Judge In Texas Will Be Able To Keep Prayer In Court And More – Join us for an incredible good news Friday! A judge in Texas is able to keep prayer in his court, more people are casting their votes early in Georgia and more!

Air Date: 10/28/2022

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:

This is the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live. We’re taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. And we’re glad you’re along for the ride. We’ve always approached it that way. It’s part of rebuilding the walls, is what WallBuilders is all about, that scripture in Nehemiah that says, arise and rebuild the walls, that we may no longer be a reproach. It’s time for us to rebuild the foundations of America. We thank you for joining us in that. You can learn more about our program at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. That’s wallbuilderslive.com.

My name is Rick Green. I’m America’s Constitution coach and a former Texas legislator. And I get to serve here with David and Tim Barton. David Barton, of course, America’s premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders, Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of Wallbarters. Again, wallbuilderslive.com to learn more, that’s also the place you can make that one-time or monthly contribution. And we appreciate you coming alongside us on that. That allows us to reach more people, train more pastors, train more young people, all the different things we’re doing here to rebuild the culture. And it also allows us to come alongside you even more, produce more materials and educational materials, things that will equip you and give you the ability to lead the charge in your community. We often say you can be the catalyst for a restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles. The tools are there. You just got to step up and take advantage of them.

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Alright, guys, let’s jump into some good news. David’s, first up, what’s our first piece of good news going to be? David, what part of the country we headed to for that good news?

David:

This comes out of a situation in Texas. This has been going for a number of years. There’s a judge down in Montgomery County, and he has opened his court with prayer for a long time. He allows voluntary chaplains, voluntary folks ministers to come in and say a prayer, and it rotates. He doesn’t have an official chaplain, but he just let somebody from the community do that. And so it was challenged, as you can imagine, with some of the Freedom from Religion Foundation folks. And so they said, you can’t do that. You can’t open with prayer. And so it’s interesting that it’s gone through a lot of decisions we were asked to get involved with it. Part of what the Supreme Court did with the Bladensburg decision a few years ago on keeping the cross up at the war memorial in Maryland, they said, look, if there’s historical precedent for this, then we’re going to go with historical precedent.

And by the way, we’ve seen that even recently with the brewing decision on the Second Amendment, that you’ve had a judge in New York go and say, well, I don’t really agree with where this is leading. But Justice Thomas in that decision said, you got to go with what the Second Amendment was at the time it was ratified in 1791. And in that particular case, it dealt with the fact that in New York, they’re saying, hey, if you don’t have a serial number on a gun, that gun is illegal. And he said, you know what? There weren’t serial numbers in 1791, so New York’s law is unconstitutional because the Founding fathers didn’t require serial numbers.

And so the fact that they’re going back to history in a number of areas is a really healthy thing as far as keeping judicial activism out. If the people don’t like it, then the people can change the process constitutionally the way they should. But you shouldn’t have a judge stepping through or legislature stepping through and said, hey, because we disagree with what the proper procedure is, we’re going to make some activist stuff here.

And so what we see in Texas is this came down and the court said, look, if there’s long standing historical precedent, this thing’s okay. And so what happened was they asked us to get involved. And so we went through, and we started back in the 1790s, where that literally you had at that point in time Supreme Court justices having prayer in the US Supreme Court chamber. So this is what they stepped into, and this is what they thought should occur and what they thought should happen. And then we just went decade after decade after decade after decade, all the way through the 1980s, judges were still having prayer and courtroom, as they’ve been having for over 200 years.

So that got in. That went to the court and then the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, they came back and said, no, no, this is absolutely within the parameters of what we’ve historically done in America. We’re not going to change it just because the group disagrees with it. This is what the Constitution recognized and accepted as practice at the time of the Constitution. Those additional the Constitution thought it was completely legitimate to do it. The guys on the US supreme Court, James Wilson, who signed the Constitution, I mean, these other guys, they’re having prayer. William Patterson, who signed the Constitution, they’re having prayer in the courtroom, they didn’t see any problem with it.

So the good news is that now the Fifth Circuit has upheld this, and this appears to be the final word on it. I don’t think there’s any way the Supreme Court is going to pick this up because they’ve already made it pretty clear they’re going historical precedent. So really good news out of Texas and out of the Fifth Circuit and this judge in Texas gets to keep having prayer and having just volunteer chaplains come in and pray to open this court, which is great.

Rick:

Alright, so good news out of Texas. Can I interject good news from New York, does that feel weird? Would you all be shocked if I gave good news from New York? You probably already have it on your list anyway. Somebody’s going to talk about it. I love this. A New York judge has basically told the city, you’re ruling on firing people because they didn’t get the vaccine was arbitrary and capricious. It’s what we’ve been saying all this time. So thankfully, a lot of the city employees going to get hired back, get back pay. David, you said this yesterday on our Foundation of Freedom program, that a lot of this stuff has taken years and we’re finally getting there. Well, more good news on that front.

David:

Just to add to that, Rick, since you’re talking about weird things coming out of the state, you don’t expect it like New York. Early this week, I was in California, and then we went to Nevada and doing things there to help folks, and in California, a ruling came down from a judge in California that protected a Christian baker from not having to do a gay wedding in California. And I was like, no, that’s not possible. How could that be possible in California? Or Tim Is that what you were going to say?

Tim:

Well, I’m just saying, both of you guys are taking stuff that are articles in my stack, and I’m not offended, but I’m getting a little bothered. I’m having to now rearrange my stack a little bit, guys. Come on. Come on.

Rick:

Tim, he’s doing oh, David covered that one up, Rick jumped into that. Yeah.

David:

It was a really goofy time in our history, and there’s a lot of good news, despite the goofiness. That’s good.

Rick:

Well, and most of the time, I don’t know at all the stories you guys share, like I haven’t heard them anywhere. I haven’t seen them on any new sites. So maybe that’s a good sign too that some of this good news is being reported more than it has been over the years as we share these stories on Fridays, most of the time people haven’t heard about it.

Tim:

Well, I think it probably helps too, that you don’t read CNN as much as you used to, so you’re seeing more of the good news.

Rick:

Right. Absolutely.. Absolutely. Alright, Tim, well, what do you have in your stack for good news that David and I haven’t spoiled yet?

Tim:

Well, fortunately, you have not covered this one yet. So there was an article that came out last week in the Epic Times and it was dealing with Georgia and their early voting. And of course, Georgia is one of the several states that worked to pass some election laws to help make sure that there was actually some parameters around the elections. And so we’re going to say secure elections, but it’s a little relative. Certainly people that pay attention, their laws have made things better as far as making sure that there’s some accountability for who votes and how that process works. It didn’t go as far as they could have, but it’s certainly they did things to tighten up and put maybe better levels of security around some of the election process.

Now with that being said, of course, as people might imagine, you have people like Stacey Abrams who had to run for governor and said she got cheated out of it and she’s attempting to stay in the political spotlight. Just lots of crazy stuff she’s been saying. But she’s one of many people that have talked about how in Georgia there is voter suppression and these Republicans are trying to cheat people and cheat minorities, etc, etc, etc.

Well, here is where it’s worth asking a question, right. How do you know if you are good at voter suppression? Well, probably you know you’re good at voter suppression if you can keep the numbers low. And how would you know if they’re low? Well, if you look over the last couple of years, if you can have that lower than it was the last couple of years, you’re doing a good job. Well, right now we are in what’s known as a midterm election. So you have presidential elections, and then two years later you have midterm elections, and two years later you have presidential elections. And it’s well known for the decades and decades and decades that voting numbers have been tracked and people have been paying attention to it, it’s well known that voter turnout is significantly higher in presidential elections than midterm elections. When there’s not a president on the ballot, there’s not as many people that get involved.

With that being said, in Georgia, numbers were released last week and they have identified to this point they’ve had more people early vote in Georgia on the day that they analyzed the data and the numbers, they had more people early vote in off-year election than they had in the presidential election two years prior. And this is after they have passed laws for election security. And actually, if you can compare apples to apples, go back to the last minute and election for 2018, they’ve had a 75% increase from 2018 for early voter showing up and how much has been turning out.

So this notion of voter suppression, the idea that if you pass election security laws or if you’re going to have accountability to make sure that you have to show a voter ID, and if you’re going to have an absentee ballot, you have to have a reason for an absentee ballot, etc, the idea that voter suppression is just ridiculous. Well, now there’s some really good numbers to identify. If the Republicans in Georgia were trying to do voter suppression, they’re really bad at it because all they’ve done is increase the turnout higher than even in a presidential election. And this is an off- year election.

So the good news in Georgia is there are a lot of people showing up, turning out to vote. Voter suppression is not a thing. It’s nonsense. There’s lots of people making their voices heard in Georgia, and that’s good news.

Rick:

So wait, are you suggesting that President Biden was wrong, this is not Jim Crow 2.0? I mean, because he was apparently around when Jim Crow was done since he said he’d been in the Senate for 120 years or whatever it was that he said so. He should know, right? I mean, he should recognize Jim Crow 20. But you’re saying more people are voting, not less.

Tim:

It’s almost like you have political leaders who are saying things for their political advantage that might not be totally accurate. Now I know that’s so far fetched to imagine because politicians are usually the most honest people there are. I’m just going to point out, in this case, Joe Biden actually was incorrect. Although the good news is people at least didn’t understand the words he was saying when he said Jim Crow 2.0, as opposed to other times when he talks and we don’t always know what he’s saying… Exactly. Hey, listen, I got two words “Made in America”.

Rick:

Alright, we got to digest all of that. So we’re going to take a quick break we’ve got more good news coming at you, folks. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. It’s Good News Friday today. Let’s dive right back into the good news, David Barton’s turn. David, where are we headed?

David:

I’m heading back to the legal world for a moment. I talked about a judge earlier that won a great decision out of the Fifth Circuit. But one of the things that folks who want to be attorneys, one thing that will build their resumes, if they can clerk for a federal judge. If they can show that clerk for federal judge, that kind of puts them up in the elite atmosphere they’ve really got some skills and they’ve got a good skill set, and here they are dealing with federal law and federal judges. And if you can clerk for a particularly Court of Appeals judge, that’s really getting rarefied error. And then, of course, if you clerk for a Supreme Court Justice, then that’s really big stuff. So this is a huge resume builder.

And going back to the Fifth Circuit, which is one of the more prominent circuits in the United States, Fifth Circuits over Texas and Mississippi and Louisiana, interesting that a judge there, Justice Jim Ho, has announced that he has had it with certain law schools and their clerks, and they’re not going to get an opportunity to clerk for him, period, at all, because he doesn’t want to do anything to help that law school and those from that law school advance and move forward in the legal community.

And he pointed to Yale. And he said, you know what he’s doing there in the Fifth Circuit, he’s boycotting Yale. He says, I’m a consumer, and I can decide what products I want. And he points to the fact that Yale, they just put a personal administrative believe who criticized President Biden for picking KJB for Supreme Court Justice simply because of her color. He said, wait a minute. You need people who know the law, who know the Constitution, who will do the right thing. Color is not enough. You have to know more. And for saying that, you need to have more than just color to be a Supreme Court justice, Yale ends up suspending this senior lecturer, and now he’s resigned in protest that, look, if you’re not going to let me have free speech.

And then the other thing that Judge Hope wanted to was they recently had a First Amendment forum at Yale, and they had people from opposite sides there. So you have Alliance Defending Freedom on one side and the American Human Society on the other. American Human Society is the atheistic side of the debate. And on the other side, you’ve got Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the premier religion liberty groups, and they were both having a discussion on free speech and why free speech is appropriate. Even if you have different viewpoints, free speech is appropriate.

And there were more than 100 Yale Law students who showed up to protest the Free Speech Forum. So they’re protesting the Free Speech Forum, and even the Associate Dean there at the law school was there and did nothing to stop it. It got so bad that the police had to escort the participants out, the speakers had to be escorted out with police help. And so you got the Associate Dean of the law school sitting there and did nothing to punish the kids who would not let free speech to be covered. He said, “Those are not the kids that I want having any kind of resume builder that they came through the Fifth Circuit and they clerk for me.” He said so I’m boycotting yell. He said, we have a right to choose what we want, and I’m not going to choose law schools that are fighting the Constitution openly and fighting its principles.

And so Judge Jim Ho on the Fifth Circuit, great choice, great move, and hopefully that sends a signal to other law schools because they do want their clerks, and that’s part of the way they sell their law school. Look, we have X% of our students are clerks on federal courts. That’s part of how they sell the law school. He does not want to be part of helping those students advance when they are so anti Constitution and so anti American principle. So good news from Jim Ho in the Fifth Circuit.

Rick:

Alright, Tim, you’re up next. Where are we headed?

Tim:

We’re in Salt Lake City for this one. And there is a high school in Salt Lake City, it’s Copper Hills High School. And there was a Turning Point USA chapter out there. And Turning Point USA, if people don’t know that, that’s what Charlie Kirk has started a lot of college campuses, high school campuses, and they’re trying to reach the rising generation with really a lot of the logic of the conservative and Christian position, why it makes the most sense, and they do a really good job well at Copper Hills High School.

There was a student, Matthew Parkinson, who had gone through the process with the school. He was a member of the group and he worked with the school, and he might have been the only one, he’s just the name and this article I’m looking at. So at least he was one of the ones working with the school the group is set up, And they had gotten permission at lunch that they could have a table in the lunch room and they could have conversations with students. They could distribute materials and really promote some of this conservative Christian position and ideology.

Well, the problem was that there was a leader from the school who saw what was going on.

They went over to the table and they shut the table down. They said, no, you’re not allowed to talk with students anymore. And they said, you even need to take down your posters. Now, why would they need to take down their posters? Well, the school official said, because your poster does not present both sides of the issue. Now, what are they maybe not presenting both sides of the issue to?

Well, Turning Point USA is against things like socialism and the idea that you’re not going to present both sides of the issue as if what are both sides? That socialism is really bad, but it’s also really good? No, socialism is always bad. Very, very bad. There’s not a positive negative side of socialism when you look at what it produces or Marxism or communism. And so in the midst of this, like in many of these cases, there are some great legal groups that will come to defend students in free speech cases or religious liberty cases.

So Alliance Defending Freedom, they got involved in this process, and their attorneys actually, Frank Mylar is one of the 4,600 attorneys for ADF. He sent a letter to the school, and the school recanted and said, oh, yeah, we are sorry. As he pointed out, you can’t give access to all these other groups and not to this group, there’s equal access under the law, etc.

And actually, one of the things also he noted in this letter is that whatever school official, administrator, whoever it was, did this, they had told them they were not allowed to use the name, the title, Turning Point USA, for whatever reason. I can only imagine what the school official told them you can’t use that title. You can’t use that name anymore. And so he said they should be allowed to use the name, the title of the organization. So the school official or somebody in the school administration came back, right, we’re so sorry. They can go back. They can have their table, they can put up their posters, just like every other group does.

And guys, we’ve talked for a long time on the program. One of our good friends, Kelly Shackleford from First Liberty in Dallas, one of the points he’s made often is that they win all of these cases all the time. He says sometimes the hardest part is finding people who are willing to stand up and fight the fight so that we can win. He says we win every one of these battles, we just don’t always have people who are willing to fight.

So I want to say at least, right, the name we know from this article is Matthew Parkinson. I want to say kudos to Matthew Parkinson for being willing to stand up and have some opposition when literally the high school administration is coming against him, trying to close them down, whatever teachers were against him as well and take down your posters and you can’t do this. And whoever helps connect him with ADF, just overall great job. And of course, ADF is one of the many great groups out there that really the largest law firm out there that’s fighting to defend some of these rights, an incredible organization. But this is good news that yet again, we have the example of someone who’s standing up, recognizing that what’s happening is not right, it’s not legal, it’s not justified.

And then we have one of these great law firms getting involved and we’re seeing these victories happen when people are willing to stand up and fight. So this is great news that now Turning Point USA. They are back on that campus and allowed to engage students during the lunch hour talking about both conservative and Christian values.

Rick:

Yeah, very good news. And that’s, again, one of those situations where sometimes it’s just out of ignorance that a teacher or professor or whatever will stop an activity from happening. And sometimes it’s just because they hate Christianity, they hate God, they hate the Constitution and they want to stop it. We don’t know sometimes which one their motivation is, but we need these legal organizations to defend and allow this freedom to take place. Okay, David, I think we got time for one more. Go ahead, man, what’s your last piece of good news today?

David:

Yeah, we got time for one. I’m going to start with questions for you guys. What is a primary source that promotes sexism, sex, violence, genocide, slavery, rape and viciality?

Tim:

That promotes that?

David:

That promotes that. What is it that promotes and here’s the part too, what is it that causes religious trauma syndrome? Do you know what religious trauma syndrome is and what causes it?

Rick:

Religious trauma.

Tim:

I can certainly imagine what people would say is religious trauma syndrome on some level. You know, at this point, I’m thinking it’s somewhere between mine-comf and some kind of extreme Islam on some level, but I don’t know. I have no idea what we’re talking about.

David:

Well, according to Escambia County Schools, the position that they took was that the Bible promotes religious trauma syndrome, and the Bible promotes sexism. Sex, violence, genocide, slavery, rape, and viciality and therefore the Bible can’t be in the library and the schools in Escambia County.

Rick:

Well, I always say the Bible has the answers for everything. I didn’t know the Bible was the answer to that question.

David:

Yeah, nobody who reads the Bible thinks the Bible to answer that question. As a matter of fact, there were complaints filed against the Bible that this has got to be taken out of libraries, out of the schools, et cetera. And here’s one of the comments that when you’re okay with the violence and incest of the Old Testament of the Bible, that’s theocracy, not democracy. And I point out, nowhere is the Bible okay with violence. The Bible is really clear. For example, in the laws of Moses, incest is not permitted. And incest, what do we call the laws of consanguinity, how you can’t marry your first cousin, you can’t marry your sister in law, etc. I mean, that’s really clear in the Bible.

Tim:

Well, and I’ll go even further, right. One of the problems that it sounds like this person is having is they’re looking at things. The Bible also records the history of humanity what people actually did, and it doesn’t always say what they did was right. In fact, in many cases, people got in trouble for doing some of these things. And the idea that the Bible promotes these, well, that’s totally inaccurate. The Bible doesn’t anywhere promote bestiality. In fact, I’m not even sure that occurs in the Bible. Although the Bible says it has a command specifically against speciality. It says if somebody does that, they should be put to death. But this idea that because the Bible is telling sometimes a story of what people did and even the judgment they received for doing that, that the Bible would be promoting or advocating that, that’s just ludicrous.

David:

And see that’s exactly what I was going to point about American history. American history has all of this has occurred in American history. That doesn’t mean we promote it by teaching American history. American history makes it really clear that this is bad, we have laws against it. So there were these objections filed. So Escambia County initially said, alright, Bible’s got to go. And then they looked at it and said, no, wait a minute, that’s silly.

And as it turns out, in Florida, there is a state law in Florida, and the state law says, “The district school board may install in the public schools in the district a secular program of education, including, but not limited to an objective study of the Bible and of religion.” So since you have a state law in Florida that says it’s okay to have the Bible in schools, the superintendent there in the Escambia County said, no, no, Bible goes back in. We’re not taking the Bible out of the library.

So it’s crazy to see the arguments that are put out by the other side and why the Bible has to go, which tells me they have never read the Bible. Somebody who has picked and choose stories, and they picked and choose a story on incest, but then don’t look at all the verses that condemn incest. And it’s like picking and choosing a story on violence in American history, but not looking at all the times that we deal with that and say, no, that’s inappropriate. So good news out of Florida; they have a law that allowed them to keep the Bible in schools and they had somebody who got past all the nonsensical rhetoric of the folks on the left who are making claims about the Bible that just don’t stand up if you actually read the Bible. Maybe that’s a good thing for them, is actually they should read the Bible before they make the claims about what it says.

Rick:

Alright, folks, that’s all the time. We have for Good News today. But there is more good news at our website wallbuilderslive.com, check that out today, you go in the archive section. And when you hear a program, you like share it with your friends and family, that’s a way you can be a force, multiplier and help us restore America’s Constitutional republic.

Reminder about the program special program I mentioned at the beginning of the program today, chance for you to come through the Constitutional Defense course. Come learn to be proficient with your handgun and defend your family while also getting good constitutional knowledge. So it’s a great combination of a Constitution class and a handgun defense class. And we’re going to be doing it right close to my house. We’ll actually have dinner together at my house on the front porch to kick off that event. Check it out at patriotacademy.com. Look for that picture of ‘constitutional defense’, click on that and you can learn more about those two dates, one at the end of November, one at the beginning of December.

God bless you. Have a great day and a great weekend. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.