Native Americans, Pro-Life News and ESG – on Foundations of Freedom Thursday: Today’s black hero segment is on Paul Cuffe. We start the Foundations of Freedom segment working through listener questions, first- If the Native Americans immigrated to America through a land bridge, could you really say that they are native? Next, who is behind ESG and what can we do about it? Also we discuss state supreme court decisions regarding pro life decision, good and bad.

Air Date: 2/16/2023

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

Missouri Plan Resources

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Transcription:

David Barton
Welcome to the intersection of faith in the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live. We’re taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And today is foundations of freedom Thursday. So that means we’re diving into your questions, we appreciate you sending those in, you can send them to [email protected] also recommend that you visit WallBuilders.com today for that one time, or monthly contribution. I’m Rick Green, America’s constitution coach and a former Texas legislator here with America’s premier historian, David Barton. And Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And Tim has been sharing some great heroes of history with us at the beginning of every program this month. And Tim, we’ve got, oh, I don’t know, maybe like seven or eight more to go. But today, we’re kind of in the middle of February. And so far, you’ve already shared, I don’t know, 10 or 11 of these stories. So I’ve lost count, but they are so good. And the good news is everybody can get them at our website at wallbuilders.com. So visit there today. But Tim, who you share with us today.

Tim Barton
Well today is Paul Cuffe, or Paul “Cuff-E” or Paul “Cu-Fe”, I do not know how to pronounce his last name. I generally know how to spell it.

David Barton
He’s not answering his phone, he’s not returning our calls.

Tim Barton
When we get to heaven, if he was bothered, by the way I pronounce his name, he can let me know. Other than that, I have no idea. But he is someone that has been so fun to find out more about and we… Rick, you mentioned, we’ve already gone through I think 11 Heroes at this point, Paul is Hero number 12 that we are highlighting in the month of February. But we can go so much further beyond even the ones we’ve talked about. But Paul was somebody that as we begin diving into his story, we actually kind of found out about him roundabout way. And what even led us to want to explore the story more was, we were able to get an artifact. Maybe a year two, three years ago, something relatively recently, we got an artifact. And it was talking about an equality ball that was hosted by John Hancock in Massachusetts. And the guest of honor was Paul Cuffe.

David Barton
And this was in 1792, we have an equality ball celebrating blacks and whites being equal in Massachusetts.

Tim Barton
And this is after they’ve already passed their anti slavery law or more specifically, when they wrote their new constitution and their constitution outline that their state would ban slavery. So legally, slavery cannot exist in Massachusetts. And there was a snippet from a newspaper. And the newspaper was done by a pro slavery newspaper, as they were talking about how ridiculous it was what was happening in Massachusetts, where John Hancock wanted to honor Paul Cuffe and other notable leaders where you’re talking about individuals coming together. And just as humans coming together, not necessarily because we’re black and white, but just individuals coming together. It was the time to honor and to enjoy equality together. And this newspaper said, How ridiculous is this? We didn’t even know about this. So we said, Okay, what’s this equality ball? Let’s go look it up. Let’s find out more about this. And as we did, we thought okay, then we really need to learn Paul’s story more see who he was and what he did. And when you start backing up, it really becomes interesting as this unfolds. So, Paul Cuffe’s father was brought to America as a slave from Ghana Africa. And when his father arrived, there was a group of Quakers who came and actually purchased him, was able to get him free. Well, then Paul’s father met a Wampanoag Indian and the Wampanoags were the ones who made the longest lasting peace treaty between any natives and any white people in American history. It was with the pilgrims. And so Paul’s father married a Wampanoag, Indian. And then along comes Paul several years later. And so Paul grows up. When he’s 13, his father’s passed away, he decides that he needs to figure out how to make a living. So Paul’s parents, actually, we’re able to get a farm sizable farm. So Paul grew up in a, I mean, pretty nice circumstance and situation, all things considered, he really liked the sea his parents were interested in the sea. He’s able to get on board a ship. He’s part of the crew. And Dad, I’m going to throw this to you, picking up with now he’s at the sea.

Rick Green
He’s at sea, and this is in the American war for independence. And he’s on an American ship and the British capture that ship. So he’s been captured by the British and the British don’t want supplies going to America. Well, once he gets free, he takes… sets his own shipping business, and actually chose that he wanted to be a blockade runner to get supplies back into America. So his ships were known for getting around the British ships and getting supplies to the Americans. And shipping was his life. It’s what he loved.

Tim Barton
And it’s worth noting, he’s only 21 years old at this time. So you know, maybe because he’s young and feels a little invincible, or maybe because he just bought into the cause of liberty so much. He was so much against the tyranny and oppression of England. But this isn’t a well advanced individual in age and stature and whatever else, this is a 21 year old young man who is doing this in the heart, the middle of the American Revolution, he is helping get supplies to Americans as needed.

Rick Green
And so he loves the shipping thing. And so after the war is over, he stays in shipping, he starts building a business by 1789, which is eight years after the war is ended, it’s only six years after the peace treaty, he has this global shipping business. He’s got this shipping business that goes all over the world and his sons are captains of a ship, which is kind of a neat thing for the family to do. So he becomes very, very wealthy. He’s in all this work, and as part of that, he takes part of that wealth and start saying, hey, I want to help others enjoy the freedom I’ve got. And so he actually helps initially set up the colony of Liberia, which was a colony in Africa, for free Africans to go where they wouldn’t be discriminated against. And so he’s really involved in the anti slavery movement as well.

Tim Barton
Well, speaking of anti slavery movement, there was also a lot of connections with the Quakers. And over time, he ends up becoming a Quaker, which I think is also very cool, because the Quakers are the ones that helped his father find freedom.

Rick Green
And by the way, the Quakers, they’re about the only group back then that would spend their own money to go buy slaves strictly for the purpose of freeing them, you know, everybody else could work in the legislative stuff, they just went and bought individuals and freed them. And that’s, that’s a tremendous outlay of money for people to do that.

Tim Barton
So at this point, this is where he is known as… He’s a wealthy merchant. He’s been known in the American Revolution as a blockade runner, helping get supplies Well, now, he’s pretty noted in the anti slavery movement. And this is what leads up to the equality ball with John Hancock. So you have a noted anti slavery, American Revolution, patriot, established business owner, who now is being honored by John Hancock. And actually, one of the things that was still kind of big at that time, as far as if you wanted to make a lot of money, if you had ships, the probably most profitable or one of the most profitable industries back then was the slave trade. And Paul Cuffe said, Look, that’s unethical, it’s immoral. I don’t want to do anything unethical and immoral. And there’s some interesting reports on him being noted as a man of character and integrity. And so he wouldn’t allow any of the ships to do something that he thought was unethical or immoral on any level whatsoever. So he was an incredible black leader, prominent both in America and, Dad, even as you mentioned abroad, some of what he did. And his life was an example of leadership, of service, of sacrifice and of Christian faith. So he’s one of the really fun people that in a page and a half, we’ve told this story at WallBuilders.com, you can go find out more about that. But there’s lots of footnotes. And there’s way more to this guy’s story that we got into, but he certainly is a hero of the faith and an American hero along the way. To find out more, go to WallBuilders.com and look for Paul Cuffe. And by the way, the reason that his last name is maybe a little challenging, and I’m sure we’re gonna have some grammar people, some phonics people are going to try to offer suggestions, maybe other languages as well. But his last name is C-U-F-F-E. And back then you also might know that sometimes things were spelled differently on different occasions. And that’s also where there’s some dispute to how his last name is pronounced, and even spelled, nonetheless, a great hero to find out more about.

David Barton
one of many great stories that we’ve had so far this month, and many more to come. Check it out at wallbuilders.com to learn more. Guys, it is foundations of freedom Thursday, so we got several questions we’re going to try to get to today. First one’s coming from Steve in California. Interesting question- He said the concept of Native Americans concerns me. We’re taught that in the Americas they immigrated across a land bridge up by Alaska many, many, many years ago. Doesn’t that disqualify them from being indigenous or native to the Americas? So I guess, guys, when is native applicable and when is native not applicable?

Anybody after Adam and Eve is not native. I mean, they own the whole earth. God gave them everything. And everybody else emigrated from Adam and Eve. So there’s no native Russians, there’s no Native Americans. There’s no native French. They’re all descendants of Adam and Eve.

Tim Barton
I mean, well, maybe technically, right? If you were if you were one of Adam and Eve’s kids, and they owned everything, then right? You’re not even a native, I mean arguably, right? Like, but But I think to your point, right, if we had a biblical perspective, and you go to the Tower of Babel, right? Because that’s where the disbursement really happens on the level that arguably is supposed to happen. And with that being said, I’d like, we understand the heart of the question of how do we define who’s a native, who’s not a native. And this is one of the challenges with semantics along the way, with some of the changing definitions, and even some of the more modern application of wokeism on some level, because if, as was just mentioned, if you look back historically, well, how do people think that America was populated? because it was a land bridge, right, coming from Asia into North America? Well, if there was a land bridge, then technically everybody that came over, right, they’re immigrants or not technically a native so so when do we define what Native looks like? Because also you can make some arguments about, well, the people in South America, right? Did they come also from the landbridge from Asia? Or was there something else along the way? There’s a lot of unknowns in this. But it is semantics, that there are some distinctions and differences worth noting. And unfortunately, in this woke era, natives is used in kind of this Marxist ideology to put people in different groups and categories, and largely to say, well, these are the oppressed people. And these are people that are oppressed by white Europeans or whatever else. And if you just know some basic history, the most oppressive people to other natives, were, in fact, other native tribes. And it’s not to say that Western Europeans or white Europeans didn’t do anything oppressive. Oh, of course, every single people group has done some awful evil things in their time. But in the history of Native Americans, the most oppressive and brutal treatment Native Americans ever received, were from other Native Americans.

Rick Green
Well, actually, the only people that oppressed anybody else, we’re humans, which means everybody. And so going to your point, Tim, if you look at someone like Andrew… I think you hit it. This, this is a term that really came in with part of the woke stuff. When the progressives got education, then you started dividing people into groups, and you have not Americans, you have Native Americans. So you can’t be an American, you have to be a different group. And so when you look at someone like Andrew Jackson, which the way he’s presented with Native Americans is, is as president, he signed 70 Indian removal acts 70 times he did things to take land away from Indians. I will point out, Andrew Jackson came nowhere close to taking the amount of land away from Indians that the Comanches took away from other tribes. I mean, when the Comanche were finally defeated by the army 1875, there were 13 tribes, the Comanches, had conquered who were fighting side by side with the American soldiers to wipe out the Comanches. It’s not a white guy kind of thing.

Tim Barton
Well, and that’s specifically 13 tribes that had enough of a population left to join with the calvary, not including the ones that were totally extinct. But, but to your point, Dad, when you look back at what progressives did, taking over in the early 1900s, when progressives took over, they started changing a lot of the narrative and mantra in a Marxist direction that the progressive movement was largely a Marxist movement. And so even as we talked about woke terminology, now, woke terminology is just fitting in line with his Marxist ideology that progressives tried to implement for literally more than 100 years at this point on some level. And they didn’t always use the same tactics, the same strategy, because at times, they tried to do implementation in an economic system, or now we’re seeing it much more in a racial system. But the same idea remains, it’s to divide, and then turn the groups against each other so they can conquer. And this is not to diminish at all, any kind of Native American heritage. That’s not what we’re talking about. But we’re talking about in a Marxist ideology, when we’re not saying let’s look at individuals and the specific individuals in their story, and even gain context on this because context makes such a big difference. What actually happen when so often we look at a simplistic narrative today, and the simplistic narrative is that certain groups of people oppressed certain other groups of people, and if you were oppressed, you didn’t do anything wrong and that’s why you were oppressed when even more recent movies that have come out where, I think guys, it was it Woman King, I think that was the name of the movie of the tribe that was trying to fight the colonizers because of they were trying to end slavery and the colonizers are, are enslaving their people when that’s not what happened at all. The Woman King, right specifically in this story was leading the enslavement of their own people. But because now there was somebody else competing maybe in the slave market or somebody in the slave market, the colonizer saying, Hey, you probably shouldn’t treat your people that way. There was a war. But it was not as simplistic as saying one group was bad and one group was good. History is very seldom ever that simplistic. And today, because we don’t know a lot of the story, we’re buying into things that are not historically accurate. This is why we will tell people all the time, make sure you find original sources. We tell this for parents, when you look at your kids books, one of the major grievances I have with so many of the modern history books today is not just that they tell a bad story, it’s they don’t footnote anything they’re telling, it’s not just that they’re lying. It’s that the omission of footnotes without even… Nobody’s even telling kids, hey, if you want to make sure this is true, go back and look at the source. And here’s how we evaluate sources and and if it’s not an original source, and actually even if it is an original source… like understanding who this person was that wrote it and what’s the context of their life and where did they come from, to get a bigger picture to understand what is happening. This is where the distortion of history is happening on so many levels. So it’s not that we’re against calling someone a native or a Native American, it’s not that we’re against any kind of Indian tribe. But to your point, there is so much more to the story that people want to discount. And so often, it’s being discounted, because it doesn’t fit the Marxist narrative or Marxist agenda. And that’s we have to be careful of.

And going back to Jackson for a minute, when you look at the 70 Indian removal acts that he signed, as a result of that, the United States got basically most of Alabama, and about 1/5 of Georgia. Okay, so that’s the 70 land removal acts. That’s what he got as a result. When you look at the Comanche land removal acts, which is exterminate everybody, it goes from Mexico City up to the middle United States above Colorado. Now, that’s a lot more land than Jackson took, and Jackson gets condemned, and Native Americans get a free pass. No, no, if you judge by behavior, that’s really bad to wipe out all those tribes.

Well, and again, this is not to say that Jackson didn’t something bad. It’s just say, let’s look at the whole story.

David Barton
That’s right.

But let’s see what happened. Because also we wouldn’t say, right, like, every Native American tribe is bad because of the Comanches. Well, no, you have to look at individuals, because again, we’re not even looking at entire tribes, necessarily, unless it’s like looking at a nation of the policies of that nation and the practices of that nation. And if there was beheading, or raping or scalping or whatever it was, you can say, okay, the nation that did this, that was bad or that nation to do. But the point is, again, that you have to have a little more context and a little more history. And if we’re going to go back to the notion that there was a land bridge, and that there was nobody in North America before the land bridge. If that’s what we’re telling, then it does seem a little inconsistent to say that these were the natives to America, when in fact, there was nobody in North America before the land bridge. If that’s the argument.

And the argument to that says, well, you’re the white race. And so you’re always oppressors, go back for a minute to Jackson’s experience, even Andrew Jackson, growing up in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, the Catawbas and the Chickasaw would come help the white settlers fight the Seminoles and the Creek and the Cherokee who are always fighting everybody, including out there Indian tribes. So you actually have good Indian tribes that are trying to fight the bad Indian tribes. And it drives me to do it with the Anglos, because they have a common… You can’t even divide the the native tribes up and say they’re all good, or they’re all bad. They’re humans. There’s good and bad among them. And that’s the way you have to see history.

Rick Green
All right, guys, we’re gonna take a quick break. We’ll be right back with more questions here on WallBuilders Live. Its foundations of freedom Thursday.

Tim Barton
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 for 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, and 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 into providential view of American and Christian history. This is available wallbuilders.com. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

David Barton
We’re back on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us on this foundations of freedom Thursday. Next question for the day comes from Joe. And he’s asking about ESG said, I just finished listening to the speakers from the profanity legislators conference concerning ESG. And for folks at home, if you don’t know, we have a great conference every year with profanity legislators from across the nation. And we record the sessions. And we have so many great speakers come in, we take as many of those as we can and share them with you our audience here on WallBuilders. So we had one talking about ESG. He said the speakers kept referring to “they.” My question is, who is they? And what can we do about it? Who is behind all of this? Alright guys, this might take an entire program, but who’s behind ESG? And what can we do about it?

Yeah, it really is pretty simple. It goes back to those who don’t believe in God, per se, but they believe that climate is god. It goes back to what you find in Romans 1:20, where it says that they worship the creation more than the Creator. And so for those that have a God centric view, we understand what First Corinthians says, we’re to use and not abuse, the natural resources God has given but for those on the climate change side, they worship that and man is the lowest level there is. Man is the most dangerous thing. You cannot let him do anything to threaten their god, which is climate. So what you have is up look at the World Economic Forum, look at the Davos group over in Europe, those are the guys driving ESG internationally. With them 400 banks have joined on and said, hey, we’ll stop funding, people will stop loaning the money, people who don’t have our climate agenda. So they includes people that place the creation above the Creator. And that includes most of the big banks, every large bank. Now, US Bank is starting to get out of this, but every other large bank in America, mostly the chain banks, if you’re a local bank, if you’re a local credit union, something like that, so that they are those on the economic side that has now moved into the insurance field, they’re starting to give insurance based on how you are with ESG, your ESG ratings. So it is people who handle the big financial institutions. And if they’re a global institution, they’re probably going to be pro ESG. If they’re local kind of local state banks, those are going to be not ESG. So that’s pretty much the answer. That’s the way you can divide that is those big corporate, the big business, the big global, versus kind of the Small Business Mom and Pop kind of stuff.

Alright guys, so probably no time for to take another audience question. But David, I want to ask you about these two Supreme Court decisions, State Supreme Court decisions, we’ve gotten in the last few months that are actually opposite Idaho had a good one, they upheld a pro life law. South Carolina, believe it or not, had a bad Supreme Court decision, they struck down the state’s six week abortion ban. What do you think about this?

Yeah, this is such a good point to make, because you have the same issue before two courts and they get opposite decisions. And you could say, well, the difference is state laws. Idaho has different laws from South Carolina. And yeah, that could be a but that’s not it. In this case. In this case, what you have in South Carolina, you have really clear state constitution, really clear state laws, they are pro life, what you have is judges who are not pro life and said we’re striking down the pro life law. And so this is where you have a problem with lack of accountability of judges. In South Carolina, even though they’re a very populous centered state, they do not elect their judges. And this is what happens when you have appointed state judges. This is coming to a state near you. If you already have appointed state judges, you need to work with your legislature to get elected state judges. Texas for a while had appointed state judges and man did they take us left, because they become the supreme legislators, they strike down what the governor says what the legislature says, no matter how hard we work to lobby something, they can override it with just their fiat decision. This is what’s called the Missouri plan. And the Missouri plan was implemented in Missouri a couple of decades ago, where they said, you know, we need to elect judges who are not politically motivated, who don’t respond to political pressure, they’re above that. So let’s not let the people have any voice in this. And so what it means is that they’re no longer accountable to the people, because they can’t be touched by the people, they can do anything they want. And they’re not accountable. In those states that have it. One of the states… one of the ways you can know if your state has the Missouri kind of plan is whether you have retention elections for judges. A retention election says, well, we’re going to vote on whether or not to retain this individual. And so you vote up or down on judges. Well right now it’s about 97-98% of all judges are retained. Because what happens when you have competition like a primary, two folks run against each other, and they point out the bad stuff, the other guy does. A judge that’s running for retention election, he’s not going to tell you all the bad decisions he made. And if there’s not an opponent to point out the bad stuff he did you say, Well, I haven’t heard anything, so it must be fine. I’ll put him back on. And this is what happens. We saw this in Kansas, where that you had actually the state Supreme Court of Kansas, struck down parts of the state constitution as being unconstitutional by the state constitution. You can’t do that the state constitution’s the highest document you’ve got in the state. You observe the federal constitution as well. But they struck down the death penalty because they didn’t like it, even though the state constitution allowed it. So I say this to say, you really need to start looking at judges. We talked about this back before Trump got elected, that was one of the biggest issues in his election. And this goes back to Isaiah 1:26, where God says He’ll bless or curse a nation based on the kind of judges you have in that nation. It’s the same way with states. If your state is starting to become a little more conservative, and all of them are to some degree, in the sense that the Supreme Court is doing what it should be doing. It’s getting out of politics and giving stuff back to the states like it did with abortion. That was not a political decision. That was a decision that said, Hey, we’re not supposed to be making those decisions the states are. So because the Supreme Court has given more and more issues back to the states, you’re going to find the state Supreme Courts becoming more and more important. And as a result of that, let me just really, really, really encourage you that if you’re in a state that does not elect its judges and competitive elections, you need to get that system change. You need to work with your state legislators. You need to get those guys where they are accountable to the people. You don’t need what South Carolina has. They’ve got a pro life state, one of the strongest pro life states in the nation, and yet their court struck down their pro life laws because the court didn’t like it. Well, wait a minute, when do eight or nine people get to tell several million people what they believe? That’s where we got to change this. So on the website, WallBuilders.com, we have a piece up about the Missouri plan, and you need to know about it, you need to contact your state legislators about it, you need to say, hey, we need to get this changed. Or you can download that that briefing on the Missouri plan, get it to your legislators become familiar with it. And if you’re in one of those two dozen or so states that does not elect your state supreme court justices, you really need to work to change that. That will make more difference in your state than about anything else you can do.

Rick Green
Alright, folks out of time for our foundations of freedom Thursday program today. But please do send your questions in [email protected] . If you’d like us to hit on a, maybe it’s a subject maybe it’s a topic that you want to get a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective on it. And you want to ask about it for that reason, or maybe it’s a historical question. You’ve heard some things at school. If you’re a young person listening to this program, or maybe just in the political realm, be sure and send those in. We’d love to answer as many of those as possible and then be sure and get the archives at our website WallBuildersLive.com. That’s also the place you can make a one time or monthly contribution today. Lots of great resources for you wallbuilders.com . So visit both of the websites today. If you would like to be a leader in your community and be one of our coaches, you can do it for free. Sign up today for free and start hosting those classes. Thanks so much for listening. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.