those things, but then let us talk about the positive side of it and the lives that have been saved. Same thing with vitamin D and all that. And so when we don’t have true free speech and an arena of ideas, it’s bad for everybody, because you can’t get to the right answer, and it’s certainly unscientific.

Because scientifically, you got to be able to go back and forth, back and forth, keep testing, keep testing, have the data. So the Founders were definitely wise and way beyond, frankly, any culture that had had to deal with some of these issues. And boy, we’ve squandered that with this administration.

Government Censorship, “Biblical” Slaves, Voting, & The State Department – On Foundations

Tim:

Well, and it’s crazy to see also this administration is really twisted the Bill of Rights, because we know the Bill of Rights was done to restrict a federal government. And so when you add people like Jen Psaki saying, hey, we’re not censoring them, we’re just telling Facebook and Google and YouTube who they should censor. Like, wait a second, this is literally with the Bill of Rights in general was about to make sure the federal government couldn’t go and pick winners and losers. They couldn’t go and stop the free exchange of ideas were mentioning.

But this notion that Jen Psaki is going to come out and say, well, we’re not the ones really doing it, we’re just helping Facebook or YouTube or Google identify, and they can censor, when also recognizing that all of those entities operate as a free speech platform. But if they’re going to start picking winners and losers, which we acknowledge, if you’re a private entity, you have the capacity to operate under the whims of who that leader is. They can pass rules and say hey, private organization, here’s what we’re doing. That’s one thing they can do.

However, you don’t get the federal protections. You don’t get the tax incentives and breaks then as being a free speech platform if you’re going to come in and censor. And when you’re working with a presidential administration, to censor the people that you disagree with, this is much more in the realm of communism and Marxism. It’s certainly not American. It’s certainly not constitutional. And this is something that we need to be on guard against.

Rick:

Well, we’re out of time for your questions today, but send them in [email protected] and we’ll hit as many as we can next week on Foundations of Freedom Thursday. You can get more of our programming at the website wallbuilderslive.com. Thanks so much for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.