Restoring America's Core Values: Celebrating Independence and Addressing Today's Challenges

Do America's foundational values hold the key to solving our current cultural and societal challenges? Join us as we celebrate Independence Day at Patriot Academy in Fredericksburg, Texas, and explore this crucial question. We express our heartfelt gratitude to our listeners and supporters who are committed to restoring our nation through biblical, historical, and constitutional education. We immerse ourselves in the spirit of patriotism, reflecting on the significance of July 4th, while sharing insights from special activities like handgun defense and constitutional training sessions.

America's greatness is rooted in principles that have been forgotten over time, leading to a national crisis. From economic instability and political division to moral decay, the urgency of counteracting these issues is undeniable. We delve into the influence of cultural Marxism and the left's control over major institutions, emphasizing the need for a dedicated effort to restore America's foundational values and reverse the cultural decline. This episode is a call to action for all patriots who care about the future of our nation.

Explore the profound relevance of the Declaration of Independence in today's socio-political climate. We discuss the revolutionary philosophy that power and freedom come from God directly to the people, contrasting it with current attempts to remove God from the public sphere. By examining the grievances of 1776 and drawing parallels to today's struggles, we highlight the importance of understanding and defending these founding principles to protect our freedoms. The inspirational story of Eric Liddell underscores the critical role of active participation in governance. Join us as we advocate for a peaceful revolution with ballots to restore and preserve our nation's values for future generations.

Chapters

• 0:07 Celebrating Patriotism and Independence
• 3:03 Recognizing America's Crumbling Cultural Foundations
• 10:33 Restoring America's Founding Principles
• 19:15 Defending America's Founding Principles
• 25:51 Revolution With Ballots

Transcript

Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the WallBuilder Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Thanks for coming alongside us and thanks for supporting us. There's so many of you out there that donate to Wall Builders, you donate to Patriot Academy, you come to our programs, you're coaches, you're doing classes locally. I mean, you're just doing so many different things to help restore the country. And of course, here we are around the Independence Day celebrations, even this week, bringing you more of that that we recorded last week while the Bartons and I were at the campus in Fredericksburg, Texas. And so, as we're talking about all of these things about the Declaration, the Constitution, the country, how we turn it around I just want to say thank you. You are a patriot, you are someone if you listen to this program very high odds, unless you're from one of the crazy left-wing organizations that just love to twist everything we say. Everybody else that's listening. You're listening because you care about the country, because you see beyond the years. You know, a patriot sees beyond the years, just like the line in America the Beautiful because you care about what your kids and your grandkids are going to be handed as a nation. So I just want to start today by saying thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for being a patriot, for listening to WallBuilders, but also for taking action.

I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David and Tim Barton, David's, America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of Wall Builders, and all week long this week and most of last week, we brought you presentations about July 4th and independence and the declaration. We brought you our live shows that we filmed right there at the campus in Fredericksburg, Texas, the Patriot Academy campus, where the Bartons joined me for a July 4th celebration. We had fantastic fireworks and just a great time and, of course, did some fantastic training handgun defense training and constitutional training as well. Well, for the rest of this week we're going to kind of finish out this Independence Day celebration, which I think should be a month. I think we ought to be celebrating all month in July, celebrating our independence and celebrating who we are as America. So I guess we're giving you about two weeks of celebration here on the Wall Builder Show. So for the next three days, what we're going to do is give you the presentation that I gave just a few days ago, on July 4th, the evening of July 4th, at the Patriot Academy campus, with a full house right before we enjoyed the fireworks together.

So let's jump right into that presentation at the Patriot Academy campus.

 So well, first of all, thank you again for spending your July 4th with us. This is the perfect time to come be at the Patriot Academy campus, because this right here, this land that you're sitting on right now, this is where liberty is being restored. This is the place where we are training patriots from across America that are going to come here, do what you're doing this weekend, plus constitutional training, plus be a legislator in that room when that room is finished, and then they're going to go back home to their community and start a brush fire of liberty right there where they live, to be the catalyst for a restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles.

We already know that what we're doing works. We already know that what the founding fathers did 248 years ago as of tonight, we know that what they did works. We know what the formula is. We just haven't been following the formula. We've forgotten where we came from.

You know, David Barton sat right there at lunch today and reminded us how important it is to know your history and that if you don't know your history you stumble around in the dark. Mike Huckabee says that when you don't know your history, when you don't remember yesterday, it's like being a person with amnesia, where you're just kind of confused and you're wondering and you're stumbling around as a culture. America has amnesia right now. So let me start the night by saying unequivocally without a doubt, America is the greatest nation the world has ever known, in every category you can think of most powerful, most free, the wealthiest, the most benevolent nation the world has ever known. We've been more of a blessing to the rest of the world than any nation has ever been.

Now we could argue the children of Israel, right, but I mean from, I should maybe even say modern nation. But there's a reason for that. There's a reason we had so much success. It didn't happen by accident. Tim Barton sat there today at lunch and reminded us that it wasn't Jefferson didn't just copy what other people were doing, because they were being successful all over the world implementing the Constitutional Republic. He had to put some things together from Locke and others and we did something that was very, very different with the Declaration of Independence. There's a formula there that produced better results than anyone has ever known. That's why we call it American exceptionalism. It's the exception to the rule. We're not normal, we're weird. Okay, we know that we are abnormal. We're not normal, we're extraordinary. That means we're beyond ordinary. We're beyond normal. We got better results than anybody's ever gotten in history. Now that started changing about 50 years ago.

I would have to say to you tonight that the greatest nation in the history of the world is crumbling right before our eyes. We're watching it. The American culture is falling apart all around us. You pick the area. I mean we're crumbling economically $34 trillion in debt, add another trillion every 90 days. We're crumbling politically. We hate each other man. We are at each other's throats. Nobody trusts the elections anymore.

Both sides say the other side's cheating. Both sides say they're not gonna trust the election. I mean, it's all over the place. We're crumbling in our morals. We now don't even know what a woman is. We are literally rejecting basic science, basic biology. We're crumbling all over the place in this culture, and it's happened on our watch.

So I'm just going to be real blunt with you tonight. We let this happen on our watch, and I'm also going to be blunt with you and say whatever you've been doing, it's not enough Tonight. We have to dedicate ourselves to spend the next two years doing more than we've ever done in our entire lives. And listen, I've been in this fight for 30 years. Some of you in this room have been in this fight for decades. You've already done a lot for freedom. You've already been willing to give some of your life, some of your fortune, some of your sacred honor to preserve freedom and protect it. But it's not enough.

The left is winning. They control every major institution in America right now. They control entertainment completely. They control most of the media and journalism. They control most of the education system. They control virtually every state and federal government agency. They control a lot of the Fortune 500 businesses and their boards. Now they control half the pulpits in America. The left is winning Now. There's a reason they're winning. They've been in the trenches scratching and clawing for 80 years. They've been working for 80 years to get to the point that they could control this our entire culture right now. So they didn't just stumble into it. It wasn't an accident.

30 years ago I was fighting against textbooks in Texas that said socialism, communism and capitalism were just three equal ways to form a society. That's cultural Marxism, right there. That's moral relativism. Saying anything works just you know, whichever way you want to do it, and pouring that cultural Marxism into the minds of our children for three generations now has produced what we see right now. There's a reason that kids are marching in favor of terrorism and Hamas right now. There's a reason that four years ago kids marched all over this country and burned cities because they bought the lie of cultural Marxism. They bought all of these lies because they did not know truth. If you know truth, you don't fall for the lie. But we're crumbling because the petri dish where bad government grows is civic and biblical ignorance. When we don't know truth, somebody gives a fluffy speech and it sounds good and we fall for it, and that's what has happened in our nation over the last few decades.

Aren't you glad you came tonight on July 4th to get depressed? No, we're just starting. All right, that's just. We have to assess the patient, right? If, if, uh, if Laura back there was, uh, in an emergency situation, she would know. I gotta figure out where the bullet hole is before I can fix the bullet hole. So we're assessing the patient and we're recognizing greatest nation in the history of the world is crumbling all around us. Let me start with the good news now. She's crumbling right on time. This is the point. When nations fall apart, it's the nature of man. Some things just are natural and the natural tendency, the cycle of nations.

You heard it many times, in fact, tonight on Flashpoint. We pre-taped it yesterday and Alan West was saying exactly what I've been saying for months and months and months. Tonight he said it before I could say it. I was like, ah, the colonel stole my line. But here's what's happening. Tough times make tough men. Tough men make good times. Good times make soft men and soft men lead to tough times. We've had it so good in America. The good times in America have been amazing, better than any nation's ever experienced. And the nature of man is that when you've got it good you get soft Because you stop doing the hard work. You're not as motivated to study, to discover what it is that made things so good. You're just enjoying the blessings of liberty, life's great. Meanwhile there are others who are doing everything they can to prepare to take that away from you. Our folks got to interrupt that presentation at the Patriot Academy campus, where we were enjoying Independence Day. And take a quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back to the WallBuilder. Show Thanks for staying with us. Let's jump right back in no-transcript. Let's jump back into that evening on Independence Day, right before the fireworks, where we were talking about the Declaration of Independence.

The tough times that we're entering into right now and we're just barely going in man, I mean, this is not. Everybody thinks this is really bad in America right now. It can get a whole lot worse. This is the beginning of the tough times. So my theory that I want to share with you tonight is that we have an opportunity that no people have ever had before to interrupt the tough times, interrupt the cycle and get back to the good times without having to go through a thousand years of darkness, without having to go through 70 years of captivity in Babylon. We have an opportunity to interrupt the cycle quickly. Maybe not for the whole nation, maybe not for everybody that lives in America, but there are millions of Americans right now that, because of the entering of the tough times and because of the pain that they're feeling, their eyes wide open and they're looking. They're asking there's got to be a better way. What do we need to do? I don't like the pain that I'm feeling, so they're willing to hear us out as we talk about what actually produces the good times.

And that, of course, brings us to the Declaration of Independence. This is the formula that produced the greatest nation in the history of the world. If you wonder why America became the most powerful, most free, wealthiest, most benevolent nation in history, this formula in the Declaration of Independence is what produced it. John Quincy Adams, of course, our sixth president and son of John Adams, who was our second. He said later that the Declaration is the slab that the home of the Constitution was built upon. In other words, it's the foundation that makes the Constitution strong. The Constitution is the rulebook by which we do this thing called government and life and neighborhoods and society, but it's built on the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence. And that philosophy in the Declaration of Independence is what changed everything, because it flipped the idea that power and freedom comes from God to a king and then the king decides what we get. It flipped that and said power and freedom comes from God directly to the people, and then we create governments to protect those rights. So, as we go through the Declaration, just think about that major shift in history in 1776, and why exactly what Tim Barton was saying at lunch today. That's why the left wants to reject God and remove God from the equation. It was that change in the philosophy that produced our results and made people free in America, and so if they can get God out of the equation and make it to where government is the source of your freedom, they can get the Marxism that they want in our nation.

So let's go to the Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson was very clear about why they were doing what they were doing. We get these 27 grievances in the Declaration. We're not going to go through all of those tonight, but there are many of those that are exactly what we're dealing with today. It's almost an absolute reflection of where they were 248 years ago. Tonight we're facing the exact same things today, again that cycle of nations.

But he started off by basically saying why, why are we doing this? Why would we technically free citizens under the crown? Technically free citizens and frankly, they had it pretty good. I mean we often try. We think, well, they were just fighting against total, complete totalitarianism. They actually had it pretty decent. I mean these guys were revolting over some things that today we just smile and say, ok, sure, I'll pay 32 percent in taxes.

Oh yeah, sure you can. You can take the best white pines. There in New Hampshire Everybody's talking about the appeal to heaven flag and how that makes Sam Alito, justice Alito and his wife. Somehow Now they're white supremacists because they are flying the appeal to heaven flag. Well, the appeal to heaven flag, not only was it saying that we're going above you, king George, we're going to the ultimate authority. It was specifically, it has that white pine there because king George was trying to take all their best white pines so they could have the best mass for their ships. And all that it was a property rights fight was what it was really all about. So, getting back to these basic ideas, these guys had freedom, but the philosophy was wrong. The philosophy meant that our freedom was subject to the king instead of subject to the king of kings, so they could lose their freedom if the king changed his mind or the queen became different, and they knew that was not going to work for us here on this continent. So he said when, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to another and to, so he said, so the declaring is the Declaration of Independence. You actually see a copy of it here. This is an exact reprint, not reprint. An exact replica of the declaration. Uh, some of our wonderful supporters, john and sue hadley, this uh, amazing guy did these by hand. He has like 26 different calligraphy pens so that all the signatures are exactly the same as the founders. It's all written exactly like that. But that document, right, there is what we were just quoting from. That's what we're celebrating tonight.

By the way, before you leave the campus, make sure you check all three of those out and you're going to notice down there on the end, the bill of rights you're going to look at and go, wait a minute, why is there 12 of these? Thought the bill of rights was 10. I thought the first 10 amendments to the constitution was the bill of rights and it's. It's hard to read it, but if you read it and you get real close, you'll figure out that actually the first one and the second one did not get ratified and so the third, through the 12th, became the Bill of Rights. That's the 10, the first 10 amendments of the Constitution. So you'll actually see we're here, you know, exercising our Second Amendment, rights, and tomorrow I'm going to do a quick crash course on the Second Amendment itself. But you'll actually see that the language of the Second Amendment is number four in there, so it's extremely confusing. So, everybody, be proud of your Fourth Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I know that's very confusing and not exactly accurate. The second one, by the way, does later get ratified, the 27th Amendment. Most of y'all have been through our Constitution class so you already know most of that. But be sure you check those out.

So anyway, okay, so Jefferson takes that first paragraph that we're celebrating tonight and he's essentially explaining to the world here's why we're nice enough to put this on paper and tell the rest of the world about it. And then in that second paragraph, this is the frame of America that he describes in just 56 words. This is the formula for what made America great, and if you watch close in this formula, you will see things that you can do to restore the formula in your community. So he starts with we hold these truths. I thought it was we hold these feelings if they aren't offensive. Is that not what it says? We better double check Feelings are not? No, yeah, we hold these truths to be self-evident. So truth has to be the foundation. If you want a solid foundation, a nation that's gonna last, you gotta build it on truth. You don't build it on moral relativism. You build it on absolute moral truth. Build these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their no.

No, it's Congress, it's not Congress. Let's double check Is the Congress we're endowed by? No, so you're sure it's not Congress. Well then, who is it? You bunch of Christian nationalists? I mean, that's what I heard is that if you think your freedom comes from God, then you're one of those weirdo Christian nationalists. And the name sounds so nasty, doesn't it? Christian nationalists, like you feel like you should have a swastika on or something. I mean Christian dominionists, christian. They make up all these names to scare you away from the arena. They don't want you involved. So they make these names up and make it sound like you're some kind of theocrat or something like that, when in fact you're exactly like Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson says we're endowed by our creator, not Congress. In fact, congress gets created in the line we're going to get to in just a second. We're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So that's what we all kind of want, right? I mean most people. If you describe freedom, if you ask me what's freedom mean to you or what would you want to protect, it almost always fits into one of those three life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness. Now I'm not going to go too far into the weeds on pursuit of happiness, but I will just tell you this on your anniversary of the nation, just so you remember why it doesn't say life, liberty and property. John Locke's phrase was originally life, liberty and property, and Jefferson changes it to pursuit of happiness. But he's also borrowing from Locke for that. So Locke has a book called Essay on Human Understandings and he's got a whole section in there on the pursuit of happiness.

What it means to us today is you're no longer just an agrarian society. It's not just property and being able to raise something on your land. It's the pursuit of happiness. It's to be able to go out whatever God's called you to do and to do that thing, to find that thing. That for you, is what God made you to do. It's kind of the old Eric Liddell thing, the Olympian Anybody see Chariots of Fire? I just have a music track in the background going dun, dun, dun, dun dun.

Anyway, the movie Church of Fire was about this guy named Eric Liddell. He's an Olympian and refused to run on the Sabbath, so he ends up having to trade his race. Just an amazing guy. But he said when I run, I feel God's pleasure. In other words, he was doing the thing that God made him to do. Now, I don't know about you, but when I run, I don't feel anybody's pleasure. I don't feel God's pleasure. I don't feel anybody's pleasure when I run. So I am not made to run. Okay, one more break. Folks, stay with me, we'll be right back.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back to the Wall Builders Show. We're listening to a presentation I just gave a few days ago at the Patriot Academy campus on Independence Day, right before fireworks, and we'll get the conclusion for today, and then we'll get the rest of the presentation tomorrow and Friday. Let's jump right back in. The idea is pursuit of happiness. And notice it doesn't say the guarantee of happiness, it doesn't say the redistribution of happiness, it's the pursuit of happiness, because the pursuit is where you find the happiness. It is the ability to have the freedom to do what God made you to do. So life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. We could talk about all the different things that that means. We could say that's what everybody tends to want when they live in a free society. What I would argue tonight is that you don't get any of those things if you don't start with truth and you don't pay attention to the next line, because the next line is why we're in the mess that we're in right now. We stopped doing this next part of the Declaration of Independence, so we said we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that we're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Consent of the governed is absolutely essential for freedom to last. So if you want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you build it on truth. But you only keep it if you're willing to stand up and give or refuse your consent. You have to be willing to live out that line on a regular basis. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. It never stops. You never arrive at a place where you get to say, okay, I'm done, not till you're six feet under. I don't care how old you are, I don't care how rich or poor you are, I don't care what your experience in life is. You still have a role to play in giving or refusing consent. If you want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and maybe not even so much if you want it.

I used to ask people what's your freedom worth? Wrong question what is your child's freedom worth? What is your grandchild's freedom worth? I got a few screaming grandchildren running around here. I'd be willing to die for them. I'd be willing to lay down my life for them. You not so much. No, I'm kidding, I would die for you as well. Right, but here's the thing Life-limited pursuit of happiness doesn't happen if we're not willing to not just die for freedom.

We have to be willing to live our freedom, we have to be willing to give or refuse consent. Everything in the quote-unquote political world comes under consent of the governor. Every time you testify, every time you call or write your legislator, if you run for office. All of that is the process of giving or refusing consent for government to do things or not do things. And we just kind of checked out for a generation. We just basically said times are really good, I don't want to take the time to have to go fight that battle, I don't want to have to take the time to run for office, I don't want to have to take the time to sign up for that or do a voter registration, whatever it was. We were enjoying the good times and we got soft and we stopped doing what it takes to preserve freedom. So, and we got soft and we stopped doing what it takes to preserve freedom. So now we find ourselves in exactly the same spot that the founding fathers did, and that's why Jefferson's next line says this that when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends.

What ends? Well, what did we just talk about? Life Is government destructive of life right now? Liberty Is government destructive of liberty right now. Liberty Is government destructive of liberty right now, at virtually every level I'm talking local, county, state, federal, I don't care what state you live in. They're being destructive of your liberty, your pursuit of happiness, your ability to do with your property what you want. How about even destructive of the ends of truth? We hold these truths destructive of those ends. How about the ability to give or refuse your consent If they're still in elections? They're becoming destructive of these ends. How about the ability to give or refuse your consent if they're still in elections? They're becoming destructive of these ends. So when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, jefferson said it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

So tonight, folks, we're going to abolish no, I'm kidding, we're not here to abolish our government. I am not a fan of Texas seceding. I'm not a fan of Texas seceding. I'm not a fan of destroying government. We are not anarchists at all. In fact, we're the opposite. We believe government was created by God and therefore government's a God-created institution. We're supposed to honor it. But government's only a blessing if it's in its lane, if it's doing what we gave it consent to do. When it gets outside its lane, it's no longer a blessing, it becomes a curse.

And so our job is to alter our government back to what the Founding Fathers gave us a constitutional republic. I know it's confusing, because the CNN keeps trying to tell you that we're a democracy and that if you do any of the things we're doing this weekend, you're a threat to democracy. When someone tells you you're a threat to democracy, your response should always be you're darn right, I'm a threat to democracy, because democracy, according to the guys that gave us the Declaration of Independence, is one of the greatest of evils. Democracy is mobocracy. It ends in violence. We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic, and that constitutional republic falls apart if we don't give or refuse consent.

And now we get a chance to alter it back to what the founders designed, and here's the beauty of our interruption of the cycle, different from anyone else in history. We don't have to take up pitchforks. We don't have to take up the guns that we're using and learning this weekend to defend ourselves. We don't need a revolution with bullets. We can have a revolution with ballots. We can have a revolution with the process. We have peaceable answers to turn this thing around. Everything we need to win this is right at our fingertips, our folks. Out of time for today, we'll just pick up right where we left off today, we'll do that tomorrow and then, Friday, we'll get the conclusion. As we walk through the Declaration of Independence, we're talking about each and every one of those principles that the nation was founded upon and what we can do to restore them. Not only preserve them, but restore them and pass them intact to the next generation. Thanks so much for listening today to the WallBuilders Show. Thank you.