Where Did Our Political Colors Originate? Everybody Needs A Rabbi: This is the last segment of a three-part series with Rabbi Lapin at the Pro-Family Legislators Conference. Rabbi Lapin does a great job pointing out where we are in America as a Christian nation and how we’ve got to be more certain about what we believe. Also, how important it is for us to realize why these principles are necessary to keep freedom alive in our country. Rabbi Lapin also gives an interesting perspective on what our laws are based on. In this episode, you”€™ll learn why Democrats switched colors with Republicans and how, Biblically, our political colors, red and blue, came about.

Air Date: 01/24/2018

Guest: Rabbi Lapin

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.

Faith And The Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live! Where we”€™re talking about today”€™s hottest topics on policy, faith, and the culture, all of it from a Biblical, historical, and Constitutional perspective.

We’re here with David Barton and Tim Barton. David”€™s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim is a national speaker, pastor, and the president of WallBuilders. My name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas state legislator.

We’re going to be back with Rabbi Daniel Lapin today. We”€™ve had Rabbi Lapin for the last two days on this great presentation he gave at the Pro-Family Legislators Conference. David, Tim, learning a lot from Rabbi Lapin once again.

Tim:

Yeah, Rick, it is exciting to be able to get through this third part of his teaching. The first two days, there was just so much there. I actually have been going back and listening to it just to get some more content out of it. It really is so fun personally for us being able to be around him and have these conversations and have a little back and forth on some of this. But the truth he”€™s laying out about some of these principles.

Whether we’re talking about law, or America, or Christianity, or Biblical truth. He does such a good job revealing truth and helping us understand what was really going on when God did this, when the Israelites did this. Why did they have to do this? Where did this come from? What did that mean for culture around us?

Seeing the Bible as a Complete Picture

Tim:

How did that impact law? How did that impact judges? Seeing the Bible as a complete life picture instead of maybe just sometimes we read it as a spiritual devotional instead of recognizing all the application that God wants it to have in our life. I think Rabbi Lapin really does such a good job of helping us see that real life application.

David:

He”€™s really good about reducing things to core principles. You really get through the fluff and you get down to, “€œOh, yeah, that’s really good.”€ It”€™s simple, it’s easy to understand, it’s probably what we would call apologetics, where you actually come up with reasons for why something is the way that it is. It’s not just reciting what you’ve been told. He actually gives you the reasons behind it and it makes you think about it.

It”€™s what we’re told in Proverbs 27:17 that, “€œiron sharpens iron.”€ Just being with him and around him, it’s that kind of stuff that he challenges your thinking in such a way that it makes you sharper in your thinking and in your beliefs. He really does give us a basis for why what we believe and what we think is right. Or even the basis of why we should think that certain way. It really is good, it is deep.

Again, legislators just eat it up. They’re really good on this, but this is something that works for every single person. And I watch the legislators and it’s like they get transformed and they don’t think about this in terms of legislation. They think about this in terms of human and how it applies to our life as people. And so they suddenly leave their role as legislators and they step back into, “€œHey, I’m a person. I’m a child of God. I need to think right on this.”€ It”€™s really good stuff.

Rick:

Well, Rabbi Daniel Lapin will be with us when we come back from the break. It’s actually the conclusion of that three-part series, so don’t miss it. Stay with us, we’ll be right back on WallBuilders Live.

Moment From American History

This is TimBarton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. In the early seventeen hundreds the Reverend John Wise preached that all men were created equal, that taxation without representation was tyranny, and that God’s preferred form of government was the consent of the governed.

All of which is language recognizable in the Declaration of Independence. Why? Because in 1772 the Sons of Liberty led by Founders Sam Adams and John Hancock reprinted and distributed the Reverend Wise’s sermons.

Four years later, much of the Declaration reflected the language of those sermons by John Wise.  In 1926 on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, President Calvin Coolidge affirmed, “€œThe thoughts in the Declaration can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was saying.”€

Few today know that the Declaration was so strongly influenced by the Rev. John Wise. For more information on this and other stories go to WallBuilders.com.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

Essentially what we have in America today is two tribes. It’s almost like the *Hutus and the *Tutsis in Rwanda. Two different belief systems and a million deaths later, they try and figure out a way to govern. When you strip away a common belief system, when you strip away that social underpinning, then everything falls apart. One of the reasons that you can safely bet on the European Union not lasting very much longer is because it simply doesn’t have a moral underpinning.

You know they haven’t finished writing the constitution for the European Union. It’s over a thousand pages and still growing. And how many of you know that in that entire thousand pages so far, the word God or Christianity doesn’t exist? How can you speak about Europe without speaking about Christianity? But if you want to understand why you don’t have honorable opponents anymore, and why your enemies actually want to destroy you, it’s because of opposing belief systems.

Because We Share the Underlying Belief System, We Share that Social Compact

Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

When we share the same belief system, it’s fine to have different political views. Because we share the underlying belief system, we share that social compact. And now we’re talking about different ways of best applying it. I can accept that. But when you have methodically destroyed that belief system, that social compact that unifies us, there’s nothing left.

You can’t possibly stitch together a political system because people are not held together by political systems. That’s not what does it. You follow? Are you with me? This is really important.

And so we quickly see that people have tried all different kinds of ways of explaining the fight in America between these two tribes, if you will, who seem on the surface of it to be roughly equal in number approximately. But how do we define them? And there have been all kinds of attempts. I’m sure you’ve heard them all. Some of them are humorous like the people who shop at Wal-Mart, and the people who shop at Nordstrom’s.

Or one is they say women and minorities are in one, white men are in the other. Look, any time you try and form a social compact based on race, or gender, or geography, it’s all over. Karl Marx tried that already. And that’s why they’ll tell you, “€œWell, here’s the real difference between the two tribes in America. One tribe is rural and the other tribe is on the coasts and in the big cities.

Now this one’s a very seductive one. Because if you look at the election maps of America for the last 30 years, you will see that if you look at states, you get a misleading picture. But if you look at counties, then you can see that sure enough, Los Angeles County, San Diego, San Francisco, all of those areas are hopelessly democratic. But the rest of the state, all the other counties, are conservative. It”€™s just that there are not enough people there. New York, if you ever have a chance to drive upstate, drive through the state of New York from New York City to the border, but don’t take Highway 87, take the Hudson River Parkways and see what New York is really like – it’s not Times Square.

The Maps Were Different

Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

But the trouble is there are too many people in the cities and so the state goes Democrat. And this map, by the way, also is really important to note in the context of what we’re discussing now. Because the colored maps on election night made their first appearance in “€˜76, Jimmy Carter. Anyone remember what color arrangements– the GOP was what color back then? Blue.

The Democrats were red. Yeah, that’s true. And through the following 1980, the Reagan election, they showed the map again and still, NBC still stuck to blue for Republicans, red for Democrats. ABC was beginning to shift. If you switched between stations in 1984, you’d really get confused.

And finally, 2000 they were unified. And I have spoken to people who acknowledged the truth of what I suspected, people in media, it’s absolutely true. And by the way, it’s since then you don’t have to depend on me. Since then it’s actually out there. The reason they changed because red has always been associated with the left, communism, the Reds, the red scare, and they were frightened that people would see the Democratic Party for what it was.

And so they switched the Democratic Party from red to blue because we have to fool the people all the time. So, who are these tribes? If we’re not geographic, and we’re not racial, gosh, 15- just under 15 percent of black males voted for Donald Trump. It”€™s not racial. There’s something else going on here.

What is it? We’ve got to understand this. There is a divide here. That divide, my friends, is religious because it’s not just the *Hutus and the *Tutsis, but it’s also every single place that Muslims are killing people. It’s because of religious disagreements. It’s not that they dislike America’s freedom, it’s that they dislike Christianity.

Can”€™t you get that into your heads? That’s not hard. And if you want to know why is it that Chris Matthews is incapable of understanding that this is about Islam, it’s because Chris Matthews represents the other tribe in America. That is so contemptuous of religion that they cannot believe that there”€™s anybody who does anything because of how he feels about his God. They don’t even believe that you act in accordance with your faith.

Nobody Really Believes in the Stuff?

Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

That’s why they love any depiction of a Christian hypocrite they can find because it validates their view that nobody really believes in the stuff. They really, that’s how they look at it. And so they you have to- I’m not mocking them at all, they’re not stupid. Their rejection of Islam as the core and source of terror is based on the fact that they simply discredit all religion as being of any significance at all. This cannot be about religion because religion doesn’t matter.

But it actually does. The reason that Jews have existed for thousands of years and are still here. Where the Hittites and Jebusites have all gone, where the Roman Empire is gone, where the British Empire, sadly, is struggling to retain some minor foothold in a corner of Europe. The reason that all these places move on is because they all lacked that underlying belief system that provided the social compact, regardless of the political one. And so for most of the last 2000 years, Jews have existed without any political reality. No land of Israel – they were thrown out of the land of Israel 2000 years ago, they came back in 1948.

How about that interim? How did Jews exist? Because the social belief compact is more important than the political one. The political one can always be built on top of the social one. But if you strip away the social one, you’ve got a devil of a job trying to build a political one.

And certainly, an impossible job trying to sustain it and hold it together. It’s really important to understand. So, this struggle between left and right, or between people who shop at Wal-Mart and people and people who don”€™t. It’s very simple. It’s a struggle between two groups of Americans – those who believe that Judeo Christian Bible based principles are essential for the survival of our nation.

And on the other hand, on the left side, on the red side really, are those who say that Judeo Christian Bible shaped beliefs are primitive obstacles to progress and we are, above all, progressives. That’s what divides us. And just the same way that every major killing of people involves differing belief systems, on what basis does a Chinese national called, *, kill tens of millions of his own people? It’s easy if you accept that your belief system and their belief system is different. It’s the same way that the Puritans in Massachusetts hung Quakers.

You have to do it, they believe differently.

“€œOne Man With a Belief Can Defeat 99 Men Who Only Have Interests”€

Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

And something that, I think it was Rousseau who said it, I was trying to look it up, but it’s true anyway which is, “€œOne man with a belief can defeat 99 men who only have interests.”€ Politics is about interests. A social compact is about beliefs. “€œOne man with beliefs defeats 99 who only have interests.”€ This division between a secular worldview, a worldview that believes that the Bible is an obstacle to progress, please don’t think this happened yesterday, right?

This goes back, this struggle goes back to Chapter 11 of Genesis. Only nine verses, the story of the Tower of Babel. What’s it doing there? It”€™s a weird story? Well, let me give it to you very simply and very quickly.

For those of you who are interested in a deeper development and understanding of this whole theme, I spend two hours explaining it on a program called Tower of Power Decoding the secrets of Babel. And I’ll show you, we’ll talk to you about it later on. Before I have to leave this afternoon at the back of the room. But here”€™s a little insight that shows us what we are up against right now. If I were to say to you, “€œEverybody, hey, how about let’s all gather some wood.”€

Excuse me, if I were to say to you, “€œLet’s get together on Sunday and build a bass boat so we can be ready to go fishing for bass when the season opens.”€ And some of you might say, “€œOh, yeah, fine, I’ll join you.”€ “€œGreat, anybody got some beer? Great, bring the beer. Anyone want to do a barbecue?

We’re going to, okay-“€ and then somebody says, “€œWell, how are we going to build a bass boat?”€ “€œWell, that’s easy enough. We’re going to stop off at the Home Depot, get a whole bunch of wood, we knock them together, you’ve got your bass boat.”€ “€œOh, okay, fine.”€ How about if I said something quite differently.

Show the Vision First and then Talk About How You’ll Get There

Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

Imagine now I said to you, “€œHey, everybody, why don”€™t we get together on Sunday and go shop for wood at Home Depot?”€ It’s silly, right? “€œFor what?”€ “€œWell, we’ll make a boat.”€ You’ve lost the whole zing. Show the vision first and then talk about how you’ll get there.

Everybody understands that. Therefore, no peeking now, don”€™t yank out those Bibles and spoil this for me. I ask you to just guess if I tell you there are two verses in Genesis Chapter 11 one of them says, “€œHey, everybody, let’s get together and build a city with a huge tower in the middle.”€ And then there’s another verse which says, “€œHey, everybody, let”€™s get together and make bricks.”€ It’s silly, right?

Which one comes first? “€œHey, everybody, let’s build a city.”€ “€œHow do we do it?”€ “€œOh, that’s easy. Hey, everybody, we’re going to have to make bricks.”€ “€œOkay fine because we see what we’re doing it for.”€

Would you be shocked to hear that Genesis chapter 11 verse 3 says, “€œHey, everybody, let’s make bricks.”€ While Genesis 11 Verse 4 says, “€œLet’s build a tower.”€ The key thing is bricks. That’s the vision. What are you talking about?

Well, we have to understand the difference between bricks and stones. There were plenty stones to build with. Even today, important buildings we build with stones – libraries, government buildings, we don”€™t use bricks, we use stone. Why? Because stone is made by God.

Every stone is absolutely unique and different. Bricks are made by people and everyone is identical. Which is the whole point – they can all be slapped together, you don’t have to shape them. You’ve got to decide what kind of society you want. And Chapter 11 of Genesis is the first depiction of a progressive society designed to replace the Bible as the unifying force.

And to replace it with the central authority of that tower in the city. Let’s turn human beings into bricks. That’s why we don’t want you in your cars, we want you all in public transport. We want everybody the same. We want you all to be bricks.

We Can”€™t Possibly Have Individuality?

Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

Stones? Absolutely not. Individuality? We cannot possibly have that. And so we’ve got to understand all of this, everything, the reality of spirituality.

The first two chapters in Genesis, why do you need two stories of the creation? Well, it all makes sense when you see that chapter one is creation from a physical perspective. Chapter two is a creation from the spiritual perspective. From a physical perspective, men and women are basically the same. There are  just some biological plumbing differences, but men and women are otherwise identical.

And a progressive worldview that depends on extirpating a spiritual reality has to come up with no difference between men and women. And that is now a fundamental priority in American leftist culture. We have to obliterate all distinctions between men and women because they don’t know about Chapter 2. Chapter 2 is the same story of creation, but this time through spiritual eyes. What’s the result of that?

The result is now we have a whole story about man, and Adam and Eve, and how they came about, and the relationship between them. From a spiritual perspective, men and women are something entirely different. That’s what we’ve got to be able to wrap ourselves around. And it’s so beautiful to see because you might remember that when Jacob gets the blessing, Isaac wants to bless his older son Esau.

Rebecca, mom Rebecca, says to Jacob, “€œYou are the one destined for the blessing. Not only that, but you bought it from your brother Esau. So, now you, your father isn’t going to see it and understand it for various reasons–“€ (we haven’t got time to go into) “€œYou must now go and put animal skin around your arms because your brother Esau is a hairy sort of guy. Your father is half blind, but he’ll feel you.”€

And sure enough, crucial words, again, King James translation and all the successive translations, Isaac grasps his son Jacob, thinking it’s Esau. And he says, “€œThat’s funny. The hands are the hands of Esau, but the voice is the voice of Jacob.”€ But everybody needs a rabbi because otherwise, you would know that in the Hebrew text, it doesn’t– there is a simple basic meaning that the hands are the hands of Esau and the voice is the voice of Jacob. But it actually goes much deeper.

Your Original Red and Blue

Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

The Hebrew text says, “€œThe hands of Esau will be strengthened when the voice of Jacob gets weakened.”€ What color was Esau? Red. What’s the prime color of Jacob? Well, you’ll see it on the Israeli flag, to this day, the House of Jacob or the house of Israel, blue.

There are your original blue and red. The struggle between Jacob and Esau. The message is simple, when the voice of Jacob, ladies and gentlemen, that’s all of us, “€œWhen the voice of Jacob is weakened, the hands of Esau get strengthened.”€ I didn’t speak for 40 days or 40 hours. I spoke for 40 minutes. And what I really wanted to do and kind of hoped that perhaps I have been doing in a kind of a way, I actually wanted to sing a song.

Now it’s a song that’s an unusual song to hear from a rabbi. And I know that your enormous relief, I’m actually not going to sing it, but ladies and gentlemen, the song I would like to sing is Onward Christians Soldiers. Thank you.

Bring A Speaker To Your Area

Tim:

Hey, this is Tim Barton with WallBuilders.  And as you’ve had the opportunity to listen to WallBuilders Live, you’ve probably heard a wealth of information about our nation, about our spiritual heritage, about the religious liberties, and about all the things that make America exceptional.

And you might be thinking, “€œAs 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’s a tab for scheduling. If you”€™ll click on that tab, you’ll notice there’s a list of information from speakers bio’s, 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:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Special thanks to Rabbi Daniel Lapin for the presentation at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. If you just tuned in in the middle of a program today, you picked up on the third part of that teaching. The first and second parts are yesterday and the day before and they’re available on our website right now at WallBuildersLive.com. We’re back with David and Tim.

Guys, I had no idea the whole blue, red, how all that worked in the beginning, how they got switched with the Republicans being red state Democrats blue state.

Tim:

That was fascinating. I remember the conference when I heard that for the first time. Being in a roomful of legislators, everybody’s eyes were open, their mouths were dropped.

David:

Well, I remember when it happened and I remember the next election, it reversed. And I just thought, “€œOh, I got it wrong last time.”€ Because they did, as he pointed out, they switched it after that election and I remember when that happened. But I remember thinking, “€œOh, somehow I got it reversed.”€ But I didn’t get it reversed, the media actually switched it.

The Strategy Behind the Color Switch

Tim:

Yeah. And not only just switching it, it wasn’t a random, “€œHey, we want a different color.”€ The strategic thought behind it that, “€œWe don’t want to be associated with the communists and the red. And so we’re going to do something different.”€ Not only can the Rabbi Lapin reveal Biblical truth, political history, from a guy who’s not originally American, right? I think he”€™s from South Africa I believe and comes to America.

David:

As he points out, he is an African-American. Now, when he says that, people say, “€œWait a minute, you’re white.”€ “€œYeah, but I’m from Africa and I’m now a naturalized American.”€

Rick:

That”€™s right.

David:

So, he”€™s an African American.

Tim:

Yeah, a little different than the normal thought of African-American. Although technically, he’s exactly correct. But when he can come here and explain things about American history to us, to me that’s even more fascinating of what all he knows. And as he wrapped it up today with some political thoughts, there’s so much spiritual underpinning. As he talked about, you can’t separate religion from what you do.

And we’ve tried to separate the spiritual and the physical and we forget the reason some of these things are here is because it’s spiritual, it”€™s not just physical. Really just such powerful stuff. In fact, I”€™d encourage our listeners, go back the last two days today and get the podcast, listen to it again. Because what Rabbi Lapin is communicating is such important truth for us to know.

Where Did Our Political Colors Originate From? Everybody Needs A Rabbi

Rick:

You can get all three parts at the website, WallBuildersLive.com right now by going to the archive section. Be sure to share it with your friends and family too. This is great wisdom and it’s something that we need to be getting in the hands of people so that we can fight well. So we can fight with some wisdom to actually get going out there winning the culture war.

We appreciate you listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.