Hope, Justice, Elections, and More – On Foundations Of Freedom: Watching the national news can make you feel powerless; yet, there is much we can do! What would happen if the courts discover that Biden actually didn’t reach 270 electoral votes? How do we safe-guard our election system? Tune in to hear answers to these questions and more on today’s Foundations of Freedom program!

Air Date: 03/04/2021

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

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

Faith and the Culture

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.”

Rick:

It’s the intersection of faith and the culture, WallBuilders Live, it’s Thursday, so Foundations of Freedom Thursday today. Thank you for joining us. My name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s constitution coach. And I have the privilege of working with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian, the founder of WallBuilders. 

I think he knows more about the Founding Fathers than anybody alive today. I know he’s read more of the Founding Fathers than anybody alive today and has the most incredible library, largest collection of Founding Fathers documents in the world, privately owned anyway. And it is incredible to be able to sit there and hold letters and books and journals and Bibles with notes in the handwritten margins. I mean, just cool stuff.

And that’s why when we talk on WallBuilders about what the Founder said, what original intent was, what the constitution was supposed to do, we’re actually telling you what they said it was supposed to do, not what some professor says, or what some Judge says, what did the Founders themselves say? 

And if we don’t like what they said, or what they did, we can amend the Constitution to change it. But boy, if we haven’t amended a particular area of the Constitution, we should be going back to see what the Founders themselves had to say about that particular thing. So that’s what we try to do on these Foundations of Freedom Thursdays.

Send In Your Questions!

Tim Barton is with us. He’s a national speaker and pastor, he’s president of WallBuilders. And if you want to know more about all three of us, you can find that out at wallbuilderslive.com. That’s our website where you can get archives the program, you can get a list of the stations, and you can also make a donation. 

Yeah, that’s the place you can contribute, be a part of the team, come alongside us, lock shields with us, I mean, out of analogies. But at any rate, you can be a part of what we’re doing by donating. And every dollar you donate, amplifies our voice. It allows us to train more people, equip more legislators, equip more citizens to make a difference in their community. And don’t you want to be a part of that solution?

Alright, guys, Foundations of Freedom Thursday today, so we’ve got a lot of questions from the listeners. And folks listening if you want to send in a question on the Constitution or history, Founding Fathers, application of biblical worldview to what’s happening in the culture, whatever you got, send it to [email protected], ra[email protected] And Rick, he’s got the next question. He said, “How much what you guys are talking about on Good News Fridays do you think Biden will instantly wipe out on his first day or anytime soon?”

So he sent this in before Biden was sworn in listening to some of our good news programs where we were sharing a lot of the good things that had happened. He goes on to say, “Do you think we’ll ever have elections, ever?” I mean, ever. He said, “I think it’s absolutely no doubt the socialist communist governments make it impossible for the people to have a voice. 

I believe everything that Trump put in place will be the first things that Biden and Harris will kill. The only hope and this test and stretches our faith painfully, massively and beyond belief is in God to use his mighty hand to wipe out all that the Biden administration does. My faith is in God, not so much in any one, although I certainly enjoyed the Trump era. However, it’s very hard to see any future in anything if man is needed to make it happen.”

Will Biden Reverse All the Good?

So guys, I mean, honestly, I think what Ricky is expressing here, a lot of people are feeling and they are concerned that everything Trump did is going to be wiped out, and that there is no hope and that there is no process left. You know, obviously, that’s not true. We know the process can work and the system works if we work it and all of those things. 

But man, when you’re facing defeat, sometimes it’s hard to see the positive, which is why we do Good News Fridays and continue to do that even in the Biden era. But what do you guys think about how he’s asking this in terms of can Biden wipe out everything Trump did? And can we still have elections in the future to reverse what Biden’s going to do?

David:

Yeah, I think we’ll still have elections in the future. And I think we can reverse it. But I think, quite frankly, we’re in the Bible where they were in when the children Israel came out of Egypt, and God gave them manna and they had manna and they said, we’re sick of manna, we want quail. And God says what you want quail? Okay, have quail.

Have quail till you’re sick of it. Have quail till it runs out your ears, essentially. And we nationally made some choices in this election and including the runoff election that happened a month after that have said, we don’t want what we had, we want something totally different. So it is no surprise that they’re going to come up with a different agenda.

We’ve talked about this for probably four or five years that this is the most polarized the nation has been since 1856, that we have two sides that are diametrically opposed to each other. And it’s no surprise that when this side comes in, they’re going to do exactly what they’ve been doing, and that’s overturn everything about Trump policies that they possibly can. That doesn’t rule out elections.

National Vs. Local Level

What happens here is this is a problem that we’ve had now for a few years. We get our news at a national level. And I don’t care whether you watch conservative news or liberal news. If you’re CNN, MSNBC, whatever or if you’re Newsmax, if you’re FOX, whatever, you get your news at a national level. And so most of us are unable to change national results, and we get frustrated at a result. There’s not a thing…

You know, Tim and I, we know dozens of members of Congress, text with them frequently, I was talking to one even last night, great. I can’t change a single thing that’s going on in Congress right now. And I’ve got good connections, and a lot of people don’t have the connections that we have. 

And so people are frustrated. I certainly can’t get anything done in the Biden administration. You know, I’ve had friends in the White House for years, not now. And I certainly can’t call a Supreme Court justice and say you guys need to pick this case up and rules. So people get frustrated.

And what you have to do is get your eyes back on where politics happens. It goes back to Tip O’Neill, Ronald Reagan. Tip O’Neill was the Democratic Speaker of the House who said all politics is local and it really is. If you have people at the local level who are right, they won’t implement all the policies that Biden is demanding be implemented. 

They’re going to say, no, that’s your opinion, here’s what the law and the Constitution says. So we have to get back to not being frustrated by watching national news, start looking at things around you that you can control, things that you can fix, start building a farm team, so that we got better choices on the ballots as we go forward in future elections.

Republicans Are Likely to Take the House

Tim:

And this is also why it’s very common in midterm elections, that whatever political party the President is from, that the other political party then comes in and takes power, because you’ve seen some of the President’s agenda, and oftentimes the other side gets fired up and riled up and the side of the President is on says, you know, we feel good about it. And so you see a bigger turnout from the other side. So there is a lot of reason to have expectation that Republicans very likely could take back the House and gain control the Senate back in two years.

Now how much can Joe Biden get done between now and that two year period? Well, probably an awful lot and it definitely will be an uphill battle. But there is still reason to be optimistic and hopeful. There still are a lot of really good people in Congress doing positive things. There have been a lot of really good things at the state level, which is the reason we’ve already had on some of these Good News Friday programs, been able to highlight some of these stories of positive things happening. 

But this is exactly what you expect to see when you have somebody that not only their party has this ideology, but the people they surround themselves with. So Joe Biden, specifically, the people that he is choosing to help lead the nation have a very radical ideology. So it’s not surprising that we are seeing a lot of what President Trump did being undone and overturned.

David:

And it’s the kind of thing to and we’ve talked in previous programs, that God does depend on us to do things. I mean, we have to do it with God’s hand and God’s blessings. God’s not going to come in and just unilaterally cause everybody in the nation to have a different attitude and a different viewpoint and vote differently.

Do Most Americans Understand Roe V. Wade?

He’s relying on us. Now he’ll help us do that and he’ll actually touch hearts and prepare them so that we can do that. But part of his plan is using us. I mean, he tells us in the Great Commission, you go and teach others. It’s not that wait till they come to you and ask you questions. He said you need to go teach them.

We’re finding right now in polling even this very week that nearly half of Americans totally misunderstand what Roe v Wade is. And when Roe v Wade is explained to them, we’re finding that up to 80% of Americans oppose abortion on demand. Now, if you just ask them, do you support Roe v. Wade, do you think the court should overturn it? Somewhere around 55% of Americans say no, they shouldn’t overturn that. 

Did you know that Roe v. Wade gives abortion on demand up through nine months that you can kill a child in the womb? No, we had no idea about that. Do you support that? No, I don’t support that.

What happens is so many people operate on sound bites that have been given them. And we’re not out there on the other side educating our neighbors. This is why we even talk about worldview. We see only 6% of Americans have a biblical worldview about what’s going on in the culture. God is the one who told us to go make disciples, help them think right, help them know. 

And if we just take on the proposition of you know, I’m going to get five people who think wrong to think right by the next election, sure that’s only five votes. Yeah. But what if the millions of Americans were to all do five votes and just take on five? Man, we would have a landslide in the next election if every one of us just took on a little bit, just a partial.

And so yeah, while there’s frustration there, this is where we have to understand that if you just do it a little bit of time, this is what the Bible says, He says, I’m not going to give you the enemy all at once, He said, I’ll give you the enemy little by little. And that’s an Exodus 23 and also, in Deuteronomy 7:22, he said, I’m going to give it to you little by little, and that’s the strategy we need to have. So don’t be frustrated, don’t check out on this thing.

At Least Five People

Make it an objective to find some people and help educate them on things they’re not familiar with or things they misunderstand or things they have bad perceptions on. And that’s really how we’re going to get this thing turned around. You have to change the way that people think. 

And that’s not going to come from the media, that’s not going to come from schools, that’s not going to come from the White House or Congress. That’s going to have to come from us talking to our neighbors.

Rick:

So good man, and it is so important to have that long term view and not get caught up in just the moment but actually be able to step back. I think that’s part of how we keep that perspective here because we’re so into history, and we’re always stepping back and looking in the context of 100 years or 1000 years, or whatever it might be. 

And the other thing that is so needed with this mindset right now and of course, dealing with the defeats and all those kind of things is fellowship, actually being in it with a circle of friends and family at church or in your home or wherever it is, and actually talking about these things.

That’s why we’re doing the biblical citizenship classes. It creates that environment where you can actually talk about these things, realize you’re not alone. In the videos, when David takes you back through the historical stories of these things, it gives you hope for the future, because you realize you really get that good perspective. So be sure and either get Constitution Alive at wealth builders.com or sign up and do the Biblical Citizenship in Modern America class in your home.

A Moment From American History

I just can’t stress enough. I mean, we’re hearing the stories from thousands of people across the country that are going wow, I found some hope and I found some action steps that I can do in my local community to make a difference. It really, really does help. Such a great question, Ricky, thank you for sending that in. 

We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be back with our next question from the audience. You can send yours into [email protected] Stay tuned, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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.”

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. The Second Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees to every individual the right to keep and bear arms has been targeted for years now by those who are determined to dismantle the individual right to self-protection. Opponents argue that only the militia, the military, and law enforcement are to have and use firearms.

Quotable Founders

But those who wrote the Second Amendment strenuously disagreed, including Founding Father Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration, a president of the Continental Congress, and one of those who actually framed the Second Amendment. He declared “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young how to use [email protected] For more information about Richard Henry Lee, and the history of the Second Amendment, go to wallbuilders.com.

Thomas Jefferson said, “The Constitution of most of our states and of the United States assert that all power is inherent in the people that they may exercise it by themselves, that is their right and duty to be at all times armed, that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press.”

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. It’s Foundation to Freedom Thursday today, so we’re taking your questions. You can send those into [email protected] That’s [email protected] Next question is coming from Montana. Anthony in Montana asked, “What would happen if say your or so from now it got out that there was election fraud and enough to actually show that Trump won, would the administration be removed? Who would be in charge? Would they hold an emergency election? Would Trump take office since he hasn’t conceded?”

Well, this question was probably before he conceded, guys. He has actually conceded now. But the question is a good question. What would happen if one of these lawsuits actually finally went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court actually said, yes, this state had so many problems and broke the law and did all these things, and therefore their electoral votes don’t matter, and that happened with enough states? 

A War Game Scenario

This is very hypothetical at this point, because I don’t think the court will touch this. But if that happened, and all of a sudden nobody got the 270, that’s never happened after somebody’s been sworn in. What do you guys think would happen?

David:

Man, this is the war game scenario. This is what you’re doing the Pentagon, when you say, what if China were to do this? Okay.

Rick:

Or sitting around the fire just talking, right?

David:

Yeah, this is the war game stuff, and that’s why I love this question. Because I don’t have a clue. There is no historical precedent for this at all. I wonder about it. I think it’s plausible the Supreme Court will come back and say, hey, the election laws were broken, and the states fix them, next time we have an election. 

Fix them before the next election. I mean, Rick, you’re the attorney, doesn’t this get into the area of mootness? Isn’t this already decided thing that they’re not going to go back and undo what’s been done but they’ll fix it going forward? Or I mean, you’re the attorney on that, what do you think?

A Righteous Outcome

Rick:

That’s why I don’t think they would touch it, but I do start thinking about justice and fairness and all that good stuff and go okay, I don’t think there’s any precedent for that, I can’t even think of an election where this has happened. I’m doing a little homework there. But you would think that if it happened, that our court system would say, okay, we’re going to right the wrong, we’re going to reverse this and go back to who should have been in office.

But I think the reason that a court wouldn’t touch it is because think of the instability that that would produce in the system itself. Right? I mean, no matter what that office would be, in this case, it’s huge because it’s the president, then you have all the appointments, and you have all the people that, you know, the 4,000 appointments that come with being president, and all of that would have to be reversed. So I think it’s so big that it wouldn’t happen. But from a pure justice point of view, and finding a righteous outcome, you would want it to be reversed.

David:

Yeah, I agree with you. I don’t think there’s the proverbial snowball’s chance they’re going to reverse anything. I’m just curious as to whether they might try to fix it going forward if they actually see something there. But you know, this is war gaming again.

Tim:

Well, and this is certainly where it’s interesting with some of the cases the Supreme Court chose not to take, maybe was there levels of motivation in that that they don’t want to bring election integrity into question even though that’s already being questioned? But to me, it also raises the different question of if these cases did hypothetically go before the court, the court looked at them, and at least from a legal standpoint, the court can say, yes, several laws were violated, and then maybe they would challenge state to fix those laws. 

A New Election?

But just from again, you’re using the war game analogy, from war game analogy, let’s say that this election was fraudulent, who was going to call for the new election? Who has the power and authority to say this election is null and void, Joe Biden’s not the president, do it again? And then who’s going to enforce that?

This to me is where now you have some major bigger issues than just is the court and as you mentioned, there’s not a snowball’s chance, is the court going to come and rule on the side of no, there was a lot of illegal activity. Even outside of the fraud, there was a lot of illegal activity that the states changed election law unconstitutionally for their state, because it wasn’t done through the legislative process.

So therefore, those states were taking them off the table, because we know that the election was skewed, etc, etc. Who’s going to call for the new election? Who’s going to enforce it? Etc. That’s where to me there are some bigger flaws in how this would be carried out.

And going forward, which, again, to your guy’s point, is probably one of many reasons why the US Supreme Court is probably not going to deal with this issue largely. And dad, you alluded to this, if they do, I think it’s more likely they’re going to, for example, in Pennsylvania, say you guys need to correct this. And don’t let it ever happen again, as opposed to saying the election was fraudulent or the election wasn’t valid, we need to do the whole thing over.

An Unfortunate Thing

David:

And I think you’re very, very, very naïve if you think that if the court were to reverse it, say the election was fraudulent let’s do it again, if you think that would not result in a violent civil war, I’m not sure what you’ve been watching for the last several years. I think there’s no question you would have insurrection in the streets. It would be violent. 

I think it would take Portland and what happened with Detroit and what happened with Wisconsin, so many other places, I think it would make it look like child’s play compared to what would happen if a body like the Court reversed the election at any point, which I just think, Rick, you mentioned from public policy standpoint, I just don’t think they will. But it’s an interesting hypothetical. I just don’t think it’ll ever come to fruition in our lifetime.

Rick:

Yeah, it is an unfortunate thing. It’s almost like if you can run out the clock like it was done, then you can prevent that justice from taking place. But listen, we’re in a fallen world, there’s injustice all around all over the place, and it happens, that’s when we fight hard to do justice, as the Bible tells us to do. 

And some of those situations, we won’t be able to reverse. So yeah, I think the answer is, virtually impossible, that even if that it was found that the states were fraudulent or unconstitutional or whatever that there would still be a reversal that could take place.

So now the energy has to go into other areas. Now we have to look at what we can do on the local level, what we can do to take the House back in 2022. There’s a lot of very positive things that we can turn our attention to and fighting a lot of what’s going on at the federal level while we do all of those things.

 

Alright, guys, we got more questions coming. We got to take a quick break, we’ll be right back. It’s Foundations of Freedom Thursday on WallBuilders Live.

—

President Calvin Coolidge said, “The more I study the Constitution, the more I realized that no other document devised by the hand of man has brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.”

Heroes of History

Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes for parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read.

And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well.

I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called The Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. 

And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman. Friends, the list goes on and on.

This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

Thomas Jefferson said, “In questions of power, then let no more be heard of confidence in man that bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Cleaning Up Our Elections

Rick:

Thanks for staying with us here on WallBuilders Live, final segment. This is Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Send your questions to us [email protected] Last question. “Why not delete all current voter registration in a questionable county or precinct require a re-registration and then match registrants to the ballots that are currently held.” Okay guys, so yeah, I think this is referring back to of course all the mail-in ballots stuff.

I mean, and not only mail-in ballot problems, people actually showing up at the polls and voting when they’re not on the rolls or you can identify them or just the mess with the voter rolls that Catherine Engelbrecht been trying to fix with “True The Vote” for a decade now. So what about this idea of literally just hey, we got to start all over everybody that wants to vote, you’ve got to come reregister?

David:

Well, there’s a couple things here, and again, we’re going to go to as many constitutional clauses as we can to look at this. But the first thing I would look at in generally, is the question why not delete all current voter registration in a questionable county or precinct? Who decides what’s questionable or not? Because this is where we’re considered to be a government of laws, not of men. 

And so this is my opinion on what’s questionable. Even among Conservatives will disagree on what’s questionable. And then if you ask Democrats, what’s questionable, you’re going to get different standards on this. 

So you have to come up with something that’s uniform under the law that is measurable and tangible. What does it take? Does it take just one side objecting? Because Democrats would then object to every Republican election there is. It has to be a measurable standard.

Rewriting the Constitution

The other problem that happens with this is you would have to actually rewrite the Constitution, because the Constitution, Article 1, Section 4, Article 2, section 1, etc, it says the states are the ones who decide what happens in their state with the elections. And so if you want to clean up elections, and for example, Detroit, you got to get the legislature of Michigan to decide that they want to clean up registration or voters or return out or whatever, in Detroit. It has to go through the states.

And so we look at cities who say, well, Atlanta was all corrupt. Well, that’s got to be fixed by the Georgia legislature. And if you think that the legislature is going to be able to single out a county, that’s going to be a legal issue, because it has to be applied to every person in the state at the same level, same measure, same treatment. 

Now we’ve seen that in Florida, they did it. They went through and cleaned up the state, cleaned up the rolls, cleaned up voter registration, cleaned up all sorts of stuff. So it can be done at the state level, but it has to happen at state level

Tim:

Well, and it certainly can be done very well on the state level. As you mentioned, Florida is a great example of it. Because what happened in the 2018 election, was at several counties, Broward County being one of them, that it took them weeks to count the votes for governor. And that’s utterly ridiculous. So it’s easy to say there is a standard. And what Florida has now that every single county has to turn in their votes by 9:30pm on election night.

So it is very possible to come into some of these states where there are counties, for example, in Atlanta, Georgia, where there are different poll sites in Atlanta that did a very poor job and didn’t get things counted and pulling out ballots from under the tables, right, things that looks suspicious, whether they were illegal or not, they certainly look suspicious. There are ways that you can put in whatever kind of requirements you want, and apply it equally for the whole state. 

Not A Problem for Most States

But ultimately, it’s not a problem for most of the states. So you’re correcting the problems from the problem counties, but you’re applying it to the whole state. So that is certainly something that is viable. Florida in 2018 was a mess, in 2020, they were pristine. They were the example of what a state should look like. So that certainly is not beyond the realm of possibility for people being able to go in and clean up states. But it certainly is a state issue from a constitutional perspective.

David:

And here’s another factor that comes into that. Is right now we know that in Pennsylvania, they’re making huge efforts at the state legislative level to clean up a lot of the voter problems they had in this election. We know Georgia is doing the same.

We know that they’re trying to do the same in Michigan. But here’s the reality. There is such a philosophical difference between Republicans and Democrats on voting in general and just give an example.

Now that President Biden has control, he’s ordered a stop to all building of the wall on the southern border, and he wants to legalize and give citizenship to 11 million current illegal aliens that have not received any kind of citizenship before. Now on the other side, Republicans are philosophically opposed to that.

They say wait a minute, there’s a process. There are laws you have to follow to be a citizen. You don’t just unilaterally say, hey, here’s 11 million more, let’s make them all voters and make them citizens.

So you look at a state like Pennsylvania. I’m glad that that Republican legislature is trying to clean up their state, but they have a Democrat governor. And what do you think that the chances are that that Democratic governor who has the same general philosophy as Biden, is that we need more people voting, not less, they don’t have to be citizens. What chances they sign any laws to clean that up? And the same in Michigan.

Hope, Justice, Elections, and More – On Foundations Of Freedom

Now in Georgia, you might see that because you have Republican legislature and Republican governor, as you did in Florida, but there’s a philosophical difference for sure. And that’s the other thing is reality, you’ve got to deal with reality to make this happen. I think, is a great objection, but you also have to play in the factors of law and reality to go with that.

Rick:

Well, folks, we’re out of time for today. We’ve got more of your questions to get to. We’ll do that next Thursday on Foundations of Freedom Thursday. And if you’d like to get your question into the pile, send it to [email protected] That’s [email protected]

And you can go to our website wallbuilderslive.com today to get more of those Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs, as well as the good news Friday programs as well as all the great interviews we have the privilege of having those first three days of the week, typically on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We sure appreciate you listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.

Samuel Adams said, “The liberties of our country and the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending against all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”