Moving Our Country in the Right Direction – on Good News Friday: Today we work through David and Tim’s legendary stack of good news. Pittsburgh has reascended their sanctuary city policy, World Athletics bans trans women from female sports, A school district in Florida recognizes the national day of prayer and this is leading to more student led prayers, In the House of Representatives a bill was passed recognizing parental rights. All of this and more on Good News Friday!

Air Date: 4/14/2023

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

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Transcription:

Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. So glad you’re with us today here on WallBuilders. We’re talking about all the hot topics of the day we take them from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, very important that you look at everything in life through those perspectives, you got to know what the Bible says about any issue, right? I mean, if you’re a follower of Christ, if you’re a believer, and you’re fulfilling the Great Commission, obeying all the commands, making disciples, I mean all those things, and that means we have to know God’s word. And so when a hot topic comes up, we need to know what the Bible says about that particular topic. And then, as we often say, here on the program, we also want a historical perspective, we want to know what happened in history on that particular subject, because then we can see where certain responses worked well, and other responses didn’t work well. We can learn from history in that way. And then of course, a constitutional perspective is knowing what the proper rules are in our nation for how to be a good citizen, and how to influence what’s going on in our particular culture. So that’s why we say a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective here on WallBuilders Live. I’m Rick Green, former Texas legislator and America’s constitution coach here with David Barton. He is America’s premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And we are looking forward to today sharing with you good news. And we call this good news Friday, because David and Tim have stacks of good news, they get through as much of it as they possibly can in a short period of time that we have today. But we’re going to dive into as much good news as we possibly can to share with you but we encourage you to also go to our website there at WallBuildersLive.com. To get more. Alright, let’s dive into that good news, David’s got the first piece of good news for us today. David?

David Barton
This is a piece of good news that comes from bad story, actually, the good news is that people can learn from mistakes and change and go in a new direction and get better results. And this goes to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is one of the blue parts of the state. People kind of joke about Pennsylvania, and that it’s really liberal on both the East and the West end. And it’s kind of like Alabama in the middle. As you get in the middle part of the state, they’re very conservative there. But over in Pittsburgh, one of the really liberal areas of the state, they have been a sanctuary city. They, you know, open borders, let it all go, we’re a sanctuary city we’ll take everybody here, we want to help anybody and everybody. And they have now unanimously, in that very blue city, unanimously rescinded that policy. And they rescinded the policy of being a sanctuary city, because they now have problems they have not had in years and years and years. And as they point out, it’s not come from our residents, it comes from the others that have come here, as we’ve been a sanctuary city, not the least of which is fentanyl. Pennsylvania has had about 5,100 drug related deaths, overwhelming majority of fentanyl. And they said, you know, our big crime here in Pittsburgh used to be things like DUI and shoplifting. And now we’re talking about all sorts of opioid uses. And the things that come with that. And it’s not being made here in Pennsylvania. It’s being brought by people from the border. And so which, you know, here’s a very blue part of the state saying what a lot of people have been saying for a long time is, man open borders, this is destroying America. This is not a part of compassion or anything else. And so here you have a very blue city that voted unanimously to resend their sanctuary city law because of the results of what they’re seeing. And so this just goes to the fact that you know, you can have really good hearts, really want to do good things to help people. But you got to have experience as well. And experience in this case is winning out. This goes to the thing that George Barna has told us is one of the quickest indications of whether someone has a biblical worldview or not, is whether they believe that man is inherently good, that mankind is inherently good. If you believe that then you don’t understand the sin nature. And you got to have government to help deal with the consequences of the sin nature. And so you got Pittsburgh starting to figure that out now and that kind of liberal, open acceptance, nature is bringing bad stuff. So it’s a bad story, but it’s really good that Pittsburgh is starting to take steps to try to correct that. And internationally in taking the steps are coming back to what people would consider a conservative political position. Not because they’re conservatives, but simply because they were smart enough to, as Jesus said, Judge a tree by its fruits. They’ve looked at the fruit; this is a really bad deal. They’re moving in the right direction as a result, and that’s good news.

Rick Green
All right one good news story down for the day. Tim’s up next. Tim Barton, where are we headed?

Tim Barton
Well guys, this one is something international related and the headline says World Athletics bans train and women from female sports. Now this should have been a no brainer the entire time. But when you’re talking about somebody like the World Athletics Council that this is a pretty significant group. And they voted just a couple of weeks ago. And the article says they voted Thursday to ban athletes who are transgender women, or who have differences of sexual development from competing and elite track and field competitions. And this is stuff that actually can impact things like the Olympics. So this is a big deal for an organization on this level to say, yeah, we’re not going to let guys who think they’re girls compete against actual biological women. This is a major victory. And even though it might seem a little trivial to some, no, this is a big deal. Because finally, you have some level of logic being restored. We’ve seen videos on social media, there’s been some articles, even highlighting some of this where you have some individuals who, whether they’re like retired, former athletes who are now maybe even coaching somewhere, and they’ll go into a gym where some women have records and just for fun, they’ll go out perform every one of the women’s records, whether it’s in squat or bench, or whatever it is, they will go and obliterate the women’s record, and you’re talking about a retired athlete, like a former athlete, someone who’s not even in the competitive sphere on the same level anymore, just obliterating these women’s accomplishments. And this is the reality of what is possible in the transgender movement. If you are allowing biological men to, one day, say I feel like a woman, so I’m going to compete with the women. That is ridiculous to say the least of the ways we could describe this. So this is again, this is really good news, that you have a organization coming out and saying, yeah, we’re not going to recognize that. When you have the world athletic Council, saying we’re not going to let transgender women, so biological men who think they’re women, we’re not gonna let them compete in women’s competitions. This is a major step in the right direction. And it’s a little sad and crazy at times now that America is not leading the way when it comes to morals or logic, or common sense. We are following at times… And especially it seems like more and more under the Biden administration and under progressives, and so many of these George Soros DAs and right, whatever kind of categories we can put together, America is leading in the wrong direction. And we are following so many other nations who are seeming to get things right at a quicker pace at times than America. And this is one certainly, that is crazy that you have international groups that are recognizing this sooner than many American groups are. But this is good news, that you have a major athletic organization saying, we see the inherent difference between men and women. And we’re not letting a biological male competing as a biological woman. That is good news.

Rick Green
I wonder, Tim, if it has anything to do with the fact that we were so blessed for so long, and kind of spoiled and had it so easy for so long, that that made it easier for us to fall into foolishness, because we had so much idle time. I mean just culturally as a nation, and then we flipped from being this great exporter of, you know, common sense. And free enterprise and all these good things, to literally exporting idleness and foolishness. I don’t know, maybe that’s why we’re behind these other nations who maybe didn’t have the same level of financial success and ease, if you will. And so they’ve still got enough common sense to look at this and go, yeah, not on our watch. This is silly. We’re not going to allow it to happen. And like you said, it’s good news, because, you know, hopefully, it’ll also wake up a lot of the other sports organizations as well.

Tim Barton
Well, I think part of the answer to is that some of these nations have already gone down this road. And so instead of America learning from them, we are repeating the mistakes that that they are now saying, hey, this was a mistake. We shouldn’t be doing this. They are correcting course on… some of these nations, some nations are still going the wrong direction, but some of these nations are correcting course on things they’ve already experimented with. They’ve already seen, it doesn’t work. And everybody in life learns from experience either somebody else’s or your own. And right now, we just have leaders in America that don’t want to learn from other people’s experiences. They want to make the same mistakes themselves. But as already mentioned, this is still good news that you do have people, and now major athletic organizations in the world that are acknowledging the inherent differences between men and women. And men should not be competing in women’s sports.

Rick Green
Yeah, yeah, no doubt. All right, David, where are we headed next for our good news?

David Barton
Well, we’re going to head to South Florida, Miami Dade school district in South Florida. Last year, they tried to have the school district, again the Miami Dade School District, largest school district there in South Florida. They tried to have the school district observe the National Day of Prayer. Now think about this- This is a federally designated time. This is a federally set aside day by federal law. By federal law, the president every year has to designate a day of prayer and he gives a prayer proclamation and interesting now for two years in a row Biden will not use the word prayer in the prayer proclamation or pray in the prayer proclamation. And it had hadn’t even mentioned God in the prayer proclamation. Nonetheless, it’s still federal law. And so last year at Miami Dade as they were saying, hey, we should have students celebrate the National Day prayer. We should commemorate that here in the school, we should have a recognition of the National Day of Prayer. Debate broke out with board members and there were all sorts of people at the board meeting and it was a real fight. And they were arguing against the motion saying, this is the quote from the article, saying that the idea that everyone could pray together was disheartening and ignorant, claiming that people of different faiths can’t pray together because they all pray differently. Now that’s a person who has not been involved with much prayer with many people or many groups in the public. I mean, that’s great rhetoric to have. It doesn’t make any sense and very rarely will you find that be the case. Nonetheless, the result of that was, didn’t work real well last year. Let’s come to last fall’s elections. Last fall’s election, down in the south Florida area, Miami Dade area, there were 30 school board positions that were up and conservatives took 25 out of the 30 down in South Florida. So not only Miami Dade, but other school districts down there. And this year, it was just a little bit different with what happened. This year, they unanimously approved a measure to commemorate the National Day of Prayer in the public schools of the district. And there’s a bunch of schools in that district. And not only did they do that, they said, you know if we’re going to have a day of prayer, who do we pray to? It’s God. Well, why don’t we post the Florida state motto in the chambers of the school board? And by the way, what is the Florida state motto? It is and God We Trust. It’s the same as the national motto. So they now have that posted in the school chamber, school board chambers. So when you go to a school board meeting right there on the back wall, it says In God We Trust, and they’re commemorating, at school level, the National Day prayer. So students will recognize that, that’s something that we’ll recognize there. It’s just a whole different day down there. And the fighting and controversy, it’s just… it’s totally different. And so this is really healthy. We’ve talked so many times about what’s happening in Florida. DeSantis has really given a lot of leadership. But at the same time, the people in Florida, they don’t have to follow him, if they don’t want to. The legislature in Florida, Tim and I’ve talked about this, I’m more impressed with the legislature of Florida sometimes than with DeSantis, because he’ll recommend it and the legislators will do it. They’ll get it done in a couple of weeks, as fast as any legislature I’ve ever seen. And so there is a different tone in Florida because the people are embracing things differently. They’re getting active, they’re getting involved, and it’s now showing up with even things like the National Day of Prayer in school districts. And by the way, if you’re in Florida or any other state, you can now have prayer in school board meetings again. You know, we’ve been told you can’t have prayer in schools. But now because of what the Supreme Court did over the last four years and three cases, they said no, no, all that stuff’s gone away. If you can do something that’s traditionally historic, as part of a long standing tradition, we’re going to consider it constitutional. Guess what? Prayer at school boards has been part of the country for decades and decades and generations. It was only recently removed, it’s now back in. And so legal groups like First Liberty are encouraging in school boards to start having prayer in school board meetings again. You can have prayer in schools, if you’ll let students lead the prayer. Student initiated prayers that’s constitutionally protected, the courts have already said that’s fine. There’s so many things that can be done. And now as we’re getting different school boards, and voters and parents are demanding more from schools, more wholesome stuff from schools. This is a great time to start reintroducing these practices, not the least of which is having schools have the National Day of Prayer, acknowledge that, participate in that. That’s a really good,

Rick Green
Huge step in turning it around guys. Big, big steps. Good news! We got to take a quick break though. We’ll be right back. We’ve got more good news for you when we return on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
Hey, this is Tim Barton with WallBuilders. And as you’ve had the opportunity to listen to WallBuilders Live, you’ve probably heard the wealth of information about our nation, about our spiritual heritage, about the religious liberties about all the things that makes America exceptional. And you might be thinking as incredible as this information is, I wish there was a way that I could get one of the WallBuilders guys to come to my area and share with my group, whether it be a church, whether it be a Christian school or public school or some political event or activity. If you’re interested in having a WallBuilders speaker come to your area, you can get on our website at www.WallBuilders.com and there a tab for scheduling. And if you’ll click on that tab, you’ll notice there’s a list of information from speakers bios, to events that are already going on. And there’s a section where you can request an event. To bring this information about who we are where we came from our religious liberties and freedoms, go to the WallBuilders website and bring a speaker to your area.

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. It’s good news Friday and we’ve got some more good news headed your way and Tim’s next.

Tim Barton
All right, guys, this one’s coming from Washington, DC. And actually, it’s coming from the US Congress. This was done just a week or so, maybe two weeks? No, I guess it was last week. This was done, and it was the House passing what they called the parents Bill of Rights. Now this is something that even though it passed the house, it been passed along pretty much strict… actually absolutely strict party lines. It’s not expected to go anywhere in the Senate. It’s not expected that President Biden’s going to sign this, but it is significant that something was done acknowledging that parents should have some level of control over their kids. And part of the context and background, before we get very deep into this is most of us remember back in 2021, when the Attorney General Merrick Garland, sent a memo offering federal resources and legal aid to states after the National School Board Association wrote a letter to President Joe Biden saying the country’s public schools and educational leaders are under immediate threat from these parents, because they’ve showed up in and verbal confrontations and other incidents at local school board meetings. And this is where parents were labeled domestic terrorists and accused of hate crimes for questioning what their kids were being taught in some of these public schools. And there was a reason they should have been questioning. There were so much bad stuff, at times even evil stuff, when you look at some of the sexualization of kids, if people are paying any attention at all, I know probably some listeners don’t want anything to do social media, they don’t care about it. Where social media can be very beneficial is so many of the modern conversations are had on social media. And in social media, there are so many videos, so many clips, so many articles that are shared that exposes a lot of what the left is doing, exposes a lot of what teachers unions are doing, and what some of these woke teachers, in fact, are teaching in the classroom. And some of it genuinely is evil. So then the idea that parents will be labeled domestic terrorists or accused of hate crimes, for showing up and questioning some of what their kids are being taught, some of these homework assignments coming home. Obviously, we remember how ridiculous that was. And this is also actually arguably part of what helped Governor Youngkin even get elected in Virginia back in 2021, when the Democrat running for governor of Virginia said that look, parents shouldn’t have a right to be involved in their kids’ education. And that’s really what pushed Younkin arguably over the top. That was an incredible gaffe, someone absolutely out of touch with parents in general. But someone has probably been just around teachers unions and listening to the School Board Association for so long, that they don’t understand the reality that most parents want to be involved in their kids lives. They want to have a say in their kids lives. They want to be able to direct the upbringing of their children. And really, they want to know what teachers are teaching. So the Republicans in the House, and again, this was straight party line, the Republicans in the House came out with this parental Bill of Rights. And ironically, because it was a long straight party lines, there were a lot of Democrats that oppose this. And it’s just posturing, it’s just politics. And this really isn’t about parents. It’s not about students, even though if you look at the parental Bill of Rights, it in fact entirely was about parents saying that they have a right to show up and question this, they have a right to know what’s being taught, they have a right to see curriculum. It’s very basic, common sense stuff. And even though again, we don’t think this is probably going anywhere. It’s not going anywhere in the Senate. It’s not something we expect President Biden to sign even if it did miraculously make it through the Senate. But it’s good that you at least do have people acknowledging that parents should have the right, and arguably parents, it’s not even a right, parents have the authority to raise their children. As a Christian certainly, this should not be even a controversial thought, where if you read in the Bible, the Bible doesn’t talk about parents giving their kids to teachers, the Bible challenges parents that they’re in charge of the upbringing of their children, and what their children learn. And so this is a good thing coming from Congress that they did to this parental Bill of Rights. Again, we don’t think it’s going anywhere. So the good news is maybe not as good as it could be as if this was actually passed. Again, the fact that’s even being brought to light is good news. And the fact there are people actually fighting and championing for parents to have some level of control over the kids’ education is a good idea. And kind of the conclusion I’ll put on this, that it’s stuff like this, when you see the Democrats voting straight party line saying no this… Parents don’t need it parents Bill of Rights, they shouldn’t have this, they shouldn’t have access to their kids education, etc, etc. When you see somebody arguing against parents to be active and involved in raising their kids and what their kids learn, and maybe the manner they learn it, and even the age that they’re learning some of this, because maybe some parents aren’t opposed to sex education, they’re just opposed to it when kids are 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, right? When they’re in early elementary school, that’s totally an inappropriate time to be having sexual conversations with kids, etc. With that being said, this is why we are encouraging parents more and more to reconsider this notion of where you send your kids to school. Where Jesus was very clear, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? And some parents think no, but for our kids to have opportunity in education, we need them here or maybe, right, we’re just trying to make the finances work, or that you know, maybe they’re single parents, and I’m not sure what I can do with them. I’m not saying there’s not really tough situations and maybe not tough conversations and you know, financial investigation needs to happen. How can we do this, or not do this? Maybe is is there a grandparent? Is there a local church, a co op? But the reality is, there’s a lot of people out there involved in education, whether it be woke teachers, or school board members, or superintendents or teachers unions, who want to control and shape and manipulate kids to be what they want them to be, how they view, what would be the most useful member of society for their end. And it’s certainly not going to be a godly end. And it’s certainly not going to be something that most parents would want from their kids. We definitely need to consider how education goes. But there is a moniker of good news coming from the House where at least there was some members of the House that voted, fought for, and even passed out of the house, this parental Bill of Rights. So that is good news.

Rick Green
Yeah, Tim, just to emphasize, I mean, even if a bill is only going to pass the House, not get through the Senate yet or get to the president or president would veto it or whatever. It’s still worthy to do and it still gets it on people’s minds. It still advances the cause, it’s advancing freedom. All right, David, final good news story of the day?

David Barton
Well, Rick, this one is kind of Texas specific. Although if we could get this done, it would help the entire nation. There is a bill that’s now working in the Texas legislature that would allow Texans to recall their US senators. Now can you imagine why any Texan would want to recall its US senator? If you answered John Cornyn, you got it exactly right. John Cornyn, who is a Republican US senator, has been so out of touch with Texas and has been a real problem in the Senate. And so when he spoke at the Republican Convention, last year, he was booed off the stage.I think it was 15-17 consecutive minutes of booing, he tried to deliver a speech. I don’t know that anybody in the room heard it, because they were booing so loud. And we’re talking thousands and thousands of delegates at that convention. So it’s… I liked the bill, because it’s a way to make people accountable. And when you get in that DC culture, and especially for John Cornyn, where you run the Senatorial Committee, and you have hundreds of millions of dollars that you can get access to, and you can spend that on your own race as well as any other race. It’s just hard to have senators who are accountable. So I love the concept. It’s going to be really hard to get done. But I think it’s good news that people are wanting to have their leaders accountable to them. And rather than just throw up their hands and say, hey, this is a terrible situation. They’re willing to stand up and do something about it. And so this measure that has been introduced here in Texas, Representative Brian Harrison, kudos to him, make your leaders be accountable to you, so that they can represent you and not their own interests and I think that’s a really, really healthy thing for the country. It’s a really healthy thing for Texas. It’s a healthy thing anywhere this kind of stuff can be passed.

Rick Green
Well, Tim, I said that was going to be the last one, but your dad went shockingly fast. So we’ve got time for one more if you got a quick one.

Tim Barton
Yeah, not shocking that he spoke quickly, but that he finished so quickly. That is the shocking part. Yeah, so guys, real quickly as we’ll squeeze this last one in, unfortunately, I was really hoping this week we’d be able to get into some of the the Trump indictments, why it is so ridiculous on so many levels, but the article I have really kind of sets the tone for this when you… the headline says Andrew Cuomo rips probe into Trump as feeding cancer in our body politic. And this is kind of conclusion we can wrap up on good news Friday with, is when you have political opponents from the other side who literally hate Donald… literally hate Donald Trump, hate his guts, despise the man. When even they’re acknowledging that this just doesn’t smell right, this doesn’t seem right. There’s a lot of problems with this. That is something that is good and what I thought was even great about this, and there’s more to his statement. I don’t have time to get into it right now but they talked about it’s feeding into this cancer that is killing our nation and this is the reality is we are seeing politics being way to divide the nation which is part of a Marxist ideology that you want to put people in groups, and you turn the groups against each other. This is what George Soros has been funding with these district attorneys. But the good news is, if you’re having people who vehemently oppose your political philosophy, positions, ideology, your faith perspective, when even they are acknowledging this doesn’t pass the smell test. Something about this is not right. It is good news, that even though there’s craziness, there’s division, there’s all kinds of issues. There are people even on the other side who have… are having their eyes opened, who are being awakened on some level to some of the lies and deception going on. And that’s good news. Anytime you have people getting their eyes open, it’s always good news.

Rick Green
All right, folks, we’re out of time for good news today. But there is more good news at our website. Be sure and check it out. WallBuildersLive.com , you can dive into those archives, you can also get signed up for one of our biblical citizenship courses, lots of good news in that eight week course and you can be the one to bring it to your church or your community completely free, free for you as the coach that hosts that class, we’ll train you on how to do it all of that available for free at our website today, BiblicalCitizens.com , BiblicalCitizens.com . It’s also free for your students. So I really encourage you to host that class. We are hearing so many great stories 11,000 constitution coaches across the country now thousands of classes where people are finding hope. They’re finding answers from God’s word on how to respond in the culture and what to do to restore our constitutional republic and you can be the one that is a catalyst for restoring those biblical values and constitutional principles. Check it out today at BiblicalCitizens.com . Thanks for listening to WallBuilders Live.