The Left Is Using Technology To Target Conservative Businesses: Today, we will be discussing some of the tactics the left has been effectively using stop donations to conservative causes and how they have been scaring conservative businesses owners to cower down. Tune in now to find out what the left is doing and how we can put a stop to it.

Air Date: 1/02/2019

Guest: Phil King & Bill Mehrling

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. This is WallBuilders Live where we talk about the day’s hottest topics on policy and faith in the culture. We”€™re always doing that from a biblical historical and constitutional perspective. We’re here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian,, and our founder at WallBuilders and Tim Barton is a US national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and my name is Rick Greene I’m a former Texas legislator.

Check us out at WallBuildersLive.com that’ll give you a lot of great information including our list of radio stations across the country. You can also get our coverage of the program from the last few weeks and months and then over WallBuilder.com you can get all kinds of great tools for your family to equip and inspire them to be better citizens, to be engaged to understand the history of our country and what they can do to help preserve our Constitutional Republic.

While you’re over there at WallBuilders.com, I also want you to consider the fact we are a listener supported program. That means this doesn’t happen without you. You make it happen. You allow us to spread this good news by sending your donations right here at WallBuilders.com. You can do a one-time donation or if you would consider doing a monthly donation. Could be just five dollars a month. Give up one good cup of coffee a month and make that five dollar donation. It allows us to plan for the year, add stations, do our training of young people of pastors and legislators. All the different things we’re doing to rebuild the foundations here in America.

We appreciate you helping out with that. Check it out at WallBuilders.com.

David, Tim we”€™ve got later in the program our good friend Phil King state representative, your state representative actually and Bill Mehrling from ALEC which is a legislators organization. They’re going to be sharing with us some of the tactics of the left that have been pretty effective at getting corporations, getting companies to not donate to conservative causes, to not be a part of influencing in any way any positive ways in the culture. They’ve really gotten them to cower down. And so we’re going to find out how they’re doing that and how to put a stop to it.

Corporations are Responding to Customer Wishes

David:

Yeah, it’s interesting. And when you think of corporations, what is it that gets the attention of corporations probably faster than anything else?

Rick:

Losing customers.

David:

Losing customers. Yeah, customer wishes whatever that is. If customers express dissatisfaction, they’re gonna respond to that because that’s our money. That’s their bread and butter. You can have your customers mad at you and expect to have a successful business. So customer wishes.

Now, what if what the corporate office is hearing is not really what the customers are saying but what somebody makes it appear that they’re saying? What if you can come up with a method of creating a lot of noise that seems to be coming from our customers but really isn’t.

Can you get a company to change its direction and go in a direction that people aren’t asking it to simply because they think the people are asking it to?

And the answer is yes.

And that’s something that Phil and Bill have documented and by the way ALEC stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council. They represent about one-fourth of the legislators in the United States. These are the more conservative legislators that are committed to economic freedom, free market enterprise system, etc. And what you see in the free market system is these big corporations starting to run like crazy from conservative companies or conservative organizations.

And you know the other side will say, oh if you’re conservative you’re racist, or you’re homophobe, or you’re a hater, or you’re whatever, and the companies think oh then our people won”€™t like that.

Brands Putting Pressure on the Conservatives

So what happens is they hear all these brands put on about conservatives and it doesn’t matter where the brands are true or not. If they get a lot of pressure, they run. But as it turns out a lot of the pressure they’re getting is not actual pressure. It’s being created in a very sophisticated, very high technological manner and it’s having great success.

Rick:

When I would say it’s not that it’s not actual pressure, it’s just not consumer pressure.

David:

That”€™s right, it”€™s not consumer pressure.

Rick:

They’re feeling the pressure. It’s just not from who they think from.

It”€™s Manufactured Pressure

David:

It’s manufactured pressure, that”€™s what it is. It’s made up pressure that appears to be, it has every perception, it’s like we were watching the guy last night with the virtual reality. You know that’s not real stuff. And you’re not going to get hit. But he was talking about skiing down a slope, and he was sweating as he was going. He wasn’t on a ski slope to stand in his living room. But the perception is, ‘I’m in the middle of a really steep alpine ski. I’m going to kill myself.”€™ No, actually you’re just stand in your living room. So it’s manufactured pressure, and it has great impact on these companies to get them to believe

something that’s not true.

And so Phil and these guys brought in a forensic team that was able to track what’s happened to these corporations, and the results really are amazing of what they found.

Rick:

Phil King, our special guest when we return. Stay with us. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

Moments From America’s History

This is David Barton with another moment from America’s history. Today, numerous court decisions demonstrate that there’s often a conflict between the courts, the law, and religion. Has this conflict always existed?

Not according to James Wilson.  James Wilson was a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He was a law professor as well as an original justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. James Wilson saw no conflict between religion and the law. In fact, just the contrary.

He declared, “€œHuman law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine. Far from being rivals or enemies religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistance.  Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.”

In the views of Founding Father James Wilson religion and good civil law were inseparable. For more information on God’s hand in American history contact WallBuilders at 1-800-8-REBUILD.

The Left Using Technology to Attack Conservative Businesses

Rick:

We”€™re back again at WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us our special guest today our Representative Phil King from the state of Texas and Bill Mehrling is with ALEC.

He’s got actually got a long title. I’m gonna see if I can’t say this faster than it’s ever been said before Bill. Here we go:

Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of External Relations of Strategic Partnerships for the American Legislative Exchange Council. I want to know how big your business card is.

Bill:

It”€™s larger than standard size. But you also just made the Guinness book.

Rick:

Alright Bill, tell us a little bit about what you guys are doing on this technology front. You know we’ve seen the left win a lot of battles because they tend to use technology better, but they’re actually targeting when we talk about businesses and the whole BDS thing and what’s happening to Israel in the same way on a micro level.

The left has been good at targeting conservative businesses right here in the U.S. What gets you guys taking a look at this and what have you found?

Companies, Organizations and Legislators Need To Work Together

Bill:

Well, that’s right. You know one of the challenges that we see as a trade association in the sense of essentially of legislators is that it is a target for activists.

You know as Representative King described at the beginning of the interview what ALEC does is bring legislators and stakeholders together. Stakeholders like WallBuilders also stakeholders like American Airlines. Companies and nonprofit organizations and legislators working together will create a better result and better policy than any one of those groups working alone.

The reality of the situation is our opposition: progressive, activists leftists also know that, and their approach is marginalized, one leg of the stool, and we can very easily marginalize the entire group.

They’ve taken that to great effect over the past decade or so as they’ve declared open season on business.

You know after all American entrepreneurship is and as a result of businesses or people who have entrepreneurial ideas instead in their view, it’s the role of government to govern how you do business. When and where you do business and if you can do business at all. At a government controlled price. Anyhow that’s that’s my soapbox there.

The reality

Government Controlled Price

Rick:

Which by the way just for our listeners that maybe haven’t studied much of this bill let’s just make it clear. And when they do it through government, it does not work, and it always affects the market negatively. Best poster child of that is I think Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter”€™s price fixing in the 70s and about.

But we won’t go too far into that, but that’s why what you guys do is so important because you got a new generation that never studied economics, doesn’t understand those things and you have to show them statistically what works and what doesn’t work.

That’s why we’re so thankful for what you guys are doing because a lot of legislators need that information as well. Sorry I had to jump in with you man. We could soapbox this thing for a while.

 

The Left Is Trying to Push Businesses Out of Public Policy Discussions

Bill:

So, the issue is that starting with let’s say Citizens United back at the beginning of this decade immediately was open season on business. They knew that progressive activists knew that if they could push business out of public policy discussions that they would have a much more suitable playing field.

At first, it was merely a tax online, merely a tax in direct mail, merely a tax besmirching the business as not having the right approach or motives. Today has become something much more sinister something much more planned and targeted.

Starting in around 2005. There was a group called Democracy Alliance that later grew to be a major national organization today funded to the tune of a billion dollars. And what it essentially does is give grants to 172 progressive organizations. Now that’s no big deal. That’s just how people make donations.

What’s interesting about it though Rick is these 172 organizations, many of them have satellites in different states. And all of them are just, let’s call them speakers or megaphones for a centralized communications effort here in Washington D.C.

So when you hear about a common cause in a particular state or progress now in a particular state for instance; Progress Texas or Bold Nebraska or progress Oklahoma or Progress Missouri, I list states that are in the heart of the work that WallBuilders is doing. Well, they’re all the same group. They’re all based in D.C., and they all communicate a similar message.

It is that top-down government is the way approach and certainly their desire would be to marginalize folks who believe in individualism who believe in liberty who believe in self-determination. And you know it’s very difficult for them to win that argument on the premise of policy or philosophy.

So instead they’ve resulted to name shame and defame campaigns that target legislators and question their motives, that targets political donors and question their patriotism. That target businesses and question their corruption instead of believing that everyone’s coming together and try and create a better America.

The Left Using Technology to Manipulate Organisations and Businesses

Rick:

You are one of the best known I guess or most you know media covered efforts on this was, of course, Chick Fil A over you know the owners’ position on marriage. That when backfired on the left I think because all of us flocked to Chick Fil A in defense of them but when they do this, you know they do tend to appear to be bigger and louder, or they’re definitely louder they tend to be bigger.

They appear to be bigger and that there’s more of them than there actually is. Is that what you guys have found?

Phil:

Oh yeah. Let me give you an example of that too and then Bill I want to go back to you. But you know we had one company I won’t name who they are, but they’ve been long-term ALEC members.

National company, international company and once just a few days their CEO received thousands of emails from what appeared to be customers demanding that they withdraw from our list because of ALEC’s position on a particular issue related to conservative free-market economics.

Obviously the CEO, what does this mean? What do we need to do?

They Tend To Appear Bigger and Louder

Bill went back and forensically traced that and found that it wasn’t this giant grassroots movement of this company’s customers. Instead, it was coming from a handful of servers in the same building on the same floor. It was all manipulated by this left organization to make it look like the customers of this company wanted them to withdraw from ALEC and wanted them to quit participating in this forum.

We’ve seen that happen time and time and time again. We”€™ll see people buy, organizations buy stock in a company so that they can show up at the annual shareholders’ meetings with resolutions demanding that they withdraw from ALEC.

The board, of course, they take this seriously, they say what it is. We trace that back and find that it’s coming from a very small group of people funding these acquisitions. They are not just using this to attack ALEC.

This is a model that they’re using to try to push businesses out of the marketplace of ideas, out of where they influence public policy. They want business out of that. And when the business moves out, of course, the leftist ideology can move into that back.

We’d Rather Win On Ideas and Persuasion

Rick:

Hey, let me just ask you guys real quick on that I mean is there any fraud statute or anything that would stop that? I mean is that, I mean is there any way to prevent them from being manipulative and for what sounds like fraud to me. But you know do they actually cross that line or is that something that you guys have looked at.

Bill:

Well, there are certain legal strategies that could be pursued.

You know it seems though that for our movement that’s not the, we wouldn’t wear it well. Legally, yes we could pursue it. But I think we’d rather win on ideas and persuasion. You know it seems like one of those where if I don’t like what you’re doing, I”€™ll sue you. It seems like something they would do more than something we would do.

Rick:

That”€™s how it would be perceived, sure.

Why Should Listeners Care?

Bill:

So, working on that.

Speaking of why your listeners should care about this issue it reminds me of the Martin Niemöller quote. You know first they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist and they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist, and so on and so forth. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

That’s the challenge that we currently have in the free market landscape where you know 60 percent of people who support socialism today think that government should be less involved in business but 40 percent of Millennials at the same time believe socialism is a good thing. At this point where we are as an American civil society is one where the news media generally positions business as bad and legislators as bad and people in government as good.

The same has actually happened is as Representative King is saying in shareholder meetings where shareholder activists have taken the same premise and position. Now I don’t suggest that your listeners go and begin pressuring companies because it’s inauthentic.

Instead, they should call those companies and ask them why they aren’t doing things. Why aren’t you supporting the free market? Why aren’t you a member of ALEC?

Why don’t you support WallBuilders or alternatively say things like you should support ALEC. You should support limited government groups that want to limit regulation and increase your business.

Conservative folks pressuring companies doesn’t work as well as conservative folks showing the way to companies because they’re both part and parcel of American civil society. And you know even looking back at Thomas Jefferson looking at why individual liberty has grown in this country. He talked about individual and free enterprise.

The Use of Open Records Request To Overwhelm Legislators

Phil:

Rick, another example of this is the use of open records request or Freedom of Information requests. We have legislators that are just pounded with open records request after request after request. The idea of that is, of course, everything that government does should be very public. Should be open air, it should be there should be full disclosure unless there is really a compelling reason that it shouldn”€™t be. Everything should be available to the public.

Well, the left is also taking the initiative to really just try to overwhelm legislators. We may participate in different conservative organizations like ALEC. Then they begin to pound you with these requests for information. It’s something we have to do. It”€™s something we have to allow but they are using it as a sword instead of true information gathering, and I can tell you, in my office, they take many many hours for us to respond to them. I’ve gotten as many as three in a matter of an hour.

I”€™ll tell you that the State Police, the Department of Public Safety in Texas got one at one point about a year ago. Ten months later, they still had three full-time employees working on just trying to respond. There was nothing but a fishing expedition. And so the use of tools like that the use of technology, the use of mass emails, and going to shareholders meetings with resolutions and all the different things they have done.

Facebook attacks is added to it an effort by the left to try to push people that are focused on free markets, people that are focused on individual liberty people are focused on freedom out of the public square and to replace it with a liberal ideology. And Bill maybe better than anyone in the country has done a great job of mapping this out.

In fact, he”€™s got a presentation that he gives to the board and others when they’re when they’re under pressure. That shows all the source of all the funding and the work. And that it’s not a mass movement of the customers or a mass movement of their investors. It’s actually often just a small number of different groups from across the country who are all cross-pollinated that are trying to appear as a movement and Bill is able to show them that look these really aren’t your customers.

These really aren’t sure shareholders. These are these well funded but very left-oriented groups that are trying to put you out of the marketplace of public ideas. And it’s an amazing presentation, and I wish it was something you could actually show on the air.

How Can Listeners Support ALEC?

Rick:

Speaking of that what would be some good action items for our listeners when we do have a lot of legislators that listen of course most of our audience not legislators. So I mean, can they support ALEC?  Can they get on an email list or are they able to read your studies and reports? What would be a good way for them to interact with ALEC?

Bill:

Well, first and foremost all of your listeners are always welcome to go to ALEC.org to go to consume any of our state comparative analysis or our model policy. Bread and butter of what ALEC does is bring legislators together to share ideas. The result of which is the creation of policy model. Now the cool thing about those policies is every one of your listeners can be a citizen lobbyist themselves.

If they see a good limited government free market idea at ALEC.org, they can take it. They can print it they can send it to their legislator and say why are you doing this or alternatively, and this is what I most often say when asked what can your listeners do – I don’t care if your legislator is a Republican a Democrat an Independent or a socialist.

Call your legislator, tell her tell him that you understand how difficult their job is and you appreciate it because legislators are oftentimes are part-time, and their work is incredibly hard.

They have to make a bunch of decisions that are all very difficult. Many of us wouldn’t want to make them ourselves because they resulted in people’s future success.

So I just ask, call your legislators and thank them for the work that they do. And then while you’re on the phone with them tell them to join ALEC.

Doesn’t matter if they’re members or not already they love to hear that. Why aren’t you a member of ALEC, you should be a member. It’s the best antidote to the calls that Representative King was just talking about.

Rick:

Gotcha. We’ll have a link today at WallBuildersLive.com for folks to find out more about ALEC. Guys, y’all been fantastic. Really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on.

Phil & Bill:

Thanks, Rick. Thank you.

Rick:

Stay with us folks. Be right back with David and Tim Barton.

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.

Phil and Bill’s Excellent Adventure

Rick:

We”€™re back at WallBuilders Live.  Thanks for staying with us. Special thanks to Phil King and Bill Mehrling for joining us as well. Back with David and Tim Barton now.

And guys I can’t help it. It’s Phil and Bill. I just feel like with this show today should be called Phil and Bill’s excellent adventure.

Tim:

It kind of was an excellent adventure right. But yeah. Probably less drugs involved in this production apparently than the other productions.

Rick:

Probably.

Tim:

I mean the drugs might be like for you know achy bones and Advil, and now you know I have heartburn. I don’t know what we take you know once we’re 50 and older so I will discover that one day guys can let me know what vitamins and pills we”€™re on.

But yeah you know other than other than probably the drugs that were used in the filming. Keanu Reeves has come a little ways. You know John Wick would no longer be on that same excellent adventure anyway. Total for any listeners who are tracking Bravo for you everybody else disregard. We”€™ll get back to discussing the interview.

Rick:

OK so back to Phil and Bill.

So here’s you know, we’ve had them on twice now specifically to talk about topics where you know ALEC, and these legislators have been able to go in and make a difference. So, for this one it’s very much for corporations and companies and stockholders to know and be aware of what’s happening, so they don’t get run over on the situation.

Manipulation – The Mantra of The Left

David:

Imagine a corporate office within a matter of hours getting tens of thousands of emails from irate consumers all over the nation telling you that we’re taking our business. I mean they can’t survive that so they’re going to change their policy except all of those emails came out of one server one building one office three guys behind the computers. So what it is it’s a manipulation, and that’s the mantra of the left.

I mean they manipulate truth or create fake news or whatever you call it. And so that’s what they’re doing here. They’re creating the perception that people are really outraged over something when they’re not. And so companies back away from ALEC or they back away from other positions or traditional marriage or whatever.

And you can see how that supporting traditional marriage I mean that has so penalized Chic Fil A. They’ll probably never recover from what happened to them. Oh wait a minute, They are booming all over the nation. That’s the thing – they create that image and remember how viciously they were attacked. But again it’s a handful, and it reminds me you guys may or may not know this.

The Mouse That Roared

Did you guys, have you ever read the book or seen the movie called The Mouse That Roared?

Rick & Tim:

No

David:

Rick, you know anything about it?

Rick:

I don’t.

David:

In the Cold War 1955, this book came out. It became a Hollywood movie, and it was about this little country in Europe. It’s smaller than most cities is maybe the size of Sausalito, but that was the whole country, and they were backward. They had bows and arrows. The only thing going for them was they produced really good wine, and so they produced this really good wine. And what happened was a winery in California produced a knockoff of their wine. So you could get their wine really cheap. Well, they can’t do that because now the economy shuts, so they declared war on the United States. So they get in their boats.

They come over the bow and arrows they land in New York, and they’re there at the middle of a civil defense drill. So nobody’s on the streets. So they take the city of New York because nobody’s there. So they attack with their bows and arrows, and it turns out some of the guys left the nuclear power plant at the time, so they get one nuclear bomb. So they now own a nuclear bomb. And so every nation in the world bows down this little bitty country.

It’s the mouse that roared. They have no capacity. They don’t know how to set off the bomb, don’t know what to do with it ended up with it, and it’s like everybody is scared of them and that’s the way it is for the left. This manipulation they do we’re told.

And first Peter 5:8 that the devil goes about as a roaring lion. He makes all the noise he seems like a lion, it looks like, it’s like virtual reality it’s not there.

And companies need to know that, and we can help inform companies that hey the pressure you’re getting from the left this is not real pressure and that’s one of the many good things that ALEC is doing, and we really appreciate them.

Consider Being One of Our Supporters

Rick:

Well, special thanks to Phil King and Bill Mehrling for joining us today. Thank you for listening today. Find out more at our two websites WallBuilderLive.com and WallBuilders.com.

And as I mentioned at the beginning of the program consider being one of our supporters. Our supporters are what make this program possible so we can have interviews like this and do our Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs and Good News Friday and all the other good news that we bring you. It’s all because of those listeners that support the program, and you can be one of those. Come alongside us right there at Wallbuilders.com. Make a one-time donation or monthly donation. We would greatly appreciate your support. Thanks for listening today to WallBuildersLive.