The Marketplace of Ideas – on Good News Friday: It’s Friday, so that means we’ll work through David and Tim’s stack of good news articles. In Moscow Idaho, Christians who were arrested for not wearing masks during COVID finally win their law suit. Investors continue to pull out of Target stocks, in response to their woke and transgender policies. A judge rules against the Satanic Temple as they claim abortion as a ritualistic sacrifice as their first amendment right. ESG is continuing to under perform and investors are recognizing it. The state of Montana leaves the American Library association for their Marxist ideas. All of this and more, on Good News Friday!

Air Date: 7/28/2023

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

Transcription:

Rick Green
This is WallBuilders live. Thanks for joining us today at the intersection of faith and the culture, we’re going to be taking a look at some of the hot topics of the day, from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And today is good news Friday, which means we’ll be looking at some good news from across the nation and around the world. We’re here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim Barton is with us 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 find out more about us at WallBuilderslive.com. And that is a great website to visit because first of all, you can listen to past programs that you might have missed out on, you can share the links to those programs with your friends and family making you a force multiplier out there by educating, equipping, and inspiring your fellow citizens to do their part to preserve and pass the torch of freedom. So be sure to visit that website for that purpose. But also go to the website so that you can make a contribution. Yes, click on WallBuilderslive.com first, get there and then click on contribution and make that one time or monthly contribution. Listen, it takes money to do what we’re doing. It takes money to be on radio stations around the country, it takes those dollars to to produce a program to get the interview set up to spread the Good News to train the pastors that we train when we take them to Washington DC to do our legislators conferences, our youth leadership program, you name it, all of those things take dollars to be effective, and to influence the culture in that positive way. And we’re excited about that. We’re not complaining about that. We think it’s great that you can make a financial investment in freedom. And that’s what we’re asking you to do. Go to WallBuilderslive.com make that contribution come alongside us be a part of the solution. And it’s time to get into that good news. I’m going to guess we get through seven. That’s what I’m saying, seven good news Friday stories today. Let’s see. Here we go. David, first go!

David Barton
Okay, this one has kind of some ties back to college days for me. Back in college days is before the Soviet Union fell. And so at that time…

Rick Green
Nevermind Tim, I said seven, we’re going back to your dad’s college days. We’re getting through one story today. All right, David, go ahead, man. No, I was kidding, man. This story reminds you of college in, I mean basketball in college.

David Barton
Well, not basketball, going back to college days. Two professors that I was with that, that were my professors back then, very active, and getting Bibles and to the Soviet communist nations. And that was throughout Eastern Europe, that was over into Moscow and Russia and etc. And so we smuggled Bibles in and so I did stuff to help raise funds and help get Bibles over there with those guys. And that’s back when Russian was my language that I learned. I didn’t want to Spanish like everybody else in Texas did. So I chose Russian. And that got me into into persecuted Christians in Russia. So it looks like that history may be repeating itself, because I’m looking here to story where that out of Moscow, you’ve got Christians that gathered outside to sing Christian hymns, Christian Psalms, and outside singing these Christian Psalms, they’re arrested, the police take their song books away from them, they handcuffed them, they haul them off to jail. And it’s like, I thought, things had changed. I thought the wall fell. And so… and then I read a little further and find out no, this is an Idaho. It’s Moscow, Idaho. So in Moscow, Idaho, this goes back two years, to COVID stuff when… and this is where the University of Idaho is. And you know, even in conservative state, like Idaho, your most liberal cities in any town are going to be college, university towns and state capitals. So Boise and Moscow, there’s going to be two of the most liberal cities in Idaho. And sure enough, as a church congregation was gathering to sing hymns outside, and they’re what are called the reformed Evangelical church. So there, that’s a conservative theological church. They were gathered to sing hymns and they were arrested because they did not have masks on outside. And so here being outside, the police arrest them take their hymnbooks away, they won’t allow them religious services. And as you can imagine, lawsuits are filed over that. And those lawsuits are now being settled. And the three people that were specifically filing lawsuits out of this are… have now been the judge has ordered that the city of Moscow pay them $300,000 for violating their civil rights. And this is just a crazy story in so many ways. The pastor, Pastor Wilson, his children, went and started posting stick up stickers that talked about Soviet Moscow, not just Moscow, Idaho the Soviet Moscow and it had the hammer and sickle. And it talked about how their rights are being violated. I mean, it was like being back in the Soviet Union or maybe not back for them, but it was like Soviet Union days back to Soviet Union days. And so as all this goes, it’s interesting that one of the guys who won this lawsuit was talking about the fact that, you know, even since winning the lawsuit, he has been so hounded by people winning what should be a very easy Constitutional suit, and it was for the judge. But he says that they’re telling me to take my money and get out of town. I’ve earned my money. And we don’t want people like you in the city of Moscow and people that won’t obey the law… But wait a minute, he obeyed the Constitution. He didn’t obey the city ordinance. He obeyed the Constitution. And so it’s just crazy, even in that liberal town, even two years later, now that he’s got this settlement, they’re telling him, you didn’t love your neighbor, you’re supposed to be a Christian, if you loved your neighbor, you would have worn a mask, etc, etc. Good news is that even though it’s two years after the fact that it was an easy thing for the courts, and the court absolutely slapped down the city and said, I don’t care what you think about your ordinance. I don’t care what… how constitutional you think it was. It was not constitutional against the Constitution. It may be constitutional against the city charter, but it’s not constitutional against the constitution. So it’s a really good ending for this thing. And you know, again, it’s two years later, but I just couldn’t help go back to college days, remember how we were trying to smuggle Bibles into the Soviet Union and maybe we need to smuggle them in university towns and get, you know, some activities going in university towns where we seem to have Soviet Russia re exerting it’s Communist influence.

Rick Green
I remember this video man, I remember when this happened, it was one of the ones that I think awakened a lot of people to how crazy this was and how much it was violating constitutional rights. I think the only thing that we’re missing in that segment is some Beatles music back in the USSR. Tim, what’s our next piece of good news, man?

Tim Barton
So what kind of bugs were playing what music?

Rick Green
That’s good. Yeah.

Tim Barton
This unknown language. I grew up with like Bullfrogs and Butterflies and like they were Christian songs, I don’t know about this…

Rick Green
Yeah. It wasn’t Beatles and Bullfrogs and Butterflies. Yeah.

Tim Barton
Alright, guys, well, this is one from a couple weeks ago. And this is no surprise, I think, actually, we even had an article on this before. This headline says investors exit downgraded Target stock. And back in the end of May, leading into June, Target, expose some of their woke madness, and so much nonsense with their transgender swimming suits at the front of the store. And by the way, as we get into this, one of the things that we hear, as we travel around, people will talk about that you are put in a situation where you can’t boycott everybody who is embracing leftist policies, because virtually every single Corporation every single organization is embracing leftist policy to some extent. And of course, what we tell them is that we still want to be principled. And obviously, if God has convicted you about certain things, and you need to follow where God is leading, but also, it is quite logical for us to rally around so that we can send messages in the market. And so, for example, when we talk about boycotting target, people would say yes, but Walmart is just as woke to which I would respond. But Walmart did not put a transgender swimming suit at the very front of the store promoting that in front of everybody’s face. But in fairness, yes, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, every major corporation ever major business, not just Corporation, every major business, largely speaking, has embraced some level of the madness and wokeness it’s just how out front are they being with it? Rick help me remember, dollars were going being donated to like Satanic temples. It was some major company that was doing it that once it was exposed, they said, okay, we won’t match donations anymore. Do you remember who that was?

Rick Green
Oh, it was just last week, I guess it was. Who was that? I remember seeing that.

David Barton
How about Fox News?

Rick Green
Oh, that’s who it was. It was it was Fox News! I wouldn’t even expect… yeah, yeah, yeah, who would have thought? Yeah.

Tim Barton
Okay, so which, you know, in fairness, most of us paying attention knew Fox was not very conservative. We’ve known that for years, if not, maybe decades, on some level. At least more than a decade on some level.

Rick Green
But you’d think somebody in the accounting department that’s approving these matching donation things, right, like the employee turns in the donation to the Satanic Temple, you would think they would go, “you know, I might ought to run this up the flagpole, you know, up to upper management and find out if this could have some backlash on us” but no.

Tim Barton
Yeah., hey, guys, is this really where we want to be donating money right now? I just want to check with the board real quick. All that to say is that nearly every major company, every major corporation out there is embracing some leve of this wokeness and of course Fox not being as conservative as a lot of people think, which is why we talk much more about outlets and companies, whether it be the Blaze or Daily Wire or the Epoch Times etc., go down the list. There’s some much better options out there for information at times that are not nearly as woke as a corporation. However, where it’s great is when Target went so public and was so aggressive with this campaign. And of course, this was following the Bud Light, the Dylan Mulvaney controversy and the backlash and where parents are finally just saying, “look enough is enough.” And not just parents, just people in general saying “enough is enough. Stop cramming this down our throats stop cramming this down our kids throats!” Even now there’s some silly conversation surrounding the Barbie movie, and what does that look like? And how much money it’s making. And there’s some wokeness in this movie, and people are saying yes, but it’s really women empowerment, etc. There’s so much of this happening. The good news is that there are signals being sent in the economic spheres all around corporations, even Hollywood, I think more and more people are paying attention to the fact that there is a very real group of Christians, conservatives, etc, out there who do have buying power, who do have dollars and who do not embrace his wokness. And if you go woke and go crazy, then they do have the power to impact you in a very negative economic way. So it’s, to me, it’s very good news that there are still headlines there’s still conversations about what happened at Target about not just downgraded stocks, but investors saying we’re not sure this is where we want to go anymore. And the reason that’s good news is hopefully it sends a shot across the bow for so many other corporations, so many other organizations who might be tempted to embrace some of this work nonsense. They can look at some of this backlash and say, that’s not the direction we want to go.

Rick Green
Yeah, and you know, Tim, overall, it’s DEI, it’s everything. The backlash is happening and it’s because people took action and They voted with their dollars and so now it’s causing all these boardrooms to go, “Whoa”, just like you said, while ago, maybe this isn’t the direction we want to be going right now, in this particular marketplace. Alright, guys, we’re going to take a quick break, we’ve got more good news coming at you. Stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
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 the 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 of 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, wallbuilders.com, The American Story.

Rick Green
We’re back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. It’s Good News Friday, I predicted seven stories we’ve gotten through two let’s see if we can do five in the second half of today’s program. David, you’re up man.

David Barton
Well, just a commentary on the first part because we covered the college town and…

Tim Barton
Rick, he’s shrine to make sure we don’t get seven stories

Rick Green
There goes the seven stories. Yep, not gonna happen. No, go ahead, brother, I’m just kidding.

David Barton
We blew it out the first story, so it’s gone. But look at college towns until people get involved, and then it turns around and look at the board rooms until people get involved and turns around. What it means is really liberals and progressives are drawn to power centers, and our guys don’t care that much about power. But because we don’t care about it, we don’t get involved with it. And by the time we get involved with it, they’ve consolidated their power into these boardrooms and into these college universities, and we’re fighting an uphill battle even though we eventually win years later, it’d be a whole lot better not to have to fight these battles. So maybe conservatives ought to take note here and say, hey, you need to get involved in positions of influence and in positions of power to keep these knot heads from getting in there and taking over and abusing that and causing all the problems they cause. You know, maybe if we would do what Jesus told us and you know, occupy until he comes and get involved in all this stuff, we wouldn’t have this kind of stuff, we wouldn’t have… So just a little commentary, but I do find it interesting that when we finally engage these guys get defeated, but why do we have to wait to engage? Why don’t we preemptively get involved in that stuff?

Rick Green
Well, I’m going to definitely ruin our chance of getting to seven for sure. We might get to a third because I’m going to ask what exactly is a knot head anyway?

David Barton
Oh, yeah, you’re not old enough to remember some… Yeah, parents and grandparents, you do that again, I’ll put a knot on your head, and so knot head is someone who was fairly stubborn and had been knocked on the head a few times to get the message. Yeah, that’s a knod head,

Rick Green
Gotcha.

Tim Barton
I think that’s the reason Rick doesn’t remember is because of all the knots on his head.

Rick Green
That’s right. That’s exactly right. That’s what Grandma Green used to do to me, put a knot on my head. I remember that now. Yes, yes.

David Barton
It must have slipped your memory you must not have have enough knots to remember, bro.

Rick Green
Well, despite the commentary, you’re still next so go for it, man.

David Barton
This one deals with a lawsuit that was filed in Texas. And the headline says Judge rejects Satanic Temple claim that killing babies in abortion is a protected religious ritual. So while overall religious liberty, traditional religious liberty, is gaining in strength, and coming back to original intent interpretations, we’ve talked about so many Supreme Court cases in the last four to five years, where the rolling back all this progressive interpretation of what religion is and what religion can do, and going back to traditional things. It’s interesting that we’re seeing it with even these alternative kind of ‘claimed to be religions’, the Satanic Temple, and they’re saying, hey, we want our religious expression protected, and it’s well, that doesn’t count. That’s not traditional values. And what it is, I’ll just read to you what has happened here is Texas is a pro life state we have pro life laws. And so the Satanic Temple has filed suit saying, hey, that violates us. They claim this is what they say. They claimed that aborting babies is a beloved and an essential ritual and laws that prohibit aborting babies infringe on their First Amendment right to practice their religion. So if you’re going to take the progressive way that says religion is whatever you believe and we’ll protect it, you’re always going to have conflicts. One side will always be placed against another because for evangelical Christians who read the Bible, we say no, no, no. killing babies is not an essential religious ritual. Matter of fact that violates biblical principles. And here the Satanic Temple says no, no, no biblical principles violate our religious beliefs. So the fact that we’re getting back to the Supreme Court saying, hey traditional understandings, the way the founders understood it, the way the Constitution was written that bring some clarity back, but I want to go further with what Satanic Temple is talking about here. And here’s part of the explanation of why they filed the suit. They said the satanic abortion ritua,l and notice that they have a an abortion ritual as part of their religious beliefs. They said this is a sacrament, which surrounds and includes the abortive act. It is designed to combat feelings of guilt, doubt and shame, and to empower the member to assert or reassert power and control over their own mind and body. Now, that’s their religious belief for why they have to have this ritual. But let me point out that if you want to combat feelings of guilt, doubt and shame, and that’s what they say, then don’t have an abortion. That’s the easiest way to combat guilt and doubt and shame is don’t do the wrong thing. That’s where a lot of that comes from. They continue, this is what they say, and this is the the explanation they give. They said our abortion ritual requires an abortion. it affirms our religious subscription to the third and fifth tenants of the Satanic Temple. But before Ms. Doe, who was filing a lawsuit on behalf Satanic Temple, can get her abortion, therefore participate in the abortion ritual, the government has required that she get a sonogram. These requirements substantially interfere with Ms. Doe’s religious belief and practices. And so what happened was they went to first to the Texas Health Commissioner and asked for an exemption because they… this is what they claim, her inability to end the life of her preborn child and just get what they said her inability to kill her child is not in accordance with their religious ritual. So even the way they described their religious ritual, I mean, they’re describing it in terms literally of what we would say is murder. If you understand the life is child, and they clearly do. But fortunately, the judge came down and said, no, no, no, this is not a religious belief and tenant that gets religious protection under the First Amendment. And this is either the third or the fourth time in the last two years that I’ve seen the courts say no, to the Satanic Temple as a religious group.

Tim Barton
And guys, that is really good news, first of all, I want to acknowledge that. I’m curious why so often in these situations, it is a Doe versus. Why is there not an individual’s name there? Because, for example, one of the guys that we’ve highlighted many times, Coach Kennedy, when he was fired from Bremerton High School for praying in the the yard line. And of course, that was one of the major victories in the US Supreme Court this last year. His name is in that decision. It’s Kennedy v. Bremerton. So why is there not a name associated with this? It’s just interesting to me.

David Barton
What happens is this is going back to part of the Supreme Court’s old doctrine, that if you’re a persecuted minority, we’ll protect you. It was part of what was called the offended objector view. And so if we say you’re Jane Doe, we say that because, if they ever find out who you are, they’re going to come for you. These religious extremist Christians are going to come persecute you. And they’re so mean and they’re so intolerant of your constitutional rights, we will protect you by giving you Jane Doe. And so it’s Roe v. Wade and that kind of stuff. So they come up with these Jane Doe names. And that was to appeal to the sympathy of the court that we are a persecuted religious minority and we’ve got to have your help to save us from these Christians.

Tim Barton
Well, and that was part of the reason I bring it up, because it seems like the irony that they’re saying we want to kill our unborn child and that’s actual part of language, where there are some that even specified that a human sacrifice is part of our ritualistic worship or blood sacrifice part of our ritualistic worship. And then, and as much as they believe in blood sacrifice, or human sacrifice or killing their unborn child. They don’t want to put their name there as if they’re showing they’re the victim as they’re trying to kill people. They’re just… it seems like there’s a lot of irony, and maybe a little similar that the Bible talks about what are those that call evil, good and good evil. They’re just quite confused in this, but it is great news that the courts have upheld, that this is not a religious belief that we recognize and uphold in America, it’s obviously a clear violation of the basic notion of government, that government exists to protect our God given rights, the first among those being the right to life. So clearly the wrong direction. That’s great news. It’s just a little bit more of the irony, and part of the way this game is being played from the side of the Satanic Temple.

Rick Green
And just overall, you know, helps with our arguments that we’ve made for a long time that religious liberty doesn’t mean Satanic Temple, it doesn’t mean anything and everything, goes back to Jefferson saying you can’t subvert public good, that sort of thing. So it’s a good news item all the way across the board. All right, Tim, another piece of good news?

Tim Barton
Well, we got four to go in three and a half minutes, here we go. So the next one on my stack is ESG funds suffer 15 billion in outflows hit by backlash, this came out at the beginning of July. And it was just identifying one of the things we’ve talked about on this program is how the ESG investments have underperformed, and the investors knew these were underperforming stocks as they’re putting more money into it, where they say, look, it’s valid, we have to sacrifice to go green. Dad is you and I were driving out west Texas. Earlier in the week, we commented as we saw so many of these windmills, that it seemed like they were covered in some kind of oil or some kind of fluid that was leaking from them. And it was consistent on so many of them. The irony that we’re going to go green, by spending lots and lots of money on something that’s not biodegradable that will cost even a significant more amount of money to have to deal with this and then how they’re going to recycle it or what they’re going to do. And it doesn’t produce the energy supposed to produce, it actually is dangerous for birds and animals, it’s now leaking some kind of oil or liquid, it doesn’t seem like this going green thing is a good idea. Well, this is what has been known in a lot of the Going Green Movement. By the way, I’m not saying that there is not any level of value in a wind turbine and solar, there is value there, but the idea that it’s replacing a fossil fuel that’s going to replace coal or natural gas, etc. it’s really silly, or the idea that we can’t even have a nuclear power system. Again, it’s really silly when you look at where power comes from and then even the amount that it’s doing… the argument that the damage it does to the environment etc.. Nonetheless, with that being said, the good news is that people are recognizing that ESG is not a good investment. It’s majorly underperforming and people are beginning to back away from it. So it is good news that people are beginning to see more of the reality of what ESG truly is and they are disengaging from some of those investments.

Rick Green
Okay, so I’m probably over by two like we might get five we might get six. I don’t know, if we go really fast we might get seven. If I shut up and give it to David we might get there! I’ll shut up now! David go!

David Barton
That’s been me. It hadn’t been you, bro. It’s been me that’s been…

Rick Green
I dont know why I set the bar so high in the first place. I should have just said you know, anyway, all right. Let’s see what we got going.

David Barton
So this one deals with the American Library Association. And we have for a number of years talked about how that they really are very, very liberal in their leadership and their positions. They’re the ones that have been defending these porn books in so many of the elementary school libraries that resulted in so many of the states trying to take action, get this stuff out. The librarians on a whole, this is not like the Music Man musical back in the 60s and 70s where librarians were seen to be very, you know, conservative, nice people. They may be nice people but they’re not conservative, now. Now there are some that are, no question. We know some librarians that are good, but overall the association is not good. And so what happened is the American Library Association just announced their new president, and their new president Emily Drabinski and here’s what she… here’s the tweet she put out after she was elected president. “I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is now president elect of the American Library Association. I am so excited for what we will do together, solidarity”. That’s Marxist all over, and then Marxist lesbian on top of that, and then solidarity and what they’re going to do to build a new society. So as a result, this is really good news to me, the state of Montana has left the American Library Association, the librarians in Montana said, hey we ain’t being part of that. If she is the new leader of the American Library Association, we’re checking out. And that’s really good. That’s really significant, too, because Montana said, hey, we’ve got state law that does not allow us to put these kinds of books in libraries and we’re not going to be part of an association that’s trying to get us to break state law. So the librarians that are heading the Montana association at least appear to sound conservative, at least they’re willing to follow the state law. And that’s really good news. And that’s a real different tone from what we’ve seen out of the library associations for the last decade or so. I hope a whole bunch of other states get on board and do exactly the same thing and send a message that they’re done with this kind of wokeness in their kids’ libraries.

Rick Green
Very, very good news, despite the fact that the bad news is we’re out of time and we’re not going to get to any more good news items today. But we’ve got more for you next week. Thank you to David and Tim for compiling all the stories and paying attention to these good news stories and bringing them to us. And again visit our website today at WallBuilders.com because there’s good news all over that website including just the materials in general to be able to learn the good news of our nation and how to pass this on to the next generation. Thanks so much for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.