Schools, Government and Baseball – On Good News Friday: Today we work more through David and Tim’s stack of good news. We look at people’s reaction to wokeism in sports. How are people responding? Parent who was disciplined in the school board for standing up against explicit sexual content in school, wins his lawsuit. Oregon state senators boycott the senate after abortion measures are adopted regarding secret abortions on girls as young as 10. Steps are being taken to prosecute fraud surrounding COVID related government checks and debt forgiveness measures are being shut down. Border security improves, with more terrorists and drug dealers being caught. An elementary school in Arkansas promotes prayer and Bible reading. All of this and more on Good News Friday!

Air Date: 06/9/2023

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

 

Transcription:

Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. You found us here at WallBuilders. I’m Rick Green, former Texas legislator and America’s constitution coach. And I’m here with David Barton. He’s our founder at WallBuilders. He’s America’s premier historian. This guy, I’m telling you, he’s probably read more of the founding fathers actual writings than anybody alive. And I say probably only because there’s no way to actually prove it. But I have zero doubt that that is the case, both from reading right there in his own collection at the WallBuilders museum. But also, just all the other things out there that he studied. You can tell when you’re talking about something dealing with the founding era, and so much of it just immediately has it right there, off of the tip of his tongue. It’s just phenomenal. Anyway, David Barton is here with us, America’s premier historian and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. These guys, by the way, you can see them in the Biblical Citizenship course that thousands of you are taking all across the country, tens of thousands, I should say, actually, I take that back, hundreds of thousands. We’ve had hundreds of thousands now go through the course. And if you haven’t, you should. So be sure to get it at BiblicalCitizens.com . But you could also book David and Tim to speak right there in your community, at your church or at a special event. Be sure and check that opportunity out at our website, WallBuilders.com . Alright, so WallBuilders.com that’s our main website. I also want to encourage you to head over to WallBuildersLive.com . It’s our radio site, you can check out the list of stations that were on across the country, you can dive into the archives, and listen to programs you may have missed over the last few weeks and months, and perhaps most importantly, you can donate. Yep, I’m asking you to give of your life, your time, to listen to programs and share them with others but your fortune and your sacred honor. And fortune yep, that’s our dollars, that’s our money. That is investing in freedom. The left does it. Why do we not do it? Why do conservatives not do more investing in freedom? I challenge you to do that today, WallBuildersLive.com make a one time or monthly contribution. I can guarantee you it is a great investment in freedom. Alright, gentlemen, with all of the bad news out there craziness going on everywhere, including at the Dodgers. I need some good news. So let’s dive in. David, what’s our first piece of good news this week?

David Barton
Well, Rick, if you’re not a baseball fanatic, like you are, that doesn’t trouble a lot of us like it troubles you…

Rick Green
It’ so painful, man. It’s so painful. Because, you know, I’ve been boycotting them for three years over the Black Lives mafia or Black Lives malice, whatever you want to call it. So I’m already like, not watching them. But then I watch these guys. grovel, like… I mean, they literally come out looking like this pained expression on their faces. They apologize to the LGBTQ community. And then all this stuff with the Sisters of perpetual and… and I’m just going man, baseball is done. It’s just lost. Okay. All right. Anyway, so enough of the bad news. What’s some good news out there?

Tim Barton
Now guys, it’s also worth noting, there was a article I saw either today or yesterday, I don’t know, maybe a couple days ago now. Oh, man, it could have been last week. I don’t know. Time is really squished together. But there was an article that came out highlighting Clayton Kershaw who was a pitcher for the Dodgers and a very talented award winning pitcher. He came out, and he said, he does not support any organization that would make fun of people for their faith, which, of course, is what was happening with this anti Catholic these transgender drag man, I don’t even really know how to categorize them as an entity. But he came out against this. So you know Dad, as we talked about, it’s kind of silly looking at some of these organizations. And that’s why we don’t watch so much sports anymore. Because we can’t just enjoy sports. Sports used to be where you went to get away from the drama and the nonsense, the busyness of the day, and now it’s not a distraction. Now, you go there and you get more indoctrination pumped at you. It’s ridiculous. But we are seeing people stand up. And this is another great example. When your… the organization you work for is promoting incredibly dumb wokeism. And you have the courage to stand up and speak out against what they are doing, that, I mean, that really says a lot to me. So kudos to Clayton Kershaw for standing up and saying something, incredible courage. And you know, we’ll see if the organization pushes back against him. I’m sure his contract is large enough that, you know, that there won’t be a lot of blowback, but I’m sure he’ll have some conversations. And he’ll have to navigate that a little bit. But it’s great to see individuals of faith, of character standing up and saying what should be rational, true and accepted positions that you shouldn’t make fun of someone because of their faith on this public scale and level. This is just ridiculous.

Rick Green
There was another Dodger player too, Blake Treinen. I’m not familiar with him, but I saw that Sean Voigt shared that he also put out a public statement against it. Now, I will be honest with you guys here I am probably, too be bitter, and I shouldn’t have tweeted this. And unless you put yourself in the situation, it’s not fair to say things like this. But my response to… somebody said that this player, his statement was incredibly bold. And I said the statement is nice, but bold would be refusing to play for a company promoting such evil. And in fact that all Dodger players that have a pair should refuse to play on at least that night. Call in sick. Call in sick and disgusted by this and refuse to be a part of it. So maybe I’m asking too much. I get it, they get paid millions of dollars. And they have contracts where they probably get sued if they didn’t play and all of that good stuff. But man, I would love to see that. Maybe that would make me go back to a baseball game after all these three years. Okay. Anyway, go ahead David.

David Barton
That’s a big sacrifice for you because that’s your sport, man. That’s where you go.

Rick Green
That’s right. That’s why we switched over to UFC.

David Barton
Honest confessions time. There was a period of time where we lived a couple of years in California. My dad was placed out there defense and military kind of stuff.

Rick Green
Was that the confession that you spent time in California? No, I’m kidding. Go ahead.

David Barton
That is the confession. And while I was there, the Dodgers were my team. I went to the games with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale and all those old dinosaurs that now in the Hall of Fame. So I’ve still got black and white pictures, because that’s all our cameras were back then, of those guys pitching and playing. So, they were my team growing up. So it really is. It’s disappointing to see how woke, they’ve gone and you know, and they backtrack for a minute, but then get scared back into doing the same thing again, and it was just… come on, guys.

Rick Green
And of course we know we talked about it on here a lot. Once you apologize to the mob, you’re done. Like they do not let up at that point. You become their slave. So yeah, so enought of that. Let’s Friday, let’s get to some good news, bro.

David Barton
Well, I’ll just comment, it looks like hockey may have more men in it than any other sport. Becaues hockey, the players are saying no, we’re not going to do that. So the players are actually kind of running the stuff for the hockey team. So yeah, it’s… I’ve given up basketball. I’m a huge basketball fan until now. And I’ve just had enough of the… I got better things to do with my entertainment time, then watch a bunch of guys who have a really twisted philosophy. So…

Rick Green
…who hate the country that made them billionaires?

David Barton
That’s right. That’s exactly right. Well, you know, there used to be a thing called the silent majority. And we haven’t talked about in a long time. But I think the silent majority is showing up with Bud Light and with Target. And with all these other things. You know, because all these people that sit in the front office, like the Dodgers, they all talk to each other. And they all talk to the professionals. And it’s an echo chamber. And then when they get out to what the tickets are, and then when they get out to where people have to go to cash registers, they’re finding out that what they said in the echo chamber is not holding up. And I think there’s a comeback of the silent majority going right now. Because there’s always a lot of people that just don’t want to get into controversy. Just leave me out of it, leave me alone. But if you’re going to cram it down my throat, I will say something. And so I think that’s a good thing now. So part of that is the story that I’ve gotten, it goes back to something that started last year. Started as a bad story, ends in a good story. And it started last year when there was so much attention on the books that were in libraries. You know, Kirk Cameron came out with his book, and now he’s doing his library tours, because all this stuff was going in school libraries, whether it was drag queen shows, whether it was the book titles themselves, whether it was aggressive pornography that was in there. And so in McKinney, Texas, which is over in the Fort Worth / Dallas area, there was a father there who found some of this material. And in April of 2022, he went to a school board meeting, and he showed this stuff to the school board. He said, look, I’m here to protect these kids. And I expect you to do the same thing. So after he’d gone through all this explicit stuff, and how bad it was, when he went back to the next month’s school board meeting, school board meeting of the next month, he was met by police officers outside the door and told that he was banned from the school campus. That just because of what he had said, the month before, about, look, I expect you to protect these kids, and here’s the content and this is not good. The school board president had the police, and they issued a trespass citation on him that you cannot trespass on school property anymore. If you show up, it is a trespass, a fine. You’re looking at jail time, whatever. And so it’s a criminal… It goes as a criminal trespass, if he shows up on any of the school district property. Well, at that point, he’s got kids in school, so he can’t pick them up in school. He can’t take them to school. He can’t go to any of their school activities. All because… and the school board… I think the school board president said you called us a bunch of pedophiles! He said, I did not. He said, I said very clearly that you’re supporting pedophilia by having this type of content in the library. I didn’t call you pedophiles. And so he was real explicit. And I mean, this school just cracked down on him and it worked its way up to a judge in Austin, and the judge whacked the school, and said You absolutely cannot do this. He’s got a parents rights, a school… the parents aren’t here to serve the school. School serves the parents. And so the good news is that he won in this. It took a year. But he wins in this thing, he now gets to go back on campus and see his kids and be at their activities, which is really good stuff. But this is the kind of mob mentality that these woke guys have, on the other side, a school board president because you question us, we’re throwing you off and giving you a criminal citation if you step back on campus. Man, that’s nothing about the Constitution, free speech, right of assembly, anything else. That’s why education has got to be changed and reformed. When you get that kind of reaction for a parent who expressed what any parent should have expressed, the good news is he prevailed.

Rick Green
Well, like you said, yesterday on our foundations of Freedom program, we need a reformation in education, complete reformation. Alright, Tim, what’s our next direction for good news?

Tim Barton
All right, guys, this one’s coming from Oregon. And unfortunately, I do not have the end of the story. I was just reading the article, reminding myself of some of the details. And then I realized, wait, I don’t know what happens at the end of the story. And I will have to go look it up. Maybe while we are on break, Dad while you’re doing your next portion, I might have to go look this up and see. This is highlighting something that the beginning of May, there was a group of state senators in Oregon called the Oregon 13 that began boycotting showing up for work, which oftentimes we’d say, wait a second, this is ridiculous, but they wanted to make sure that there wasn’t an opportunity for the Oregon Senate to be able to conduct business. And so without these 13 individuals there, they couldn’t conduct business. What business were they trying to stop? This is the title of the article. Oregon lawmakers keep blocking bill for secret abortions on girls as young as 10. And guys, part of the details of this article, it goes through that there was a, as so often happens with these measures with HB 2002B and it was supposed to be, right, this health initiative, but so often these health initiatives end up being the exact opposite of what it is. And in this, it’s 46 pages, and of these 46 pages a State Senator Kim Thatcher, she’s Republican, she is one that is part of this Oregon 13, that’s boycotting. But she wrote her constituents and identified that 46 pages of this HB 2002B, the first 10 pages are devoted to abortion. And among those, it says with respect to abortion, even advocates of the legislation admit it would permit a girl as young as 10 to obtain an abortion without her parents knowledge. And as it goes through what’s this kind of require Medicaid and private insurers to cover more procedures under the umbrella of gender affirming care would allow minors of any age to get an abortion without need to notify a parent. I mean, guys, this is absolutely it… This isn’t evil. This is abominable. And what’s interesting about this boycott of the 13 senators that are boycotting the Oregon Senate, 12 of them are Republicans One of them’s an independent, which I thought kudos to the independent for joining on this comments inside. What is kind of fascinating about this is 10 of them under Oregon law are now ineligible for reelection, because they missed 10 unexcused absences from the Senate floor. So literally, of these 13 already, it’s cost 10 of them their jobs, and it might cost the other three their jobs before this is done, where they could not be reelected, because they’ve missed too much of that term in the Senate. But they’re missing it on principle, and for really good reasons. There’s individuals who said that, right, to put it simply, I’m more than happy to lose my job if I can stop HB 2002 from happening. That was from Senate Minority Leader, Tim Knopp. As I go down this list, one of the things in this article, it’s such a great quote, they referenced Teddy Roosevelt, and back in 1911, and he’s been out of the presidency for two years, in 1911 he reflected on his long career of service. He wrote an article in a magazine called The outlook. And in it one of the things he said was that you should never put holding office above keeping straight with conscience. So don’t be more concerned about your reelection than then doing the right thing. Instead, he should be prepared to go out of office rather than surrender on a matter of vital principle. So Teddy Roosevelt said you should be willing to lose your job, if it’s a matter of principle. And guys, so often we talk about the politicians that frustrate us, that disappoint us. There are people that are more concerned about getting reelected and standing for principle. It’s something that we’ve been frustrated with, frankly, with many of our state elected officials here in Texas, and to see this happening in Oregon, I mean guys, this is absolute really incredible that we often talk about, you need to be strategic and know what hill will you die on. Where’s your line in the sand, that you say, we will go no further, right? This is almost like Lord of the Rings, right? You’re standing on the bridge. And you’re Gandalf and you say, none shall pass. Where’s that line where you’re not going to let anything pass? Well, where are you going to stand? What hill will you die on? And I am so proud to see the senators in Oregon. And as I mentioned, I don’t know the end of the story yet. This article came out on May 22nd. Guys, I think this’s incredible news that there are people in Oregon, that literally, like this is their hill, that they are going to protect children, a 10 year old girl under this bill, could get pregnant, could go have an abortion, her parents don’t even have to know. This is evil. It is the epitome of evil with all of the stuff going on. And so man, kudos to these senators for their courage and their boldness for them sacrificing their political career to some extent, sacrificing their job in the Senate to stand on principle. This to me is really good news.

David Barton
And Tim, I looked it up while you were talking and they’re still out, and they pledge to stay out to June the 25th when the session ends. So they have made this a big conscious choice, and they’re holding strong.

Rick Green
Alright guys, we’ve got more good news to get to in a few minutes left when we come back from break. I bet we can get at least two pieces of good news in maybe three and as fast as the Bartons talk, maybe four. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
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 the 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 Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. It’s good news Friday, let’s see how much we can get in before the end of today’s show. It goes to David next.

David Barton
You guys remember that back in the last year or so, Biden was just giving away money like crazy to everybody over COVID stuff and COVID initiatives. And all these ads started appearing on radio that, hey, if you get paid this COVID initiative, there’s still money available, you can come get more. And so there was all this money being given away. And then we started seeing the reports on all the fraud that was going on with it. All the people, all the groups that were taking this money, they weren’t really… it wasn’t really due to them, and so billions in fraud. And so what happened this, just recently, the House passed two interesting bills. And one of them is to recover that money that went out on fraud that was fraudulently taken. And it’s called the protecting taxpayers and victims of unemployment Fraud Act. And what it does is it incentivizes states to recover the fraudulent payments. So if you took the money fraudulently, it incentivizes states to go after that. It improves the program integrity to prevent future fraud, puts better parameters around it, and extends the statute of limitations for prosecuting the fraud. So if you committed fraud, it allows longer time to go after you and prosecute you. So this came up and guess what it passed in the House of Representatives, except no Democrats voted for it. Now how can you not vote for a bill that prosecutes fraud, that goes after fraud, that prevents fraud? You know, I know we’re polarized in Congress, I know the nation is polarized. But how can you not vote for something that tries to stop fraud and tries to prosecute? That just blows my mind. I recognize the polarization that’s there, but I don’t understand how Democrats will not vote for that. And the other bill that was passed, and it was a… it was, I mean, there was not a single Democrat voted for this. It was the Border Security Act. And it was to take care of what’s going on with the lifting of Title 42. This is to fill that gap and say no, here’s what we’re doing with immigration, we’re going to protect our borders. Because just this year alone, I mean, just this year alone, the numbers are staggering. There’s been 80 individuals caught, and you realize they only catch one out of 10 to 20 people that across, but 80 individuals have been on the terrorist watch list coming into America. And these are the ones they catch out of the 5% or so. They’ve seized over 379 million doses of fentanyl, which is the highest cause of death in many states right now. And it’s just unbelievable that what’s there. And just, I mean, just in the six months of this year, there’s already been a million illegal crossings. So this law would fix that, except not a single Democrat voted to do anything with the border. Now, what’s interesting is the Democrats voted to increase IRS agents. They were all over that. They voted against increasing the Border Patrol agents. So, I mean, what a really weird world this is that all the Democrats want the borders open and they want the IRS agents to have more power to go after Americans, but they don’t want Border Patrol agents to go after non Americans. And it’s… you know, I can’t explain, all you can do is point it out. But I think it’s really good news that those two bills get passed in the House. Will they go anywhere in the Senate? Unlikely. Would President veto them? Likely. Doesn’t change the fact that the House did the right thing and did two really good bills, and that’s good news that we got some guys in the house trying to do right thing with immigration and with fraud.

Rick Green
All right, Tim, I think we’ve got time for at least one more. What’s your last piece of good news?

Tim Barton
Well, this one’s coming from Arkansas, from Prescott, Arkansas, actually. And there was a school district in Prescott that posted on their Facebook page. And it showed, first that there were preschoolers praying over their food with teachers in the cafeteria, it showed fifth and sixth graders that were highlighted on their social media posts. They were given Bibles, and they were reading those Bibles. And the Facebook page said, this is a site that should make anyone happy. It sure does us. Our fifth and sixth grade students received New Testament Bibles today, and we’re reading them at lunch. And even on the bus this afternoon. God is good. Now, that’s from a public school Facebook page in Arkansas, which just as awesome to me for several reasons in my head. And as you can imagine, if a public school is going to be highlighting that it’s good that kids read the Bible or maybe that kids even were praying over their meals or whatever else. Of course, you’re going to have pushback, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the group up in Wisconsin, they wrote a very mean letter and they said, whoa, when a public elementary school’s faculty and staff lead students in prayer, encouraged students to pray, distribute Bibles, blah, blah, blah. They said, right, this is unconstitutional. You’re showing favoritism toward Christianity, this has to stop. And this came from CO President Annie Laurie Gaylor, she said, it shows a complete disregard for those in the community, with minority and non religious backgrounds and for our secular constitution, which not to get into that statement, although that’s totally wrong, instead of waving the white flag, Instead, what the school district did was pushed back, the superintendent got on local television, and explained that no one was forced to take a Bible or read the Bible. And furthermore, it’s not illegal for teachers or students to pray at school. Guys, not only is it encouraging to me that students are once again, having the Bible in school, which is totally constitutional. It’s so encouraging that you have leaders of a school, a superintendent, who’s not afraid to go on a local television program and say, guys, we’re not afraid, we’re not ashamed of what we’re doing, we’re going to stand up for what we know to be true. That is really encouraging to see some of this in public schools. Now, it doesn’t largely change our impression of most public schools in the nation. But it does highlight that there are some really good people out there. And we know even of our listeners, that we have public school teachers and superintendents and we have people that we work with in public education all over the nation, there are some really, really good people out there. And this is one example of a group of really good people that are promoting finally truth yet again, in education and not cowering, not backing down when they’re threatened with a lawsuit from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. This is good news.

Rick Green
Well, David, I think we have time to squeeze one in if you’ve got a short one.

David Barton
Yeah, I do. There’s another one that I’d point to that Congress did, that is another really good measure. Again, we don’t know where it’ll go with the Senate and president. But the House passed a measure that overturned Biden’s student debt forgiveness program. So again, another free money giveaway. You signed a contract that you would pay this back, but we don’t want you to have to keep your word or do that. And we’re going to treat you differently from all of the students who have student debt. It’s just a crazy, crazy, crazy program that they put out there. But Congress did pass a bill, the House passed a bill that would overturn that and would take that back and you don’t get debt forgiveness simply because it was COVID or anything else. And so again, another good sound measure done by Congress that’s really good. And just throwing one more in, Chicago. It was really interesting, Chicago just had a big gathering of citizens. Meeting with city officials saying we are tired of illegal immigration. We don’t want illegal… Now, this is Chicago. This is not a Republican city, a Republican town, this is one of your really big blue cities. And even they are getting fed up with illegal immigration, what it’s doing [to] their communities. They’re talking about the rise in crime that’s happened with all the legal immigration, what is done to jobs, economics, everything else. So again, those inside the echo chamber, like the Dodgers, and like the federal government, with Biden and his administration, they talk to themselves. When you get outside and get where the people live, it’s a whole different story of what they like and what they don’t want. And the fact that you have Chicago citizens showing up to really tell the city that we don’t like this and the city’s communicating that to the President, you know, maybe sometime they’ll stop being tone deaf and listen to the Americans. But at this point, that’s really good news that we’re seeing across the nation. People want change and they want it back and a much more conservative direction.

Rick Green
So much good news from across the nation, as you said, David, I mean it’s… I love listening to you guys and all these stories from across the nation, it encourages me despite all the negative as we started with on today’s program. I hope it encourages you as a listener. And by the way, share the program folks, as you’re listening to this and it warms your heart and it gives you hope and you see those victories, make sure you get it to the people that you also… you know they also need this good news as well. So be sure to share the program and also visit the website today at WallBuilders.com and make that one time or monthly contribution. It helps us to expand the program, get on more stations, reach more people, train more pastors, train more legislators, and young people. We appreciate you coming alongside us. Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders.