Travis Tritt, School Choice, Biden Mandates, And More – On Good News Friday: Did you know a record number of pro-life laws have already been passed in 2021? Why were the Braves brave to allow Travis Tritt to sing at their game? How could school budgets going down be good news? Is Biden’s mandate a policy or a threat? Is there any good news coming out of New York? Tune in to hear stories you may not hear anywhere else on today’s Good News Friday!

Air Date: 11/12/2021

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.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. We’re glad you’re with us today on WallBuilders Live, where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

Listen, if you go and you look into the Bible, and you say, what a God teaches on this particular issue, and every issues covered by the Bible? And then you say, hey, what can I learn from history, what works, what doesn’t work, there’s nothing new under the sun so we can learn from history? And then you look at the Constitution and say, how do I apply this in my particular country here in America as an American citizen? 

How does this work under our Constitution? When you do those three things, you’re going to get the right position on every issue, and it’s going to produce good results when that position is influenced into the culture. So that’s why we take that biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

The name WallBuilders comes from that scripture in Nehemiah that says arise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach. The foundations in America are cracking, folks. There’s a lot of challenges out there, and what we’re here to do is restore those foundations. And we’re thankful that you’re part of it today.

I’m Rick Green, former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. And it’s my honor to work with the Barton family. I’m here with Tim Barton, he’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and David Barton, he’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. 

And today is Good News Friday, which means we’re diving into those good news stories where people have taken a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective, they’ve applied it in their community, and they’ve gotten good results. And we want to share those stories with you so that it’ll encourage you to do the exact same thing. Let’s dive into that good news. David’s got the first piece of good news today. David.

David:

Rick, I’m going to jump into a report that’s come out nationally, and it’s on the issue of prolife laws. The headline says, “It’s record 106 prolife laws have already met passed in 2021 saving babies from abortion”. So the fact that in one year, in 19 states, there have been 106 new prolife laws passed, that’s a major, major victory. And I think this is healthy in so many ways.

Protecting Life

Now, obviously, there’s a lot of states that didn’t pass a single prolife law. And I go back to something that the Founding Fathers said that among all your inalienable rights is first is a right to life, then to liberty, then to property, etc. And you’ll find that where states really are active in protecting life, they’re also active in protecting your liberties, and they’re the ones that are less likely to mandate all the stuff we see going on. 

They’re protecting your properties. Taxes are going to be lower. Property rights are going to be higher.

Generally, if you get the life issue, right, the other things you get right as well. It’s like going down an interstate. If you’re off the interstate, you’re off the interstate, I mean, until you get back on it. And life is that thing. If you get off on the life issue and go the wrong direction, you’re off on all the other rights that are there; the property rights, the right of self-defense, the right to criminal justice, due process, etc. You’ll be wrong on the rest if you’re wrong on life. So it’s really good to see that.

Now here’s kind of the spin off that is striking me as intriguing, is about the time this report came out. We also heard that the Supreme Court picked up the Texas abortion law. Now, the Supreme Court had already picked up the Mississippi Heartbeat Bill, and this had a whole lot of people thinking, maybe this is what the courts going to use to overturn Roe v. Wade, that this could be it. 

And, and some people don’t think they’re going to overturn it, but they’ll use this and take an incremental step. Because there’s a lot of folks that we talked to that are dealing with a Supreme Court regulate that think it’ll be a two-step process, three-step process to get rid of Roe v. Wade.

The first, they’ll take a state law like Mississippi and say, hey, if Mississippi says it’s 15 weeks, who are we to disagree with that? We should let the states decide how many weeks. And then they’ll come back later and say, well, let’s just let the states aside all of this: this shouldn’t have been a federal issue anyway. 

So they see the Mississippi bill as being if not a way to overturn Roe v. Wade, at least a way to undermine it, that the court will probably move in the right direction. And I think that that’s probably true. I think we’ll get one of those outcomes. I don’t think they’re going to strike down the Mississippi law.

State Laws

But the fact that they went ahead and took a second abortion case is really intriguing to me. Why would you do that? I mean, you’ve already got an abortion case that allows you to undermine Roe v Wade or overturn it, so why would you take this case from Texas? 

And I think what makes this case intriguing, and I haven’t seen any of the legal speculation on this, this is the case where that it says the state is not the one to enforce these abortion laws, it’s citizens in the state that can do this. Citizens can sue abortionists, and they can sue them for damages to these inalienable rights.

So it’s really a unique law in the sense that it allows citizens to be able to enforce it. And this is why Planned Parenthood hasn’t been able to sue against this law and prevail because it’s not the state closing Planned Parenthood down, it’s actual citizens that are saying, hey, we don’t want this going on in our communities and we’ve got a right to decide what’s in our communities. And as an individual citizen, I have a standing here to be able to go against Planned Parenthood. And that’s a really unique approach. Texas is the only state in the nation with this law.

Now, granted, there’s a lot of other laws that allow citizens to sue, for example, environmental type of stuff, it doesn’t have to be the state that enforces that but the federal government. You as an individual can sue over your neighbor polluting stuff; it doesn’t have to be the state that enforces it. So the Liberals have used the right of citizens to sue as something they’ve done with so many of their laws.

This is the first time conservatives have reached over and said, let’s let the citizens enforce this. So I think that’s really good news, the court picked up a second abortion case. I think that’s pretty much an indication they’re definitely going to do something with the Mississippi case that would be favorable for us on the prolife side. And I think we may see something really good come out of the Texas law as well, where they might let citizens start being able to enforce some of the state laws, which is a great way of doing it.

So piece of good news, it looks like to me, at least not only nationally with 106 prolife laws so far this year, and the state sessions are still looking at other laws. But the fact that we’ve got two cases at the Supreme Court on abortion, I think is really good news.

The Atlanta Braves

Rick:

Yeah, very much a game changer, and lives being saved as a result of it, and it could happen in other states as well, especially depending on those Supreme Court rulings. Alright, Tim, where are we headed for our next piece of good news?

Tim:

Well, this one is going to Atlanta. And recently, the Atlanta Braves did win the World Series, which Rick, I know that you are a major baseball fan. So out of curiosity, I assume as a Texan, you were cheering for the Astros?

Rick:

You know it. But you know what, my heart was a little bit with Atlanta, just because I wanted Georgia to be able to say, ha, there you go, MLB, you pull the all-star game away from us over the ridiculous things. And you had to come enjoy the World Series here and now we’re going to be the champs for the next 12 months. So, I was kind of happy. Yeah.

Tim:

And you know, the Commissioner getting booed as he’s making the presentation for the people of Atlanta because they recognize like, he’s the one that pulled the all-star game, right, because all of a sudden, they’re racist. But I was very torn as well. I was going to be happy for whatever team won. Both of them different levels have compelling stories.

All that being said, one of the interesting things leading into the World Series, and part of what got the Braves to the World Series. If you look back at the National League Championship Series, at Game Six, they had a singer. And this is where when teams are in these different championship series, especially when they have home games, they will bring out some of their fans to come.

And specifically fans, like high profile fans, some of their noted fans that are maybe professional artists and specifically singers, and now have them come out and perform the national anthem or something of such nature somewhere during the event.

And so Travis Tritt was invited to come and do the national anthem before Game Six for the Braves, and interesting, that there’s a lot of backstory to this. But the way it started unfolding is Travis Tritt after he sang it, apparently, there was controversy, which I didn’t know there’s a lot of controversy initially. But looking at the backstory, it’s kind of fascinating and silly all the same time.

But Travis Tritt tweeted, he said “So the wing, not Cancel Culture tried to pressure the Atlanta Braves into forcing me not to sing the national anthem at Game Six of the NLCS. I’m so thankful that the Braves did not cave to this pressure and refuse to be bullied. Thanks for allowing me to pay tribute to America.”

Why Be Cancelled?

So apparently, he was going to try to be canceled. So you have to ask the question. Okay, why was he going to be canceled? What was it against him? 

And I thought, okay, he’s a country singer, so automatically, that’s going to put them in a certain demographic category for some people. And so right, maybe they think if your country, maybe that’s their categorizing them as the racist or the white supremacist, whatever it is. And so I’m trying to figure out why is this dude being canceled?

And there’s actually a lot of articles that came out right after he saying, and let me just read you part of it that becomes very silly. So this is from the Washington Post. They said “The choice for the Braves Travis Tritt is somewhat puzzling because it seems to court unnecessary controversy, given Tritt’s stance against vaccination mandates.” So the reason that Cancel Culture came and tried to cancel him is because he’s against vaccination mandates. Well, what did he do that was against vaccination mandates?

He had released a press statement where he says he’s going to perform concerts, if any of the venues where he’s going to perform a concert, if they require a vaccination passport, or if they require people to have a negative COVID test or to wear mask during the concert, he said, I’m not going to play a show there because I’m not going to allow you to discriminate against any of my fans who want to come. And so he actually did canceled several shows where there were venues that did require, whether it be a vaccine passport or masks, whatever the case was.

And so he came out and defended that position and said, I’m not going to discriminate against my fans, etc, etc. But because he’s anti the vaccine mandate, not anti the vaccine, anti the mandate, apparently he was super controversial. So let me just say, not only a level of Congratulations. We have a lot of friends in Georgia. We did a barnstorming tour in Georgia. We’ve done a lot of things with a lot of people, a lot of friends in Georgia, and so we have a lot of friends who are celebrating this Brave’s victory, good for them.

With that being said, I am going to celebrate also that the Braves did not kowtow to cancel culture, because they had a professional artist who was against the vaccine mandate. But we are in an era where there’s a lot of people that would have coward at this cancel mob. And I am just encouraged that we’re seeing now different levels of leaders rise up. 

Travis Tritt

So whether this was presumably the owner making this decision, right, but probably the manager, probably some of the team had to be on board with this because we didn’t hear about any level of protest from the organization, so kudos to the Braves on more than one level.

But for this one, for them supporting Travis Tritt just singing national anthem, as he said, and his original tweet that he just wanted to pay tribute to America, and they did not cancel him because of his position against vaccine mandates. So good job, the Atlanta Braves.

Rick:

Well, I love that story. And Tim, I got to tell you I’ve been following Travis Tritt for the last year on Twitter because he’s had so many good comments and common sense comments. So, just like you, I was thrilled to see them back him up and stand firm with him. 

And frankly, for those reporters that complained about Travis Tritt singing, here’s a quarter call “Someone who cares”. Because without question, Travis Tritt could smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E. That was for all of our country music fans out there that know that those are two of Travis Tritt’s biggest hits. Okay, next piece of good news. Actually, let’s take a break. Guys, we got a lot more good news to get to. But we’re going to take a quick break, stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

The Courageous Leaders Collection

Hi, 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, parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read.

And if you remember back to the Bible, to 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 and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Livebutterfly. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. And I bet you have friends and family that need some good news as well. So be sure and share this program with your friends or family. Go to our website at wallbuilderslive.com and share this Good News Friday with everybody that you know. Alright, David, let’s dive into that next piece of good news.

David:

I love the free market. I think it’s really successful. I love his principles. I love the principle of competition. I think competition helps anywhere it’s tried. I think competition when churches is good, that that helps drive better churches. 

I think competition between hamburgers is good, or between chicken people or whatever it is. I think competition everywhere is good, I think is good in government. I think having unions is bad deal because you don’t allow the competition, and so you get set on a contract that you can’t change.

The Federal Government

I think that’s one of the problems we got with the federal government is because the civil service laws that were passed in the 60s you cannot fire those guys. You know, I mentioned even before that they think 300,000 died, what was that in 2017. With all the stuff that happened with the VA hospitals, they think that 300,000 vets died as a result of bad treatment and nobody was fired as a result of that.

They actually passed a law under Trump in 2017 to allow that to happen. And a bunch of those guys were removed from their positions in government because how incompetent they were. And yet I saw the Labor Relations Board in the last few months went back and reinstated every one of those people who got taken out for 300… We don’t have competition. And unions kill competition. I think it’s a really bad deal.

I love what’s happening now with how bad public schools have become because even in Fairfax County, they have lost over 10,000 students because of the nonsense that’s happened. Now, when you lose 10,000 students, you’ve lost funding for 10,000 students, and that means school budgets are going down all over the nation. They can’t meet their budgets anymore.

Tim:

Hey, let me also offer one point of clarity. So it’s not just how bad schools have gotten, it’s parents finding out how bad schools have gotten. Because the reason these kids are getting pulled out is because their parents noticed, and some of these pairs for the first time, they had no idea what their kids were learning, what propaganda was being shoved down their kid’s throat, whether it be with a pornographic material, or the sex Ed curriculum, which actually could be redundant, what I’m saying right there.

And when you look at critical race theory, and some of these things happening in these schools, when parents were finding out how bad these schools were, that’s when parents are pulling these kids out of school. And that’s what’s really encouraging is that parents now are recognizing the brokenness of the system. 

And it is encouraging, not because it solves all of the problems of the public school, but it doesn’t. It’s encouraging because whatever kids get pulled out of these indoctrination camps are more kids who will not go through the same level of indoctrination. And that’s the good news.

Public Education

David:

Yeah, there’s a lot with that. And so the fact that you have so many public schools losing high percentage of kids 6-12, 8%, whatever it is, they can’t afford to have that kind of cut in their budget. They’re just really tight. They’re wanting to raise taxes. 

And some states, that means property taxes, in other states, it’s bond elections, etc. But with people moving out of that, that’s creating competition in education. And anytime you get competition, education is going to be really good.

I go back to when President George W. Bush was president, and he instituted in Washington DC, he said, we’re going to allow school choice in Washington, DC, because Washington DC is under the control of the federal government, it’s not a state government. And so they made this thing for school choice. 

And the best article I’ve seen in maybe my lifetime was about three years later that the Superintendent of Public Education in Washington, DC, the article was he was going door to door and the community saying, parents, you can come back to the public schools: we’ve made so many changes in school choice. Great. You should have made those changes before. But competition drove you to do something to compete in the market.

And so I think for the first time, you’re going to see a lot of states start having introductions of school choice laws they’ve not been able to introduce. Here in Texas, we got 68% of citizens in Texas won’t complete school choice. They want it for all forms of education, homeschools, Christian schools, charter schools, everything. And we haven’t even been able to get a bill dropped on that because the teachers’ unions have been so powerful.

But now man, it is a whole different climate. And I think you’ll see the opportunity for tax dollars to be spent in things that work, not just in things that indoctrinate and fail. So I see so many good things happening with the free market approach to education that we might actually get some good education going again.

Competition

And certainly, looking at stats here on the rise of Christian schools, I talked to a Christian school guy last week, they had 50 in their Christian school last year, and this year, they’ve picked up 150 more since all the stuff has happened. It’s just blown up on them. And I spoke at a Christian school banquet not long ago, they picked up 120 new students. And so it’s just blowing up everywhere. 

And if you let competition go, you’re going to start getting some better education, some better products, you’re going to have this liberal indoctrination stop, you’re not going to be seeing what we see at colleges. The whole system would be changed if we can keep this competition going in education.

Rick:

It’s a really, really positive thing, not only will those kids go into those private schools and homeschool get a better education, but eventually the public school will have to respond to that. That’s the very competition you’re talking about it, it forces you to get better. Right now they aren’t doing it, but they’re in panic mode as they lose all these kids, and eventually, they’re going to go, okay, we’ve got to do better and attract those families back to the public schools. So, it’s good all the way around; really, really good news on that front. Alright, Tim, what’s our next piece in the good news?

Tim:

Alright, guys, this one’s coming out of New York. And actually, from the New York Police Department, this was a report that came out a couple of months ago now. And it’s from an event that happened back in August. So in August, there’s actually cellphone footage of this on Facebook and it actually went viral. And at the time of this article, which article is a couple months ago, it had already been viewed more than 500,000 times on Facebook, and it was only a couple days old.

Anyway, all that to say, there was an incident, a couple of police officers were showing up to do a standard check on a subway, and they saw someone collapse onto the subway. And for those who have written a subway, you know that when a train is so far out or so many seconds out, like the lights start flashing, there’s an alert that’s coming, and so the train was less than a minute out. And so the police officers realize we’ve got to get this person up or this person is not going to make it.

So police officer, officer Lopez jumps in the tracks, grabs this person, another good Samaritan bystander jumps down to help, that female officer when they’re lifting this person up is able to help grab this person and kind of pull them back to safety. The officer or the Good Samaritan, they jump up and they’re able to rescue this person being run over and medical care was provided. The person went to a medical facility and they’re deemed to be totally okay, and they’ve recovered.

Kind Police

But this is one of those things that was interesting. And this kind of after action report that was filed, and there was an interview done by police officers. One of the things that Officer Lopez says was “We just did what we were there to do, which is to help and serve the public.”

 One of the things that he noted in the interview was this is not something necessarily all that much out of the ordinary, what we do every day is to try to help people. And I point this out. And we’ve had many Good News Fridays, where we talk about police officer positive stories, actually, I have another article to get to if I can here in a minute.

But we’ve had many situations of officers who are just showing up and want to help and they want to serve, and they’re doing good for people. And over the last year and a half, there’s been a move by many in the mainstream media, by many leftist to paint police officers as evil and awful and racist, and really denigrate and rundown this kind of organization of law enforcement. And the reality is the vast majority of law enforcement officers are really good people who are trying to do a really good job to serve the community.

And this is an example where the officer knowing a train is coming, threw himself on the tracks, knowing that this was a life threatening situation for him, but knew that there was a life that needed to be saved, and so put himself in harm’s way to save this life. And fortunately, everybody was saved. But this is just another really good piece of news dealing with law enforcement showing the sacrifice, the mentality, the attitude from them. And so this was coming out of Bronx, New York.

And New York is one of those cities that is definitely attacked officers when it comes to funding or the vaccine mandates, etc. So they haven’t gotten a lot of love from a lot of people. But we’re going to point out, there’s a lot of really good officers out there doing really good things. And this is just one more story of those good officers.

Rick:

Alright. I was a little worried, Tim when you said good news out in New York. I was like, where is he going with this? I didn’t know anything good was happening in New York right now. But that’s very good news out of New York. How about, David, what’s our last piece of good news from you today?

Biden Mandate Not Law

David:

Well, I’m jumping into what a bunch of attorney generals have just said. As we have seen, Biden’s mandate be really onerous, and he’s trying to impose it on so many groups. There’s a whole bunch of attorney generals saying, man, if this thing ever becomes a real policy, and that’s kind of, I guess, news for some people. 

This Biden mandate is not a policy yet. This is just his loud-mouth threat. And you have all these companies jumping through hoops because he’s threatened that he’s going to do something eventually.

You now have a bunch of attorney generals lined up that says as soon as this thing actually becomes a policy, as soon as he writes this thing out, as soon as it’s issued by the federal government, we are all over this, a bunch of us are going to court on this thing to stop it because this is unconstitutional. So it’s interesting that right now most people think just because the President said it, that it’s a policy, and that’s not the case.

We do have a bunch of legal guys ready to jump on this at the state level, the state attorney generals. And one of these guys is out of Montana. And Montana. I mean, he said, we’re just basically chomping at the bit. As soon as the thing, the day, the minute this becomes policy, we got the lawsuits ready to drop in court to get this thing stopped. 

So if it ever gets to that point, now I think that Biden does more progress to his agenda but not making a policy just threatening everybody, because everybody, look at them all jump through hoops right now to try to self-impose on themselves this policy he’s just announced. I mean, he’s going to get more done that way than he ever will if it becomes legal policy because he’s going to stop.

But even the governor of Montana said, hey, we want you to know that Montana, we’re a 10th Amendment state. We believe in federalism. We believe that there’s a role for the federal government, but it’s only what the Constitution gives it, the 17 enumerated powers that we talked about from time to time. Here in Montana, we think that the states can best handle so many of these issues. And healthcare is not a federal issue. That’s not in the Constitution. That belongs to the states.

South Bend Police Department

And so the state of Montana has got some really good leadership. And by the way, their legislative session, they passed so many good bills the session. It was really good to see the change that happens when you get a good governor in Montana who is also a believer. He’s a Christian guy, very outspoken about his faith. 

But it’s just good to see what an election will do in a state like Montana, and it’s good to see them standing up for the rest of the nation ready to go after the administration if this thing ever becomes policy.

Rick:

Alright, Tim, you’re bringing us home with the final piece of good news for the day.

Tim:

Alright guys, one more piece of good news, this one is dealing with another law enforcement scenario. These are police officers up in Indiana. And this is the South Bend Police Department posted this. Officer Howard was working his shift, it was a night shift. He got a call that there was a woman with a car, kids in the car at a gas station, and they’ve been sitting there a long time at kind of in the gas station parking lot at the gas pumps.

And so he comes up in the woman he said it was very nervous and he said hey ma’am, you know, I’m just trying to see what’s going on so that I can leave. I’m sorry, I’ll push my car I’m out of gas, and I don’t have money to get gas yet. She said, but at midnight, then I actually get money in my account because it’s the first of the month and then I’ll have money to get gas. I just don’t have gas right now.

And officer said he looked in the backseat, there was a kid on an iPad watching some kind of dinosaur show, and he realized, hey, I’ve got a stuffed toy dinosaur in my car. So he goes and brings this kid back a dinosaur, and tells the woman, hey, you don’t need to be staying here. And he said, she was so apologetic and really kind of embarrassed about the scenario. He said let me buy some gas for you and then you can, later on when you get the money, you can fill it up the rest of it, whatever else, and she said, I don’t want to.

Don’t Forget that 99.999% Are Great Guys 

And so he ends up filling up a car with gas, making sure she’s taken care of. He said, look, you don’t want to be out here at night, you know, might not be the safest environment and you have a son in the backseat, let’s just get you some gas, and let’s get you out of here. So it was an officer showing up on a call, saw a woman in need, and offered to buy her gas.

And one of the things that Officer Howard said was that this was not a brand new scenario. He said that there’s a lot of times that I’ll show up and I get gas people or I’ll change tires, or help get food for people. He said there’s a lot of stuff that police officers do that just don’t get reported. 

And this is just kind of par for the course. And guys, this is again, it’s another example. There are so many good police officers out there doing really good things. And Officer Howard from state of South Bend Police department is just one more example.

Rick:

I love hearing those stories. And it’s important for people to know that and hear those stories because too often you get the one bad apple and boy, everybody talks about that, and you forget that 99.999% that are the great guys and gals that have decided to devote their lives and be willing to put their lives on the line for us. 

We’re so thankful for those stories as well. There’s a lot more good news at our website, be sure and visit that today wallbuilderslive.com. Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders Live.