Council Of Europe Not In Favor Of Compulsory Vaccinations And More – Tune in for some good news! The Council of Europe stands up against mandatory vaccinations, a special interview with Los Angeles police officer and more!

Air Date: 04/09/2021

Guest: Officer Ken Lew

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

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live. We’re taking on the hot topics of the day, equipping people with truth and courage by taking that biblical, historical and constitutional perspective on every topic that we address. You can get more information at wallbuilderslive.com.

My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. And I’m here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders, and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. You can find out more again at wallbuilderslive.com.

And by the way, while you’re at the website, not only do we have archives of previous programs, we have a map where you can click on your state and find a local station close to you. But there’s a very important opportunity there to come alongside us here at WallBuilders Live to donate to the program, which allows us to reach more people, to equip more people, to train more pastors and young leaders and legislators. Every donation you make at wallbuilderslive.com is helping to restore our constitutional republic. So be sure to take time to do that today. If the Lord puts that on your heart, we would love to have you come alongside us locking shields with us being a part of the team. And guys, we got a lot of people that have been donated from across the country, some do $5, some do $500, it’s whatever they can do. But it definitely helps us to add stations, helps us to reach more people.

Tim:

Yeah, it’s something that is probably underestimated the value of in this modern culture. We’ve mentioned before that dealing with cancel culture, and with people that are literally trying to shut down conservative voices, there’s not a lot of space in big tech, in some of the current political environment for people who believe in biblical truth, who stand for traditional values, who uphold the US Constitution and try to teach and train the next generation for that.

And so this is something where we tell people often, when we have even guests on and we interview, we tell them, hey, this is a great organization to give to, donate to, go buy this book, go support them. Because if we don’t support people who are doing the things, standing for the values, the principles, the biblical truth that we believe in, if we’re not supporting them in those efforts, then some of those things might deteriorate and dry up and America would not be better off for it.

That’s why there’s a lot of conservative organizations and even personalities and outlets that I give to a lot of these different organizations, not because I even have a chance to listen to all of their news outlets or radio broadcasts or read their articles, because I support what they are doing, and want to continue helping them as they fight and engage with the culture. And that’s certainly something that people that are supporting WallBuilders Live that are donating to the radio program, all that we’re doing to try to help educate and inform Americans, they are helping make a difference in that cultural battle for biblical truth, for constitutional understanding.

So we are definitely grateful for all those people who come along and partner with us. And we’re praying that God continues to stir up people and bring more people to come and partner and support what we’re doing here to try to educate America to the biblical foundation of the nation, to the biblical truth we need to live in every day, and, of course, the US constitutional principles and values we need to follow right now.

Rick:

And then one of the reasons that we hear a lot of people say why they donate is because they love the encouragement that they get, and the biblical, constitutional, historical outlook gives them hope for the future. And Good News Fridays are all about that we get to talk about victories and good things happening out there. And it really encourages a lot of folks. So let’s dive into some of that good news. David, I think you’re starting us with the first piece of good news. We’ve got a lot for folks today.

David:

I have a new national poll that’s out. It’s a poll of business leaders, of 500 top business leaders across the country. Now, when we talk business, there are small businesses, there’s big business. And small business, we tend to think of as being much more conservative and big business as being much more liberal. And that seems to be their giving patterns with partisan elections, that seems to be where they come down on issues.

So this was a very interesting poll, because it asked these top decision makers in the business field, it asked them about progressive ideas and what’s going on. So they were specifically asked, do you think the progressive ideas on race and gender and post colonialism and cancel culture, do you think they’re undermining society? Do you think they’re necessary? And by a 2:1 margin, these business leaders said yes, we think those ideas are undermining the culture, undermining society.

Now grab this. This is two out of three business leaders, major business leaders saying we think that the progressive ideas on race, on gender, on post colonialism, which is anti-America kind of stuff, and on the cancel culture, we think that those are not good ideas for the culture. Now, there were some demographic differences by regions. In the East, it was probably the highest was 67% saying yeah, I agree with that. The stuff going to progressive, ideas is not good for the culture. And out west, it was 55%. But nonetheless, it was still a majority in all areas of the country and overall averaged about two-thirds. And then here’s just a strange twist on this poll.

They actually, I don’t know why they decided to ask business leaders in France, why choose France, I don’t know. They chose a European nation, they chose France, and they asked the business leaders in France, do you think these American progressive ideas that are going with cancel culture, and they’re going to race and gender? Do you think they’re hurting business in France? And two out of three French leaders said, yes, we think those American ideas are actually hurting us here in France. So very interesting poll that we’ve got folks agreeing across the country from the big business side, or what appears to be the big business side in this poll that these progressive ideas are undermining the culture and society.

Other thing I’ll throw out is dealing with compulsory vaccinations. President Biden in recent days has said, look, we’ve got you states that are taking mask off, you got to put them back on. I mean, this is not a political issue. We need mass back on in all states. And he actually had a press conference begging for that people to start wearing masks, again. Stop unmasking and go back to mask.

And so now he’s talking about this vaccination passport, that we need this to move from state to state or to move to other countries, or the airlines are pushing to have this vaccination passport, which is a real problem constitutionally, because they’re not giving exclusions for conscience issues. There’s a lot of religious groups and just parents that don’t think vaccinations are good for your body. And so they don’t do it for religious reasons, conscience reasons, and none of that is being considered.

But what I find interesting is over in Europe, the Council of Europe, which is kind of like the parallel to the EU, the Council of Europe got together. There’s 47 member nations there in Europe that are part of this Council of Europe. And they said, we’re completely opposed to compulsory vaccinations and we oppose all discrimination against the unvaccinated. Now, that’s pretty wild, because that’s considered to be a fairly progressive part of the world as Europe. And even Europe is saying, hey, these vaccination passports, that’s not a good thing. And forcing people to get vaccinations, that’s not good. So that’s a piece of good news is that even a lot of progressives aren’t buying into what the Biden administration is pushing right now, and that’s progressives and other nations as well. So just a lot of good news in polling right now the numbers that we’re seeing.

Rick:

Hey, guys, as we’re going to break, you remember that time when you were more free in Europe than in the United States from? Yeah, yeah, I remember that time when the…

 David:

The last few weeks, is that what you’re talking about?

Rick:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, well, you know, normally, I say let’s not model Europe, you know, because we’re usually modeling European socialism. But if they’re actually say no vaccine passports, have the freedom to decide on these things, and we have states and certainly a president that doesn’t want to give you a choice on it, yeah, I’d say let’s model Europe instead of that. So that’s a strange place to be. But I like that good news coming out of Europe on that front. Let’s take a quick break, guys, we’ll be right back. Tim Barton’s got some good news for us. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

BREAK:

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called “The American Story”. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today.

And we would say very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 Project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement, Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

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

Rick:

We’re back on WallBuilders Live, Good news Friday and Tim Barton’s got the next piece of good news. Tim.

Tim:

Alright, guys, this one is coming out of Georgia, where just a couple of weeks ago, Georgia governor Brian Kemp signed SB 202 and it is a law to secure elections. Now, in the midst of this, there’s a lot of people who have grumbled and complained. And a lot of those people, generally speaking, were on the liberal side on some mainstream media news outlets who said this is terrible. One of the arguments that’s been going on for the last couple of weeks is that requiring voter ID is a form of voter suppression. Now, that’s utter nonsense for lots of reasons.

But here’s the breakdown of what SB 202 that Governor Kemp signed into law will actually do. It will verify the accuracy of voter registration lists. So people that are eligible to vote, one of the things that happened actually in many states is last year is that those voter rolls were not checked before the election. And so you had people who had died, these ballots were still coming in, and then people who had moved states who were still eligible to vote.

So this is saying, hey, let’s just make sure the people that vote actually in our state live in our state are registered to vote, etc. It also require a voter ID for any absentee voting. That way, what happened in Wisconsin, for example, where there were literally tens of thousands of ballots that came in with a signature and there was no address, there was no verification, and the people said, hey, let’s just go ahead and count it, because they probably are who they say they are. And maybe they just forgot where they live, they forgot their address. This is saying no, no, let’s actually verify that we’re sending these absentee ballots to people who are who they say they are.

In the midst of this, they said they’re not going to do a mass mail out ballot, which is actually one of the things that in house bill one in the US Congress, they’re proposing is that everybody in America should have a ballot mailed to them. So Georgia is saying we’re not going to do that in our state. It also prohibits private funding of election officials and government agencies: which is super interesting to consider that any state would allow government agencies or election officials to be privately funded. And we think maybe there wouldn’t be bias there, if some private entity is funding. You’ll say yeah, that seemed like a no brainer to say let’s not do that anymore.

And then they also wanted to make sure that they clarified an election law, that anybody who is an election observer who is there legally to observe the election is given full access. If you remember, one of the things that was shown in Atlanta, is that people who were they’re supposed to observe the elections, not only were they kicked out of the room, the elections officials are actually putting up different pieces of wood or cardboard or paper in front of the windows so nobody can even see it as they were counting these ballots. So they’re working to remove a lot of the problems that they had seen from previous election.

So this is really good news. Georgia is not the only state doing that. There actually is a case right now in Arizona before the US Supreme Court dealing with election integrity. And so there are many states moving in that direction. But governor Kemp, we have certainly not agreed with everything he’s done, with some of these lockdowns, with the election back in the US Senate runoff races. Nonetheless, we want to give honor where honor is due, in this time, Governor Kemp has signed a very good law into existence in Georgia, which should secure elections in Georgia for the foreseeable future. And this is just one of many states doing that. So that is very good news.

Rick:

Hey, quick break, guys, when we come back, we’re actually got an interview, don’t normally have that Good News Friday. But we talked a couple of weeks ago on Good News Friday, Tim, you had a story about the Los Angeles Police Department and a great organization there have some police officers that have been helping in their neighborhoods. And now we’re actually going to have them on right here on Good News Friday on WallBuilders Live. So stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

BREAK:

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Alexis de Tocqueville, a political official from France, traveled to the United States in 1831 and penned his observations in the now famous book “Democracy in America”. Being from France, what he found in America was completely unexpected. He reported “Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention. And the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this. In France, I almost always seen the spirit of religion in the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America, I found that they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.”

De Tocqueville recognized that it was biblical Christianity and the morals that produced that made America great. For more information about Alexia Tocqueville and the positive influence of Christianity in early America, go to wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. Officer Ken Lew is with us from the LAPD. We actually talked about this story on our Good News Friday a few weeks back. Ken, appreciate your time, man, thanks for calling in today.

Ken:

Thank you, Rick. Thank you for having me on.

Rick:

Well, you guys are doing incredible work, badgeofheart.org. Badgeofheart.org is the website where people can go to donate. Tell us a little bit about how this got started and why you guys decided to take this extra step. You’re already serving the community, already serving the people, but you saw another way to help.

Ken:

Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Yeah, I’ve been a police officer for the city of LA for about 31 years. And in that time, you know, I work various assignments, but the majority of my assignments is the field training officer. Basically, what we do is go out there and train new officers. With that being said, LA is a big city and we have bad neighborhoods, good neighborhoods, but the majority of my tour was actually in a bad neighborhood.

So, I saw a lot of families struggling, a lot of families going through some tough times. And a lot of times, the families that we deal with is not all bad. A lot of times they call for just needing a little bit of help or some guidance. And with that being said, I saw a lot of families needing food, clothes and such. And so, on my own time and my own money back when I was a young officer, I would reach in my pocket and help some of these families move forward. As I have gotten older, I saw an opportunity about seven years ago to start a nonprofit to continue my journey. So we started in 2014. And…

Rick:

Okay, wait, I got to stop you there, officer, because, this is amazing to me. I mean, first of all, you guys are, you know, my brother was a sergeant in Grand Prairie, I see the sacrifice, I see the risk, the pain, all of the things that you go through as officers. I see it in my sister’s eyes every time. You’re already giving so much every day you go out there and put your life on the line, and very little thanks and very little appreciation, frankly, from us, we the people.

And yet, even as you’re giving that much, to take that extra step, I mean, what kept you from being like what most of us would do is say I’m already giving everything I can in life? What made you decide to not say, well, somebody else has to do that other part, somebody else will reach in their pocket and go take care of those pencils for that kid for school or food for that family? I mean, that’s all the things that you do. I mean, I’m just amazed. And so I’m wondering what your thought process was when that first time you made that decision, I’m going to go above and beyond what my actual technical description of what I’m supposed to do for the community is? Does that make sense what I’m asking?

Ken:

Absolutely. I get that asked all the time. I truly believe it’s my upbringing. You know, my grandmother was very heavily Christian, and I grew up in a Christian household. And so, she was a very church person, and she was always giving to families in need. And I saw that in my own eyes as a young child, and growing up as well. So my dad, he worked couple of jobs to put food on the table and put a roof over my head. And so I learned at a very young age to work hard, and to just to give back to folks that need a helping hand. And so, that’s what made me propel to start this thing.

Rick:

So you saw that example in your own home, and that benevolence that we learned from Christianity and that desire to take care of others. I love it. I love it. Okay, I’m sorry to get you off track there. So that was about seven years ago that you started the actual organization. And so did you go to your fellow officers and say, hey, this is what I’ve been doing, would you guys come alongside? I mean, what did you do to get other people on board?

Ken:

You know, in the beginning, it was just me, it was just an idea. And all of a sudden, I saw my fellow officers, they were watching and seeing what I was doing. And we got a little bit of coverage on the TV, because the news media here is like, hey, who’s this guy who’s an LAPD officer going out and doing all this stuff? So they kind of covered us.

And so it was for me to know, you know, I have several officers in the city of LA who do come across families in need. They reach out to us and say, hey, Ken, now this is what we have, you know, good family, dad working couple jobs, they just need a helping hand. And so about 90-95% of the time, we provide resources for those families, such as food, clothes. We pay their bills. We pay the utilities, just to kind of give them a little bit of hope. And so, it’s also a great community interaction. It’s a great way for the community to see us as a human being, not just a person wearing a badge. And so, that goes long ways.

Rick:

That’s awesome. Oh, man. Alright, so tell me how people not only in the Los Angeles area, but really across the country can help you guys reach more people. Because I’m assuming there’s obviously more people to help than you have the resources to help. And so if people can donate or whatever they can do for you guys, what’s the best way to help?

Ken:

The best way to help is go online in badgeofheart.org, there’s a link to donate. You know, Los Angeles is a very big city, we have millions of people here. We’re not going to serve all of many people. But we’re here to serve one to two families at a time, even during COVID last year, our requests for help has actually tripled, so we had to be careful that we don’t go bankrupt. But we’ve been blessed with a good Lord that people have stepped up and made nice donations for us to continue our mission.

Rick:

I love it. I love it. And I got to ask you how that’s helped with just community relationships, right? The fact that you guys are doing this out of your heart, how that helps in the neighborhoods and with those families, not just the family that you’re helping, but as others in the community see you guys as the police officers doing this, it’s been a tough year for you guys, I know. And I’m just wondering how that has helped to mitigate that a little bit.

Ken:

You know, interesting you said that. We have several news outlets here, and they’re always asking me, hey, Ken, do you have good stories? Because LAPD doesn’t really put out good stories for whatever reason. And so we always looking for these stories where officers are actually out there helping the community. Instead, they’re always asking us to give them stories and we try. And we always try to protect the privacy of the recipients as well. But like I said, we’ve been doing this for seven years now, and we are looking with an opportunity to maybe expand to other cities and states. So we’re looking at that as well, because we have other people have reached out to us and say, how can we start Badger of Heart in our local community as well?

Rick:

Oh, that’s interesting. Even so that’s okay if we encourage officers across the country if they want to contact you to see how they can duplicate what you’ve done there in their community, that’s something you’d be willing to help with?

Ken:

Yeah, you know what, we got to be careful how fast we want to expand. We’re all in states like Arizona and Nevada, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, maybe. So we are looking for something that’s manageable for us as well.

Rick:

Yeah. Yeah. Make sense? We’ll folks, badgeofheart.org is the website, badgeofheart.org. We’ll have links today at wallbuilderslive.com to get jumped right over there. Ken officer, God bless you, man. Thank you for what you do every day on the job, but also this in addition to the job and just the example it sets and just would love to see this duplicated all across the country. Really appreciate your time today.

Ken:

Yeah, exactly. Let’s just make a huge difference out there. Thank you.

Rick:

Amen. Amen. I appreciate it, man. Stay with us. We’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

BREAK

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Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Final piece of good news. Tim, you got a final piece for us?

Tim:

Yeah. So I’m going to break and really wanting to point this out. One of the things that happened is in the Sixth Circuit Court, which is the US Court of Appeals up in Virginia, they ruled in favor of gun owners of America, who were seeking an injunction to prevent the ATF from implementing a final rule incorrectly classifying bump stocks as machine guns.

So one of the things that we were not very pleased with that happened under the Trump administration was the ATF and this was again, part of the Trump administration where we were critical of things that we thought were not good, we certainly praise when we thought it was right. But this is an area we’re very critical of that was very detrimental to the Second Amendment saying that bump stocks, made guns, machine guns, therefore bump stocks should be illegal, etc.

Anybody that’s really been around guns a long time, if you’ve been around a bump stock, you know that does not make it a machine gun. Bomb stocks do not make the gun inherently more accurate, which therefore doesn’t make it necessarily more dangerous, either way. So at least in this case, it is good news the Sixth Circuit has come in for gun owners of America giving them an injunction to not classify bump stocks as machine guns with the ATF. Now, this is not a resolved case. It will still go further. But at least at this point, this is very good news coming from the Sixth Circuit.

Rick:

Alright, it’s all the time we have for good news today. There’s more good news at our website wallbuilderslive.com. Go into the archives, get some of those Friday programs for some more encouraging news. And as we mentioned at the top of the program, we would love for you to come alongside us and help us spread this good news, teach this truth to as many people as possible. You can do that by going to wallbuilderslive.com and making a one-time or monthly contribution. It goes a long way to reaching more people. The more people we reach, the more we equip them, inspire them, give them this good news and also give them the equipping they need to make a difference in their communities.

Tim:

Yeah, and we would encourage everybody who’s listening right now that you start praying for organizations who are doing things to engage in culture, who are helping equip you to stand up and do what God’s called you to do. And then we probably are not the only organization that you listen to that maybe encourages you or strengthens you, but we would ask you to pray. And this is the time that we really need to come alongside those organizations, and start supporting them, standing with them.

Just knowing that the battles that we are dealing with in culture, knowing where big tech is, knowing some of the cancellations we are already seeing. We want to make sure that we do a good job supporting those organizations. And if in the midst of your prayer, God leads you to want to give to WallBuilders Live, we would certainly welcome that. And we are very grateful for all of those who already do give in to support us. We have some very fun stories and testimonies and actually some young kids who have sent in some money to us recently. So probably next week, we can cover some of that, some really cool things. But definitely, we would appreciate any support to WallBuilders Live.

Rick:

You could do it at wallbuilderslive.com. Thanks so much for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.