Rest Easy Soldier – Last Medal Of Honor Recipient Passes Away And More – The last Medal of Honor recipient passes away at 98 – rest easy soldier! We are already seeing good results come from the Dobbs decision and more!

Air Date: 07/08/2022

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:

This is the intersection of faith and the culture. We call it WallBuilders Live. WallBuilders comes from that scripture in Nehemiah that says arise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach.

Just think about it practically, folks, back then if you didn’t have those outer walls, you were run over as a city. Here today in our nation, obviously, borders are important as well. But what we mean by WallBuilders is the fact that, you need the foundation, you need the strength of a society, you need the truths that makes a society strong instead of the lies that weaken a nation.

So WallBuilders has been around for nearly three decades now rebuilding the foundations of America, bringing back the truth about what makes our constitution so strong, what makes our Declaration of Independence, why are those principles something so powerful and so true that they changed the entire world. It had such an impact on everyone on the planet because of what America became and was able to do in exporting freedom around the world. That’s what WallBuilders is all about.

You can go to our main website today at wallbuilders.com or to our radio site, wallbuilderslive.com, wallbuilderslive.com. And they’re on the radio site, you can get archives of the program. So if you missed some shows last week or previous weeks, it’s all available there on the website. Throughout the week, we typically have interviews, and on Thursday, we’ll have a Foundation of Freedom program, that’s where you send in questions. You can email those to [email protected] And then we try to get through as many of those questions as we can on Thursdays.

And then Fridays, we have what we call Good News Friday, it’s a chance for us to just go through as many stories as possible that have happened in the last few weeks or months. You don’t typically get good news on programs like news program, or certainly major media, you typically only get bad news, we want to highlight a lot of those good things that have happened. So we reserve Fridays to do that. And that’s what today is, Good News Friday, a chance for David and Tim Barton to just go through as many stories as possible, their good news story stacks are way bigger than we can ever get to all of them, but we’ll get through as many as we possibly can today.

Alright, that’s enough lead up, that’s enough teasing. Let’s get to the good stuff. David Barton’s got the first piece of good news. David.

David:

Okay, Rick, this is not necessarily a piece of good news, but it’s a piece of wholesome news in the sense that it really is pro-America pro-country, and it’s just a head nod as an acknowledgment that just within the last few days the last Medal of Honor recipient from World War II died. He was 90 years old, and his name was Hershel Williams. He went by the nickname of Woody. And it’s a fun story because when he tried to enlist at World War II, he was five foot six and they said, no, son, you’re too short, you need to go home.

But as America got into the war, it just need his soldiers, even if they were shorter, and so he became a soldier. He was sent to Iwo Jima, and Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest battles in World War II, he was right in the middle of it. He was a dairy farmer growing up. And so as he landed on Iwo Jima, he had to crawl through literally hundreds of dead bodies on the beaches and hide between the bodies and work his way through. And then he went through bomb craters, hide himself till he finally got reunited with his unit.

But because of what he did there, and he single handedly took out a series of Japanese positions. He was just remarkable guy. But he died 98 years old, and they have now named a US Navy ship after him, it’s USS Hershel Woody Williams. So, last remaining Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, we appreciate him, appreciate his family.

As far as good news goes, I want to go back to what happened in the last two weeks with the Supreme Court coming down with so many landmark decisions. You know, we’ve talked about the gun decision, talked about the abortion decision, religious liberty, etc. There was one that I thought was really significant, we didn’t talk much about it, but it’s worth mentioning now. And I want to go to an article that was written by the Epic Times, Jeffrey Tucker wrote the article. And I’m just going to read part of the article because he really says what I think and I would have said the same thing too. And he talks about how the decision in West Virginia versus EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency is one of the biggest decisions we’ve had in the last century. This is the first real decision in a century that started raining and federal agencies and saying you guys can’t make rules. You’re not Congress. You don’t get to legislate. Congress legislate, you guys don’t.

And so the EPA was really trying to shut down the coal industry in West Virginia. The EPA has bought into this ESG notion, environmental, social, and governance where we’re going to shut down anything that has to do with traditional energy that’s really evil and bad, we want it gone. So the EPA is really trying to shut down businesses by regulating them out the ones they don’t like. And the Supreme Court really slapped down the EPA on this. And in doing so, it’s a direct shot at the CDC and all the COVID vaccines and having any agency tell you what your job can be or what your health care can be or what your policies have to be. So I’m just going to read part of this article because he really does nail it here.

He said “The flurry of rulings from the Supreme Court has everyone’s head spinning. The most significant among them, even if it doesn’t capture all the headlines, is West Virginia versus EPA”. The majority opinion is impressive. But the part I found truly wonderful is the concurring opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch. This is where we see things headed, toward a major and much welcomed curbing of the power of the administrative state.

Just review what this thing is. It’s an unelected bureaucracy that rules the country without oversight from voters or legislators. For well over 100 years, most courts have given it a pass, just assuming that the experts and the bureaucracies are handling things just fine faithfully interpreting legislation and merely creating rules for easy compliance. Generations have gone by and it’s this fourth branch of government has grown in size, scope and strength. For the most part, it’s baneful impositions have been felt by one business industry at a time. You heard the crazy stories, the car dealer complaints about the Department of Labor making him crazy, the machine parts manufacturer is going bonkers about letters from OSHA, the energy company can never satisfy the EPA.

There are stories and we find them unfortunate, but we’ve generally avoided thinking of these as systematic, all pervasive and truly dangerous to the idea of freedom itself.” And on he goes.

He just talks about how that the court has now given the first shot across the bow and it was a big shot and a big restriction on agencies being able to make policy and implement policy. And that’s really good because most of the agencies are filled with not freedom loving folks, they’re filled with government loving folks who love to exert power over the people. And so it’s not been agencies that enhance or produce freedom, it’s been agencies that have created oppression and their own agendas and you can’t vote them out of office and most federal employees nearly impossible to fire. We’ve seen that in so many instances.

And even when we pointed out that back in 2017, when Congress did pass a law to allow the folks in the Veterans Administration be fired when they found that 300,000 veterans had been killed by bad health care, even when we got to fire those folks, the Labor Relations Board came in a few years later and said no, no, that really doesn’t apply, everybody gets their job back.

So it’s just been almost impossible to hold these folks accountable. And now the Supreme Court has put them on notice that you’re not elected, you’re not the policy makers, and you don’t get to do this. And that really was a great decision from the US Supreme Court.

Rick:

Alright, well, that’s our first piece of good news. Tim, what’s our next piece of good news?

Tim:

Well, guys, this is another one from the US Supreme Court. Actually, I have a couple things that deal with the life issue, but this one deals with the Dobbs decision. And actually, last week, the article says “US Supreme Court since decision against Indiana Parental Notification Law back to the Seventh Circuit.”

So in Indiana, they had passed a law where they said parents should be notified before their minor daughter is taken to get an abortion procedure. And that seems incredibly logical that parents should know before their daughter has a medical procedure done, especially when it involves the murdering of an unborn child inside of that daughter’s womb.

Nonetheless, when this law was passed, Planned Parenthood of Indiana decided oh, we don’t like that because that might restrict abortions. And also, guys, as a side note, it’s interesting, Planned Parenthood has often claimed that abortion is only a very small part of what they do. And yet, because of the doctor’s decision, and some of these restrictive abortion laws that have already passed in some of these states, many Planned Parenthood’s have closed because they were no longer making money off abortions. But if abortion is only like, 3% of what you do, and you lose abortions, and then like 97% of what you do should still be going on, you should still be able to function and operate and make money unless maybe you were skewing that number and abortion was more than 3%. I digress.

Nonetheless, in Indiana, the Planned Parenthood of Indiana sued and said that you right you can’t pass this law is restrictive and it violates Roe v. Wade. Well, as you guys know, we’ve talked about we had good news on this. It wasn’t even a Friday. It was a good news program on the decision of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. In this one, what they said is that this was a case appealed all of US Supreme Court, the Seventh Circuit upheld that the state of Indiana had passed a law that was too restrictive, that parents did not need to be notified before this minor daughter was taken to go get an abortion. And the Supreme Court looked at this and said yeah, we’re going to send this back to the Seventh Circuit, they need to review this in light of the Dobbs versus Jackson’s women health organization decision and come to a different conclusion is the implication.

So guys, good news we are already seeing things happen in some of these states where some of these state laws were passed and they’ve been challenged. We’ve talked about that we know there’s going to be battles, we know there’s going to be a lot of challenges going forward with what’s happened with the overturning of Roe v. Wade that we know that the people promoting evil to people doing evil like Planned Parenthood, they’re not going to just roll over and let this happen, they’re going to fight back against this.

And this is already, now, one or two weeks in we’re already seeing the Supreme Court said that we’re going to have to go examine some of these challenges, some of these lawsuits in light of this Dobbs decision, we know which direction is going to go.

Guys, this is really encouraging, it’s exciting, it’s good news that we are already seeing the impact of the Dobbs decision taking place. Well, that was one thing.

The second thing is we know when the Dobbs decision happened and Roe v. Wade was overturned, so now it’s no longer a federally recognized statute, and now belongs to the states is the argument from the Supreme Court, because 10th Amendment, it doesn’t belong to the Federal Government in the Constitution, therefore, by default, it has to go to the states. And we pointed out, I fundamentally disagree with the notion that should be a state’s rights, whereas the idea of murder or rape, that’s not a states’ rights issue, those are things that are fundamentally wrong.

Nonetheless, not digress in that again, there were many businesses that came out and said that they were going to fund their employees to go to various states to have an abortion. They would pay for their transportation. They’d pay for their travel. They’d paid for their lodging, their food, all this stuff. Whatever’s involved, they’re going to cover it up to $4,000 for these women to go have an abortion.

And on the counter side, here’s the really cool piece of good news. I’ve seen a couple stories like this, but this is one of the first and the biggest. There’s a Texas based insurance company. And the title of the article is “This company is offering pay for births and adoptions in response to Roe decision.”

There’s a Texas based insurance company, their name is Buffer, and they released a statement denouncing secular companies and announcing their pro-life commitment. They promised to cover adoption fees for their employees who choose life. And as someone who’s gone through part of the adoption process, I can tell you and we’ve talked about before, firsthand, adoptions are not cheap, and can be very expensive. For a company to offer to pay for a family in their organization that they employ to get an adoption to pay for those fees, that’s a huge amount. And they’re going to pay for paternity and maternity leave. And not only these, they are also offering to other companies to help them provide the same benefits. They said employers, if you’d like to learn how you can provide these benefits to your employees, let us know, we have ready to use policies you can add to your employee handbook.

And guys, we’ve talked often about voting with your dollars. I was not even familiar with his Buffer insurance company, but after seeing this article, it made me think you know, I might want to examine who does my insurance, because a company that is like this, that wants to help provide funding for other companies or the insurance backing for other companies, that wants to supply their employees with not only just paid paternity and maternity leave, that might be something you’re like, okay, that should be part of normal insurance package, like I get that argument. But to cover adoption fees, that this was incredible.

And certainly, in their response to push back to the secular organizations that are paying their employees to go murder this unborn child and fly them to other states, the secular companies are saying if you live in a state that doesn’t recognize abortion, we’ll fly you to a state that does you can have your abortion procedure, your “healthcare operation”, whatever done. It’s crazy.

And yet in the midst of this, it’s really cool to see companies like this that are stepping up, that are putting their dollar where their mouth is, and saying we’re going to fund the opposite direction. Guys, this is a really cool piece of good news. And for anybody listening, I don’t know whether you know your insurance, I don’t know anything about this company. But I’m going to check out this Buffer Insurance company, Texas-based, to see what they offer because a company that does this, is a kind of company I want to support.

Rick:

We’re going to take a quick break, guys, we’ll be right back. We’ve got more good news for you when we return at WallBuilders Live.

AMERICAN 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 we, 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 in 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.

Rick:

We’re back with David and Tim now to get some more good news on our Good News Friday. And David, I think you got the next piece of good news.

David:

Okay, guys, Tim, going back to something you said before break, you were talking about how with the Dobbs decision, the court really gave it back to the states but now we’re seeing all these facts in states. And that’s something really we talked about back after the decision came down, what this has done, it doesn’t end abortion, it just moves the fight to 50 different states instead of one Supreme Court, and it moves it to hundreds of communities, even pro-law states like Texas guarantee you, Planned Parenthood is going to move in here with hundreds of millions of dollars to try to turn us away from being a pro-life state. So we’re going to see battles all over.

What I’ve been shocked at is as clear as the Supreme Court decision was, and by the way, we even talked the night of the decision that a lot of states created what are called Trigger Laws, Texas has a trigger law. And it says, if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned, then this law triggers a ban on abortions in the state of Texas. So a of number states had Trigger Laws. Louisiana had Trigger Law, etc.

And so when the Dobbs decision came down, we said alright, that kicks all those laws into gear. And promptly, we saw in Texas a state Judge step in to say, no, that Trigger Law can’t go into effect. We saw three lawsuits in Louisiana over three laws that were their Trigger Laws, said now they can go into effect. We saw across the nation, all the state Judges start saying no, you can’t have that go into effect. No, wait a minute, it went back to the states, the state legislature said we have a Trigger Law, we’re going to have no abortion in this state when Roe v. Wade is overturned when it becomes a state issue.

And so, you know, we talked about here it is, this is all the battles we thought. But the thing is you don’t get discouraged by battles. I mean, it’s like the war horse in Job 39, when he hears the sound of a battle he runs toward it and he starts pulling, he can’t wait to get there, oh, great, another fight, another battle. And that’s the mentality we’re going to have. If you ever get tired of fighting, you’re go lose, guaranteed, because the other side is going to keep showing up on the field. And we have to keep doing the same. So we knew that this stuff is eventually going to get overturned.

And so here’s the article that the Texas Supreme Court blocks the order that resumed abortions. So it made our Texas Supreme Court and Supreme Court said no, the legislature’s really clear, Texas now, the Trigger Law goes into effect, abortions are banned in Texas. We’ve seen this with other states who were initially blocked last week, and now their judicial system is catching up higher authorities, because you always have Judges at lower levels, particularly in the sometimes the higher levels. But you have more of them lower levels that are going to try to really legislate from the bench their own view and their own policy. Most likely, they were probably pro-abortion Judges, they didn’t want to see this end, and they’re going to do what they can to issue a ruling to stop it.

But by the time you get usually to higher courts, especially in states that elect their Judges, like Texas does, when you get Judges elected on the Supreme Court, they’re pretty responsive to the will of people because the people take them off the court if they’re not. And so, in states that have those elected Judges we’re seeing now they’re starting to line up and we’re starting to win these at the state level.

Now, we’re still going to have legislative battles. But it’s really good that what the Supreme Court decreed in the Dobbs decision is now finally working his way into state level, despite the fact that initially most of the states had lawsuits blocking those prolife laws from going into effect, it looks like they are taking effect. And that’s really good.

And by the way, if your state doesn’t have elected Judges on the state level, this is a good reason for you to do that. If you have what’s called the Missouri plan, or the Tennessee Plan, or other plans that let the governor or the legislature appoint the Judges, not really a good idea. You want to make these guys accountable to you, particularly when we’re in an era where the Constitution means what the Judge wants it to mean rather than what it actually says.

And so you want to make sure Judges are accountable, and you can hold them accountable; that if they don’t uphold the Constitution, if they don’t uphold the laws, then you can get them off of there. So that may be something to look at as well, to encourage your state to move toward elected Judges if you don’t have that.

Rick:

Alright, Tim Barton, what’s our next piece of good news?

Tim:

Alright, guys, a couple of articles. The first one I have is revisiting what we talked about before the break, where we talked about Supreme Court based on the Dobbs decision was going to send things back down to the lower courts. Specifically, we talked about Indiana before the break. This one identifies two more states that are going to have some of their challenges go back to the lower courts.

In Arkansas, they had had passed a measure to ban selective abortions based on fetal genetic abnormalities such as Down syndrome. And there was a challenge. And this was from the Little Rock Family Planning Services, which seems a little bit sounds a bit like Planned Parenthood, I don’t know. But the decision was made in the Ratledge V, Little Rock Family Planning Services. The challenge went up saying that you can’t tell people they can’t abort a child if there’s some kind of genetic abnormality. That was the Eighth Circuit decision and the Supreme Court is sitting down back down just like from Indiana. So now Arkansas is one going back down.

And then in Arizona, there was a similar decision where they had a block on a ban on abortions due to a fetal genetic abnormality such as Down syndrome. So very similar to the Arkansas law where they said you can’t do selective abortions because there might be something physically off with the child. And so the Supreme Court and both of these were the challenges from the state of Arkansas and Arizona were those that were challenging said that you can’t limit and restrict abortion. And now based on the Roe decision from the Supreme Court, we know that actually this does go on with the states. And so if the states passed laws, they can’t uphold and enforce those laws.

So this is yet again more examples of cases. Already in the last two or three weeks since this decision didn’t happen, we are seeing things go back to where the states once again are able to exert power, goes back to states’ rights on some level. I mean, dad, as you mentioned, it’s going be a lot of battles. But the good news is for a lot of states, they’ve already been passing a lot of prolife laws that have not been upheld. But now, those challenges maybe can be revisited. Now they can go back to some of those areas, since the overturning of Roe v. Wade since now this is not a federally protected, as Joe Biden said, the right to abortion.

No, this is not a constitutional right. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s not federally protected. It shouldn’t be protected on the state level either. But at this point, at least, it can go back to those states that have already passed laws. And so now we know Indiana, Arkansas, and Arizona, all those cases are going back to the lower courts and the lower courts based on this Dobbs decision should reverse their positions.

David:

The other thing that’s interesting on those states you mentioned that had the Down syndrome is kind of a law, that goes back to the pre Dobbs days, which you know, it’s only a few weeks ago. But the belief was that if you can get some specified type of handicap kind of laws to the Supreme Court, the more likely to overturn it. Just like we have laws with the American with Disabilities Act and other handicap things that say you can’t discriminate on the basis of any physical handicap, the belief was the Supreme Court might be more willing to pick this up and overturn abortion. So those are actually laws that now there are old laws. But that was part of the philosophy just even a year ago on how to get the Supreme Court to pick up a case was do something with Down syndrome or some other physical disability.

Tim:

Well, and other good news from the Supreme Court, dad, as you mentioned, with some of the decisions that have come down, Justice Thomas specifically has come out and said, there’s some other things we had to talk about, some other things we had to hear. And so, he’s actually calling for certain things to come back recognizing that a lot of what the Supreme Court has done in the last several decades has not been rooted and based in the Constitution. Well, that is correct we should revisit those unconstitutional decisions.

One of the things that’s sad on some level, but maybe promising on another level, is one of the cases that the Supreme Court declined to hear was a defamation case dealing with D. James Kennedy Ministry. And if anybody listening doesn’t know who D. James Kennedy was, incredible pastor, great boldness, loved America, biblical in what he did and promoted. And so his organization, Coral Ridge Ministries is still around there, they’re still working to make a difference in culture, trying to do things of significance. And the SPLC labeled them as a hate and a terror group…

David:

And by the way, he was a really noted national television kind of guy, not in the sense of televangelists, because he was such a sound teacher. But he had such a huge following. And he was so transcendent across all denominations. He’s a Presbyterian. But whether you’re Baptists or anybody else, I mean, everybody loved him because he was such a good Bible teacher.

Tim:

So yeah, so like a Charles Stanley or a Robert Morris or somebody, a noted individual that people kind of across denominations could look and listen and enjoy, definitely, who D. James Kennedy was, well, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified them as a hate group largely because of their biblical positions, identifying maybe that there’s such thing as male and female, but really, it was more about their marriage issue is what got the ire of the SPLC. When they had the nerve to suggest that Bible said that marriage was between a man and woman which by the way it does, they said, that’s hateful. So they were put on the hate map.

And even what Justice Thomas identified is, even though Supreme Court failed to pick this up, he said that this does lead us to recognize that the standard of libel for organization like the SPLC or he actually referenced the New York Times in a former case from the New York Times, he says the standard that we uphold to them is a pretty ridiculous standard. He said we probably should revisit that standard.

And so dad, as we mentioned earlier or on previous programs, he actually called for may be let’s have another case, we can come and review the standards. And one of the things that’s also worth noting is as he’s calling for some of these cases to come, we know generally speaking for a case to get to the US Supreme Court, it can take years. Where you look at, for example, the coach Joe Kennedy case that we saw a great outcome just a couple of weeks ago, that was seven years to get there. Some cases take even longer than seven years to get there. So this is something that in seven years, the makeup of the court could be a bit different than it is now.

But it’s also worth noting that Justice Thomas probably feels like you know what if I have a few years to maybe talk to some of the Kavanaugh or the Gorsuch or the Amy Coney Barrett or maybe even Chief Justice Roberts, maybe there’s a strategy involved thinking that in seven years, I can probably get them to understand why we need to change the standards. I don’t know if maybe that’s part of his strategy.

David:

It is definitely part that’s something that Justice Thomas does really well. He kind of puts the court on alert that we’re going to be looking for these kinds of cases, we all need to be looking for them. It’s kind of like having a conference in public. And so you’re eavesdropping on a conference. But he does this to put pressure on the other Justices. And even as you mentioned, the Coach Kennedy case, I mean, he’s the guy who specifically said when you bring this back to us, bring it with these arguments. And so he even told the Attorneys the kind of arguments they needed to bring to the court so the court can get the right decision.

So Justice Thomas had been very, very good about saying, guys, it’s time for us to revisit this. And that dissent you’re talking about was a three page dissent, saying, man, were given big tech and all these media guys complete cover. No matter what they say, you can’t hold him accountable and we can’t do that. And so, he really explained well why needs to be revisited.

Tim:

So this is really good news. We’ve already talked about several programs how great things have been going at the Supreme Court this year. I mean, guys, this is something that I don’t think we expected in a couple of weeks span to have so many positive things coming from the Supreme Court. But this is really good news on this Friday.

Rick:

Alright, guys, we are not going to get anywhere near through the stack of good news that you’ve piled up from the last few weeks. So we’ll dive into more of that next week on Good News Friday. But for folks that want more right now, right this minute, go to wallbuilderslive.com. You can get some more good news there by going into the archive section and listening to previous Friday programs. And frankly, a lot of our interview programs also are packed full of good news as well.

Now we’re not Pollyanna, we’re not just waving the flag and saying oh, hope everything works out. I mean, we’re diving into the issues of the day, we’re looking at everything from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. But not only do we look at that issue and what’s actually happening, we talk about solutions for how to turn this culture around, how to be true salt and light.

So thank you for listening. Share the program with your friends and family and join us in being salt and light in the community, biblical values, that’s where all the answers are right there in God’s word and you can be the one to apply that in your community.

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