Let’s Focus On The Victories That Are Happening Around Us Today – This week we all need to hear some good news, and it’s good news Friday! Let’s focus on the victories happening today. Tune in to hear more!

Air Date: 01/22/2021

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.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, and it’s Friday, that means it’s Good News Friday today. So we’re going to be getting some of those good news stories from David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders, and also from 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.

You can learn more about all of us at the website, wallbuilderslive.com. More importantly, that’s the place where you can go to get a listing of all of our stations around the country where we can be heard locally, and also where you can get archives of the program from the last few weeks. So a lot of great material there for you at wallbuilderslive.com.

In addition to the stuff we’re going to give you at wallbuilderslive.com, we’re going to ask you to consider giving at wallbuilderslive.com as well. We are a listener-supported program. And so those of you across the country that give to WallBuilders Live, thank you, thank you, thank you. You allow us to amplify this voice of Truth, to get truth out there, to equip and engage and educate folks and encourage them even in tough times on the things that they can do to make a difference in their community, their state, and of course, our nation.

So when you go to wallbuilderslive.com and donate, you’re coming alongside us, you’re locking shields with us, and you’re helping us to become force multipliers, to actually multiply this voice of truth. So thank you very much for being a part of that.

Alright, David, Tim, I’m looking forward to this. Need some good news this week, and I know our listeners do as well. So let’s focus in on some of those victories out there.

David:

Alright, to start this, Rick and Tim, I’m going to ask you guys some questions about an organization that you’re both members of. So I’m going to give you clue as you tell me when you recognize the organization. So…

Tim:

He Man-Woman Haters Club. Little Rascals.

David:

How did you get that before I even gave you a clue?

Tim:

Little Rascals. I got it.

Rick:

Okay, wait, does that make you Spanky and me alfalfa or me spanking you off?

Tim:

We’ll look at our hair in the mirror and see who fits it better. We’ll see.

Rick:

Is David Darla…

David:

How are we identifying today? No, I think not.

Rick:

Okay. Okay. Alright, organization. I got my thinking cap on. I’m ready.

David:

Alright. You’re both members of an organization that was founded in 1871.

Tim:

Okay, I was thinking like Adam and Eve in the garden, the main organization, but now we’re out. Okay.

David:

No.

Tim:

18, what?

David:

1871.

Tim:

Got it.

David:

What is it?

Tim:

NRA.

David:

There you go.

Rick:

NRA. Yeah.

David:

You’re both members of NRA, and it’s 5 million members.

Rick:

I didn’t know it was founded in 1871 until all the news this last week or so I read an article and said that and I thought you got to be kidding me. NRA has been around for 150 years!

David:

It was started by some union generals after the Civil War, and it was a self-defense thing. Not that you had needed it in reconstruction areas where you had wars going on after the war.

Tim:

Well, and also they looked and saw how many of the soldiers had been recruited for the Union Army, that flat out could not shoot and they said, this is embarrassing, we need to be helping people learn to shoot. Which by the way, this is also the same era as like your Annie Oakley’s. And so Annie Oakley, also there’s total side note. But Annie Oakley started schools, specifically for women where she taught women how to shoot. So there was a lot of people learning how to shoot at this period in American history.

David:

So we go to the NRA. Do you know where the NRA is headquartered?

Tim:

I didn’t until last week. At least I know where they used to be and I know where they’re going to be. They were in New York.

David:

New York. That’s right. Now here…

Rick:

I feel like this is a movie moment for private. What were you thinking? I mean, why in the world would the NRA be based in New York?

David:

With taxes being what they are and everything else, that’s crazy. It’s interesting that with President Biden, one of his campaign promises was that he was going to, “defeat the NRA.” So that’s not good news for a Second Amendment folks, is defeating the largest Second Amendment group in the country or one of the largest. So that was his announcement. He’s going to defeat the NRA.

And right in line with that, which has been a democrat philosophy for several years now, you have the Attorney General of New York who has taken the NRA to court and they’ve got the NRA in court and they just you know, it’s the law fair kind of stuff that we talked about years ago where the Islamic activist group were taking everybody to court and just harassing them and wanted you to back off from saying anything bad. And that’s kind of the sense you get with the lawsuit going here.

So NRA, apparently has finally had enough of it. They are tired of living in a state that is completely hostile or at least the leadership of the state and the leadership of the city where they are is completely hostile to what they represent, which is a constitutional protected liberty and freedom. And so they are moving and they are moving to Drumroll, Texas.

Rick:

Much better choice. Alright. I like this decision.

David:

And that is good news for Second Amendment folks, because your contributed dollars in NRA, so much of it’s not going to be going to legal defense kind of stuff and into ridiculous rent in New York City, etc. You’re actually down in a much more reasonable state that is not going to harass you for being part of the Constitution and protecting part of it. So this is a good news deal not only for NRA, but for NRA donors. Your money will now go a little bit more into legislative efforts and things to protect the Second Amendment without having to pay the rent, and the frivolous lawsuits in New York City. So that’s good news.

The other thing that is interesting news to me, you know, we’ve seen over recent months, as the wall has gone up, the illegal immigration has gone down. Security of United States goes up when you protect your borders, know who’s coming in, etc. And now with the election change and the announcement, already, we’ve started seeing changes. So there’s a caravan of about 7,000, 8,000, 9,000 Honduran folks headed to America. They’re coming back in large groups now.

And interestingly, Guatemala said, no, no, no, you’re not going to America through us. Now this goes back to things that Trump had negotiated in the last three to four years, where they actually got the lower part of North America, upper part of Central America to start saying no, we’re not going to let you travel through us to get to the United States. And so really, they’ve helped really enforce some of the border security measures for up here.

And so as this group was coming through, and they’re headed to the United States, it’s interesting that that would seem to be because the Democrats are now in control, they’re now in charge, and so the borders are open again. But at least the reported statement is very interesting to me. The reported statement that is the headline of this news story, is it says that “Joe Biden says to that migrant caravan, it’s a lie that our border will be open to everyone next month.” Now, I hope that means what it says it means, maybe he meant is going to be open in two months, I don’t know. But just the fact that the Biden will say hey, if you think the American border is suddenly going to open up because we’re back in office, that’s a lie. Now, I hope that’s exactly what he means. We’ll watch over coming months to see if immigration policy changes, what happens in border security.

But just the fact that that comment was made was to me a whole lot better news than what I was expecting out of Biden administration. I hope that is an accurate statement. I hope they will maintain border security and try to do something there. But that’s unusual piece of good news coming from possibly the Biden administration.

Rick:

Okay, you shocked me. You already shocked me. I thought for sure the good news was going to have to come from somewhere other than the Biden administration. I didn’t know we can already find some good news in the Biden administration. You are an amazing guy to be able to find that needle in a haystack. Well, actually, that is good news.

David:

I will say that is some optimistic, hopeful news. We’ll see if it bears out in coming months, but at least on paper, that’s a good statement.

Rick:

Yeah, good stuff. Okay, guys, let’s take a quick break, we’ll be right back. And Tim Burton’s got some good news for us. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called “The American Story”. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today. And we would say very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out of statement, Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story. Starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America, not as the story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out wallbuilder.com, “The American Story”.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. It’s Good News Friday today. Yes, there is good news out there, there’s a lot of it, and we’re just going to give you as much of it as we can in our short time together today. And Tim Barton’s got the next piece. Tim.

Tim:

Alright, guys. Well, as we mentioned in the first segment with the NRA being in New York, and now they’re leaving New York, this is another piece of good news from New York. But this is not people leaving New York. This is people standing up and fighting and winning in New York. And by the way, standing up and fighting meaning in a legal context. This day and age, we probably have to clarify, because there’s a lot of craziness happening.

But in Harrison New York, at Harrison High School, just like in many schools, there was a group that was being formed, and it’s an after school group, and it’s a club, and we want to invite people to come to the club. The problem was this was a conservative club, and the school district was not really excited, apparently about having this conservative club. So the ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom got involved. And the young man who was the student that ADF got involved on behalf of him, his name is Luke Wong.

And by the way, let me point out we often talk on this program, about how often we are able to read these good news stories because somebody had the courage to stand up and say, I’m not going to be bullied and lose my constitutional rights, when everybody else at school gets to have a club, but you’re telling me I can’t because we’re a conservative group. That’s ridiculous. So this is a situation, they’re going to win this fight as that will continue reading in this article.

But first of all, just props and kudos to Luke Wong for standing up and being willing to fight this fight that his name is on paper, that he could be targeted. But he said, no, I’m going to stand up and fight. What’s kind of funny to me about this article is this fight ADF got involved, they sent a letter back in April of 2019. Now, this is just to have a club on campus, which the school already has 35 different clubs on campus, and lots of interesting clubs, right, like non curricular, social and civic clubs, such as the Gay-Straight Alliance, Relay for Life, Youth to Youth, Youth Volunteers of Harrison, a lot of things that were not considered civic clubs, even though they were told that well, you’re not really an academic, you’re not a civic club, this doesn’t really benefit the students. So all this nonsense that was told to them.

Well, this was filed in April of 2019. Why in the world did it take until 2021 to be resolved? Well, the school said, well, we wanted to resolve it sooner, but then COVID happened and so we couldn’t do anything during COVID. I’m pretty sure you’re talking the entire year of 2020, you guys were still in school, the fall of 2019 and most schools were not canceled until somewhere Spring Break-ish in 2020. Nonetheless, the school is being ridiculous.

However, the victory has come, and Luke Wong now has been able to get this win that this conservative group and I’m saying conservative group, it’s young Americans Foundation, it’s their group for high school students. So it’s Young Americans for Freedom, is this high school club that they were trying to start on campus. So this is really good news that is yet another example where you see someone, and this is the high school student, having the courage to stand up and say, no, I know we have the constitutional right to be able to have a club. There’s other clubs here, we’re not discriminating, we want to be able to recruit people, tell them what’s going on. The school fought back.

We’ve talked many times, there are a lot of really good organizations that fight for constitutional religious liberty, First Amendment, free speech kind of values, and Alliance Defending Freedom is one of those. And when people are willing to stand up and fight for those constitutional values as First Amendment values, we have a lot of good organizations that are willing to step in and help to fight on behalf of the Constitution for the students in a win. And so this is just another great win. This coming out of New York. And again, props to Luke Wong, for standing up. Good job, Alliance Defending Freedom getting involved.

But this is what we consistently see when people have the courage and backbone to stand up and fight and defend the Constitution on something like this, it is very clear constitutional grounds we see victories more than anything else. So one really good piece of news coming out of New York.

Rick:

Yeah, very good news. And you’re exactly right, Tim, I mean, when people stand up, we can win when we shy away and we received from the arena, then we definitely hand it over to those who certainly do not have the same worldview. Stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live. It’s Good News Friday.

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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 is Good News Friday today and we’re trying to get as much good news in as we can. As we head into the weekend, David Barton’s got the next piece of good news.

David:

In the first segment I had we mentioned, Rick, as it shocked you that the illegal aliens at the border, Biden made the statement hey, don’t think the borders suddenly open just because we’re in office. This also is an article that deals with illegal aliens, but this one doesn’t deal with the Biden administration. This is kind of a carry through the Trump administration.

The US Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision upheld President Trump’s decision that when you’re doing the census, when you’re counting the census, don’t count illegal aliens in that number. Now, that’s significant for several reasons. If the numbers are correct, there may be as many as 20 million illegal aliens in America. If you count that 20 million, then what that does is it really shifts the distribution of power in redistricting. So instead of having X number of citizens, 330 million American citizens, and you break it up into 435 congressional districts. And as a result, you say, well, what you have here is, I don’t know, 800,000 people a district, you would shift that and say, well, there’s 350 million Americans counting illegal aliens in over 435 districts. That means a million in a district.

And so what happens is, as you start counting that and redistricting, the states that have a high percentage of illegal aliens, and specifically, that is going to be a lot of the sanctuary city kind of states, which California is going to be that, a lot of the West Coast, Portland and Seattle, the states of Oregon and Washington, this is going to benefit them, because that gives them more inhabitants in their state, which means they would get more congressional seats out of their state, even though the people that are helping raise that number are not Citizens United States.

So the Supreme Court has come through and said, no, just count American citizens. They said now we realize that may be hard to do. The Trump administration said this is going to be a really hard thing to do, but we’re going to try to do that. We’re going to try to count citizens and not go out of our way to count illegal aliens as well. So that’s a good decision from the Supreme Court. It does, literally without even planning to or trying to, it will benefit the law abiding states more so than the sanctuary kind of states. And so that will help not skew congressional representation in Congress to have more congressional members, extra congressional members from those sanctuary city, non-federal law abiding type of state.

So that’s a piece of good news coming out of Washington DC with the US Supreme Court.

The other thing I was pointing to is good news is, and this is really mixed good news. I can’t claim this as straight out good news. But it is good news that with all the stuff that happened, with the insurrection of the Capitol, etc, you know, there was talk about is that all Trump supporters, were there any Antifa members, Black Lives Matters, were there other things there. And there’s absolutely no question that a lot of what went on was Trump supporters. No question about that. But there was also absolutely no question in my mind that there were also some instigators there that are not part of Trump supporters.

And so this article came through that said that the Black Lives Matter activist who stormed the Capitol was actually charged and arrested. So there has at least been an arrest, so not been many arrests at all. But just the fact that there was an arrest, and there should have been arrest for all sorts of stuff that happened, but the fact that it was not all Trump supporters that it was as we thought, there were others there as well. And that in no way excuses or condones the Trump supporters, even if they followed these guys into the Capitol, that was the wrong thing to do. No question about it.

So I just appreciate the fact that there’s some news on that, certainly, this was not picked up by most of the national mainstream news, because then that was showed that it was other than just Trump supporters creating problems at the Capitol. But nonetheless, it’s good news to some degree, although the entire insurrection thing was not good news. But the fact that there are some arrests being made and the fact that they were not all Trump supporters, that’s man, it’s hard to say that’s good news. But at some level, that is at least some truthful news and I appreciate that truthful news coming out.

Rick:

Well, the good news is yeah, that they’re uncovering those things, right? I mean, if none of that was known, if we didn’t see some of the organized efforts that took place, then even those of us who knew better wouldn’t have anything to back it up with, right, and the narrative that has been propagated on the American people right now would have no response, like you’re always saying one side sounds good till you hear the other. And there’s no doubt that there was an element of BLM and Antifa and instigators.

And a lot of it was, you know, you watch that war correspondent on Epic Times in his interview man, he really described having been embedded with Antifa for a while and watching what they’re doing and being a part of the Hong Kong riots and all that. He said he knew exactly what was taking place and a lot of gullible, and wrongheaded supporters of Trump were also involved. But this is good news because it uncovers what was also taking place there. Quick break, guys, we got time for one more segment of good news. Tim, you got a good one to close us out with today?

Tim:

Absolutely.

Rick:

Alright. Stay with us, folks, we’ll be right back. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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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 used 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, “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 them.”

For more information about Richard Henry Lee, in the history of the Second Amendment, go to wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. Our final few minutes of good news and Tim has an outstanding good news story. I have no idea what it is. I’m just really setting you up here, bro. I hope it’s a good one.

Tim:

Yeah, so this is interesting. I saw it on Epic Times and that’s not something I normally look at for nonpolitical news. Because really, I didn’t even know about them till this presidential election, and then they did a lot of really good tracking of a lot of polling in presidential stuff. But they had a story that just came out in the last couple of days, really remarkable about only the second woman to ever receive the Silver Star since World War II, and it’s Monica Lin Brown.

She was an army medic back in 2012. She was part of the 82nd Airborne Division. They were ambushed in Afghanistan, the Humvee in the front went over a pressure mine, it detonated. So the Humvee is immobilized, the soldiers inside are injured. They’re a small arms fire and mortars going on all around the Taliban have opened up on them. And specialist Brown, who’s an army medic, so not necessarily trained, or doesn’t carry firearms as much…

David:

And as I recall, she was 19 years old at the time.

Tim:

Correct. She was 19 years old. You’re talking very fresh, young, military person. But specialist Brown had an interview. She said I didn’t think about anything other than the patients, meaning the soldiers who now have just been injured. There were five soldiers who were injured. So she got out of her vehicle, she runs through the hell of bullets, she makes it to this Ford Humvee. Two were seriously injured, and they’re in the middle of all this fire, small arms fire of mortars going off.

And in the midst of the fire going outside the vehicle, she said one of the problems was that ammunition and grenades inside the vehicle begin to detonate. So she said at first, it sounded like firecrackers, but it got pretty heavy after that. So she’s in the middle of this fire, there’s no cover. There’s now grenades and ammunition going off inside the Humvee, so she starts pulling them out one at a time. So she gets all five pulled out. She finds a low spot in a riverbed down off the road, she’s able to pull off five of them down. They become the target of fire. She’s store in her body on them at times trying to keep them alive. They were finally able to get some cover. The medivac comes in and they’re able to get them out.

Her Sergeant and division commander both recommend her to see the Silver Star. She does only the second woman since World War II to receive a Silver Star. And just really cool. So Monica Lin Brown, congratulations. And this happened several years ago, but this story was just recently publicized, brought back to public attention. So very cool for Monica Lin Brown saving lives, being very heroic and courageous and receiving the Silver Star.

Rick:

Well, folks, we’re out of time for good news today, but we sure appreciate you joining us. and we want to let you know there’s more of that available at our website wallbuilderslive.com along with our other programs throughout the week. So be sure to tune in on a daily basis, if you can. If you want that Joshua and Caleb perspective on what’s going on, whether it’s the good, the bad, or the ugly, whatever it is, we’re going to say, hey, what’s the Bible teaches about this, what is the Constitution tell us about this, and what can we learn from history, and then we’re going to go apply it.

So we’re not just going to analyze what’s happening out there. We’re going to talk about what can be done to make a difference in the culture. You are the solution if you’re willing to be, If you’re willing to be faithful wherever you’ve been planted. And I’m going to challenge you right now today to start one of our biblical citizenship classes in your living room or at your local church.

Go to Biblicalcitizens.com and sign up today. In fact, you can join us on Monday nights. We’ve got a huge national class going right now and we got almost 20,000 people across the country register for this class. It’s great material. We’ve got Kirk Cameron in there, Mat Staver, Barry Loudermilk, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Jack Hibbs, Rob McCoy. It’s just a lot of great perspective on how do you influence the culture and be a good biblical citizen, how do you live out your freedom and your duty as a citizen, but in a biblical way. That’s what the course is all about.

I promise you, it’ll give you hope. It’s also a great chance to have fellowship to gather with others, and have that opportunity for that fellowship and that iron sharpening of each other’s countenance. So be sure and start your own class today, biblical citizens.com. Or you can join us in that national class on Monday nights and then start your own class. But the key is having those local classes. I promise you out of those local classes, we’ve seen it happen over and over and over again, people get hope. They get confirmation that their gut was right about the greatness of our nation and the goodness that we can once again have as a nation and then there’s also people that end up running for office out of these classes and you have your own your whole team right there built in as a result of the class so there’s a lot of good things happening. Be a part of it biblical citizens.com is the place you can go to sign up. We sure appreciate you listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.