VA Hospitals Are Now Allowed To Distribute Bibles: We call it, “Good News Friday” because it’s a chance for David and Tim to share some good news from across the nation and around the world. We don”€™t often hear good news from major media, however, here on WallBuilders Live, we love sharing news worthy of celebration! Tune in now to learn more!

Air Date: 08/23/2019

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

 

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

Faith And The Culture 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live! Where we”€™re talking about today”€™s hottest topics on policy, faith, and the culture, always doing that from a Biblical, historical, and Constitutional perspective.

We’re here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders. Also, Tim Barton, national speaker and President of WallBuilders, and my name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas state legislator, national speaker, and author. 

David and Tim have been compiling good news stories over the past few weeks, and we’re going to dive into as many of those stories as we possibly can today. We encourage you to go to the website WallBuildersLive.com and share the program with your friends and family. Give them some good news as well. 

Then also while you’re there at WallBuildersLive.com, click on that donate button, make that one time or monthly contribution. That makes this program possible. We appreciate you doing that, coming alongside us. 

Let”€™s dive into that good news! David Barton is first then, Tim Barton. Where are we gonna start today, David?

David:

I’m going to start with Mexico. I’m going to look at our southern border. That certainly is where a lot of attention has been focused in recent months. Immigration debates focused around there out of the various migrant care events, that they’ve come and rushed the southern border, the building of the wall. 

President Trump has started turning up the pressure on Mexico and said, “€œLook, you’ve got to stop. These people coming because they’re coming through your land illegally, and you’re letting them come to our border and flood our southern border. This is not going to work.”€Â 

Mexico Reinforcing Their Own Border to Prevent Illegal Immigrants from Passing Through

And Mexico has just kind of said, “€œYeah, yeah, yeah.”€Â 

Trump said, “€œOkay, here’s the deal. We’re cutting off foreign aid to you unless you start doing something about this.”€Â 

Now Mexico has suddenly sent 15,000 troops to their border to start enforcing their own border.

So it is significant that President Trump’s pressure economically is resulting in relieving some of the pressure on our own borders. That’s a story that largely has not been reported—that I have seen at least—I haven’t seen anybody making much notice of the fact that Mexico is now starting to swing around. 

And in a similar vein with the President’s foreign policy, he certainly has critics, and they’re very loud, and the media tends to be very loud on how he’s mishandled stuff. Then when you see a success like this they are suddenly silent. They don’t say anything. But when President Trump levied the tariffs against China for unfair practices, and China—I mean, my gosh, because they use slave labor for so much of what they do it’s just really hard to compete with them, and then they come in and undercut the economy, and they go into so many smaller nations and and create connections with them because they can offer products at a lower price. 

And then they get America. China loves American dollars so they love doing trade in America because the prices are cheaper we were let in. They’re getting all of our dollars to fund what they want to do globally. It”€™s just a bad situation. 

So President Trump put all these tariffs on China, and particularly their aluminum, and their steel, and other exports. 

U.S. Tariffs Cripple China

And people here say, “€œThat’s going to destroy the American economy! This is terrible! This is a stupid thing! Everybody knows tariffs don’t work!”€Â 

And I was with a congressman here just a couple of weeks ago, who was in China on a mission over there, who met with one of the top Chinese generals. 

That Chinese general looked at him and said, “€œWell, we’re gonna have to make some serious changes here within China on our economics. We’re going to have to start changing our prices, changing the way we do trade, your tariffs have hurt us so bad that we can’t sustain our economy if we don’t get rid of those tariffs.”€Â 

And so this congressman said, “€œOh my gosh. Nobody’s reporting that back home. I’ve got to make sure I tell them.”€

And he said that that that general just flushed. His face went white and he said, “€œNo, you can’t say that I said that for your benefit. If they find out I’ve said this, I’ll be killed.”€Â 

So it was interesting.

So we’re not mentioning that the general’s name, obviously. 

Tim:

Or the congressman. 

David:

It is interesting that from that high ranking general you get confirmation that this foreign trade policy is having a significant impact on what’s happening with China and bringing them to the table. One thing that that Trump did for a long time before he became president was negotiations, and he knows how to bring people to a table, and now I look at what’s happening in China and in Mexico, and while the media loves to criticize him, I guess that the results are working. 

U.S., U.K., and Israeli Cooperation

It is bringing folks in the American direction toward policies that are very good for America. That’s the America first thing that he promised. But it’s interesting to see it work and see it working so well with so little coverage in the national media.

Rick:

OK, so first piece of good news on China. Anything else before we go to break and come back to Tim?

David:

Yeah. Another piece of international good news, and this is the first time ever, but international cooperation in the Middle East is now becoming better than it has been. As a matter of fact, the article I’m holding here is Israeli F-35s Train Alongside U.S. and U.K. In First Ever International Exercise. 

So we actually now have major allies, Israel, and the United Kingdom, and the United States, doing training together in the Middle East, which really sends a strong message across that unstable region. 

There’s so many hostile areas over there that would love to take advantage of any weakness they see. And so here again, under President Trump, we’re seeing more strength exerted in the Middle East which leads to greater stability rather than greater instability. And so whether it’s China, whether it’s in Israel, whether it’s in Mexico, the foreign policies really becoming more stable and actually much more positive for the world, not to mention more positive for America.

Rick:Quick break, we’ll be back with Tim Barton. Tim, as we’re going to break, where we are going to be headed on our good news trip?

Tim:

We’re heading to Pennsylvania when we come back. 

Rick:

Pennsylvania good news when we come back. Stay with us folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

Moment From American History

This is Tim Barton 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, “€œOnly the militia, the military, and law enforcement are to have and use firearms.”€ 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, “€œTo 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 them.”€

For more information about Richard Henry Lee and the history of the Second Amendment go to WallBuilders.com. 

Good News from Pennsylvania

Rick:

We’re back with WallBuilders Live on this Good News Friday! As we were headed to the break, Tim said that we were headed to Pennsylvania. I was just there like a week or so ago! At Valley Forge, actually. So where’s our good news set?

Tim:

Well, not by Valley Forge. It actually is by a Pennsylvania National Guard facility. And the good news is actually the reverse of what initially happened. 

So you guys remember when the Boy Scouts of America were going through all of their questions about, “€œWhat are we going to do? We’re not going to be the Boy Scouts, because that’s not exclusive.”€Â 

Even though that’s kind of the nature of what the Boy Scouts were about, was raising boys to be men. Well, all of that now in this day and age, and politically correct culture, we can’t say that anymore, so girls can come in. 

In fact, everybody just come on in. 

David:

What happened to the The Girl Scouts?

I thought that’s what the Girl Scouts were created for. 

Tim:

I think at this point we just have “€œScouts”€. I think gender has been done away with. A lot of silly things. 

Well, in the midst of this, Trail Life USA came back—because Boy Scouts used to be a part of a denomination that actually promoted God, it promoted faith, it promoted biblical morality. That’s what the Boy Scouts were and what they did. And they got away from that. 

So there was an organization that was started Trail Life USA, and they said, “€œWell, let’s bring back some of those moral values, and let’s actually go back and we’ll recreate the Boy Scouts. We”€™ll make it the Christian version, like what the Boy Scouts used to be.”€Â 

A Christian Alternative to the Boy Scouts

So the Pennsylvania National Guard does tours of their facilities, and the Boy Scouts come and get tours, and so Trail Life USA was—now, this is a Christian alternative the Boy Scouts, and they have grown to be a pretty significant thing. This is not just a mom and pop show in somebody”€™s living room. 

No. 

There”€™s a large national audience that thousands of kids that are part of this organization anyway so the Boy Scouts had permission to go and tour the National Guard facility and we’ll have you as a signed up. 

Initially they had permission, and then apparently somebody looked at the website, somebody did research on them, because then their initial approval was denied. They were rejected. 

They were told, “€œYou cannot come and tour the National Guard facility.”€Â 

Now, my initial thought is, “€œHow many other groups do you say no to?”€

I don’t know. I haven’t seen all of the groups that request, and maybe the Boy Scouts are the one exception, but I don’t know, knowing military bases, or in this case National Guard facilities, and how many people can come and get tours, and families can come on, for them to say that the Trail Life USA this Christian version of a modern idea of the Boy Scouts could not come on, there was a there’s a protest. 

Some legal groups got involved, and initially the National Guard facility had a spokesman says, “€œLook, we told them they couldn’t come. But it wasn’t because of their religious affiliation. It’s because they weren’t the Boy Scouts.”€Â 

No More Discrimination

Well, if you let the Boy Scouts come he can’t say that other groups can’t come at this point anyway, so that you had groups like First Liberty Institute, our friends Kelly Shackelford many of their great attorneys we’ve had on the program before, they got involved. 

There was other law firms, Independence Law Center. 

They wrote letters, and so the good news is the National Guard changed our policy and said, “€œOh, OK. We don’t mind if you’re not the Boy Scouts, we will allow you to come and we won’t discriminate against you because you are a religious organization.”€Â 

So the end of the story is really good news that now the National Guard is changing their official policy, which I don’t know what their official policy was, probably is just a memo now that says, “€œHey guys, don’t discriminate against the Christians.”€Â 

I think that’s probably all it is. 

But this is good news that we talk about so often, we lose a lot of these religious liberty battles because people are not willing to stand up and say, “€œNo, that’s not right. You can’t discriminate against me because of my faith or my religion.”€Â 

And here’s a scenario where Trail Life USA, this Christian, Boy Scout organization—and I’m saying Boy Scout, they’re their own organization. They’re not the Boy Scouts but it’s kind of reclaiming what the Boy Scouts used to be—but Trail Life USA has come out and said, “€œNo, our kids shouldn’t be discriminated against and not allowed to go because we have different moral positions.”€Â 

And they won that position. So now the National Guard facilities will let Trail Life USA come into their facility. 

An Ironic Twist

David:

If I can point out the irony of this, what happened, Tim, as you kind of alluded to, the Boy Scouts decided, “€œWell, we’re going to be the non Boy Boy Scouts, and the Girl Scouts are going to be the non girl Girl Scouts.”€Â 

Trail Life came up and said, “€œWell then, we’re going to be the old boy scouts, so we’re just gonna bring that back.”€

And so Baden, when he founded this back in England more than a century ago, it very clearly was founded on biblical values and, to teach Christian precepts, and to connect fathers and sons, and to connect mothers and daughters to be able to do activities together and to build the family build a relationship. 

So the new Boy Scouts, when they made this change six, seven, eight years ago, and the Girl Scouts made the same change, and they decided Planned Parenthood was their new best friend when they made all these changes, that’s when the people with Christian values said, “€œNo. Let’s go back to doing what this organization did for over 100 years, and that’s connecting families together.”€Â 

So what you have with Trail Life is the actual Boy Scouts, not just the ones that are Boy Scouts in name only, but this is what the organization was founded for. 

It’s ironic that they say, “€œWell, if this is what you were founded for, we don’t really want that group on our National Guard facility. We want the new guys who don’t do this the strong pro family stuff like you guys do.”€Â 

The Old Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts

So it is ironic that what we’re talking about is actually what had been for about 125 years, old boy scouts and the older girl scouts, it”€™s still very much outdoor activities, but is still very pro family, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. It’s a good, healthy organization to be part of.

Rick:

All right, quick break guys. So we’ve been around the world with some good news, been to Pennsylvania with some good news, talking about Trail Life good news. Quick break, we’ll be back. David’s got the next piece of good news. David, any kind of preview you want to give us before the break?

David:

Yeah, it’s a seismic shift that is happening in religious expression across the United States.

Rick:

Seismic shift in religious expression. Stay with us. We’re gonna get that good news we come back on WallBuilders Live.

This Precarious Moment Book

David:

This is David Barton. I want to let about a brand new book we have called This Precarious Moment: Six Urgent Steps That Will Save You, Your family, and Our Country. Jim Garlow and I have co-authored this book and we take six issues that are hot in the culture right now. 

Issues that we’re dealing with, issues such as immigration, race relations, our relationship with Israel, the rising generation Millennials, and the absence of the church in the culture wars, and where American heritage is, our godly heritage. We look at all six of those issues right now that are under attack and we give you both Biblical and historical perspective on those issues that provide solutions on what each of us can do right now to make a difference. 

These are all problems that are solvable if we’ll get involved. So, you can grab the book This Precarious Moment and find out what you can do to make a difference. This Precarious Moment is available at WallBuilders.com.

The Lemon Test Repealed?

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live on this Good News Friday. Next piece of good news has to do with religious expression coming from David. 

David:

It deals with the case that Kelly Shackelford and First Liberty argued and won that case the U.S. Supreme Court a month and a half ago. It was the case on the Bladensburg Memorial Cross in Maryland, St. George County, Maryland, where forty nine guys in that county died in World War 1. 

The people of the county erected a cross to commemorate them and commemorate their loss. The mothers erected that cross and so it’s been a memorial for more than a century, and a lower court said, “€œWell, you have to take it down because you can’t have a religious cross up in public. There’s no secular purpose for that.”€Â 

Which goes back to when the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1960s, rewrote the meaning of the First Amendment. Instead of protecting religious expression, it now says, “€œWe can’t protect religious expression, we have to stop it.”€Â 

And so 1973 they came up with what was called the Lemon test. In the case Lemon versus Cartman, that says, “€œWe”€™ll only protect religious activities in public if the primary purpose of that religious activity is secular.”€Â 

Well, when you look at that war memorial cross, you can’t say the primary purpose of having that cross is secular because you could have chosen any other symbol. You could have chosen an eight sided cube, you could have chosen a hexagon, you could have chosen anything. 

Freedom of Religious Expression Restored!

So the fact you chose a cross, you can’t say that it’s primarily a secular purpose means that cross has to come down. Well, this is where the U.S. Supreme Court came in about two months ago and said, “€œHere’s the new deal. We’re going back to the original Constitution, and we’re going to assume that instead of a religious activity being unconstitutional on its face, we’re going to reverse it and say a religious activity is constitutional unless somebody can prove otherwise.”€Â 

So now the default position is, if it’s a religious activity in public, it’s fine unless somebody can prove it’s not. 

It used to be the other way with, “€œIt’s not legal unless you can prove that it is.”€Â 

That’s very hard to do. 

So now the default is shifted and so now the cases are starting to roll down from this in a very big shift. For example, the Veterans Administration came out with a new position because they had taken the position that in V.A. hospitals now that you can’t have Bibles out, and you can’t have them in displays Nick. 

Well, now they said, “€œBased on this ruling we just got from the Bladensburg court case, you can now have Bibles and V.A. hospitals, and you can display them, you can have them as part of the public displays. It’s OK to do that.”€Â 

More Religious Expression than in the Last 50 Years

And then here’s a case out of Florida where that deals with prayer before a football game, because in the state of Florida, private and not private schools all compete with one another. The private schools, they have prayer before football games, but the public schools don’t. Well, now you got a public school versus a private school at the finals, and it’s at the home with a private school, and the private school says, “€œHey, we always pray before football games, this is our facility, we’re the home team, we get to pray.”€Â 

They said, “€œNo, you can’t do that.”€Â 

Well, in this case they said, “€œBased on Bladensburg, you”€™ve got to assume that a religious activity like prayer at a football game is constitutional lashing prove otherwise.”€Â 

So we’re starting to see now all these cases starting to roll down that we have not been able to in 50 years. 

We’re starting to shift in the other direction. The result of this: over the next three to five years, we may be able to start doing religious activities in public that we did for 200 years, but that we have not been able to do in the last 50 years. So, for most people who are alive right now, they may see more religious expression in their life in the coming years than what they’ve seen in their entire life previous to this point in time. That is a seismic shift to where we can get back to displaying and expressing religion publicly in a way we’ve not been able to do in 50 years.

The Best Good News All Year!

Rick:

Maybe the best news that we’ve shared all year long right here on WallBuilders Live on our Good News Friday. This is a huge, huge—as you said—seismic shift in religious expression and religious liberty and is something we should be celebrating throughout this year, and hopefully share in additional good news from the court says as lower court decisions have to reflect these things. It’s going to be really, really fun to watch and to continue discussing that topic on good news Friday’s into the future.

We got one more segment today, guys. 

Tim Barton will have that one, Tim? What are we going to be talking about our next segment? 

Tim:

Somebody getting justice who deserved it.

Rick:

Alright. Justice deserved. Stay with us folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

Front Sight Training Course

Rick Greens here, from WallBuilders Live. What do Dennis Prager, Larry Elder, Ben Shapiro, Rick Green, Tim Barton, David Barton, have in common other than the fact that they’re conservative commentators that defend the Constitution?

They’re raving about Front Sight Firearms Training Institute. Go to my website right now at RickGreen.com. You can watch the video of Dennis Prager training at Front Sight, or Larry Elder, or Tim Barton and myself out there. It’s an opportunity for you to learn how to defend yourself and your family. It is a fantastic place to train. They train 30 to 40,000 people a year, and they’re just wonderful to work with. You can go with us. We’re headed back out.

We’re going to have a great time out there, and if you’re a supporter of WallBuilders, we’re going to treat you. If you’re a donor of WallBuilders, you”€™ll be able to go to this Front Sight class for free. It normally cost a thousand dollars, go to FrontSight.com right now. You’ll see that it’s a thousand dollars to attend their two-day class. You are going to be able to go for free, if you’re a supporter of WallBuilders Live.

So, check out that information at RickGreen.com and join us. We are going once a month for the next three months. You can pick one of those classes. All of our previous classes have filled up. Make sure that you get online today and get signed up. Whether you’ve never shot before, or you’ve shot your whole life, you will enjoy this class. You”€™ll enjoy the fellowship. We’ll be training on the range during the day and studying the Constitution at night. What a great combination. Check it out today at RickGreen.com.

Jackson Costco Arrested

Rick:

We’re back with WallBuilders Live! Thanks for staying with us! Last segment of good news today. Tim Barton’s taking us to”€¦ how did you say it? Justice deserved? 

Tim:

Justice deserved. Now as a Christian, obviously we don’t all want the justice that we deserve. We believe in forgiveness, and we’re grateful for that, but in a system in America where the purpose of the government is to protect its citizens, and at times that means giving justice to wrongdoers and uphold a standard. 

If you go back to the Kavanaugh hearing, one of the things that happened is there was a young person, young being relative, but somebody who works in Capitol Hill at the time. He was actually fired, but still managed to get access to the office, he worked for a senator from New Hampshire, it was Senator Maggie Hassan. 

He got back in the office. And so what he did was went through a bunch of files that had what should be confidential information. He got a bunch of personal information for various senators, for various representatives from the Republican side. 

This individual’s name is actually Jackson Costco. So Jackson was against Kavanaugh apparently, and decided he wanted to doxx all of the people who were supporting Kavanaugh, or at least as many as he could. 

Now, doxxing is when you take someone’s private and personal information, and so you put let’s say you go online or on your Facebook page you say, “€œHere is their cell phone number. Here is their home address. Start texting them! Start calling them! Show up at their house!”€Â 

Dangerous Information Was Made Public

And so not only are you giving their personal information, you’re doing it for malicious intent, you are trying to get negative things to happen to them. Well, a lot of personal information for people like Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Senator Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, a lot of people’s information was being made public, and they eventually tracked down who this was. 

This certainly is a dangerous thing to do when, even though in America we would like to pretend like we have a moral climate on some level, and that we know you shouldn’t do bad things to people, and we should have honest debates, and conversations, and disagreements of ideas, but you don’t bring physical harm to someone that politically you disagree with. 

That’s just not the climate we live in anymore. 

So when he was putting up their information and saying, “€œSomebody needs to go deal with these people.”€Â 

Well, that is a major problem on lots of levels. He was not supposed to have access to that information in the beginning because he already apparently was already fired. 

Now, I don’t know how much of this were the smoothing the books over. Maybe he wasn’t fired. 

They’re saying he was already fired, but he still had friends in the office, they actually identified some of the friends that helped him gain access to the information when he made this information public. 

Justice Served

So the end of the story is that he’s just been sentenced to four years in jail for what he did. By the way, his father in California a major financial backer, supporters, friends with Nancy Pelosi and with lots of these kinds of people. So lots of ties from the family in the midst of this, but when someone does something like sharing private information in public, and then calling for people to put an end to someone you politically disagree with, that is terrible, and that is really dangerous. 

Fortunately, they did find the person who did this, which was Jackson Costco. He has been sentenced to jail time for what he did. So the good news is that justice has been served, and hopefully it will serve as a deterrent to other people in the future going. This is something you should not do. This is bad behavior. Don’t do it. The good news is that in this situation justice was served.

Rick:

Well, that’s all the time that we have for good news today. But there is a lot more good news at our website if you go to WallBuildersLive.com today, there’s a button there you can click called the archives. When you go to the archives you can pick up last week’s programs and the week before that. I think it’s got several months available to you. And so those Friday programs, most of the time are Good News Friday programs, so you can go back in time and catch up on good news from several months ago. 

It’s still encouraging, it’s still timely, it’s still important for us to know that these principles work every time they’re tried. 

V.A. Allowed to Distribute Bibles and More Good News this Friday!

I hope that this program is encouraging you to get more involved, be more active, maybe to be a host of a Constitution class there in your community or to take people out to one of our constitutional defense training at Front Sight. 

Maybe it’s an encouragement for you just to study more, and read more, and listen more, and then to use your social media to share this good news, to share these principles, so that more and more people can vote intelligently.

We hope that you’ll come alongside us and partner with us, and you can also click on that donate button and financially support what we’re doing so that we can bring more and more of this to you and make it available to you. Check all that out at WallBuildersLive.com. 

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