It Is A Great Time To Join Us Today – Good News Friday – A bill is introduced to ban Federal funding to teach the ‘1619 project’ in schools, a life size statue of Billy Graham is going up in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall and more! Join us today!

Air Date: 08/28/2020

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.

 

Rick:

Well, you pick the great day to join us here on WallBuilders Live, it’s Good News Friday today. I enjoy these Good News Friday, it’s chance to get a little pick me up from the negative out there. So welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s called WallBuilders Live, and that comes from the scripture in Nehemiah that says a rise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach. In other words, make sure the foundations of America are strong, that’s how we apply it today in this particular nation. And obviously, there’s cracks in the foundation and we need to strengthen that foundation, we need to find out what the principles are that make a nation great that make a society good and prosperous. And all of the things that you want in your culture, well, how do you get them? You got to make sure you have the right formula on the other side of the equation. And that’s what we talked about here at WallBuilders, what produces a good society. And we look at everything that’s happening from that biblical, historical and constitutional perspective because that’s what gives you the right answer.

We’re going to have that conversation with David Barton, he’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders, with Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders and my name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach.

Alright, David, Tim, it is time to dive into some of that good news. But before you give us our first piece of good news, I have to apologize to some of our listeners for the scheduling of the last couple of months we’ve aired some really cool programs, “Our Setting the Record Straight” DVD that’s available on the website of wallbuilders.com, lots of great stuff in there about black history in American history and just awesome stuff. But we did air part of that on a Friday. We did a little Constitution Alive on a Friday a few weeks ago. And here’s the email from Juliet, this ought to make you guys feel really good about the good news that you bring on Fridays. Here’s what she said.

“I offer this request as respectfully as I can. I know you all must have busy schedules and there’s so much good info you provide when you have a pre-recorded Friday, but please stop skipping Good News Friday!! I honestly look forward to these so much. They help me get out of bed with a newborn when I’m exhausted and the political and world news landscape looks like the apocalypse and then to discover there’s no Good News Friday, I feel despondent for half an hour. I try to listen to the other program that day with a good attitude, but it’s hard. I feel like the girl from raver, the Bray Bradbury story, where she missed the sunshine hour and has to wait another seven years. It seems as if lately the incidence of Good News Friday’s getting replaced is rising, but that could just be my perception. You’ll always talk about how you can’t get through your stack and good news so go ahead and record an extra segment or two for the deep freeze and use those on a few extra Fridays. This is literally the only place I get uplifting Christian news and I look forward to it all week, Cheers and blessings to you all. Juliet.”

Alright, Juliet, I apologize. Yes, we had a few Good News Friday skipped there for some of those programs that take more than a day or two. But David, Tim, I think she’s right. I actually feel the same way when we miss a Good News Friday, it does encourage me as well. By the way, Ray Bradbury for those listeners out there that made, that’s the same guy that wrote Fahrenheit 451 which is feels like we’re living in either Orwell’s world or Bradbury’s world. I’m not sure which dominates at this point. But anyway, David, Tim, I guess I will do my little Mia culpa here, I’m sorry. And now let’s get to some good news.

David:

Well, I’m going to start in the federal legislature with Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. We have watched over recent weeks as we’ve seen America kind of tear itself up and appear to be really divided. Now, we covered last week on Good News Friday that really a lot in the national polling is showing that the people have not bought into the division that the media is trying to portray as being out there so deep and big. And no question there is deep divisions in America, there’s a lot of strong feelings on both sides. As a polling last week, pointed out, it’s not as even as it would seem. You know, I’m saying that the two sides are kind of polarized and they are polarized and evenly divided, but it turns out they’re not evenly divided. That Americans overwhelmingly are going with more of a traditional interpretation, declarations, a good document kind of stuff rather than a racist document and so many things we covered last week.

Well, this is kind of a follow up to that, where that when you look at the 1619 Project and the 1619 Project is one of the really loud mouthpieces out there to say that America was founded on slavery, it was all about slavery. As a matter of fact, they on their website point out that everything that makes America exceptional came from slavery, which you know, that’s a pretty strong claim that everything that has made us unique nation is only because of racism and slavery. So you’ve got that kind of mantra out there from the 1619 Project. And the 1619 Project is now being used as curriculum in schools across the nation.

So where this curriculum is being taught, it really does buy into fostering racial division and really racial retaliation, the false narrative that anything good that happened in America came as a result of slavery. I mean it’s a false narrative, as easily as provable. Even a lot of those who were initially consulted to help write the 1619 Project, have backed out and call them out and said, this is bad history, this is false history.

Tim:

And by the way, those are liberal professors largely, not conservative professors. Liberal professors said, yeah, this isn’t really historically accurate, even though they get a Pulitzer Prize, because they had the boldness to say things that weren’t true to a culture who didn’t really care about what was true. But even the liberal professors were like, yeah, this isn’t right.

David:

So, you’ve got the 1619 Project, and it’s being taught in curriculum in all 50 states. And so Sarah and Tom Cotton central this this bill that said, okay, any school that gets federal funds, you cannot use those federal funds to teach the 1619 curriculum. So that’s a really good piece of news. Now, I don’t think that’s going to pass, something’s going to go anywhere. But it is helping call attention to the fact that this curriculum really is bad and that it is being used across the nation.

So it’s good news that that gets pointed out. There’s no way the democrats are going to pass this thing that would limit their curriculum at 1619 curriculum. Pelosi is not going to let this go through the house, but it’s still a good heads up to let Americans know what’s out there. And the other thing that kind of goes with this, and Tim, you sent this to me this week. And it was just kind of a cute meme. It’s got Tim Tebow, his picture on it. And it says, “Dear Nike, you picked the wrong kneeler.” And it goes to the fact that they didn’t go with Tim Tebow, who kneels for Jesus Christ, but not for other stuff. They went with Colin Kaepernick. He knelt because he’s been taught that America is bad and racist, and he’s bought into that narrative of the 1619 kind of stuff.

And so that is because this week, the earnings report came out on Nike and Nike is the one who backed Colin Kaepernick early on and took a position and didn’t want to stay neutral about America. They wanted to come out that America is a bad racist nation again, the false narrative. But Nike over the last quarter has dropped 40% and its earnings. They’re down 790 million and they are losing jobs and laying off people at a time when the economy is actually re-growing. We just added 1.8 million jobs last week and Nike is going the other direction.

Tim:

And this is not to obviously wish ill on any company or business necessarily, although if you’re promoting an ideology, and you are losing capacity, you continue to promote that ideology. Well, that’s a good thing, that you don’t have the capacity to prove that ideology. Not that we think necessarily, shoes or clothes or whatever and of itself is evil, although we could talk about who is making them and is it actually slave labor making some of the stuff, that would be a different discussion. Nonetheless, if we can identify that this is an ideology that is not being largely supported currently, that’s a really good thing that this Colin Kaepernick supported movement is not gaining as much ground as potentially Nike thought it was when they were promoting this originally.

Rick:

Alright, guys, quick break, we’ve got more good news coming up. Folks, stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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The Founding Fathers of America made a habit of reading through the Bible once a year. There’s no better source of wisdom and it is applicable to every issue in our lives. What a great time for us as American citizens to take this time. If you’ve got extra time at home now, if you’re quarantined at home and you’re looking for something to do, what better thing could there be to do than to read through the Bible, maybe for the first time in your life?

I tried to make this a habit several years ago and I had a new tool to start doing that with and it was called the Founders’ Bible. It gave me a chance not only to read through the Bible once a year, but also to learn history while I was doing that. And what I love about the Founders’ Bible is that as I’m reading that Scripture, then all of a sudden, there’ll be an article inserted right there by that Scripture about what the Founding Fathers learned from that specific verse or chapter and how they applied it to launch our new. It’s a really fun way to learn. It’s incredibly empowering and it has answers for today. The Bible is full of all the right answers for today, in fact, it’s the only source that has all the right answers.

So, if you haven’t read through the Founders’ Bible, I challenge you and encourage you get a copy of the Founders’ Bible today, it’s available at wallbuilders.com. And we even have a digital version, so you can do this on your phone or iPad or computer. Check out the Founders’ Bible today, make it a part of your regular reading throughout the year. But right now, is a great opportunity to redo the Founders’ Bible. Check it out today at WallBuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back here on WallBuilders Live, Good News Friday today. Tim Barton is up next. Tim.

Tim:

Alright guys, this is going to Washington DC, but via a statue. Because one of the really cool things coming from North Carolina, is there’s going to be a new statue, a new monument put in the capital. Dad, one of the things that we really enjoy doing, Rick, you’ve done dozens of these as well, it’s so cool to be able to go up and lead groups on a spiritual heritage tour of the United States Capitol. Most people have no idea how much of a spiritual legacy is outlined in the Capitol building itself. Go through statues, through monuments, through murals, and paintings and just all the things that is very evident and visible. But if you don’t know the stories of the people involved, if you don’t know what they did or why they’re there, you don’t recognize how much faith has played a role in the shaping of our nation. So one of the things we love to do is on these Capitol tours, we’ll highlight so many of these statues and monuments, that were people of faith and the reason they’re there is because they did something notable and notable largely in reflection of their faith.

One of the guys who now is going into the US Capitol for North Carolina is the Reverend Billy Graham. And I love the fact he’s going to be there, because so often will point to someone that it’s a name people don’t know or don’t recognize, even though every state only gets two statues. So you’re at least one of the two most notable people for the State by vote of the State body. So at that point, you’re in a really significant person, most people don’t even know their story. And so, we have to…

Rick:

Through their whole history, but not just most notable recently, like throughout that state whole history.

Tim:

And so we get highlight some of these great people who have been there, some of their faith accomplishments and accolades. Well, one person we probably won’t have to tell a whole lot of details, at least not in the near future is this individual who’s being honored from North Carolina, the Reverend Billy Graham. Billy Graham, is really interesting replacing a statue from North Carolina, Charles Acox with a governor of North Carolina.

But back in the late 1800s, when you have kind of the rebirth of the Klan, leading up to Woodrow Wilson’s administration, and a lot of really bad things happen under Acox leadership, he really was a racist guy, was not good at all, although he was a noted leader in North Carolina. So, he was chosen for being a noted leader, but again, really not a good guy in a lot of ways he led.

Contrast it and this is where you almost see the story of redemption from North Carolina. The Reverend Billy Graham is going in and Billy Graham, for six decades was among the top 10 in Gallup polls list of the most admired people. For 60 years, Billy Graham, this evangelist, this preacher was recognized as being one of the most influential people in the entire world.

And now this pastor is going to be honored in the United States Capitol. And as we mentioned, we tell a lot of the story of a lot of the spiritual heritage of our nation. And of 100 plus statues that are in the Capitol, roughly one-fourth of them are people who were involved in the ministry, and who did things either in church or chaplaincies or promoting Bible, etc. whether it be American Bible Society kind of stuff or local Bible Societies, nonetheless, people that their stories are not as well-known or evident.

Billy Graham, this is a guy we probably don’t have to introduce people to, although many people don’t know the depth of his story, it certainly is worth going back and looking at his story, listening to some of his early sermons. Such a man of God who is passionate and fiery for the gospel, fiery for defending the Word of God and who Jesus Christ was. It’s just really cool that now he’s going to be in the US Capitol.

Rick:

Very, very good news. Can’t wait for our first tour after that statue is in place. So we get to point out Billy Graham there in the Capitol. Stay with us, folks, we got more good news coming up right here on WallBuilders Live.

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Have you ever wanted to learn more about the United States Constitution but just felt like, man, the classes are boring or it’s just that old language from 200 years ago or I don’t know where to start? People want to know but it gets frustrating because they don’t know where to look for truth about the Constitution either.

Well, we’ve got a special program for you available now called Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green. And it’s actually a teaching done on the Constitution at Independence Hall in the very room where the Constitution was framed. We take you both to Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty and Independence Hall and to the WallBuilders library, where David Barton brings the history to life to teach the original intent of our Founding Fathers.

We call it the Quickstart Guide to the Constitution, because in just a few hours through these videos, you will learn the citizens guide to America’s Constitution, you’ll learn what you need to do to help save our constitutional republic. It’s fun, it’s entertaining and it’s going to inspire you to do your part to preserve freedom for future generations. It’s called Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green. You can find out more information on our website now and wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. It’s Good News Friday today and we’ve got our third segment of good news right now. David Barton.

David:

I’m going to go to something that happened in Washington DC from President Trump, it relates actually to Tennessee. Tennessee, the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is over a lot of the waterflow, the Tennessee River things there in Virginia and there’s power plants and there’s a lot that’s tied to the Tennessee River. But because the Tennessee Valley Authority is actually a federal board. And so, the head of the Tennessee Valley Authority had announced that it’s going to outsource 20% of his tech jobs to foreign workers.

So, at a time when America’s having a lot of unemployment problems, but you know, as I mentioned earlier, we’ve seen an increase of 1.8 million jobs just over the last week so things are coming back more rapidly than what was expected after the COVID. But nonetheless, to take and say 20% of our tech jobs are going overseas probably is not a good deal. And the result of that decision was that President Trump fired him. And I like the statement he made here. He says, “Let this serve as a warning to any federally appointed board. If you betray American workers, you will hear two words. ‘You’re fired.’” And I thought, yeah, that’s pretty good. That’s…

Tim:

He kind of made himself famous doing that on TV for a while with “The Apprentice.” Yeah, interesting that he’s going to defend American jobs that way.

David:

So he stood up for American jobs and that does send a big, big message, for sure. And along, in the same thing of kind of keeping America first and making sure that we can have good things here, he’s also ordered that in the census, they’re not going to count illegal immigrants. You can’t do that for congressional redistricting. And that is important because when you count individuals, you break the congressional districts up into however many millions of Americans are divided by 435. So right now, I think it’s like 760,000 Americans in each congressional district.

Well if you count illegal aliens, which could be as much as 20 to 40 million additional folks, then you’re putting a lot more representation into congressional districts and it’s going to affect some States that have taken congressman out of those States and add them to others. But if you’re counting non- citizens in that, then you’re really not representing those people in DC and you’re also using those census numbers to help distribute federal funding, whether it be for welfare or for health care for anything else. And the numbers really aren’t accurate, because those monies aren’t to go to illegals, ought to go to American citizens. So that is a really bold decision.

It’s the kind of stuff that got a lot of criticism because he’s not counting illegal aliens. but it’s the kind of stuff that’s the right way to stand up for America and to put America first. Because as president, he’s not in charge putting the world first, he’s in charge of putting America first. And so what we’re seeing here with trying to preserve jobs and keep them here and trying to make sure that Americans get counted, not illegal aliens, those are all good measures from my viewpoint of helping do really what a president is supposed to do under the Constitution and that is look out for the United States of America and its citizens.

Rick:

Alright, guys, one more break, we’ve got one more segment of good news coming up. Stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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Many of you out there are under stay-at-home orders by your governor or your local health officials and maybe you’re looking for something to do during this time. One of the most important things you can do as a citizen is to make sure that you know your rights, you know when they’ve been violated and you’re the better prepared to defend and assert them. To do that, you’ve got to study the Constitution and the history behind it.

Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green does exactly that. We take you into the WallBuilders library, we bring all those resources to life. And then we go out to Philadelphia, the Independence Hall and right there in the room where the Constitution and the Declaration were put together, we bring it to life, we relive it and we make sure that we as citizens know what our part is in preserving these freedoms for future generations.

At this time in our nation, it is so important to know the proper role of government and what we as citizens should be doing at this time. If you haven’t done Constitution Alive, check it out at wallbuilders.com. You can get the DVD set there, we’ll get it out in the mail to you as soon as we can. And you can study it at home or you can go to constitutioncoach.com and become a Constitution coach today. We’ve got a free license for you right now where you can sign up as a Constitution host and be the catalyst in your community to bring back these biblical and historical and constitutional values.

And what you do is you sign up as a host and then you get your friends and family together on Zoom. We coach you on how to do it and you’re able to create community and also study the Constitution at the same time. Do this and we will be able to pick up the pieces on the other side of this crisis and rebuild our nation even stronger than it was before. Check it out today at constitutioncoach.com.

Rick:

Thanks for staying with us here, final segment of Good News today. Tim Barton, what’s our last piece of good news going to be?

Tim:

Well, we’re going to have a couple and so we’ll see where it falls to be the last one. The first one, this is something that did reach a little bit of notoriety but certainly worth pointing out, is Nicholas Sandman has recently settled another lawsuit, this one with a Washington Post. Earlier this year, there was one that he settled with CNN. And there’s been a little kind of interesting sidebar and Rick with your attorney mind, you probably can even give a little insight on some of this.

One of the things that happens in these settlements and initially, right, first of all, backup. Nicholas Sandman was the boy from Covington Catholic High School, who at a March for Life up in DC a couple of years ago, there was a native American man who got up in his face with a drum, who walked up right to him and start beating the drum in his face and Nicholas Sandman just basically smiled at him, right, didn’t respond, didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, but the media said all this boy went and challenged native American and insulted him and he was a veteran. And just went on and on about how disrespectful and racist Nicholas Sandman was. And he absolutely was not.

But there were so many media outlets that slandered him and their school had all kinds of death threats and hate threats and had to close down for a while and extra security and just all kinds of craziness. And so they decided, let’s go after these news outlets who lied about this and who deliberately distorted what actually happened because many of the news outlets have the footage and just refused to show all of the footage, only showed a clip, etc.

So CNN was the first one to settle a lawsuit, that lawsuit was for $250 million. Generally, a settlement is going to be nowhere near what the actual lawsuit was. Although, I would assume it was more than just for kind of punitive damages. It’s probably more than the 30,000 or 40,000 that some people alluded to. It would not surprise me if it’s in the several hundred thousand if not even several million, certainly probably less than the 250 million.

But with that being said, they win with CNN, they went with the Washington Post, because both of them recognized, yeah, we don’t have ground to stand on; we definitely said the wrong thing; we were bad journalists in this, we apologize, so here’s money for the settlement. One of the interesting things…

David:

Wait a minute. Did you say that CNN and Washington Post admitted that they did bad journalism?

Tim:

Only admitting it in the sense that they agreed to the settlement and not go forward with the case. And it wouldn’t be because of the frivolous lawsuit. This is something that he absolutely could win, because this was slanderous, it was dangerous, it caused a threat to his health, to his well-being, to his livelihood. So this is more than just a false news report. This is an individual whose life was forever changed and tarnished, because of what they did. So in acknowledging this lawsuit or acquiescing to this, in essence, yes, they are acknowledging they did wrong in this. With that being said, there actually were some people who worked for Washington Post and CNN, who came out and they wanted to clarify he didn’t win $250 million, that’s on a lawsuits work, it was something far less and they speculated numbers. But here’s the problem.

Washington Post and CNN, both by doing this agreement right of the settlement as it is, they have nondisclosure agreement they sign, which means they will not talk about the case. So they now have reporters who are questionably breaking this nondisclosure agreement by discussing some of what happened. So some of its going to be interesting to see where it goes. Nonetheless, it’s always great to see that an individual whose life was just raked over the coals, is now being held up and vindicated from some of these big media mogul outlets that really were trying to destroy him.

Another article really quick is a pastor from Tennessee, Greg Locke, who went viral on a couple of different videos, because he said, I’m not backing down, I’m having church. They can tell me that they don’t want me to. They can put me in jail. They can do whatever they want to me. And he was one of the first pastors that really we saw being the vocal and defiant. And he certainly was not the first pastor to be defiant. There are other pastors saying, look, we know how important church is, we know we’re an essential service, we’re not backing down. And maybe because he was in a place where he was receiving threats that other pastors weren’t, he was able to do some videos and go viral, but the backbone of this guy saying I’m not going to back down. And then we’ve seen pastors in California standing up. And pastors are being threatened with jail time: pastors who are being threatened with fines, with losing their church, with losing their property. And pastors are beginning to stand up to some of this government tyranny and oppression.

It really reminds me a little bit, backing up to the Founding Fathers era, the 1770s where you had early pastors saying, you know, we’ve had about all we’re going to take of this King George nonsense with his attacks on our religious freedom and our religious liberty. We’re not doing this anymore. And it was pastors leading the charge so often in early America that causes pastors to become the targets of the British in many conflicts. And they will go to town, often burning churches to the ground in those towns because pastors are the problem. It’s just really good to see some pastors once again standing up and maybe being the problem for tyrannical government.

Rick:

Well, and the most important thing you can do as a citizen out there is to study your freedom and then act on it. And you can only do that if you have the intellectual ammunition, if you’re studying the Constitution itself. We encourage you to become a Constitution coach and not only study it, but share it with other people. You don’t need any particular background. You don’t have to have done anything like this before. We will equip you and give you all the tools that you need. Check it out at constitutioncoach.com today. Get signed up is one of our hosts or coaches. That means we give you all the videos, all the tools you need. David and I will take you into his library and all the amazing things that are in the library in terms of history and bringing that to life. I’ll take you out to Independence Hall and teach the Constitution in the room where it was actually created. It’s a great way to learn those foundational principles. And you can be the catalyst for a restoration of biblical and constitutional principles by being a Constitution coach.

You can get people in your community or even across the nation by hosting a class on Zoom or you can host it in your living room, right at your church. We go through all of that training for you and we’re giving it away for free. 2020 is that serious. We’re giving it away for free. We need more people to go through this Constitution class so that we can save this constitutional republic and you can be the one to make it happen in your church, in your community. Get on constitutioncoach.com today and get signed up.

Thanks so much for listening today. You’ve been listening to what WallBuilders Live.