Randy Forbes At The ProFamily Legislators Conference “€“ Part 2: Progressive groups have been implementing 21st century strategies successfully for years. But it only takes a small percentage of the population to make a huge impact. Tune in to learn what you can do to impact the future of our nation by taking action today!

Air Date: 12/24/2019

Guest: Randy Forbes

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. It’s WallBuilders Live where we talk about today’s highest topics on policy and faith in the culture, always from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And today, we”€™re going to be actually having a presentation on that from Congressman Randy Forbes. My name is Rick Green. I am a former Texas legislator and America’s constitution coach. Normally, we”€™re here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders and Tim Biden, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders.

But all three of us are going to take you out to the pro-family legislators’ conference where we are going to pick up on a presentation we started yesterday with Congressman Randy Forbes. Now, if you missed yesterday, don’t panic. You can listen and you’ll still enjoy today’s program for sure, but you can also go to wallbuilderslive.com and listen to yesterday’s program which was the first half of that presentation from Congressman Randy Forbes. It’s a great opportunity to get an insight into what leaders are doing to save our constitutional republic and what you as a citizen can do as well.

We want to challenge you to listen today and then take action, be a part of the solution. One of the easiest things you can do, by the way, is go to wallbuilderslive.com, click on the contribute button and invest in freedom by donating to this program. We impact thousands and thousands of people across the nation. They get active, they get engaged, and help to save America’s constitutional republic.

Join Us!

And when you donate to WallBuilders Live, you are a part of that impact. We”€™re a listener-supported program. That means without listeners supporting, we would no longer be a program. You”€™re the ones that make it possible and we thank you. all of you across the country, that have been contributing. Thank you so much for being a part of the program. Make that contribution today and you’ll be investing in freedom. Let’s go to the pro-family legislators’ conference and pick up with Congressman Randy Forbes where we left off yesterday.

21st Century Strategy

Randy: With 21st-century strategy, I’m not trying to find out ultimately where I’m going. I’m trying to fight to learn to the start line because it is going to constantly be evolving as I begin to do something in my appointed position. I’ve got to be able to adjust and my adjustment is dependent upon this next thing which is called innovation. Now, if you take away nothing else, make sure you’ve taken away this. This is what Disney bases every single one of its decisions on today. I can assure it’s what the left bases their decision because they’ve put it in books and they’ve written about it.

And here’s the difference in innovation, between linear innovation and intersectional innovation. Linear innovation is what Elon Musk does. He takes a battery, puts in the car, all of a sudden it”€™s a different product and he’s made innovation but it’s continuing on the same line. Intersectional innovation is when I bring people into a room and they are different, have different thoughts, they”€™re looking at something and what ends up is totally different than anything we’ve got in the room.

If you look at all the studies and I bring in experts in finance and they are conservative experts and I put them all in a room. Or if I take in the next room, I bring in experts in finance and they are all liberal and I put them in a room. Or if they are social studies people and they”€™re all conservative and I bring them in a room or if they”€™re all liberal and I bring them in a room and I ask them to project the future and predict the future.

Intersectional Innovation

The studies are overwhelming, they will be wrong. And the reason they will be wrong is because what they do is when they look at the data points, instead of looking at all the data points, they reach over the data points that substantiate what they already believed and so, they then continue that curve line on and they don’t see the changes. What intersectional innovation is is when I bring experts in who look at things differently.  So I might bring in an economist and a social person. I might bring in a conservative, I might bring in a liberal. I bring them all in and I say “Let’s look at this with a totally different set of eyes.” And over and over again, the studies show they”€™re better at projecting the future and where they are.

I want to just tell you one thing because I’m one of you. We listen to ourselves. We want to hear ourselves, we want to reinforce ourselves. We had a major presidential election that we lost. Afterward, I brought in all my staff and said, “What went wrong?” I had a young staffer, he said it better than I could have said it. He said, “€œWe just talk to ourselves and we listen to ourselves and we don’t look anywhere else.”€ I’m going to tell you, if we want to win this battle, this is what they are doing. We better start learning how to do this kind of innovation.

Now, let me show you this because this is what they are going to do to you. If they haven’t done this, this is what their principles of 21st-century strategy are utilizing today. I don’t care where they are attacking you. I don’t care if it’s in your community.

Change the Legitimacy Gap

I don’t care if it’s you personally, this is coming to a theatre near you. And here’s what they do. The first thing they have to do is change the legitimacy gap. And that means this, I’ve got to walk in and I’ve got to say that you were not elected properly. I’ve got to find an affair that you had. I’ve got to say that you are stupid. I’ve got to say that you are racist. I’ve got to do something to change the legitimacy gap to bring you down.

The second thing is I need a disruptive policy issue. It doesn’t matter what it is. When we start it across the country, they are different ones in different places. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s disruptive. They use that disruptive policy to build networks. They then use those networks to gain that competitive advantage and then they use that competitive advantage to change the landscape.

Over and over, we’ll get calls across the country from people saying, “We”€™re in a crisis. They are attacking us. We”€™re going to hold a press conference. We”€™re going to bring all these people to get these people.”€ We say, “€œWhoa, whoa. Whoa, what you need to do is to break down these components and see how we”€™re responding to their components and what they are doing or else your press conference is not going to do you any good at all.”€

Front Sight Handgun Training Course

Hey friends! Rick Green here, from WallBuilders Live! What do Dennis Prager, Larry Elder, Ben Shapiro, Rick Green, Tim Barton, David Barton – what do all these folks have in common other than the fact that they’re conservative commentators that defend the Constitution and educate America on the Constitution?

They’re all raving about Front Sight Firearms Training Institute. In fact, if you go to my website right now today at RickGreen.com, you can watch the video of Dennis Prager training at Front Sight, or Larry Elder, or Tim Barton, or myself out there training at Front Sight. It’s an opportunity for you to learn how to defend yourself and your family to make sure that you are ready and able to do that. It is a fantastic place to train. They train 30 to 40,000 people a year, and they’re just wonderful to work with.

And, you can go with us! We’re headed back out. We’re going to have a great time out there as the WallBuilders family and if you’re a supporter of WallBuilders, we have an amazing deal for you. It”€™s actually going to cost you 1/10th the normal price to attend this two-day handgun training because you”€™re going with us. And, you”€™ll also get the Constitution crash course. I”€™ll be teaching on the Constitution, you”€™ll get the intellectual ammunition that you need to defend the Second Amendment and our Constitution. As well as getting physical training on how to defend yourself and your family.

It Is for Everyone

And, this is for everyone – guys, gals, everyone should take this class. No matter how much you”€™ve shot your whole life or if you”€™ve never touched a gun, learn how to defend your family. We”€™re going to be going several times throughout the year and we would love to have you be a part of that. Check it out at RickGreen.com today to find out the dates, get all the specifics, and get all of your questions answered. Check out RickGreen.com today to join us on this Front Sight trip for both your constitutional and handgun defense training.

How Can Conservatives Benefit from 21st-Century Principles? 

Randy: How do we use 21st-century principles for our benefit? Well, the first thing is we’ve got to start to remember our strategic options. We love to think lofty thoughts. We love to have great grand strategies. What you have to have in the 21st-century? You have to have to have strategies that are executable and then you have to have them at the fastest decision point possible. If you’ve got to have a board of directors vote for your strategy, it’s probably never going to happen because the time is going to move by. We try to make strategies that individuals can implement and get done so that they can move fast. And the third thing is you can’t use the same thing. It’s got to constantly be refreshed.

Now, this is the second point to take away with you. And this is the one I have to apologize because it’s that one that says, it’s uncomfortable, I have to say this. Here is the three models of doing strategy”€”and you pick which one you want but let me just say the first one. All of you understand this model, the task force model.

Appoint 10 people to the task force and I say, “Well, you guys create a strategy to come back to whatever somebody is doing.” We love this, we are comfortable with this. Let me say, we’ve used this in the military. We”€™ve used it for the Manhattan project when we tried to get an answer for the atomic bomb and ultimately did. And there is a lot of reasons why we like this that I’ll come back to in just a minute.

A Consensus Model

The second one is what we call the consensus model. All of you have been in organizations or groups that did this. Bring 40 groups together and here is what you do. You have a Power Point and you say, “Okay, who wants strategy number one? Who wants strategy number two? Who wants strategy number three?” Worse model, and I’ll tell you why in just a minute. This is what they have developed and we don’t have a clue of doing this.

This is what we developed in our military in the 1980s. It’s a cultural strategy and what happens is you don’t have fair strategies coming out of one task force. You don’t have three strategies coming out of one committee. You have strategic, you have taught people how to be strategic at every point along in your network so every day what’s happened when people tell me where are their strategies coming from? They are coming from all over the country. They may have 100 of them popping up. 90 of them crash and burn but 10 of them work and then they replicate those.

We built this in our military beginning in the 80s. It is still what separates us from the Chinese. The Chinese don’t know how to build this yet. They are trying. They are not there yet. Now, the reason that I tell you this is so important is, here is why we love the task force model. I’m comfortable with it, I understand it. I know it, I can control it. I put the right people on the task force, I can control what it does.  I put the right channel in the task force, I can control what it does. There’s nothing wrong with it. It still works. It’s still good.

The Danger

Here is the danger with the consensus model. The consensus model, the one thing we would teach at the war college, never ever use a consensus model because you’ll get a watered-down strategy. You never go from consensus to strategy; you go from strategy to consensus.

And imagine if I were to go to the pentagon and I put up five different strategies and I ask all my aircraft carrier guys, “Which one do you want?” They’d all want the ones with aircraft carriers. If I asked the pilots, they’d all want the ones with more planes; the army, ones with more soldiers. And so, that one is the worst possible model. We tell people please, in the military, never use this model. This one works.

And here is the danger. If I’m trying to beat a culture of strategy with a task force model, it is like competing with an assembly line with a mom and pop garage where you”€™re making cars one at a time. It’s very difficult to do it. Now, if you want to be successful in the 21st-century, you need two things. It used to be, we would say strategy and money. Believe me, you are going to need the strategy and the networks today and that can build the money. If you do not build the networks, your strategy is worthless.

I just gave a lecture at the war college about a year ago and I told them, “This is a new paradigm because you guys used to view strategy like you were the relief picture sitting out in the bullpen and you were waiting for the manager to bring you in. That is no longer the case. You’ve got to have the strategy, you’ve got to have the networks if we are going to win.

Networking

To run networks, you’ve got to have the right strategic opportunities. These are the ones I described earlier but also, you have to have the right messaging. So many times as conservatives, we focus on messaging as this, “How do I persuade the other side that I am right?” That’s not the only messaging. Messaging, we have to understand why we are doing it. Now, the main thing I want to point out is one of the key things that we do messaging for is to give voice to the values of the people that are out there already believing the things that we believe. And sometimes we don’t pay a lot of attention to that.

One of the best examples of this was Ronald Regan. You all remember when Ronald Regan would go around saying, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me.”€ I thought I was this hot shot political guy. I came out of law school. As Rick said, I was the valedictorian and I got a little bit full of myself, I guess, at that particular point. I’d listen to the president as he would talk and I would tell my wife, “I wish he would stop staying that over and over again. I wish he would get on to something of substance.”

Finally, I’m at dinner one night with my father-in-law who worked at Ford Motor Company as a union member for 45 years. Out of the clear blue, he says this, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me.” I looked at my wife and said what an idiot I was. He was giving them a message not to persuade people but to give voice to where they already are; we just paid so little attention to that.

National Strategic Center

Now, one of the things that we are doing right now is we are trying to help. Look, we just built this, the first ever national strategic center. Let me tell you what it’s designed for. It’s not designed to build the smartest people in the world. It’s not designed to create that bag of tricks that we can pull out. But what we are doing is analyzing and taking a part in distilling those principles by looking at what the anti-faith and the anti-conservative people are doing and saying, “Here are the principles we”€™re gleaning from them. Here are the principles we are seeing that we are doing that are working and not doing and then sharing those with you.”

America’s Hidden History

DAVID:

Hi, this is David Barton.

TIM:

And, this is Tim Barton, and we want to let you know about a series that’s happening right now on TBN on
Thursday night. TBN is the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Every Thursday night, there’s a series that we’ve filmed called America’s Hidden History.

And, this season is called”€œAmerica’s Hidden Heroes.”€ The reason is, we highlight heroes from American
history. For years we’ve been focusing on the forgotten history and heros of the nation.

And now, we have a TV show just highlighting some of those heroes.

DAVID:

These are inspiring stories about some of the greatest people maybe you’ve never heard about. We go on
location to the sites and show you where the events happened. It’s the stories of folks like Bronco Charlie, Stagecoach Mary, Jedediah Smith, Robert Smalls, and so many inspiring folks.

TIM:

Now, this happens every Thursday night, and the time is gonna be different based on where you live.
Either way, we think this is something that will so encourage and inspire you in learning some of these great stories from America’s Hidden History.

Things We Must Do

Randy: The first thing we do is take ideas. How many of you have had meetings for strategy over and over again and say, “Well, let’s meet and get a strategy,” and nothing comes out of it? There are ideas that flowed out there. What we do is take those ideas and we bring those ideas into workable fashion called tool kits that we give back to you and say, “Now, here, you can do this,”€ and individuals can execute this and actually look, this is what the other side does. We just haven’t been able to master that yet

Second thing we do is we will take things that people are already doing in communities and say how do we scale that now so we can take it across the country and use it in other places? And the third thing we do is when you”€™re in crisis, we will take in this one and we bring the best strategies from the country virtually into our worrying literally by connecting them and saying, “Now, how do we respond to this? How do these guys deal with this particular situation?”

Let me tell you what you need to be afraid of. This is their strategies. They used to have them, they are now putting them out. This is what their network looks like. Notice you can’t read that. You can’t read it because it’s so big. They built that network. And it’s important to remember, on networks, everybody doesn’t just come inside and just say we are in the network. Some of these people don’t even know they are in the network but they”€™re still in the network doing what they are doing. These are just some of the things that they’ve accomplished.

“Do we even need a constitution?”

Look at this. This is the latest one in Harpers, “Do we even need a constitution?” And that’s where they are going today. Now, the last couple of things that I’ve got is this. When we”€™re looking at strategies, one of the temptations we have is to say, “What are they doing and how do we copy that?” That’s the worst thing we can do because you know what? They are better at what they do than we are and even if we get to be X, they will be 2X.

If I am looking at a carrier group and being attacked by China and they are throwing spears at us, I’m not going to go say, “Let’s go get a bunch of spears and throw back.” What we look at is the impact and how we respond to the impacts. This is the impact that their strategies have had on us. First of all, they’ve tarnished our Christian brand. When you and I were younger, it was positive to be a Christian. Today, they changed it and made it toxic.

Secondly, they’ve distorted our message. What you and I say is not what the general public is hearing out there. Third thing, they’ve isolated Christian leaders. All of you know, everybody tells you, “We are with you. We are there with you.” They are just six miles back and you feel like you are out on an island. The other thing is they’ve increased the cost of public faith when you can lose everything you have if you stand for your faith and they”€™re systematically removing faith from wherever they are in the country.

Now, first of all, we need to develop the networks, and that’s one of the things we want to help you do, or the strategies. But secondly, we want to help you build your networks. Now, this is just an example of the prototype.

Faith Impact Network

This is the Faith Impact Network. We started with a congressional prayer caucus in congress. We then added the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation. We then added 40 states of legislative prayer caucuses. Many of you are part of that. We then added a whole ring of interior organizations that we put together with that and then we added this network of allies. Now, the reason I show you that is not because this is the only network. This is a network out there to benefit you.

But I only tell you this. The principles that we use to build this network, you better use in your congressional or your legislative districts because if you are not building these kind of networks within your districts or your state, you will lose in 21st-century and so we need to study and learn how to build those networks and not wait till election time comes when you are trying to deal with them.

Now, I don’t have but a couple of minutes left so I want to answer two questions. And remember I told you at the outset, I can’t walk through all of these principles with you. All I can do is hopefully wet your appetite to see how important this is for the 21st-century. But the question that I always get at the end is, is it just too overwhelming? Do they have too much money? Have they gone too far wherever we are? And the second question is, is it too late?

It Only Takes 9%

Well, to the first one, I want to give a shout out to David. We were in a meeting and David this is your number and I may have it wrong so you correct me if the number is wrong today. Sometimes it changes to 8% or 10% or whatever. But we were in a meeting and we were looking at some strategic things for the country and after we’d spent probably a day, David came up with a great historical tip and he just reminded us all. During the revolutionary war, about 30% or so of the colonies were in favor of the fight and for freedom. About 25% or so, maybe a little less, were actually for Great Britain. And then about 50% of the people really were apathetic. Do those numbers mean anything to you in today’s world? They are pretty similar. But David said the key number was 9%. He said only 9% of the people in the colonies did anything at all for the effort either where to check or a fault in the war. Only 9%.

I went home that night, and this so often happens when David’s put a thought in my mind. I didn’t sleep much that night. I came back the next day and I said, “We’ve been all wrong. We’ve been trying to get 70% or 50%. We’ve been looking at this polling or whatever.” If you look historically, 9% of the men and women in any country in the world, if they are committed and they are passionate and they are trained strategically, can transform that country. We’ve got that 9%. We just have to find them, bring them together, organize them, and we can turn this country around.

Constitution Alive!

Have you
ever wanted to learn more about the United States Constitution but just felt like, man, the classes are boring or it’s just that old language from 200 years ago or I don’t know where to start? People want to know. But, it gets
frustrating because you don’t know where to look for truth about the Constitution either.

Well, we’ve got a special program for you available now called Constitution Alive! with David Barton and Rick Green. It’s actually a teaching done on the Constitution at Independence Hall in the very room where the Constitution was framed. We take you both to Philadelphia, the Cradle of Liberty and Independence Hall and to the WallBuilders”€™ library where David Barton brings the history to life to teach the original intent of our Founding Fathers.

We call it the QuickStart guide to the Constitution because in just a few hours through these videos you will learn the Citizen’s Guide to America’s Constitution.  You’ll learn what you need to do to help save our Constitutional Republic. It’s fun! It’s entertaining! And, it’s going to inspire you to do your part to preserve freedom for future generations. It’s
called Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green. You can find out more information on our
website now at WallBuilders.com.

Desire

Randy: Our problem is not time. It’s not that we don’t have enough time or time is too late for us. Here is our problem. I go round to so many places today and I just asked people, “Do you have a desire to win?” You’d be surprised how many people have no desire to win anymore. They are just back on their heels or they”€™ll ask you this question, “Desire to win what?” If they do raise their hand, the group of people that raise their hands and say, “I have a desire to win.” I ask them the next question which is this, “Do you have the will to win?” Which is a big difference than the desire to win. That’s the commitment and the dedication to do it.

And then again, another, you had to organize and actually transform college football in the early 90s. The will to win without the will to prepare is useless. Do we have the will to prepare? But here is the final thing. Every single thing you do in your life, every step, every step, every action you take is going to fall into one of two categories. It’s going to either be non-strategic or it’s going to be strategic. Doesn’t it make sense that we make it strategic? And if that makes sense, doesn’t it make sense that we don’t just open the curtain to 21st-century?

Take Action Today!

We tear down the curtain and we come in and say before we start saying we”€™re going to be doing strategies, we are going to begin to explore and understand what strategy really is. We”€™re going to take this apart. We”€™re going to study what the other side is doing. We”€™re going to extrapolate those principles that work and then we are going to overlay them on what we do and what our plans are. And I just promise you this, if we do that, we can transform this country.

Rick: That was Congressman Randy Forbes at the pro-family legislators’ conference, speaking to legislators from across the nation, equipping and inspiring them to go back and make good law and kill bad law in their state legislatures. But we wanted to bring that presentation to you because you as citizen can do the same thing, you can impact what the future is going to look like for our children and grandchildren by engaging in the process.

Now, I want to give you several ways to take action today because you might say, “Well, Rick, I’m not a legislator. That presentation was for”€¦” Listen, every single one of us, we the people, we are the ones that control the political process in America and what the future looks like depends upon what we do as citizens. So I’m going to give you several pieces of action if you will that you can take.

The Easiest Thing to Do

Another one, the easiest thing you can do, I’ve already mentioned it earlier in the program, go to wallbuilderslive.com, make a donation there by clicking on the contribute button. Those finances go to train these legislators, to train young leaders and pastors, to do constitutional classes across the country. All the different things we”€™re doing, that’s what you”€™re investing in when you make that contribution to wallbuilderslive.com. Many of you across the nation have done that and I just want to give a shout out to several of you.

Thank you Tamera in Kansas, thank you Terry in Florida, Daniel in Michigan, Angie in New Mexico. We’ve got $25 contributions, $50 contributions, $500 contributions. Abigail in Nebraska, Patricia in Florida, Grant and Sarah in Iowa, James in Texas, Zachary in Washington, Rebecca in Texas, Terry in Texas, Bob in Ohio. We’ve got Judy in Illinois, Margaret in Arizona. All of you folks that are contributing, thank you, thank you, thank you.  All of those contributions go a long way to allowing us to be more effective. So, lives, fortunes, sacred honors, what the founding fathers gave, I’m asking you to give a little bit of your fortune investing in WallBuilders Live today.

Randy Forbes At The ProFamily Legislators Conference

Now, lives is your time. So, yes, I’m going to ask you to give us your time and to do that, by looking for some young people to send to Patriot Academy. Go to patriotacademy.com to find out more. We do state capital boot camps across the nation where we bring young people in and they have the change to serve as legislators and learn how to make a difference and how to be good citizens, patriotacademy.com. You can contribute there or you can find a young person to sponsor and send to Patriot Academy. You can share those links with young people, 16 to 25 out there or military veterans. We have a military veterans program that we do the first week of August at the Texas State Capital where the senate is made up of military vets from across the nation and the house is made up of young people from across the nation. Find out more on patriotacademy.com.

While you are there, consider attending one of our constitutional defense courses. That’s a chance for you to come study the constitution directly with me, America’s constitution coach, and at the same time, learn how to defend yourself and your family. We do handgun training during the day and constitution training in the evening. Check out constitutional defense courses at patriotacademy.com. There’s a lot of ways you can make a difference. You can be a constitution coach. You can actually host a constitution class in your home or at your church. Find out more on patriotacademy.com as well or the wallbuilderslive.com. Thanks so much for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.