Progress In North Dakota – Stopping The COVID Crackdowns – Join us to hear Daniel Horowitz talk about the progress taking place in North Dakota on the COVID front. Tune in now to educate yourself in this matter and take steps to fight for our liberty!

Air Date: 02/08/2021

Guest: Daniel Horowitz

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, we’re looking at everything from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. And we’re glad you’re here to do that with us. In fact, we’re with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian, and our founder here at WallBuilders. My name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator, and America’s Constitution coach. And Tim Barton is with us, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders.

You can find out more about us and the program at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. And that’s also the place to check out the archives, if you missed some programs over the last few weeks, you can get those at the website anytime. And that’s where you can get a listing of our stations across the country as well. We appreciate you being a listener to WallBuilders. We hope that you will also consider supporting us. We’re a listener-supported program, which means we need your help to magnify this voice to get on more radio stations, to reach more pastors and legislators and equip more citizens, equip more people to be biblical citizens in modern America, and we appreciate you coming alongside us to help do that. You can make those contributions at the website wallbuilderslive.com.

Alright, David, Tim, later in the program, Daniel Horowitz will be with us. Watching some of these state legislators right now, and of course, many people may not even realize, almost every state legislature is meeting now. We had our Legislators Conference just a few months ago to help equip these guys and gals, the good folks, right, the pro-family legislators across the country, and some of them are ready taking some action. So Daniel is going to share with us some of what’s going on in North Dakota to stop some of the COVID crackdowns and other items.

But I wanted to ask you guys, I mean, the founders view on balance of power, they wanted state legislatures to be the place where most of the power resided with regard to domestic policy, right, and then the federal government deal with external issues, is that the right way to look at this?

David:

Yeah, Rick, you’re exactly right. Legislators at the state level were very, very significant. Founding Fathers said everything related to domestic affairs, they’re going to be at the state level, international affairs, foreign affairs, that type of stuff, the 17 enumerated powers in the Constitution, that’s going to be at the federal level, but again, out of thousands of issues, only 17 of them rise to a federal level. It was going to be the state legislatures where domestic policy came from.

But the other key word in that is not only state legislatures, but just the word, “legislators”.  Three branches of government, we’re often told the three branches of government are co-equal. Founding Fathers said no, that’s not true. In the Federalist Papers, they said the legislative authority necessarily predominates. If something predominates, it’s not co equal. And then they turned around and said, the judicial branch is by far without comparison, the weakest of the three branches. Now, wait a minute, if you get one that is super strong, and one that’s super weak, that’s not parody. That’s not being co-equal.

And so it is supposed to be the legislature in the states that is in charge of the policy, not the governor, not the Commissioner of Health, not in the case of elections, not the Secretary of State, it’s the legislature. And so it’s interesting, that’s part of what we covered historically at the legislative conference this year. And as these legislators went back to their state legislators started saying, no, wait a minute, it’s the legislature that’s in charge of policy. They got pushback from other legislators say no, that’s not true. We got three co-equal branches.

And so we’ve been having to supply legislators with quotes out of founding documents showing no, the legislative branch is the most important branch and the state legislatures are the most significant branch when it deals with domestic issues are that is issues related to their state, things like COVID, and education and transportation, etc. That’s the state legislature. It’s been really interesting to see the re-education the state legislators are now having to undergo just to find out how much power they really do have according to the Constitution.

Rick:

And North Dakota is doing that. Their legislature considering several pieces of legislation that will prevent the federal government from overstepping that authority and overstepping those boundaries. And just to bring this home to people, I mean, just think about some of the things, with a stroke of a pen that the President of the United States would say you got to let men go into your daughter’s bathroom at school, you got to let guys and girls share that space. I mean, those kinds of things. How do you stop it? Well, state legislators can prevent it from happening in their states, and even local school boards can stop it from happening in their local school district. So there are ways to push back on this. And the good news is some legislators are doing that across the country.

Daniel Horowitz is going to share some of that information with us. So stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. As the American war for independence began, the president of Yale was the Reverend Naphtali Daggett. When New Haven, the home of Yale came under attack, about 100 citizens rushed out to meet the British. The Reverend Daggett gouged by them on horseback, his clerical robes flowing behind him in the wind, and he took up a solitary position on top of Hill.

The 2500 British soon for the townsfolk to fly, but the Reverend Daggett continued to stand alone, firing down on the advancing troops. A British officer confronted him. “What are you doing there, you old fool? If I let you go, will you ever fire again on the troops of His Majesty?” “Nothing more likely” was the preachers reply. America’s early pastors have personally confronted danger and courageously lead their communities.

For more information on Pastor Daggett and other colonial patriots, go to wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. Thrilled to have Daniel Horwitz with us. I’m telling you, if you’re not listening to Daniel’s show every day, you should be. Brilliant analysis. Great information. Make sure you check him out. Listen to conservative review. Daniel, great to have you, man. Thanks for your time today.

Daniel:

Hey, great to be with you. And good to be reversing the roles here.

Rick:

I enjoyed being on your show a little while ago. And I’m telling you man, your articles, I don’t know how you turn out so much content. Almost every day, you’ve got a great article, your show every day informative, fast moving. You’ve done a better analysis of the whole COVID fascism and pandemic stuff over the last year, as well as the BLM. So I mean, it’s just been phenomenal. And I want to thank you, because it’s been a great resource for me personally, but I’ve sent so many people to go listen to your show, to get that kind of information, because it’s so rare that anybody dives into these details like you do. So, God bless you, man, I just appreciate your work very, very much.

Daniel:

Well, really appreciate that. But you know, obviously, knowledge is power, but you got to use the power. So the question is where we go with that?

Rick:

Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s a great point, man. And even now, your latest article and actually already done two more since you wrote this one. But the article you had earlier this week on what North Dakota is doing, because you’ve been calling on legislatures to step up. Now that they’re all in session, enough of this COVID fascism, enough of this crazy, you know, letting governors be dictators, all these things. But you’ve highlighted North Dakota because some legislation has been filed there that you think could be a model for other legislators around the country to do.

Daniel:

Exactly. This is really the fulcrum of liberty of our future to find some vestige in the country where we can move to and actually have liberty. A lot of people are hopeless. Man, what can we do? You got Biden. You got the Democratic Congress. But people forget, we have states. And some of us noticed during the Trump administration, that you had states like New York and California, they didn’t become more Trumpian, they actually got more Left under Trump because they’re like, hey, we’re done with him, we’re not abiding by anything he does.

And even regarding things that legitimately our federal powers, like immigration law, they’re like, hey, we’re not doing that, we’re going to be a sanctuary for them. And they actually not only blocked Trump’s immigration policies which were a law, they criminalized enforcement of them. And I said to myself, well, wait a minute. If Republicans have control of 31 state legislators, many of them by significant, significant margin, super majorities, then why can’t they at least become a sanctuary for American businessmen, from COVID fascism, schoolchildren, from the mass fascism, you know, Trump supporters that are being persecuted with First Amendment violation?

So then I saw this bill from Representative Tom Kading in North Dakota, it’s HB-1164. And it’s really a forced multiplying bill that speaks to everything we’re talking about. And it basically says this. Look, we’re going to have the state attorney general take a look at anything that Biden does executively. Just you know, he wakes up one day or whoever pulling the strings and says, you know, CDC creates a new statute, alright. It’s a crime to breathe without a mask. No exceptions. No ADA. No OSHA. Nothing. Everyone must do it. And we’re going to take a look and say, hey, is that pursuant to statute? And is that constitutional?

Rick:

Something that Congress didn’t even consider, let alone actually do.

Daniel:

Yeah. I mean, it’s literally CDC just makes statutes now. I mean, we’re not talking about like, you know, you have certain executive actions that are pursuant to statute. We’re talking about an earth shattering civilization change at a federal level criminalizing human breathing, unless you take an action and uncover it, and no exceptions, even children, everyone every day. I mean, even if you think that’s constitutional which is certainly not, you, at least via statute for it. So what this would empower and this is why…

Rick:

Oh, and by the way, Daniel, I got to say, side note, also no exceptions for ADA, for people with issues. You’ve had several great programs on that as well. People need to go into the archives of your podcast to get more detail on that. But yet no exceptions whatsoever, everybody mask.

Daniel:

Everyone does it. And look, we’ve gotten all sorts of things like we’re going to rig the economy against only for non-whites, they literally have an executive order to do, it violates the 14th Amendment. We, you know, obviously, the transgender stuff. I mean, this is unbelievable. So look, Madison envisioned this scenario, and Madison, even Hamilton talked about the fact that a state is an independent unit.

And Hamilton said very clearly in federalist 33, that if the federal government wants to violate the Constitution, the state will just regard it as a user patient and treated as such. So that’s what this legislation does. It says the Attorney General will look at all these executive orders and unless they’re pursuant to law, any state or county agency or publicly funded organization is prohibited from going along with it and enforcing it. And this is very simple. Just say, no. This is how we utilize the power that we have.

I don’t want to hear about oh, 2022, 2024, let’s take that Congress, we’ll worry about that. But for now, we can’t wait. And we have super majority. If you look at North Dakota, this is a state where they have an 80:40 majority in the House, 40:7 majority in the Senate. And there’s a similar bill as well in the senate there and there’s a bill in South Dakota, we need to make this pass in those states, and it should pass in at least 25 States.

Rick:

You point out that in this particular bill, and by the way, I love the great quote from Hamilton in Federalist Papers, you also point out, hey, look, the supremacy clause is when it’s in pursuant of the Constitution. And Hamilton very clearly said when it’s not pursuing, that’s when the state has to do its job. But you even detail out specifically with this North Dakota bill, and part of what you’re recommending legislators across the country do it’s dealing with the pandemics and health emergencies, it’s dealing with regulation of natural resources, agriculture. Which by the way, why do you need a National Department of Agriculture when you have a State Department of Agriculture in every single state? That’s just one department we can talk about that we have the duplication.

But agriculture, use of land, regulation of the financial sector when it comes to environmental, social and governance standards, and the regulation of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. So I mean, it’s a fairly large list, but it’s all the things where we see the attacks through executive orders, and federal action that is not constitutional. And this North Dakota legislator is clearly leading the way on this. What do you think is his chances are there in North Dakota? That’s a large Republican majority too, right?

Daniel:

So again, if we don’t light a fire, the chances are zero. And here’s where I’m going to get a little bit pessimistic here, and that’s why I got to light a fire under people. Here’s the deal. At the end of the day, you count on these legislators, well, you know, let’s just talk about what happened in Washington. We saw only 29% of House Republicans in a private vote felt that Liz Cheney was a rhino, is unfit to lead the Republican Congress. I got news for you. That’s roughly the percentage of good guys in every state house.

Now, the other guys that pretend to be Republicans and want conservatives to keep voting for them in primaries, they never get forced into an inflection point, into a defining moment of clarity where there has to pick a side because we never pick these fights, enforce these votes. So that’s the thing. They need to hold press conferences. We need to have multiple states do it. And then grassroots, go up to their legislators and say, hey, are you going to be stewards for violations of civil liberties? Are you going to be Biden’s puppet? Or are you going to stand up as a state and just say, no?

One of the important things you and David have talked about this for eon, for forever, no one has a monopoly over the Constitution. That’s why the judicial branch is not the end all, right?

Rick:

That’s right.

Daniel:

The point of judicial review was not that they’re the end all, it’s that they also. You know, if the Congress and the President proposed something that’s unconstitutional, and a legitimate litigant comes in front of me, look, I got to use my powers in concert with the Constitution. Am I to end all? No. And the same way if a court says, we’re going to arrest any county clerk who doesn’t issue a gay marriage license. Well, you’re an executive branch, either the federal marshals or the state troopers, that’s executive branch. You have an obligation to follow the real interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which doesn’t include that. So therefore, you are violating current state law, by the way, those laws weren’t changed in most states and you cannot do that.

Same thing with states in the Fed. Like you said, it’s not supreme, it’s supreme in the sense that if they do something, like, you know, with John C. Calhoun, the Nullification Crisis, the federal government could regulate trade, he didn’t like it. He thought, tested this out. But that was legitimate federal power. There’s no mechanism in Constitution to just nullify, just like there’s no judicial nullification either. But what it is, is it’s a consequence of being an independent, separate branch, either within the same sphere or state or federal, where we each swear an oath to the state and federal constitutions. And if you’re doing something that is manifestly repugnant to the Constitution, you cannot tell me, CDC could just say, if you breathe without a mask, that’s a felony. You just can’t do that. You have to say, no.

Rick:

That’s so good, man. That’s so good. And this is at the state level. Now, you’ve also talked a lot about over the last few months even at the local level, the Sanctuary County, kind of an idea where county commissioners and sheriffs also say, listen, you can’t force and this may be where we get into the whole transgender thing, where they’re saying that we’re going to allow men to go into our daughter’s bathrooms at the schools. You’re going to do that from a presidential executive order, not something passed in Congress, certainly not something passed in our state legislature, or by our local county commissioners. So it’s not just the legislators that need to be getting involved in this sort of thing, it’s those local officials as well.

Daniel:

Look, I learned this again from the Left. The Left, that they’re good teachers, they fight for what they believe in. They’re smart. They don’t give up. And I noticed that everyone thinks the feds are juggernaut. But I’m talking about even things that are legitimately national, international issues. I mean, imagine having the MS-13 guys sneak in, previously deported sex offender, and they’re looking for him. And when you had these, like blue counties where the sheriff, the county commissioner, the county prosecutor, county judge, they’re all on the same side, and they’re saying, look, you know, we’re not doing that here.

The feds were impotent. The deportations were down 80% in California. There’s no reason that we can’t do this for real rights, American rights, the Bill of Rights. And it’s time we make self-governance great again, and this is what it’s all about. Because at the end of the day, when you talk about the trainee stuff, when you talk about hey, this guy has to be in your sports team in this school in the county, or this boy has to be in the girls’ bathroom, at the end of the day, the feds aren’t down there, nor could they be. If the county officials, the COVID fascism, we’ve learned, hopefully this will be the only good lesson to come out of this past year is how powerful and influential if you use it properly county government is.

If you focus both on your activism in terms of meeting with the people, and also in terms of the primary challenges on county officials, and you just take, Trump won 83% of the counties, if you even take the 50% of those counties that are the most conservative that Trump won by at least 15-20, sometimes 30-50 points, and in those counties where we clearly have a patriot majority, and you just simply had the sheriff and the county commission, and there’s been a couple of counties that have done this and it’s growing, put out a constitutional sanctuary resolution, we don’t dig unconstitutional stuff, bro. You got it?

Rick:

Yeah.

Daniel:

We don’t do that here. I’m actually we’re going to investigate constitutional violations. You know, that’s a crime. If we see a state health department officials trying to shut down life, liberty, and property, we’re going to have a problem here. That’s what they need to do. We need the doctrine of least magistrate to use the legitimate institutions we do have to best interpose against the encroachments on liberty, protect the people, work together as one unit. And that’s true localism and self-governance that our founders envisioned.

Rick:

And even as you’re describing that, I’m thinking school boards, you know, you’re the ones that can stop the whole men and women’s bathrooms thing at your school. There’s no reason for you to implement this presidential executive order and there’s so many other examples like that. Man, Daniel, we got to get you back, brother.

And I want to encourage people to read your articles, they can read those at the Blaze. Theblaze.com, just type in Daniel’s name, almost every day he turns out another great article. And then for the radio program, Daniel, best place, is it on iTunes? I know you’re on Spotify and everything else, but I listened to you on Caster, I think it is. But iTunes is an easy one to get to. So yeah, and I tell you what, man, just keep doing it. I know you got to get tired, because you put out more content as one person than large organizations do. So keep it up. We really, really appreciate you, and appreciate you coming on the program today.

Daniel:

Looking forward to coming back and looking forward to seeing you next week.

Rick:

We’ll do it. We’ll be out there for constitutional defense. Folks, stay with us, we’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

BREAK

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Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Daniel Horwitz for joining us as well. Be sure and listen to him over at conservative review. Back with David and Tim Barton. Okay, guys, so if North Dakota does this, what about other states? I mean, we’ve got a lot of “red states”, and a lot of good legislators in many of those states. Do you think you’ll see more action like this?

David:

I think so. And I thought the point he raised was just superb on sanctuary cities and sanctuary states. If you want a sanctuary from the Second Amendment, move to California, move to New York, if you don’t like the Constitution, if you don’t like what it stands for, if you don’t like guns, there are states you can go to that will ignore that. If you don’t like the federal laws on marijuana, move to Colorado because they ignore the federal laws against marijuana usage. If you don’t like the laws against immigration, California is a place you want to be.

So I love the idea of how about the red states become sanctuary states for those who love the Constitution and those who want to practice constitutionalism? Hey, well, there’s 31 state legislatures now controlled by Republicans. Here’s 31 states you can come to where that we’re going to uphold the Constitution. We’re going to do what it says. We’re going to do what it says with freedom from COVID regulations and whatever. I mean, that’s a great idea.

Tim:

Well, I’m really it’s having state legislators that protect the sovereignty and the power of their state, recognizing the federal government only has so much power, and they can’t enforce all of their dictates, and not all our dictates are constitutional. And it was a really interesting thought to think, you know, Trump put a lot of really good policies into place, and yet, there were several states that directly ignored those policies, and sometimes directly went against those policies, saying we’re going to do the exact opposite of what you’ve said. And this is where it really did give a really powerful example that states have a lot more authority, a lot more sovereignty sometimes than we recognize. And it really would be a good opportunity for a lot of Republican states, Republican legislators to step up and say, we’re going to protect certain constitutional measures, certain basic values or rights, that even though the Biden ministration may be against them that we’re not going to let those be outlawed in our states.

Rick:

Well, and this is really good news for individuals too. Because I mean, a lot of people are frustrated, they don’t know what to do. Well, listen, you can reach your state legislator. You can encourage them to take action. So if you’re wondering what you can do, let your voice be heard right now. I mean, obviously at the local level too, maybe run for school board and run for city council and be that buffering, that protection in your community.

But with all these state legislators meeting across the country right now, now’s the time to contact them. I mean, even just three or four or five months from now, depending on which state you’re in, those sessions are going to be over and you’re going to wish you had made those phone calls. So if these legislators are willing to take action, encourage them. If they’re not willing to take action, encourage them to do so. So it’s a great time to have your voice heard in America.

Tim:

Yeah. And Rick, the point you made that sometimes legislators are already in favor, and sometimes they need that pressure. We know that even those and a lot of the states that identify as Republican legislators are not necessarily conservative. That’s just they’re playing on this team, so to speak, and right, they put on the jersey of Republican, but they might not really be a conservative fighting for those values. 

There’s a lot of rhinos, there’s a lot of moderates that are republicans. And they’re going to need that pressure to know we need to stand up for what is constitutional, we need to stand up for our state’s rights, the 10th Amendment. If things were not specifically given to the federal government via the Constitution, our state is the one that has the power and the federal government doesn’t going to tell our state what we can or can’t do. But legislators need to feel the pressure from the state in order for them to be making the right decisions. So absolutely, this is the time to call your legislator and let them know they need to stand up and defend your rights, the Constitution, and the state.

Rick:

We all have a role to play in that. And the easiest way for anyone to get started out there, we’re going to give you some tools to be able to do that. If you go to our website today at constitutioncoach.com, we will help you start a class in your living room, at your church, wherever it might be that is so easy to do, but it is so encouraging. It gives people hope. It’s great fellowship. It’s a great education. I’m telling you, every time they leave that class, they are fired up about real solutions for restoring our constitutional republic.

It’s a great way to even begin that group that can then do the things that Daniel was talking about today in terms of sanctuary counties, and in terms of working on your legislators and your other leaders. So make sure that you check that out today, constitutioncoach.com. Again, it’s totally free to sign up. You can start hosting classes immediately. And believe me, these are entertaining classes. These are not your typical boring history or government class. You know, if you listen to WallBuilders Live, we bring that history to life. We make it interesting because we tell the stories through the eyes of the people that experienced it, and then we are constantly focused on action steps, what you can do to be that catalyst for a restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles. Get signed up today, get started today, be a part of the solution, and let’s save this constitutional republic.

Thanks so much for listening today to WallBuilders Live.