States That No Longer Have Mask Mandates – Georgia Made A Sanctuary State – There are some great things happening on the local and state level! 19 states no longer have mask mandates, Gov. Kemp makes Georgia a sanctuary state for people of faith, and so much more!

Air Date: 03/26/2021

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. This is WallBuilders Live, looking forward to talking about the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. And of course, today since it’s Friday, that will be a lot of good news on looking at the issues of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

David and Tim Barton have been gathering good news stories. And I know when I say that, you’re probably thinking, how is that possible? There’s so many bad things happening in America today. Well, friends, it depends on where you look, no question, we’ve got huge challenges. But because of people just like you get engaged in the process, living out your freedom, doing your duty under the Constitution, we are seeing a lot of victories across the country, mostly at the local level and the state level, obviously, a disaster at the federal level. But a lot of good stuff happening at the local and state level, and we want to bring you some of that good news today here on this Good News Friday.

Now, if you listen to today’s program, and even with the wonderful good news stories we’re going to share. It’s not enough. There’s more good news at our website. So be sure to visit our website wallbuilderslive.com, you can get the archives of the last few weeks and months there in the website. And then also, you can get a list of the stations across the country where we can be heard, as well as the great opportunity available to get the website to make a contribution. Yes, make that one-time or monthly contribution. It helps to amplify our voice, helps to get this voice of truth out there teaching and educating and inspiring citizens to do their duty. So be a part of that, go to the website today at wallbuilderslive.com.

Our first piece of good news is going to come from David Barton. Where are we starting today, David?

David:

Well, it deals with COVID or maybe COVID coming to an end, at least maybe coming to an end and the red states as relates to the masked mandate. We have more and more states rolling back the mass mandate. Interesting, there were 11 states that never required a mask. Do you guys by the way know which so states are?

Tim:

11 states that never required a mask?

David: Yes.

Tim:

Okay, South Dakota.

David:

Got it.

Tim:

I’m just going to guess, because it’s right there by, North Dakota.

Rick:

No, I think they did. Yeah, I know they were 11 they didn’t. I’m glad to hear that number.

Tim:

Yeah, I am to you got to think Florida, because Governor DeSantis had open so long.

Rick:

Right. Never required a face mask? Wow.

Tim:

Man, I’m about out.

Rick:

I’m going to think like, oh, I don’t know. I think, Wyoming did have one, but I think they’ve lifted theirs, so that’s not going to count. Maybe Idaho, did Idaho have one?

David:

Idaho did not do one.

Tim:

Montana.

David:

Montana had one.

Tim:

Okay, hang on. I got it. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia. Like I…

Rick:

Okay, I’m most impressed that you can still do that, Tim. I mean, you had that pounded in when you were young, wouldn’t…?

Tim:

It’s hard to do it without singing the song. It’d be easier if I sang the song, but yes, it’s still there.

Rick:

I am really baffled. I honestly thought South Dakota… Oh, Iowa didn’t do one, did they?

David:

Iowa did.

Tim:

Oklahoma.

David:

Oklahoma did not.

Rick:

Did not. They had local ones, because I know Tulsa was a real problem, but they didn’t have a statewide one. Okay, good.

Tim:

So Rick, I’ve picked three.

Rick:

And I’m on four.

David:

No, you got Idaho.

Tim:

You have one. You have one.

Rick:

Rick:

I’ve one. Okay. Man, let’s see. It’s got to be some good conservative red southern state, right?

Tim:

I can only imagine people are listening right now going, how do you not know my state? My state is awesome. And we’re like, guys, I’m sorry I have no idea.

Rick:

So I know Mississippi just lifted theirs. So they had one, right? So…

Tim:

Alabama.                                          

David:

Alabama had won.

Tim:

Louisiana.

David:

Louisiana had one.

Tim:

Georgia.

David:

Georgia did not have one.

Tim:

That surprised me. I didn’t know that.

David:

Now, if you go through all 50 states, you’re going to get them right eventually.

Tim:

I was just going across the coast. I was thinking about what’s down there.

David:

You’ve got more wrong than you’ve got right so far.

Tim:

And it’s outcome based education, I’m going to do this.

David:

Okay, we go, guys. Here’s the list. Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee.

Rick:

South Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona. I’m sorry, Governor Ducey, I can’t believe I didn’t get that one. Okay, so that’s something. Okay, I didn’t realize there were that many. That’s encouraging. Okay. But so you’re saying 11 that never did a statewide and then you’ve got how many now that have been losing up and lifting?

David:

You got a bunch of, you mentioned Mississippi, but Utah, Alabama, Texas, all these other states are… And so the count I have right now is 19 states no longer have mask restrictions. Now here’s the deal. All 19 states are red. Would you please tell me why a mask is a polarizing issue? I mean, that doesn’t even make sense. Abortion is a polarizing issue. How did we get to the point in America where a mask, having a mandatory mask requirement is such a polarizing issue that goes…

Rick:

Wait, wait, I’ll try and answer that. Because it has become a personal responsibility versus government will save us issue. And that is clearly a Republican versus democrat issue.

David:

Alright, I can buy that.

Rick:

And even as we talked about this, we kind of been laughing and having a good time, people may think we haven’t taken the mask issue seriously. Boy, have we ever? We’ve been screaming about how this shouldn’t have been done statewide, and how this is an infringement on liberty and all that. We have been very vocal about this. But I think that’s the distinction. I think you’re more likely to have massive mandates in blue states, because those folks in those states want government to tell them what to do.

David:

Yeah, I think you’re right. I had not thought of that standpoint, but that is government heavy states. And certainly, not all the people in those states as we’re seeing with the recall effort in California with Newsom, not everybody in the states agree with that. But certainly, the governors of those states do believe that government is the answer solution. So that’s a good answer to that.

And speaking of things that are starting to happen, in addition to protecting rights and liberties, I love the fact that you now have Georgia passing law, governor Kemp signed it, saying that Georgia is a sanctuary state for people of faith. And that’s another law that’s starting spread across the country is that churches will always be considered essential in any crisis, any emergency. And again, that that tends to be a red state, blue state kind of stuff, and that’s really unfortunate that constitutionally guaranteed right of religious expression has become a red-blue issue. That’s a constitutional issue. But that’s another area where we’re seeing a lot of gains and a lot of states are starting to pass laws, making sure that in any future emergency churches will be considered essential services.

Rick:

So it’s good news. Dominoes are beginning to fall, as more states open up, other states hopefully will open up as people see others living in freedom and the world not coming to an end. So very, very good news. Let’s take a quick break, we’ve got more good news for you, folks. Thanks for joining us today. We’ll be right back on WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. America is a special and unique nation. The average length for a Constitution in other countries is only 17 years. But we’ve had ours for over two centuries. And our 4% of the world’s population produces 24% of the world’s gross domestic product. And every year, we produce more inventions and technology than the other 96% of the world combined.

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville of France came to America, travelled the country, and in his famous book, “Democracy in America” reported, “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. This is the origin of the phrase ‘American Exceptionalism’ and affirms that America is unique because of the distinctive ideas on which we had been based including inalienable rights, individualism, limited government, and the importance of religion and morality.”

For more information about American exceptionalism, go to wallbuilders.com

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. It’s Good News Friday today. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to visit our website wallbuilderslive.com for more good news there. Tim Barton gets the next piece of good news. Tim.

Tim:

Alright, guys. This is a poll that came out of Harvard CAPS-Harris, so Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, and it was dealing with the idea of Cancel culture. And really, the question that they were dealing with is do you believe Cancel culture is a threat to our freedom? And what they discovered was that 64% of respondents said that they believe Cancel culture is a threat to our freedom. And they have this broken down in so many different areas and demographics, identifying that among Republicans, 80% of Republican participants said Cancel culture poses a threat to our freedom.

Now, it’s also interesting why only 80% of Republicans, so it’s a 20% don’t think Cancel culture is a problem. That’s interesting to me. Only 48% of Democrats said Cancel culture is a threat to our freedom. Again, less than half of Democrats think that Cancel culture is a problem. Which if you are canceling people that disagree with you, then maybe you like that notion. But among independents, 64 of independents said that they think Cancel culture is wrong and it is a threat to our freedom. There’s also a breakdown on this poll with urban and rural dwellers. And so those numbers actually are surprisingly similar with 62-67%.

And they explained in this poll of Cancel culture, what Cancel culture actually means and it is to silence somebody, to reject somebody, to stop supporting somebody, because they have said or done something that offends you. So anytime somebody offends you, you’re going to try to stop them, you’re going to reject them, you’re not going to support them anymore: you want to cancel them. And the vast majority of Americans recognize that that’s not a healthy thing for the nation.

Now, the reason I point this out, that’s a really, really good piece of news. And one of the things that the director of this poll said Mark Penn, he said that these big tech companies, these tech industry companies that they better wake up and pay attention. Because things like Facebook and Twitter are already receiving a lot of scrutiny from individuals recognizing they’re trying to silence voices they don’t agree with, what they’re doing and even de-platforming people. And so you are going to see when there are some new outlets available, like Parler, which of course when Parler lost their deal with Amazon and lost things with Google and the Android so they don’t have the same app, obviously, it’s impacted Parler. But you’re going to see a now move among an entire swath of Americans where they’re going to look for somewhere they can have freedom, where they can voice their concerns.

And so this is what he tells big tech is you need to be careful, people recognize that you are favoring the Democrats and you are silencing conservatives. And among this, there’s examples like when Amazon started removing books of many conservative authors they disagree with. One of them as a friend of the program, Ryan Anderson, and he had a book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment”. And they removed it said, no, that’s transphobic, we can’t have that because it’s anti-trans.

Well, this is what we’re starting to see now for much more big tech. And, again, what the guy who did this poll says that the people need to be careful. Mark Penn, who is in charge of this poll said they need to pay attention, what they are starting to do is something that might not go well for them, their company, and their business.

In fact, there are even examples where you can see that prominent liberals are nudging this is a problem. Bill Maher went viral just a couple of weeks ago for talking about how ridiculous and dangerous canceled culture is. When you’re going to cancel somebody for something they did back in 1990 or because you don’t agree with them, you’re going to try to shut them down and keep them from making a living or being able to have a family, etc, etc, etc. guys, when somebody as extreme as Bill Maher is saying this is the problem, somebody on the Left might want to wake up and listen.

But this is what’s interesting seeing this poll is that the majority of Americans are not as far down this rabbit hole of the behavior that’s happening. And it’s easy for us to look at some of the things happening and feel like this is overwhelming, this is the problem. America has gone the wrong direction we might not ever recover. The majority of Americans do not like the direction America is going. It’s just their voices aren’t being heard as loudly, because the big tech platforms, right, the big industry is the loudest voice we hear right now, the majority of Americans are not in favor of that.

So that is a really good piece of news that the majority of Americans are against canceled culture and to be a little tongue in cheek, they want to cancel Cancel culture. They’re not in favor of this going forward. That’s good news.

Rick:

Very good news, and hopefully, we’re going to start seeing a little tight shift back as some of these more, I guess, covered big cancellations like Gina Carano and others as we see the pushback on that, then hopefully, businesses will begin to hesitate before they participate in some of this cancellations. Let’s take a quick break, guys, we’ll be back. We’ve got more good news. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

Friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes we’re parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible, the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well.

I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called the Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin, or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, friends, the list goes on and on.

This is a great collection for your young person to have in read. And it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is [email protected]. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. It’s Good News Friday today. Next piece of good news, David Barton.

David:

Well, I’m going to pick up with the same topic, Tim had, and that’s the big tech censorship. There’s five big tech companies that are out there that really have shut down so much. Tim mentioned the deplatforming. I checked about a month ago, and at that time, they had deplatformed some 70,000 conservative groups and voices. They just taken them off the platform, shut them down, don’t want people to have access to those viewpoints or that beliefs.

I think there were 70 different pro-life groups that were deplatformed. A lot of what we call traditional family or nuclear family groups were gone. Even groups just advocated for Constitution, constitutional instruction, they were gone. So they really are cracking down philosophically for anything that can even be linked to conservative viewpoints. And this goes back, just to understand real quickly.

When these guys were given the kind of immunity they have today, those big tech guys came in under federal law, Section 238 law says, if you’re a platform, then you’re going to get protection from lawsuits and from civil suits that would come against you, etc. And a platform just means you’re a bigger oak tree out in the middle of pasture and anybody can go and nail up a bullet on that oak tree. The oak tree just stands there. And whatever your viewpoint is, whatever it is, you just put it up there and people can walk around the oak tree and read whatever bulletin they want. Well, that’s a platform.

Your publisher says, no, you submitted that thing nailed on the train and we’re not going to let you nail it up. A publisher is like a newspaper owner that says, here’s what I want in my paper, here’s what I don’t want in my paper. And so they had immunity because they were not publishers, they were platforms. They were just a bulletin board to post things on. Now, they clearly are platforms. They’re deplatforming people who don’t agree with what they want to see. And they’re no longer the community bulletin board.

So as part of that, there’s one lawsuits been filed by even Democrats on this. 49 states have gone after an antitrust lawsuit saying this is a monopoly: you’ve taken a monopoly on news and inputting information. And it’s not the Democrats are concerned over the fact that they’re censoring conservatives, although some Democrats may be concerned over that. But generally, Democrats are concerned over the monopoly aspect of it. Conservatives tend to be more concerned over the content of it, although they are concerned over monopolies.

As part of this, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was looking to file lawsuits against these big tech guys for their censorship. And so what he did was he put out a letter demand that wanted to see the documents revealing the company’s internal decision making process for banning users, and especially wants to see from these five groups, as there collusion going on here. Are you five groups acting as a monopoly to shut out all competition, because there’s problems with antitrust laws if you do that?

And so he is filed this demand, a legal demands saying I want to see those documents. Interestingly, Twitter has now sued the Attorney General of Texas for suing them to see their documents. And here’s what Twitter wrote as its response. They’re suing to stop Attorney General Paxton, from “unlawfully abusing his authority as the highest law enforcement officer of the state of Texas to intimidate, harass, and target Twitter and retaliation for…”, now grab this. Here’s Twitter’s explanation. “They’re targeting us for our exercise of First Amendment rights.” Actually, it’s your lack of exercise the First Amendment right is why you’re being targeted. And so Twitter’s so twist in their thinking that they’re saying he’s coming after us for using First Amendment rights. No. It’s because you won’t let other people use First Amendment rights that’s he’s coming after you. And if you want to be a publisher, great be a publisher, but you can’t be a platform under Section 230, which means if you’re a publisher, you’re now open for lawsuits.

Now, having said that, piece of good news just came out of Illinois in a federal court regarding Facebook. Illinois has a privacy law that says, look, you cannot use the images of people without their permission. Well, Facebook went in, and was just scanning through and getting all the graphics off people’s Facebook pages, and doing facial recognition software…

Tim:

Which by the way, is part of what you agree to when you sign up for their terms and conditions. It’s just that nobody actually really knows that because nobody reads those terms and conditions, because it’s small writing, it’s really long. And you just accept what you have to accept to be able to use the platform. You’re not thinking about the repercussions of it. But in Illinois, they’re saying wait a second, you’re taking advantage of these people, that’s not right. And that’s part of what’s happening.

David:

And so there’s 1.6 million Facebook users in Illinois that Facebook in violation the state law that says you can’t do facial recognition stuff in store that, Facebook was storing all the images off these 1.6 million users pages. And so a class action lawsuit went after Facebook, and Facebook is a platform under federal law, and they sued under state law for privacy and they went to federal court to do it. And the federal Judge upheld the state law for privacy against Facebook, and say at Facebook, you owe $650 million to these people in Illinois for violating their privacy.

Now, here’s the huge thing. A lot of states have these suits going. And if you’re going to be able to sue as a state, and you can get $650 million at a whack or whatever it’s going to be, 1.2 billion or 200 million or whatever, that is a huge penalty to these five monopolistic type of big tech guys that trying to control speech and media. So that is a huge blow against these guys. And we’re already seeing the states like Texas and I mean just state after state after state, they’re passing state laws now to enable citizens to go after these big tech giants if they censor their speech simply because of its conservative content. So looks like a lot of starting to gain momentum going in that direction against the big tech guys, including from Democrats and Republicans.

Rick:

Very, very good news. Quick break, we’ll be right back. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called “The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today. And we would say very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil, and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story. Starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation of a perfect people. But the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out, wallbuilders.com “The American Story”.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Final segment of Good News today and Tim’s going to wrap us up final piece…

Tim:

Alright, guys. As we look at some of the issues we are dealing with in Texas, it’s getting a little bit of national notoriety. In fact, President Trump has commented about how bad the border has been with some of President Biden’s policies. And certainly, people that are not around border states don’t always recognize how bad it is. And certainly, if you’re not in a border city, even in Texas, you might not recognize how bad things are in the border. And many congressmen have gone down to the border, and they’ve aired videos of what the conditions are like, where they’re walking and interviewing and trying to help Americans understand the severity of the issue about who’s coming across.

And certainly, America has long been known as a big hearted nation, and we want to help people in need, we want to do what we can. When there are people who are suffering and hurting and we can intervene and help relieve some of that pain and suffering, we want to. And so we understand that people want to come to America, they want to better their life. And even on the show, guys, we have long been proponents about we want people coming to America who want to make America better.

If you want to be here and you want to follow the American dream and you want to assimilate to the culture, but also bring the things with you from your nation that that you think and make America a better nation, we’re totally in favor of people coming and making America better. We also recognize there’s a legal process to do that. We actually have people that we work with. We have the people that we employ who became legal immigrants through the legal process who’re not originally born in America. We are huge fans of that. And if people say, well, we want to make the legal process better or easier, we’re totally in favor of having that conversation discussion about improving things everywhere things need to be improved.

With that being said, there’s a major crisis is happening on the border. And one of the things that happened in Texas when President Biden said essentially, that we’re not going to allow ice to enforce some basic protocol and law that was put in place under the Trump administration. The state of Texas said, well, we’re still going to let our border patrol do their job. And we’re going to try to stop bad guys from entering the nation.

And in the midst of that, there’s an article that lists more than 1,600 immigrants that were arrested over a three day period in this Texas border operation. And among those, there were lots of smuggling cases and criminal aliens and more than 50 sexual offenders and people who were already in this nation who were kicked out for bad behavior.

The reason I bring this up as it is a good thing that in the midst of maybe having leadership that is contrary to a common sense area of saying we don’t want bad guys illegally entering the nation, and we’re just going to turn them loose to do what they want, it’s great that there are governors who are standing up, there’re sheriffs, and there’s Border Patrol and different people saying we want to protect American citizens, and we want to stop the bad guys from coming in.

And so this is just one example of many situations where there are good guys trying to stop bad guys from coming across the border. Again, we’re not saying everybody coming across the border is bad, but certainly, this is why you want a screening process. This is why you want to do it legally so you can make sure that you’re not just flippantly letting bad people come in and do bad things to Americans. And at least from this article as they identify here in Texas, Texas has certainly trying to stop bad guys from coming into the nation.

David:

And to build on that just a little bit, I mean, this is bigger than what most people recognize. Since the change has happened under Biden, we’ve seen massive overload at the border. But there’s other things to consider. Since the world announcement has gone out that America’s borders are open, it’s the San Diego checkpoint has already in the last two months arrested more illegal immigrant, sex offenders, convicted sex offenders than they had all of last year. I mean, it is just through the roof over there. And then down at Brownsville, those that are coming across the border are coming through so fast that COVID tests are being done occasionally in some places and they immigrants are not required to wait for the results.

And so in Brownsville, they’ve already seen that there were 108 immigrants that came through that had COVID, but now they’re out into America. They’ve gone on because it’s a catch and release kind of thing under Biden. We had a crossing here a few weeks ago where 11 Iranians were caught crossing the border. So this is putting stress and tension in a lot of areas, is not good. And, Tim, as you said, it’s good news that Governor Abbott and others are stepping up to try to do something. But this is a policy with disastrous results.

Rick:

Well, friends, thanks for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live. You’ve heard some good news today. There’s more available at our website at wallbuilderslive.com. And what a great opportunity there for you to be a part of the solution by making that one-time or monthly contribution to WallBuilders. We sure appreciate you coming alongside us, locking shields with us, helping to amplify this voice of truth. Thank you so much for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.