Vaccine Mandates, Rights of Conscience, LGBTQ Issues, And More – On Foundations Of Freedom: Is the decision to take the vaccine a Biblical issue or a Constitutional issue? Is mandating vaccine passports unconstitutional? Why are we ignoring natural immunity? Why are younger generations more open to the LGBTQ issues? How did Gen Z get its name? Tune in to hear some common-sense answers to these questions and more on today’s Foundations of Freedom program!

Air Date: 09/09/2021

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 Cuture

Thomas Jefferson said, “In questions of power, then let no more be heard of confidence in man that bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, we are talking about the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Thanks for joining us. My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. And I have the privilege of serving with David Barton here. He’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders, and also with Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders.

Today is Thursday, so it’s Foundations of Freedom Thursday around here at WallBuilders. We love taking your questions today, and diving into those foundational principles about the Constitution, the Declaration, the Founding Fathers, and looking at our history as a nation and what made America the greatest nation in the history of the world, how we have deviated from that, where those cracks in the foundation are and how we can rebuild that foundation.

And by the way, if you’d like to be a part of the rebuilding, we would love for you to be a part of our kickoff for Patriot Academy’s campus in Texas. We’re having a big event on Constitution Day. You’re down to one week. Constitution Day, which will be September 17th in the Fort Worth area, the Dallas Fort Worth area.

Join Us!

In the stockyards at Fort Worth, we’re going to have a great dinner with Lauren Boebert Congresswoman from Colorado who’s a Patriot Academy grad through our Constitution Alive program, Senator Bob Hall, and even the third ranked lightweight in the UFC in the world, Beneil Dariush, man, he’s got a great story and just a great testimonial witness for the Lord and understands the dangers of Marxism and why it’s so important for us to raise up a generation that understands liberty.

You can be a part of that. Go to patriotacademy.com, click on the dinner there, the September 17th Constitution Day dinner. And if you want to come in, you can come in for the whole weekend because the next day Tim Barnes is going to take us through The American Journey experience over at Glenn Beck’s studios at the Mercury One, amazing, amazing opportunity. So come spend the weekend with us. Check it out at patriotacademy.com.

Alright, David, and Tim, let’s dive into those questions. First one is worded this way. Here we go. “Evidently a Pew Research survey says 45% of ‘White evangelical Christians are not getting the vaccine.’

Some of my community are making this a spiritual biblical issue, not being a good Samaritan is the claim, saying that Satan is trying to cause division, which probably is true. However, I find it’s those that get the shots judging those that haven’t. I respect their decision as they should respect mine.

Isn’t this more of a constitutional issue and freedom of choice rather than biblical? And what about mandating vaccine passports, isn’t that overreach and unconstitutional?

And that’s from Val, guys, so a few questions in there. But first of all, is it a biblical issue or constitutional issue? And I bet our answer is going to be the same one that Deion Sanders said, whenever they asked, are you going to play baseball or football? It’s both.

Vaccinations

David:

And that’s going to be the answer we’re going to use. And, you know, there’s really some aspects going here that for me I’ve not been vaccinated with COVID-19. But I have had other vaccinations. I’ve had smallpox and polio and other things. So for me, it’s not a vaccination thing, per se.

But I am very conscious of both passages in Corinthians, it says, my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so therefore, I do try to do workouts. I do try to eat well. I do try to make my body at least partially inhabitable, hopefully, where he can enjoy himself and not feel like it’s a really trashed out kind of a house to live in.

And because I think that my body is important, and that I should do something with it, and as Paul says, bodily exercise does profit something, because I do that, I don’t like a vaccine that changes my DNA. And that’s what’s happening with this COVID vaccine. I don’t like making fundamental, permanent changes to my body structure. Now, the other vaccines, it makes it kind of a natural change, if you will. But this is a scientific medical change that I’m not comfortable with.

Tim:

Well, and let’s also point out there’s other vaccines that we would be against because of the abortifacients of things that are in the vaccine. There’s other things that, you know, even for this, FDA has now approved certain ones of these COVID vaccines. But when you’re talking about an approval rate, after only a couple years, when nobody actually knows what is the long-term side effect or consequence-

Because it hasn’t been around long enough for there to be long-term side effects and consequences. There are some legitimate questions you can ask and there are some legitimate concerns that make a lot of sense for people to have.

With that being said, we also recognize in 1 Corinthians 8, it talks about if you see meat that was offered to an idol and you’re like why don’t we even that I want to don’t eat this meat, and then it offends another brother, Paul says okay, for the sake of the brother that was offended, don’t eat the meat offered idol.

But what’s significant about this is Paul didn’t say necessarily it was right or it was wrong. He said that you need to be careful with the conscience of the other.

Right of Conscience

And this is where I think generally speaking from a biblical perspective, we’re going to take the issue of that we’re going to respect your right of conscience. And this was long tradition in America. This was something going back to even the early settlers in America, the pilgrims in America, was known as a right of conscience, that if you believe something is wrong in your conscience, the duty you owe to God.

If you think, man, I shouldn’t as a Christian be doing this, then we respect your conscience, because the Bible says that every man must work out his own salvation with fear and trembling, that your relationship with God is something between you and God. It’s not something for somebody else to dictate how that goes, even necessarily what your convictions are.

Now, it’s also, one thing to say if if you say you’re a Bible-believing Christian, well, then yeah, if you’re doing things that are unbiblical, it’s okay for people to point out and say, hey, what you’re doing is not biblical. That’s part of the iron sharpening iron. That’s a good thing. With that being said, we still respect the rights of the conscience of individuals, and recognize that we can have a difference of conscience, a disagreement on some basic issues. And so this isn’t to say that we’re totally against the vaccine, if you want to get the vaccine and if you want to alter your DNA.

Now, dad, as you pointed out, there’s some reasons you’re not going to, not the least of which of those reasons, is the fact that you already had COVID, and you still have the antibodies? Well, if you have the antibodies, what’s the vaccine supposed to do? Is supposed to help your body produce an immunity so that you don’t get COVID or don’t suffer negative consequences from COVID.

Well guess what antibodies do? They help you not get COVID and not suffer negative consequences from COVID. So if you already have the antibodies, why do you need the vaccine.

Immunity

And this is where there’s already now reports coming out and test coming out showing that people that have had COVID, they now have greater immunity against the Delta variant, against other forms of COVID coming in…

David:

Yeah, Lambda variant is out now.

Tim:

Because of what their body already went through. And so the natural process of the body is actually better in many cases than the vaccine would be.

David:

One of the thing I would point to about this vaccine being different from others is the other vaccines, whether it be smallpox or, or measles, or anything else, they have gone through decades have been proven. I mean, smallpox vaccine goes back to Benjamin Rush in the 1700s. So we know what happens to that. We have a lot of history on that.

Tim:

Well, let me point out that technology’s changed a lot, which, obviously, dad, for the listeners, what they did back then, wow, so much different than our vaccines today. They would take people that were infected, they would actually like take some areas of pus or infection on their body, they would draw blood from that area, and they would inject that infected, whether it was pus or blood into a healthy victim so their body could build up an immunity.

Time-Tested…or Not

And so similar to a vaccination, just very different than technologically-speaking, certainly does not seem nearly as safe or sanitary, except they recognize that your body could build up an immunity. And so if you gave yourself a smaller dose, your body can build up immunity to smaller doses.

It won’t have the same negative consequences, it would, if you had a really big infection of whatever it was. So that’s going back to Benjamin Rush.

There’s a lot of things I’m grateful our medical technology has gone a long way forward. So it is a little different, except they did understand some basic premise of helping your body build up an immunity by contracting a very small portion of whatever that was.

David:

But it does go to the principal they’ve been working on this for hundreds of years, and they now have it down what they know works. We don’t know that with COVID. This is still much old.

It’s you know, maybe a year old. And we’re finding all sorts of exceptions. If you look at Israel, there is no nation in the world that has done a better job of following Fauci and CDC than Israel. I mean, they’ve got the highest vaccination rate of any country in the world, and they’re having one of the biggest outbreaks of COVID right now among vaccinated people, that even as of this morning, the EU has put Israel on the do-not-travel list for the EU. And they’re the ones who have followed the most protocols, that tells me the size has not yet developed on this vaccine or how the virus works or anything else.

George Washington And Mandates

And so to go in and start mandating things or telling me I have to take an untested, unproven hypothetical medical procedure that may or may not have consequences, but is going to alter my DNA, I’m just not comfortable with that. And so that’s why I am and as Tim said, you know, we’ve had, Rick, you’ve had it, I’ve had it, Tim’s had it. We’ve had COVID.

Tim:

Now, also what are being said, one of the question was what about a mandate? And this is where becomes interesting, guys, because certainly, we would be in the position of saying, well mandate’s unconstitutional. Now, it’s interesting because if you go back up historically, at times there actually were encouragement for mandates.

In fact, George Washington, during the American Revolution, he wanted to mandate that the military get a certain vaccine, the smallpox vaccine for all of the troops. And it’s worth noting back then that if you got smallpox, it was more than a 25% chance that you were going to die.

David:

And there were places in the United States with a 70% mortality rate because of smallpox. In the 1600s, smallpox, I mean, just ravaged the country. So in the cities at the time of Washington was up to 25%, it was massive.

Rick:

So just for comparison, so people can measure that against COVID, that’s 250 times more deadly on the low end, and 750 times more deadly on the high end than COVID. So just a little difference, just a little bit.

Recovery Rates

Tim:

Right. When you’re talking about that more than 99% of people that get COVID recover from COVID, and you’re talking back then, at least one out of every four people that got the smallpox was dying from smallpox, so George Washington did encourage a mandate. Now this is why it’s interesting, because you do have some places where there were mandates that were encouraged. Now, actually, there’s even places mandates happen.

But generally, mandates happened inside a city, inside a county, or were encouraged by the state. There’s never been an example of the federal government enforcing a mandate of a vaccine.

David:

And that’s really important point because health care was something that was left to the States. It was not a federal issue. It did not appear in the Constitution and the enumerated powers that belonged to the federal government. The federal government was not put in charge of health care. That was a big issue at the day of the Founders, but it’s an issue left completely to the states and to the cities, not to the federal government.

Tim:

Well, guys, this is where it’s interesting too looking at the American Revolution and Washington says he wanted all his troops to get the smallpox vaccine because they were trying to have enough troops just to be able to fight a war. And they were having a hard time getting enlistment and on top of not getting enlistments, they wanted to make sure they’re not having people die along the way so much that their army is diminished enough that they can’t fight a war. That’s not the current scenario with the US military.

Mandates for the Military

As we’re talking about, again, the vaccine mandate for the military, and with the military, the vast majority of military being a young, healthy individuals, we know that COVID is especially not particularly deadly for young, healthy individuals. And so requiring a mandate, this is a very different scenario than it was for Washington during the American Revolution with smallpox. This is something very different. It’s something that now you can argue there was a level of precedent at some point for this.

And so, again, constitutionality, that’s a different question on some level, but certainly COVID is not the same thing as smallpox, even though there were examples of a mandate on some level, it never was by the federal government.

Rick:

Yeah. And the only thing I would add, guys, you know, Tim, you were talking about this, just these mandates ignore the natural immunity. And it’s crazy. We’ve never done that. We’ve always recognized that natural immunity was a major player in getting to the point of herd immunity and getting to the point of eradicating anything, it was absolutely necessary. I think most people say at this point, you’re not going to eradicate this, we’re going to have to deal with it for years to come.

And so natural immunity becomes even more important. And it’s not just a little bit better, that most recent study, 13 times as good as actually as getting the vaccine, and then something like 26 times more likely to still spread the virus if you get the vaccine versus natural immunity.

And I read an interesting article the other day about why and it has to do with immunity in the nasal passages that only comes from natural immunity, whereas the vaccine is just giving you immunity within your body. And that’s why people are still spreading the virus when they have it in their nasal passages.

Local, Not Federal

So I mean, it absolutely ignores the science out there. The mandates are one-size-fits-all. And as you said, to do it on a federal level, I mean, go back to Woodrow Wilson and the Spanish flu, which was again, this one was 25 times more deadly than what we’re dealing with, kids were getting in the morning and dying in the evening, it was killing kids as much as anybody.

That was horrible in 1918 with the Spanish flu. Woodrow Wilson never even mentioned Spanish Flu, can’t find a single writing or anything or even talked about it and he got it himself. So it was not a federal solution. It was a state and local solution. And that’s the right foundational answer. State and local solutions are what we need to be looking at.

Tim:

And guys, let’s also be clear, we’ve gotten some emails before from people saying, wait a second, you’re giving bad medical advice. Guys, just in case anybody listening doesn’t know, we’re not medical professionals. Now, we all have stayed in many holiday inns, so we feel rather qualified…

David:

No, holiday inn express, it is not holiday inn, holiday inn express.

Tim:

Let’s clarify. What we are pointing out are things that are common sense other side of the story, biblical and constitutional perspective. That’s what we are pointing out. No where are we saying, if you are wearing a mask that we’re going to shun you and we hate you and you’re a terrible person?

1 Corinthians 8

No. Guys, we already pointed out in 1 Corinthians 8 when it talks about if you see someone that they’re offended by the eating of meat that was offered to an idol, then for the sake of their conscious, don’t do it. We respect the rights of conscience.

And so if your conscience says, I want to mask, I want to socially distance, we respect that if you want to do that, we’re just telling you, there’s another side of the story. We’re telling you where we’re coming from.

We recently got an email from someone who accused us that have been a longtime listener and fan, but accused us of being culpable for thousands, or at least hundreds, maybe thousands of deaths, because we said, we don’t wear masks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, let’s just be very clear.

We’re not medical professionals. But there’s a lot of things that current medical professionals are saying that don’t make sense. There’s a lot of science they’re leaving out and all we’re doing is pointing out the other side of the story. But just like we would tell you with multiple areas of life, we’re not telling you how to live your life.

I will encourage you, you ought to get a handgun and you had to train in a handgun, you had to practice self-defense. But I’m not telling you, you have to get a handgun or you’re a sinner, hit and going to hell. That’s not what we’re saying. Oh, my gosh, don’t misunderstand the concepts we’re going over.

We’re pointing out things that are practical, things that are scientific, thing is sometimes that the leading scientists like Fauci are ignoring or denying, or they’re giving contradictions in what they’re saying. And we’re certainly pointing out things that are historic, biblical, and constitutional. With all that being said, we still respect the right of conscience and we respect the choices that you are making, even if we think the choices you’re making might not be the most common sense or logical.

Use Common-Sense

David:

And I think part of what we’re doing too is we’re raising questions that relate to common sense. We go back to the Bible, Proverbs 18:17 says one side sounds good until you hear the other. And this is why it’s good to have debates at times. And one of the things that we’ve seen even today is, for example, when I fly on airplanes, all the airplanes require you to be masked 100%.

I use that light blue colored medical mask that is so common that you can get virtually in any convenience store. And that’s fine with them. They’re okay with that, even though it’s only 10% effective in stopping the virus. Now, that is an indisputable statistic and they’re okay with that.

So wait a minute, if masking up is this big a deal, 10%, and if you look at the size of this, and you measure the size of the virus in nanometers, it is the equivalent of shooting a BB through a 14 foot hole. So the size of the virus is so much smaller than the size of the openings in that mask, so that’s why it’s only 10% effective.

Another analogy I’ve heard is it’s like trying to stop a mosquito swarm with a barbed wire fence. Are you going to stop some mosquitoes in this case, 10%? So you’re looking at 10% effective mask and people are saying but that’s okay.

David:

Let’s clarify. You’re not stopping mosquitoes with a barbed wire fence unless the mosquitoes get tired and stop flying. Right?

That barbed wire fence is not stopping any mosquitoes unless they voluntarily chose not to continue their journey. But that’s the point with even, I mean, some of the things you’re saying now with cloth masks, so these gators or even the basic medical mask. But even N95, they’re not totally effective at stopping this virus because it’s so much smaller.

Presenting Evidence

Again, we’re not telling people necessarily what they should or shouldn’t do, we will present evidence. We’ll present information. We will offer our encouragement and suggestions. But we respect the right of the individual. This is part of the God-given constitutional perspective, that we respect the right of the individual to choose and make decisions for themselves. And that’s the camp we’re going to fall in.

Rick:

Yeah, you know, last thing I’d say on it is, again, we’re not doctors, but everybody individually has got to start looking at the data. The CDC, the federal government has lost all credibility. They’ve been wrong every single step of the way. So you got to stop looking at them for the answers and the advice and do a little homework yourself, follow the data, follow the science, read all of these things.

And then as far as the biblical part of this question, I would also say live not by lies, do not bear false witness. If you know that mask don’t help, then when you were one, if you believe as I believe that they’re not making any noticeable difference, and in fact, are causing harm, especially to kids when they have to wear them all day long, eight hours a day, coming home with a headache, not getting as much oxygen.

You know, actually more bacteria, all of those problems, teachers wearing them and, then the kid can’t see the mouth when they’re trying to understand them as they’re teaching, I mean all those problems as well, if you believe as I do, then to wear one is living in a lie and being part of the problem.

Break

If you believe that they make a difference, and they’re going to protect you or someone else, then by all means go ahead and wear one. But you’ve got to do the research, you got to follow the data, and you got to make the decision yourself, and not have you know, I call him Pope Fauci because people are literally religious about, they’re zealotry and following every word he says, not try to follow this guy who has absolutely admitted lying to the American people and been wrong every step of the way.

Okay, let’s take a break. We got time for one more question when we come back. Stay with us, it’s Foundations of Freedom Thursday right here on WallBuilders Live.

—

Samuel Adams said, “The liberties of our country and the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending against all hazards and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”

Biographical Sketches

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 Live. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundation of Freedom Thursday. Final question for this week, we got more coming up next week, so be sure to email them in [email protected].

LGBTQ Issues and the Next Generation

Last question is this. “I’m wondering why every younger generation gets more supportive of LGBTQ issues. Now I only did like five of the letters, I think there’s 172,000 of them now.” But anyway, “And why is Gen Z called that? What’s the Z stand for? Is that going to be the last generation of Americans? Is this a label given to the various generations by evildoers in the federal government? Where do these labels come from?”

Alright, guys, so why do as each generation comes up seems to support more and more the LGBTQ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the other letters issues? And where do we even get these titles, Gen Z, millennials, that sort of thing?

Tim:

Well, let’s start with support from the rising generation for the LGBTQ+ issues. And specifically, I mean, guys, this is not something that is very complicated. The reason that advertising is utilized and people pay big dollars for advertising is because advertising works.

When you advertise to rising generations that there are options and they need to explore their sexuality, and that different lifestyles are normal, and gender fluidity is normal, when you begin to tell impressionable kids things that are not inherently or objectively true, but these kids don’t know what is inherently and objectively true, they don’t have common sense because they haven’t lived long enough to experience life, to understand some basic things.

They all haven’t been raised on farms, where there are male and female animals and you see how the reproduction cycle works. They’re very impressionable. And they’re being given very bad information.

Brainwashing

And what we are seeing is the outgrowth of the consequence of the consistent bombardment of this bad information on rising generations. And so it’s not surprising that you’re seeing more and more generations accept this and embrace this. One of the things that we have talked with George Barna so many times, and George Barna continues to tell us the rising numbers of average Americans who no longer believe in objective, absolute, or moral truth, and when you don’t believe in basic absolute, objective, moral truth, when truth is fluid, when truth is how you feel, what you want, what you think, then all of a sudden, things like male and female, things like basic anatomy, or biology are no longer determining factors in things like human sexuality, or gender, etc.

David:

There’s also the reality that there’s not a lot of counter information to the other side, I talked to so many parents who are uncomfortable talking to their kids about sexuality, sexual issues, sex in general, or even the alternative things that kids hear about. Now, most parents just don’t want to deal with that issue. And back in the day, literally, at church, there were churches, and I was even part of churches that we would have youth retreats just to cover sexuality issues from a biblical perspective.

We wanted young people to know what the Bible said. I think the church is extremely silent today. I think most parents are silent today. And most parents are not comfortable addressing the alternative forms of sexuality and sexual activity that occur. That’s just not what they deal with.

So since kids have that void of information, when they hear advertise, and Tim, is you say there’s nothing to contradict what they’re hearing.

Gen Z

Tim:

And when you’re seeing all the stars, whether it be on social media, whether it be on YouTube, whether it be sports, entertainment…

David:

Or whether it be the recent Olympics, where you had so much boldness on the issue…

Tim:

When you’re seeing so much of this being advocated and promoted, when pretty much every single TV show, the vast majority it seems of commercials are promoting these things, it is being normalized for this rising generation where to them that’s just normal. It’s not weird. It’s not immoral. It’s not ungodly. This is just the way life is and you just choose.

And we definitely have continued to promote and embrace a hedonistic culture of if it feels good, go for it; if you like it, do it. And this is why you’re seeing the growth of that rising generation. Now, with that being said, where did Gen Z come from? I mean, guys, you can back up and walk through this probably a little bit better.

I don’t know what generation A was. But I know the millennials, they were the Y generation. I know, you can look at the X generation. And so we’ve been counting the alphabet for generations for a long time.

Vaccine Mandates, Rights of Conscience, LGBTQ Issues, And More – On Foundations

Certainly, this is not like some calendar where you’ve now arrived, kind of like Y2K, where people thought, well, the Mayan or the Aztec calendar, whoever it was, like this calendar is over the world about the end. No, I don’t think there will now cease to be generations, because we’re running out of letters in the alphabet. But I don’t even know where this alphabet…

David:

It goes back to, I was talking to Barna about this, he said, really, they’re just arbitrarily: pollsters get together and kind of say, hey, let’s do this. And so Gen X is kind of where we got the letters going. Before that, was boomers and busters and seniors and others. And so Gen X, they said, hey, this is kind of like the X generation, we’re not really sure what they do, what they believe. This is the X Factor, and so they called a Gen X.

Well, then it became logical to say, well, the next one must be Gen Y and Gen Z. So they’ll come up with something new, and it may have nothing to do with letters and is kind of arbitrarily agreed on by pollsters, and they say okay, let’s kind of say 1980 for millennials or 82 or whatever. And so for a while it’s unknown even by pollsters and then they generally agree on it after three or four or five years in.

Rick:

Alright, folks, we’re out of time for questions today, send them in at [email protected], we’ll hit as many as we can next week, and you can learn more at our website wallbuilderslive.com. Also, consider making that one-time or monthly contribution there. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.