The Doctrine of Discovery, Black Democrats, And More – On Foundations Of Freedom: What consistently happens when nations apply God’s principles? What is the problem with Doctrine of Discovery?  Why are the majority of black people still Democrats? Tune in to learn the answers to these questions and more on today’s Foundations of Freedom program!

Air Date: 03/10/2022

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.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

This is the intersection of faith and the culture. Thanks for joining us here on WallBuilders Live. I’m Rick Green, America’s Constitution coach, and a former Texas State Representative. 

I’m here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim Barton is with us. 

He’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. All three of us, you can learn more at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. That’s our radio site, wallbuilderslive.com, archives of the program from actually weeks and months, if you missed any shows you want to catch up.

And also you can make your donation there, one-time or monthly, we appreciate you coming alongside of us, so many of you across the country. Every time you donate, those dollars put fuel in the tank so that we can get out there and reach more people. 

We can train more pastors, more legislators, more young people, we can get them message of truth to more Americans and save our constitutional republic. So thank you, thank you, for all of you that have donated. I encourage you, if you haven’t, to please consider doing that at our website today at wallbuilderslive.com.

Now, today is Foundations of Freedom Thursday, this is once a week, we take your questions, you need to email those in. We get to as many of those as we possibly can. But you can email them to [email protected], [email protected] 

You might have a question about something we’ve covered on the program in recent weeks, you may have a question about the Constitution, or something from the founding era, or how to apply principles of liberty to what’s happening now, a question about how the system is working, because the system does work, if we work the system. 

The problem is when we step out when we check out and we let other people run the system or run the system amok, you know, run it into the ground, but if we come back and get involved, the principles of liberty work, as Bob McEwen says, every time that they’re tried.

Send in Your Questions

So your questions may be about the application of what we call around here a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Or it may just be a random question, whatever you want to ask, send it in to [email protected]

Alright, David, and Tim, let’s jump into some of those questions. First one is actually a comment and I agree with everything that they’re saying. Lorenzo and Shell emailed in and said, “Hello, we’re writing to say bless you for offering the Founders’ Bible. 

We love the introductions of the books. They impart such good insight, clarity, and historical perspective. The outlines of the books provide even more clarity and organizational perspective. Collectively, the Founders’ Bible and a 450 plus historical articles, contain their and provide rich truth of the existence of God and His providential hand in the lives of people. A must have indeed.

Lorenzo and Shell, I agree with you wholeheartedly, and in fact, kind of taking people through a one year read of the Founders ‘Bible right now and posting daily and people are commenting on it. And David, and Tim, I want to echo what these folks were saying. Thank you for putting this out. 

Because I get so much out of obviously, reading God’s word. But those articles, it takes you back in history and makes you realize, oh, here’s why they thought a constitutional republic was best, here’s why they thought we couldn’t do it without a Bible, here’s where they got the 10 Commandments as the founding. I mean, it’s just so good. And it’s so relevant every day, it just seems like it applies to whatever’s going on in the culture today.

So thank you guys for putting that out. And I encourage people to get one. I know, David, you’ve always talked about the importance of reading through the Bible and staying in God’s word. 

And even just this week, couple of the articles were about saturation in God’s word. And you just recently had talked about, I think, a week or so ago, how memorizing Scripture is what gave you such a great memory for everything else in history. So get into God’s word, I think, is essential if we’re going to restore the country.

Applying God’s Principles: The Record Is Clear

David:

Yeah, I think is not only essential, I think the track record is really clear on that. Any nation that has applied God’s principles, and that’s particularly reformation nations after maybe the 1500s, even in Europe, you see them turn around and get freedom, get liberty, and then when they get away from that, they become more secular, then they move back into oppression and tyranny. 

So it’s not just America. These principles work anywhere they’re applied. And this is not just America, you can see this other nations as well, Guatemala really had a real transformation 30-40 years ago. They become more secular since then, which is unfortunate. But this stuff works anywhere it’s applied.

Rick:

Yeah. And I guess, maybe we are so used to Bibles being so available in everywhere in our country, that we take it for granted and so we don’t spend time in it. And of course, you and George Barna did that book ‘U-Turn’, you talked about the importance of getting back to it, how most Christians frankly don’t read the Bible. 

And so yeah, it’s at the heart of, I just hope people recognize that if you love America, if you want to restore the Constitution, if you want to restore freedom in America, it starts with biblical knowledge. We got to have biblical knowledge and not biblical ignorance. If we want to have civic knowledge and not civic signatures, it begins with that biblical worldview.

Good stuff. Alright. Well, thank you so much, Lorenzo and Shell for email and that one in.

Our first actual question of the day comes from Betty and it’s about the Doctor of Discovery. She said “Listening to a recent interview with a Christian Native American named Mark Charles, his talking points are in a TED talk on YouTube, I was challenged to dig into what he called the Doctrine of Discovery from Papal Bull’s about discovering new lands and subjecting anyone encountered to serve us, the Europeans. 

He called the founding documents racist, sexist and white supremacist, which I have no problems thinking through as far as rebutting. I’ve read your works, including the American story. 

I know he makes a grand leap from the Doctrine of Discovery to saying that’s why Columbus sailed demonstrably false there, but was curious to hear you talk about this Doctrine of Discovery, and provide perspective on its flaws, and how impactful it was on 15th, and 16th century western expansion.”

Doctrine of Discovery

So David and Tim, you guys just came out with this book, American Story last year, it’s been a huge hit. I don’t know how many printings you’ve gone through already. But people are hungry for this knowledge. And what she’s asking about right here and just the foundation of well, before America was even launched, what was the real story of this continent? So what is this Doctrine of Discovery thing?

David:

Well, it’s not so much the Doctrine of Discovery, as the tone that they’re trying to communicate with that. The tone is that because this Papal Bull was issued, we have the right to go conquer everyone and make them serve us, and that’s what we white Christians are supposed to do. And there’s a real problem with that. And they point to Columbus as the problem, enslavement, genocide, all the stuff that Columbus is charged with. He’s given the Native Americans a free pass.

Before Columbus ever got here, anthropologist, and sociologists, and those who do archaeology work, etc, they point out that the enslavement rate among Native Americans was between 20 and 40% slaves by other Native American tribes, and that competes with what you had with Rome at 40%, what you had Greece at 30%. 

So the Native Americans had a much higher slavery rate than anything that happened after Columbus. And so why give yourself a free pass on the Doctrine of Discovery. Now, there’s other rebuttals as well, but that’s the tone they’re trying to get at.

Tim:

When not to point out, when you look at the Doctrine of Discovery, the notion that everybody was motivated by the same thought, is just so historically, blatantly inaccurate. And yet, that’s what happens so often. Even if you look at westward expansion in America, and this notion of manifest destiny, and so America, even expanding westward was evil, because of manifest destiny as if all of America was supportive of the idea of Manifest Destiny.

There Are A Lot of Problems

There’s a lot of problems when you take something that in general could be problematic, right, some of these Doctrine of Discovery, and I found it very much in the era of the king, right, the king says, hey, this whole new world is mine, and I’m giving you permission to go live on the new land that we discovered. 

It’s mine, and therefore, you don’t need to worry about anybody else living there. There are definitely some problems with some of this perspective. And really, it goes back to this idea of a king. But not everybody in America had that perspective and ideology.

That’s why when you look at the New England colonies, specifically with Plymouth and their relationship with the Native Americans, it was by and large very good, the longest lasting peace treaty between any Americans or really any Western European settlers, any Anglos coming to the New World and any Native Americans. The longest lasting treaty was between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians, which lasted 54 years before that treaty was violated actually by Native Americans.

But in the midst of this, you look at other colonies breaking off from the Plymouth colony, and so whether you look at Roger Williams in Rhode Island, or even William Penn in Pennsylvania, which wasn’t even a break off of Plymouth, it rather was an entirely different colony. But William Penn was a Quaker, and he came with lots of Quaker brethren, and they’re the founders of Pennsylvania. 

These were all individuals who purchased the land from the Indians at a price set by the Indians. So they didn’t have this idea that because we are here, we therefore get to consume all of the resources, regardless of who else has been here and what they’ve done. This is just not historically accurate to the perspective of America. It very much is, along the lines of what the 1619 project does, is tried to paint all of America with some of the evils that happen to Jamestown.

And even the way they present those evils, there is a lot of misrepresentation and flat out dishonest lies, and what the 1619 project says about America, and they take something that’s partially true with some of the history of Jamestown. But they distort it to make things that are really not true be said. And then they apply to all of America when that’s just not the reality.

And to me, this is one of the problems I see with part of this notion is there’s no doubt, because you have so many people motivated by so many different factors and because we know that they’re sinful human nature is sinful man and sinful man does sinful things, there’s no doubt that there were some people motivated by selfish greed, lust kind of desires, and they did evil based on those motivations. 

Treating Everyone the Same?

But there’s also no doubt that that was not the vast majority of America, number one. And number two, there’s no doubt that people were motivated by very different things, which is not part of the conversation when you talk about this Doctrine of Discovery.

David:

So not only is there a problem with this monolithic approach that everybody treated everybody the same with Jim just explained, there’s also a selective approach of, well, I’m going to look at your guys, not my guys, and my guys were worse than yours. But I’m not going to point that out.

Tim:

Well, and also, just to be clear, some of this perspective, it’s not just my people versus your people; it’s this group versus that group. And it’s going back to the group mentality. And so it’s even some of this Marxist underpinning where there’s only two kinds of groups, the oppressors or the oppressed. 

And historically, that’s just an oversimplification, or it’s really a unbiblical approach on a lot of levels. When we’re saying we’re looking at people based on groups instead of based on individual behavior or character responses.

Because if you look at the Native Americans, there were some great Native Americans, had it not been for Squanto, the Pilgrims would have all died. This is not something to look at Native Americans and say man, all Native Americans, they were brutal, they were Beasley, they only wanted bloodshed and they murdered and raped and scalped. Well, there definitely were some Native Americans that fall in that category. 

But that wasn’t all of them. So you don’t paint a picture saying all of this group looks like a certain thing. You judged the individual not based on the group.

And so not even just white people versus Native Americans, although that’s part of the picture being painted in some of this conversation, it really is about one group versus a different group. And that is a very poor perspective when you get into the details of individuals, because not all individuals are fitting in the category of the group. 

It’s why even today, when you look at some of the conservative movement, there are many noted black leaders in the conservative movement that are Republicans and you have people like President Biden, if you don’t vote for me, you’re not black. Well, what in the world are you talking about? 

Group Mentality

You are trying to condense everybody into one group and say all of this group has to look the same, act the same, be the same. And so this group mentality is not a historically good approach, and certainly, is not a biblical approach. And that’s part of the conversation as well.

David:

And it’s also a problem that they don’t even give historical context because they say, well, they issued a Papal Bull. Well, they did. But you know what? The Pilgrims and the Puritans and the Congregationalist, and the Baptist and the Quakers, they weren’t Catholics and they didn’t care what the Pope said. And they didn’t come here because the Pope told them to do something. 

Matter of fact, most of them disliked the Pope, they had been punished by state established churches in the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church were the two big state established churches. And so by and large, those who came to America were dissenters and disagreed with those positions of the state established church. 

But on top of that, you’re also missing the context of reformation. Man, if you want to go pre-1300, pre-1500, I’ll be the first one on board to tell you how bad Christians were and how bad the church in general was. And that’s because they did not follow the Bible. They didn’t read it. It was not even available to most of them. It was genuine a language nobody could read. Illiteracy was high. They didn’t know that. That’s what the Reformation was all about.

Tim:

And even, dad, let me point out in the midst of that thought of the Reformation, and as you mentioned how bad Christianity was really, the idea was people that identified as Christians doing very bad thing in the name of Christianity without even understanding what the Bible said. And so sometimes, Christians get a bad name, in certainly the Dark Ages because there were so many atrocities that were done. 

And one of the things that I think is probably worth noting, historically, is that a lot of these people were probably very genuine good hearted people trying to do good things; they just had such bad information given to them by their religious leaders, when they’re like, hey, we’re going to go kill Jews for Jesus, we’re going to go kill the Muslims for Jesus.

Christians Acting Unbiblical

There was some conflict in theology the way it was being presented. But they probably very generally thought they were doing good things. Like the apostle Paul, when he was saw, and he was going in murdering Christians to honor and glorify God. 

That’s why God knocks him off the donkey, the shining light, and I am Jesus, who you’re persecuting that whole scenario as it unfolds in the book of Acts, it’s because in the name of God, they were trying to do something to honor God, not recognizing what you’re doing is not God honoring.

And so, I think sometimes even the perspective that we have of the Christians in the Dark Ages, there were some very good people and actually, even some Catholic monks and priests in that time, who were trying to do good things. But you had definitely religious leaders and political leaders who recognized that they could use Christianity as a tool, as a weapon to be wielded to accomplish their goals in many occasions, instead of recognizing what the Bible truly was about. And they weren’t teaching what the Bible is truly about.

We talk about, historically, that so often the Bible at this time was not a language of common man, certainly that predominantly, you found it in Latin, maybe in Greek or Hebrew, Aramaic, you did not find it in the language of common man, and so many people couldn’t even read. Had it been the language of common man, the Bible at many occasions was chained to pulpit so people, they didn’t even have access to go look at a Bible. If they even wanted to, unless they went to church, and then they could only see it in church. So there was such limitation on what happened to Christianity.

But I do want to make sure that for everybody listening, we are clear it wasn’t a Christianity was bad in that era. It’s that the teachings from political and religious leaders was so bad. They were encouraging people in the name of God to do bad things to be a good Christian, which certainly when the Reformation comes along, and you have Catholic priests and monks, because at this time there really was kind of only the Catholic Church, but you had leaders inside the church standing up and saying, guys, it’s not what the Bible actually says. What the king is telling us to do, what these religious leaders are telling us to do is not what the Bible says. And this is part of the birth of the Reformation.

And dad, to your point, when you look at America, the people coming to America, by and large, seeking religious freedom, looking for a place, escaping religious persecution in their own nations, coming here to worship God according the dictates of their own conscience, they were not following the teachings, or the dictates of the state established church they had left. So even if you’re saying to say, the state established back in the day did these really bad things, we would agree with that, we would agree that is totally wrong. But those are not the people who came and founded America.

David:

And on top of that, even if you say, okay, at the time that this happened, this Papal Bull came down, before the Reformation before people were getting back to what the Bible said, as Tim pointed out, so much of the Reformation came from Catholic priests who said, let’s get back to the Bible, even as you look at America. And you know, here comes Columbus and comes the explores, if you’ll go to California and look at some of the heroes of California, one is Junípero Serra, a Catholic priest, who actually didn’t believe that, didn’t believe this Discovery Doctrine.

And he worked really closely with Native Americans and got education going and elevated their lives. And if you’re going to Arizona, you find one of the heroes, there’s Catholic priest [inaudible 16:36] Okino, who did the same thing. He said, here’s what the Bible says and he so elevated native communities in so many ways.

An Incorrect Ted Talk

So this question is really poor on a lot of areas. And I can imagine TED Talk being taught, this is the kind of woke version of everybody, but us is bad, and Columbus is the worst of all, and the church is right behind him. And that’s just bad history.

Rick:

Alright, guys, before we go to break and come back with another question, I got to ask what is a Papal Bull? I don’t know what that is, a Papal Bull. It was in the question and I’m assuming it’s some kind of decree from the Pope or from the Catholic Church, but I’ve never heard that expression. So I’m just pleading ignorance here and wondering, and thinking maybe our listeners might have the same question.

David:

Well, it’s like the difference between the Constitution versus federal law versus state law versus regulatory law. It’s a hierarchy. There are certain things that come from the Pope that are not necessarily the highest level: that’s his opinion, but that’s not church doctrine. And there’s a lot of that that’s come from the current pope. And of course, a lot of people like to criticize what he said, but they’re not Papal Bulls. But when you come up the papal bull, here’s the doctrine, here’s what we’re doing, here’s the official view of the church. I’m speaking as the Apostle Peter would have spoken, and I’m giving the same credence almost as the Bible. So, Papal Bull is a level of decree that carries a lot of weight within the hierarchy of various Catholic decrees.

Rick:

I got it. Okay. Alright, makes sense. Well, I was just curious. We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. We’ve got more your questions. You’re listening to foundations of freedom Thursday here on WallBuilders Live.

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Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday, taking your questions which you can send into [email protected], that’s [email protected] And Thomas has the next question and it is about setting the record straight.

He said “I have not caught all of the programs on the black history that you’re currently doing. But when listening, you cover many, many truths. But I keep wondering which you haven’t gotten to yet, since the Dems have been so bad for so long for black folks, how is it that they still cling to the Democrat Party?”

And if you’re just tuning into WallBuilders Live we had aired just a week or two ago a program, you can actually get it on our website at wallbuilders.com, but it’s called Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White. And guys, I got to agree with Thomas here. It’s truth bomb after truth bomb after truth bomb. It’s got some shocking, powerful information. And for folks that didn’t listen, they can go to the archives at wallbuilderslive.com, or they can go to our main website at wallbuilders.com, get the video, which also has some really cool imagery and reenactments and all kinds of great stuff.

So now to the question, why do you guys think it is that after so many years of the Democrat party being the racist party, holding on to slavery, doing the Jim Crow laws, all the things that they did, why do they still garner 80-90% of the black vote?

Different Core Beliefs

David:

Well, let me change the question. Why do Catholics still adhere to the Democrat Party since one of their core beliefs is the inalienable right to life and they support a party that doesn’t believe that? And for that matter, why do profamily Hispanics cling to the Democrat Party, which is so anti-nuclear family? And that’s such a big deal for Hispanics, and you can keep going down the list.

Tim:

Well, and to that, and it’s also interesting, as we’re saying, Catholics and Hispanics, whether it’s Catholics being so prolife and Hispanic, oftentimes they’re very prolife, they’re definitely pro-family. It does seem like one of the big differences for the African American and the black community is the reason I think they get caught up in this is the notion of the big switch, where right, we’re told that well, Democrats used to be really bad and evil and racist. And then either in like the 1930s, maybe the 1970s, not really sure when but somewhere, there was this big switch where the Republicans became Democrats, Democrats became Republicans.

And so actually, like we’re black people used to, like Republican Party was founded, it was one of the party of blacks, it was founded as the party of equality trying to fight to advance the quality issues, and really civil rights issues for the black community, and so you had black and white people working together, but now, right, what used to be the Republican Party is the Democrat party.

Why do African Americans Vote Democrat?

So I think it’s a little different, that the democratic policies even though we can look at them on their face, and recognize that they are really bad in a lot of areas, I think there’s a lot of people in the black community that really have bought into this notion that they’re on the good side, right. And if Lincoln were alive today, if MLK were alive today, they probably be Democrats today because the party switched.

I think that’s one of the issues and the reasons. Now I think there’s other issues too, the Democrat party are offering to give them more things and benefit them and help them more.

And we know historically, there was a time back in the Great Depression, when people were really struggling to stay alive, you have people like FDR step in and say, hey, we’ll do these kind of soup kitchen food programs, and we’ll help keep people alive. And so that did shift some of the historic vote from black Americans, from the Republican Party to the Democrat Party, because I said, this guy’s going to keep us alive. But it seems like there’s a few factors that would be different then for like Catholics or Hispanics, because you can look at those policy issues, those are super clear and played, doesn’t always seem as clear and plain for African Americans.

David:

Well, I think part of it though goes back to something William James said a long time ago, he was 1800s guy into the early 1900s, he said there’s nothing so absurd, but that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it. And if you go through this great switch thing, oh, really, is that what happened? Nobody asked who switched. Can you give me examples? Can you show me where that all the Democrat governors became Republican governors and vice versa? Nobody asked those questions.

Tim:

But we know there was one person who switched.

David:

Yeah, there was one person out of probably 15,000 elected officials in the south, one person switched. And we can point to that, and that’s going to be it.

The Big Switch?

Tim:

And I think Dinesh D’Souza, he actually covers this in one of his videos where he actually identifies all the people that they switched parties, but it was less than 1% that actually switch parties. And even if you look at where we are today, you have Democrats becoming Republicans today, you have Republican rhinos becoming Democrats today, switches of 1% or less are something that just happens in the reality of life, that doesn’t represent any kind of seismic shift in policies or politics.

So identifying one or two people that shifted is not reflective of the parties themselves actually shifting. If you look at the platforms of the parties, you’re not going to find all of a sudden switch their platforms. And you’re going to find, dad, as you mentioned all these elected officials, that all of a sudden, all of the people that the Congressmen all of a sudden, AOC all of a sudden Bernie Sanders, they’re going to become Republicans. That’s not the way it works. But there’s where people point to one or two individuals a switch and say, well, that was all of them.

David:

And so what happens is we generally don’t know what they stand for policy-wise. We’re told the Democrats support the little man and he’ll fight for the worker and etc. Now he’ll tax you out of existence. And by the way, why do small business owners vote Democrat? Because they keep sticking taxes on them, keep regulating your business, makes it tough, because they’ve heard lines.

And so really kind of bottom line, even with Hispanics and we’re seeing in the last two months Hispanics becoming Republicans at a very rapid rate because they did not realize the Democrat Party was virtually 99.9% pro-abortion only. And they’re finding that out now with the new Congress and they said, that’s not what we signed up for. So you’re seeing the shift, but it all goes back to knowledge. And this is the thing. CRT only works because you don’t know real American history.

The Doctrine of Discovery, Black Democrats, And More – On Foundations Of Freedom

If you knew real American history, you’d laugh CRT out of the room and say, you guys are crazy. You didn’t mention this, and this and this, and you didn’t mention this hero and, this hero and this hero; and you didn’t mention this law and this policy. You’ve only picked what you wanted. You’ve made a narrative on that. And so I think that’s where a lot of this is with what happens with all these groups that really should not be with the Democrat party.

Rick:

Alright, friends, that does it for today. This has been Foundations of Freedom Thursday here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for being a part of that today. If you’d like your question answered, please send that into [email protected] That’s [email protected] And while you’re there, go to wallbuilders.com. Check out some of those amazing resources.

If you’d like to have a better foundation for yourself that you would like to know more about how the nation was founded, you’d like to be able to apply a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective to what’s going on in your community, whether you’re testifying at the school board or at the state capitol or you’re calling or writing your legislator, or you’re just teaching friends and family at church or in your home or even your own kids about the principles of liberty, we have to each get educated about those things first.

So, go to wallbuilders.com, get some materials today, start diving in, maybe even consider becoming a Constitution coach and joining our 12,000 Constitution coaches around the country and hosting one of those classes in your home or at your church. You don’t need any background for that. Anyone can do it and we do it for free. Check all of that out at biblicalcitizens.com. Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders Live.