On this episode of the podcast, we have a special guest, David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a company that has some of the most valuable artifacts in the world. We talk about the value of these items, the history of the company, and what it's like to work with them.
00:00:58.000And you're dumb now, if you have no regrets.
00:01:01.000So that being said, I always love learning from you.
00:01:04.000You'll probably not hear me talking a whole lot, aside from asking questions, because he is like the computer war expensive artifacts for shoes.
00:02:31.000I was like, don't give it to me because I'm clumsy.
00:02:35.000Yeah, some of the stuff you really got to be really delicate with, but it's interesting.
00:02:38.000The older stuff is a lot more durable, and you can handle a letter of George Washington much more than I can handle a letter of Woodrow Wilson or FDR, because that stuff, it crumbles, falls apart.
00:02:48.000They had a lot of ash in the paper in that time, and they didn't know what it did.
00:02:52.000But back in the original founding era, they made all the papers, a lot of linen in it.
00:02:55.000It was just a totally different world.
00:02:57.000Did you say they had a lot of ash in the paper with Woodrow Wilson?
00:03:50.000So, about 30 years down the line, if there's some kind of a nuclear holocaust, Huck Finn will be a distant memory, but gender theory at Schenectady Community College, it'll last forever.
00:04:05.000I have so much I want to ask, and I'd maybe like to go back, since you talked about that, to hemp and ropes for ships, because that's something that's always interesting to me, why we switched over and the cotton trade.
00:04:14.000Obviously, 4th of July, it's a time where a lot of people are obviously enjoying the fruits of this country, this wonderful country, but a lot of people aren't necessarily aware of exactly how it was founded, why it was founded.
00:04:27.000Something that comes up a lot, I've talked about it on my show, but I know you're an expert, is the idea that it's a secular nation.
00:04:33.000The idea, of course, there's the First Amendment and people misconstrue that with the word separation of church and state.
00:04:39.000We hear a lot that the Founding Fathers specifically were deists, they weren't Christians, and it was really founded more on Enlightenment principles.
00:04:48.000Can you, just as a jumping off point, let me know what's correct, what's incorrect there?
00:04:52.000What was the intent for the United States from the people who created it?
00:04:57.000Well, let's deal first with where they get their ideas, where the Enlightenment ideas.
00:05:01.000And in the history of the world, you go back to all the classics and all the earliest, Cato and Cicero and Plato and all those guys.
00:05:08.000And then you get to a period of time where the world goes into the Dark Ages, about 1300 years of illiteracy.
00:05:13.000Nobody's reading, nobody can read, only the elites read.
00:05:19.000Then you get to the point of what we would call Reformation.
00:05:22.000And Reformation was really a bunch of Christian folks saying, we've got to get back to reading, which means the Bible, so we've got to have literacy.
00:05:29.000So that's why that those that first came to America, the pilgrims, the Puritans, others, they were big Bible guys.
00:05:34.000And America had the highest literacy rate of anywhere in the world at that point, including for girls.
00:05:40.000We educated both boys and girls, and that wasn't being done in Europe at the time.
00:05:44.000So, literacy starts coming back in, really, in the 1300s, 1400s, 1500s.
00:05:47.000Out of literacy, then you get back to what's called Renaissance, and so now you're back into art, you're into science, you're into all sorts of stuff, because for 1200, 1300 years in the Dark Ages, that stuff just wasn't doing anything.
00:06:00.000And then out of that, you get philosophers coming out of Reformation and Renaissance, and that's where we call it the Enlightenment.
00:06:07.000The problem academics have today is they separate all the Enlightenment as really an anti-Christian kind of movement of intellectuals, which is silly.
00:06:16.000There are two strains in the Enlightenment camp.
00:06:19.000You have the secular Enlightenment and you have the Christian Enlightenment.
00:06:22.000And so in the secular Enlightenment, you're going to have David Hume, you're going to have Rousseau and Voltaire, you're going to have those guys.
00:06:27.000In the Christian Enlightenment, you're going to have Blackstone and Montesquieu and Locke and Grotius and Pufendorf, all these philosophers.
00:06:33.000So, when you get into that point today, they just kind of say, if you're Enlightenment, that's secular.
00:07:48.000And can I clarify, too, for the audience really quickly?
00:07:51.000A lot of people who aren't necessarily, you know, hobbyists with this, the term deist is often applied to Founding Fathers to separate them from Christians, where they say, well, they believed in an idea of God, but not necessarily the Judeo-Christian God.
00:08:03.000And I think that also deist has changed, and our view of what a Christian might be today has changed.
00:08:07.000So I just want to clarify for people who may not know, because I know you do.
00:08:20.000A deist today is one who believes in the clockmaker philosophy, that there is a creator out there somewhere, and he wound up the universe like a clock, but he's taken off, and it just runs on its own natural law.
00:08:31.000If you pray, he's not going to answer.
00:09:09.000This is all the scriptures out of the Bible that deal with the Trinity or the Divinity.
00:09:14.000I mean, this is all the major doctrines of Christianity, and it's John Locke.
00:09:18.000So, if they say he's a secular Enlightenment guy, they're crazy, because he's got writings like this.
00:09:24.000As a matter of fact, this one that I showed you, this is the most cited book by the Founding Fathers when they were writing the Declaration of Independence.
00:09:32.000One of the signers of the Declaration, this guy, if I can point to him right here, this guy here is Richard Henry Lee.
00:09:38.000He's the guy that actually made the motion for America to become an independent nation.
00:09:43.000That's what led to the Fourth of July was his motion.
00:09:45.000He said they copied the Declaration out of this book.
00:09:49.000This book, John Locke, references the Bible more than 1,500 times.
00:09:54.000So when a political philosopher says, oh, they quoted Enlightenment philosophers, therefore they were secular, that proves to me they don't have a clue what they're talking about.
00:10:10.000If anyone were to do that today upon swearing in, they'd be considered a radical extremist and hauled out in cuffs.
00:10:17.000They would be accused of establishing a theocracy somewhere.
00:10:20.000They're trying to get an Ayatollah in or something.
00:10:24.000Well, I don't know about the fatwas, but the principle remains.
00:10:27.000No, I understand what you're saying, and I do think that it's interesting, because even if someone – and we'll get to that question of the divinity of Christ.
00:10:34.000By the way, you could refer to all Muslims as deists in that sense, because they did question the divinity, at the very least the resurrection.
00:10:41.000That doesn't matter so much here when we're discussing people who were creating laws in a system of government pragmatically because they needed to extrapolate those from somewhere whether they believed that Christ was resurrected and an actual God in the flesh or not.
00:10:55.000And I think people need to understand that because it changes the context of the laws we have and where they come from.
00:11:01.000Well, not only has it changed the context, but even if you take those who question the divinity of Christ, out of the 56 signers of the Declaration, there's really only two we know who question the divinity of Christ.
00:11:14.000If I go to a university, Duke University Law School, Southern University Law School, I'll put this picture up and I'll always ask, Who up there can you identify?
00:11:37.000That's a different story, different thing.
00:11:40.000And we get into the scuba flippers that he invented that went with that, and all the other stuff.
00:11:46.000But what you get is these two guys are the only two to question the divinity of Christ, and they're the only two that people know today.
00:11:53.000And so they say, oh, well, they were deists.
00:11:54.000Well, they were, by definition of their day, although Jefferson would, if you called him a deist, he would argue with you.
00:12:01.000He called himself a Christian several occasions.
00:12:04.000Franklin one time said he was a deist, and that's in his autobiography.
00:12:08.000And two pages later, he says, I was, but I'm not, because he essentially said it's the most foolish, the most silly belief of thought out there.
00:12:17.000So within two pages, he renounces deism, but professors still quote that one quote from Franklin, not paying attention to the rest.
00:12:23.000That's important for people to note, and I encourage them to read the text.
00:12:27.000We'll go back to the establishment from all of the Founding Fathers, but let's take those two, because those come up a whole lot.
00:12:32.000You see a lot of atheists bring up Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
00:12:36.000Jefferson obviously is most cited for, you know, his desire to build, people talk about a wall of separation between the church and state, and we know about the private letter to the Danbury Baptists, but let's start with what did Jefferson believe?
00:12:48.000What did he want for this country, the person who people argue he was the one who wanted no faith at all in any level of government?
00:12:55.000So what did Jefferson believe regarding faith, regarding America, what aspects?
00:13:01.000What he wanted to establish with the United States, you know, if it was, because we all know, obviously, it's not a religious theocracy, right?
00:13:08.000But then people try to say that, well, so Jefferson wanted, didn't want anyone praying or having any faith-based principles involved with the founding of government.
00:13:16.000Give us kind of a snapshot as to who Jefferson was and what his vision for America was.
00:13:23.000Jefferson, interestingly enough, when you look at him from a faith perspective, he was raised as a very orthodox Anglican.
00:14:15.000John Leland helped do the First Amendment, and he worked with Jefferson on it, worked with Madison on it.
00:14:21.000He worked with Jefferson to disestablish the Anglican religion.
00:14:24.000So what happened is Jefferson, as an Anglican, is in a state that is an Anglican state established religion in Virginia, which meant that in his state, Jefferson, who's friends with all Christians, Jefferson is watching people in his state, like Quakers and Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodists, be thrown in jail, be fined, be whipped, be beat, simply because they're not Anglicans.
00:14:48.000So Jefferson hated that, and so he worked first in 1777, right after the Declaration, he introduced a bill that would disestablish the Anglican Church and say all denominations are equal.
00:15:00.000Then when he became governor, He specifically did that.
00:15:03.000He removed the professor of religion from William & Mary.
00:15:06.000And people say, ah, that proves he's anti-religion.
00:15:19.000And so that's what Jefferson's after, is free marketplace of ideas, wide open for Christian faith.
00:15:25.000So Jefferson, actually, as you go through what he did, it becomes very interesting to see what he did before he wrote that letter, the separation letter.
00:15:33.000So in 1789, Washington's president, Jefferson's secretary of state, Congress passes a law that said, hey, we told you in the Constitution, find a 10 mile square piece of property, not 10 square miles, but 10 miles, but 10 miles, but 10 miles, make that the federal city.
00:16:16.000So the first year is in New York City as the federal capital, then 10 years in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia is the federal capital.
00:16:24.0001800, November of 1800, they move into the capital, Washington, DC.
00:16:28.000When they moved in, Thomas Jefferson, who's been in charge of this, is now the Vice President of the United States, which means he presides over the Senate.
00:16:34.000Unlike Mike Pence today, the Vice President actually sat in the Senate every day and ran the Senate, instead of Mitch McConnell or whoever.
00:16:42.000So, Jefferson's in the Senate, and they said, now that we've got this brand new building, here's an idea.
00:16:48.000The largest room in the Capitol is the hall of the House of Representatives.
00:16:52.000That's the biggest room, Let's take every Sunday and start a church over in the Hall of the House, and let's have church in the U.S.
00:17:17.000Even his political opponents who hated him said, we got to give to Jefferson.
00:17:20.000He never misses Church of the Capitol.
00:17:22.000And so when Jefferson was asked by a minister, a guy named Ethan Allen, not the Ethan Allen of Vermont, but the Ethan Allen there in town, he said, why do you go to Church of the Capitol?
00:17:31.000He said, I'm the chief magistrate of a Christian nation.
00:17:34.000And that's the example you're supposed to sit as the chief magistrate.
00:17:37.000So Jefferson not only had Church of the Capitol, Jefferson also had church at the Navy Yard, At the War Department and at the Treasury Department.
00:17:46.000So, if you want to go to church in early Washington, D.C., you can choose four government buildings, and that's Thomas Jefferson?
00:17:57.000People in the offering plate were none the wiser.
00:17:59.000So, before we go to Franklin, then, explain to me, now when we hear that, people might be confused and say, well, hold on a second, what about the First Amendment?
00:18:06.000And, obviously, Jefferson is sort of seen as this godfather of the separation of church and state.
00:18:11.000Obviously, I'm laying this up for you, but I would like for you to explain to people who may not be familiar, because most aren't, and that's what's sad.
00:18:57.000And I had already taken communion in a non-denominational church, and I didn't know that I wasn't allowed to take communion in the Catholic church.
00:19:04.000When they found out, I was immediately sent to the principal's office, and my parents were called.
00:19:07.000It was this huge deal, and my dad said, well, honestly, we go to a church where we do communion, and you have to understand what it is.
00:19:12.000He goes, do you understand what communion is?
00:19:13.000I said, yeah, I understand it's a representation of, you know, the body of Christ, the blood of Christ, and that he sacrificed for us.
00:19:25.000A lot of people don't realize this was commonplace.
00:19:29.000And so the context of, hey, we don't want the government to be enforcing or be in the church running business, rather, is very different from, well, of course you can pray and establish a church in the Capitol building.
00:19:41.000Of course you can do that in the Navy Yard.
00:19:43.000So, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
00:19:46.000That's exactly it, and the example you gave regarding yourself is what Jefferson didn't want.
00:19:51.000He didn't want them to be able to come in and say you have to go to this church, and so the concept of separation church and state is not secularization.
00:19:58.000By the way, this is really important to understand because the critics today say if you don't have separation church and state, the church is going to take over the government.
00:20:36.000So Jefferson does not want to secularize the society at all.
00:20:40.000What he wants to do is make sure the government can't stop it.
00:20:42.000So what's really cool is when you read the First Amendment, the two religion clauses really short, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
00:20:57.000Key word is Congress can't make a law establishing religion.
00:21:02.000Congress can't make us all Anglicans, or Lutherans, or Baptists, or Catholics, or Quakers, or Atheists, or anything else, and the only one limited there is Congress.
00:21:21.000And just an aside, this is something that a lot of people don't understand when you get a lot of sort of modern intellectuals saying, well, it's such a crime, it's a crooked game, a racket, they say, because they're in the 1940s, that churches have tax-exempt status.
00:22:25.000It might be Anglican in South Carolina.
00:22:27.000So what he's wanting is freedom, religious freedom.
00:22:31.000So when he got elected to office in Interesting enough, he got letters, just a bunch of letters came in from Baptist pastors across the nation.
00:22:44.000Because in every state except Rhode Island, Baptists were minority pastors and they were scared to death of the government shutting them down as they did in Virginia.
00:22:52.000And so when Jefferson got in, they say, hallelujah, you're our guy.
00:22:56.000You've been fighting for us for years.
00:22:58.000You've got more than 15 years of fighting for us.
00:23:01.000We are so glad you're president because we know you're going to do the right thing and you're not going to punish us.
00:23:06.000So one of those groups, Danbury Baptist Association, Danbury, Danbury, Connecticut, wrote him a letter.
00:23:15.000And they said that we are really concerned because this thing about Congress guaranteeing our free exercise of religion They said God guarantees our free exercise of religion.
00:23:25.000We think that even the word Congress appearing there might someday cause the government to think it has the right to regulate our religion.
00:23:32.000And so they're concerned that the words appearing there might cause Congress to think they could.
00:23:37.000Jefferson writes back on January the 1st of 1802.
00:23:40.000It's Friday, and it's the reason I say Friday.
00:23:51.000Anybody can read it in under five minutes.
00:23:53.000If you're a slow reader, it'll take you under five minutes.
00:23:56.000And Jefferson said, you don't have to worry about Any government establishing or taking over your faith, because there is a wall of separation between church and state that protects your religious expression.
00:24:09.000And he goes through and says, because there's a wall of separation, you're free to express your faith however you want to, anywhere you want to, any place you want.
00:24:16.000And so he gave this guarantee of religious freedom.
00:24:19.000Now, what's fun is that's Friday, January the 1st, 1802.
00:24:25.000Sunday, January the 3rd, 1802, Thomas Jefferson is in church at the Capitol, and the guy who's preaching that day is the Reverend John Leland, who Thomas Jefferson invited to come preach at the Capitol at the church.
00:24:40.000So if you think separation of church and state is a bad deal, what's he doing on Sunday?
00:24:43.000He just violated everything you wrote, no?
00:24:46.000And this is what's really significant to me, Steve.
00:25:39.000I'll say, for crying out loud, I think it was 1,800 pages for Brennan Dassey making a murderer, so you think they could at least shoehorn it in there.
00:25:47.000No, I think that's very interesting, and I hope that people do go and read the letter.
00:25:50.000I know I've talked about it before, but I'm sure you probably have the actual authentic copy lying around there somewhere.
00:25:56.000Let me ask you, so let's go to Benjamin Franklin then, since I think we've addressed Jefferson.
00:26:00.000Benjamin Franklin is another one that people say, well, he was just, he was a deist.
00:26:05.000Give us a snapshot of Benjamin Franklin and what his vision for America was and who he was as a person.
00:26:11.000Yeah, Benjamin Franklin, in his own autobiography, I mentioned earlier, he said he was a deist.
00:26:15.000And he said within two pages, but I found out how silly that belief was and I quickly rejected it.
00:26:21.000In his own autobiography, he has a number of personal psalms that he writes to God, how God answered his prayers on numerous occasions.
00:26:29.000He talks about how important God is throughout his life.
00:26:32.000As a matter of fact, he's the guy that brought Thomas Paine to America.
00:26:37.000Now, Thomas Paine genuinely is a deist.
00:27:27.000He and Ben Franklin were talking Sitting around talking about it, and Benjamin Rush says, you ought to call that piece Common Sense, because that's what it is, Common Sense.
00:28:39.000And so he said, I was writing this kind of like a step for the French to say, don't get away from God.
00:28:45.000And when it came out, however, because it attacked Christianity and Judaism, the founding fathers turned on him and said, this is terrible.
00:28:52.000We established this nation on these principles, and now you're attacking them.
00:28:56.000What's really cool is before that, and by the way, when it came out, Washington would never talk to Thomas Paine again after that came out.
00:29:04.000Sam Adams did an op-ed piece against him in Boston newspapers.
00:29:09.000Patrick Henry wrote an entire book trashing Thomas Paine when that piece came out.
00:29:14.000I mean, Founding Fathers turned against him.
00:29:16.000When Thomas Paine came back to America and died here, there was not a single cemetery that would let him be buried there.
00:29:21.000They buried him in a church pasture because nobody wanted anything to do with Thomas Paine.
00:29:54.000for attacking Christianity and the Bible, and said, you do not understand how much we need Christianity and the Bible in the nation.
00:30:00.000He said, think of all the young people whose bad behavior is restrained by the teachings of the Bible.
00:30:06.000Without this, you have the Law of the Tiger and the Shark.
00:30:09.000So it's the least religious Founding Father, Ben Franklin, who tears Thomas Paine up for going secular.
00:30:15.000Which tells you something about Franklin.
00:30:17.000Now, what I've got also right here, and I won't worry about pulling it up, I can.
00:30:21.000This is the original Constitution for Pennsylvania, 1776, written by Ben Franklin.
00:30:28.000In this Constitution, Ben Franklin says you can't hold office in Pennsylvania unless you believe in the divine authority of both the Old and New Testaments and believe in a future state of rewards and punishments.
00:30:41.000Don't want you close to government in Pennsylvania if you don't believe the Bible and believe that you're going to stand before God and answer for what you do.
00:30:51.000And in 1787, when Franklin becomes a governor of Pennsylvania, as governor, he actually came up with a statewide plan to raise church attendance in the state of Pennsylvania.
00:31:19.000And part of the incentive was just intellectually.
00:31:22.000Don't you realize how good religion is for a nation?
00:31:25.000You know, one of the things that Daniel Webster said later, Daniel Webster talked to Thomas Jefferson.
00:31:30.000Daniel Webster was the second generation of American statesman.
00:31:34.000And when he was a young guy, he sat down with an older Thomas Jefferson.
00:31:38.000And Thomas Jefferson, this is recorded by Daniel Webster, Thomas Jefferson told Daniel Webster, a studious perusal of the Bible will make us better citizens, better parents, better husbands, better fathers.
00:31:51.000He said, you need to get in the Bible to make you a better citizen.
00:31:53.000So what happened was Daniel Webster turned around and said, whatever makes men good Christians makes them good citizens.
00:32:01.000And sure enough, it's not the good Christians who are killing people or who are breaking up and looting stuff.
00:32:08.000And that's what Franklin appealed to was, hey, this is great for behavior, makes you a good neighbor, makes you a nice person to get along with.
00:32:17.000So Franklin and Jefferson, you take those two, if that's your two least religious founding fathers, then what does that tell you about the other guys who are not the least religious?
00:32:27.000I did want to ask you about specifically, you know, John Adams, most people know him, Paul Giamatti.
00:32:32.000In 1796, he did say that the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.
00:32:39.000And so I've seen people argue that because specifically, you know, you don't see Jesus, or Christianity, right, mentioned, or Jesus, specifically Jesus, because that's obviously the center of this, in the Constitution, or Declaration of Independence, that it proves what John Adams was saying, and that's in a very limited context, that it is in no way founded on the Christian religion, because to many people, they read that quote, and they say, well, that seems pretty cut and dry.
00:33:02.000Yeah, what's wrong with that is they're wrong on that quote in so many ways.
00:33:06.000That quote is Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli.
00:33:10.000The Treaty of Tripoli happened in the 32 years that we were having a war on Muslim terrorism, quite frankly.
00:33:16.000We went from 1784 to 1816 fighting Muslim terrorists.
00:33:21.000By the time that George Washington got in office, 10% of the federal budget was being spent fighting Muslim terrorists.
00:33:28.000For people who don't know, we did a segment on that in your spot there, where we went through the history of Leatherneck and the Navy.
00:33:48.000So what happens is, when we did not have a Navy back then, and we could not defend, defeat the Muslims until Thomas Jefferson built, John Adams built the Navy, Thomas Jefferson takes it and says, now we're going over to North Africa and the Mediterranean, we're going to thump their heads.
00:34:08.000Prior to that time, all we could do was negotiate with them to not attack us.
00:34:13.000And so starting in 1774, Congress sent Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to London to negotiate with five Muslim ambassadors to get their nations to stop attacking Americans.
00:34:25.000And so while they were there, after two years, Jefferson records it.
00:34:30.000This is in the State Department records.
00:34:32.000Jefferson and John Adams were still with the Muslim Ambassadors, the five of them, and Franklin had been sent somewhere else.
00:34:38.000So Adams and Jefferson asked the Muslim Ambassadors, said, look, you trust us, we trust you.
00:34:43.000We don't understand why you keep attacking Americans.
00:35:12.000So with all that's gone at that point in time, we're writing treaties back and forth with the Muslims.
00:35:19.000How can we keep the Muslims from attacking us?
00:35:21.000Because the Muslims in that period enslaved about 1.25 million people.
00:35:26.000Capture, ship, men, slaves, including Americans.
00:35:28.000And so we have these treaties to say, okay, You acknowledge that we're a Christian nation, we acknowledge that you're a Muslim nation, and we want you to understand we don't fight you because of your religion.
00:35:37.000We fight you because you're a terrorist, but we won't fight you because you're a religion.
00:35:41.000Well, the Muslims said, well, we fight you because you're Christians.
00:35:44.000And so, in the treaties, we had this thing that says, look, we'll acknowledge you're a Muslim nation, you acknowledge we're a Christian nation, and that means that our Embassies can harbor the others.
00:35:56.000In other words, in America, if you want to send a Muslim to your ambassador, they'll be safe in America.
00:36:01.000But if we want to send a Christian to our embassy in Tripoli, then they need to be safe there.
00:36:07.000And so what happened was, in the treaties, they acknowledged that both nations were, and what they did in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797, Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli says, the government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.
00:38:47.000And I also think there's something that I'd like to get to, you know, why Americans stand before the Pledge of Allegiance, you know, hand on your heart.
00:38:52.000Because kneeling has been very popular lately, kneeling to people, which we do not have a storied history of doing here in the United States.
00:38:59.000So first, tell me about how the Pledge of Allegiance came about.
00:39:22.000Supreme Court ruled in 1875 and 1876, immigration belonged totally to the states.
00:39:27.000The first time the federal government gets involved is when the Supreme Court says they can, and you don't have the first federal immigration law until 1891.
00:39:36.000So, what's happened is you have Ellis Island, all these folks coming in, all these immigrants coming in, and the Founding Fathers wrote about immigration, what you needed for good immigration, because of the 55 guys who framed the Constitution, seven of the guys were immigrants.
00:39:51.000We had a lot of immigrants who actually framed the Constitution.
00:39:56.000Matter of fact, that's one of the grievances in the Declaration, is King George III's trying to shut down our immigration, and that's a grievance against him.
00:40:04.000Now, the deal is, to be an immigrant back at that point in time, the states controlled it, and you had a pledge of loyalty to the beliefs of the state, the beliefs of the nation, etc.
00:40:19.000Hebrew, I've been involved in a lot of hearings in Congress, etc., and one of the popular Bible verses that people like to use for open borders and open immigration is Leviticus 19, 34.
00:40:31.000And it says, the alien or the stranger among you, you used to be strangers in Egypt, so you invite the stranger in, treat them the same as you would yourself.
00:40:38.000And that's where people say, hey, the Bible says open immigration.
00:40:51.000He said in Hebrew, we have three words.
00:40:53.000That word, which doesn't translate in English well, is the word proselyte.
00:40:57.000It says if anyone comes to your nation and wants to be a proselyte, wants to become one of you, wants to adopt your laws and take your culture and take, he says, then you treat them just like they're a citizen.
00:41:05.000Well, that's what we did with immigration.
00:41:07.000If you come in and become an immigrant, we treat you like a citizen.
00:41:10.000But you gotta come here to be an immigrant, not to be illegal.
00:41:13.000If you're a communist, it's back to Ellis Island or Fire Island, right next to Judy Garland's slippers.
00:41:18.000Yeah, right there with Darth Vader and everything else, too.
00:41:21.000So that's, yeah, it's very interesting that that word, so three words in Hebrew.
00:41:24.000There are three words in Hebrew, and one of them is a natural born citizen, one is an immigrant citizen, and one is what we would call a green card holder.
00:41:32.000They're there for a job, but they still have to live by the laws of the land, but they're not there to become a citizen.
00:41:37.000So, all that to say, we're in a big immigration time in the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s.
00:41:44.000And Francis Bellamy said, hey, what better thing to do than to sit forth a belief of what we as Americans have.
00:41:50.000This is something every immigrant can learn.
00:41:57.000Now, the way we got under God in it, really interesting.
00:42:01.000When Eisenhower became president after having done all he did in World War One, then World War Two, D-Day, everything, he becomes first NATO commander after the war, he becomes president of Columbia University, now he's president of the United States.
00:42:17.000He said the night before that he was thinking about how secular America has become, that it's becoming way too secular, and he was really concerned about that.
00:42:26.000He said, I don't know what to do because I'm not a preacher, so I can't preach a sermon.
00:42:29.000But as he was going to inauguration, he thought, I know what I can do.
00:43:06.000He worked to establish that with Congress, also worked with Congress to get a prayer room
00:43:10.000put in the capital of the United States.
00:43:13.000He also is the guy who said, we need, and God, we trust on our money, all of our money.
00:43:19.000And he said, while we're at it, let's make that the national motto.
00:43:22.000Under God came about a really different way.
00:43:24.000He was attending church at New York Street Presbyterian Church.
00:43:27.000The pastor was a Scottish immigrant, had just got to America from Scotland, George Dockery.
00:43:33.000And we actually have a sermon, you can see it on the website, the sermon he preached in 1954.
00:43:39.000He said, I'm new to your country, he said, but when my kids came home from school this week, he said, I've been here a few months, my kids came home from school and I said, what'd you guys do at school today?
00:43:48.000And they said, well, we do the same thing we always do.
00:43:50.000He said, well, I don't know what American schools do, what'd you do?
00:43:52.000He said, well, we had a prayer and we had a scripture and we said the Pledge of Allegiance and we, you said the what?
00:44:05.000And so they recited, pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
00:44:13.000He says, I've been thinking about that pledge all week.
00:44:16.000And now this is at the time when the Cold War is really going hard We're in the Korean War.
00:44:24.000He said, I've been thinking, he said, that pledge could be said by the Soviets because they claim to be a republic with liberty and justice for all.
00:44:32.000He said, that claim could be made by the Chinese.
00:44:34.000He said, that claim could be made by any nation in the world.
00:44:37.000He said, but America is not any nation.
00:44:39.000He said, what makes America different from all other nations is you guys have God.
00:44:43.000You guys really ought to put under God in your pledge of allegiance.
00:44:47.000Well, sitting on the front row, you've got Eisenhower and senators and representatives in church, and guess what happened on Monday morning?
00:44:52.000They introduced the bill and said, that's great!
00:44:54.000Let's put God in the pledge, because that's our core value.
00:44:57.000It's what makes us different from other nations.
00:44:58.000That's how we got under God in the pledge.
00:45:00.000Now, we can actually go back to the Star-Spangled Banner written in 1814, because The fourth stanza says, and in God is our trust.
00:45:11.000That was a state motto for states like Rhode Island since way back in the 1600s.
00:45:14.000That motto, under God and in God we trust, appeared on a whole bunch of stuff before it went in the pledge.
00:45:21.000So it's not a brand new innovation, but the way it came about is kind of a fun story.
00:45:25.000It is, yeah, and it's interesting that we don't have that in the American National Anthem, but they do say, God keep our land in Canada, you know, between Blackfish.
00:45:43.000And I think that's a contrast that people maybe miss.
00:45:45.000Why do we stand at the Pledge of Allegiance?
00:45:47.000Let me ask you this first, kind of going back, so I know we're doing a little bit of looper here.
00:45:52.000Were the Founding Fathers, did they ever, or is there a historical precedent where they would kneel for other men, particularly other men ruling over them?
00:46:01.000They would kneel for God, and they would kneel in church.
00:46:05.000Other than that, you're not going to find them kneeling.
00:46:07.000You'll find Washington kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge, and as an Anglican, he usually stood when he prayed.
00:46:45.000But anyone who is at a football game or anyone or any of these protests who says we're kneeling in protest of the flag, I don't think they understand the context in that that was a conscious decision, the Founding Fathers, to not kneel before any man, but only to God.
00:46:59.000And when you are standing at the Pledge of Allegiance, that's saying that as Americans, we are not subservient to any other man.
00:47:21.000You know, it's designed to show some disrespect, and this is a little sidebar off to the side.
00:47:28.000So many of the guys who actually suffered racial injustice at a level that we'll never know, actually suffered the oppression, actually suffered slavery, actually were persecuted and beat because they were just black.
00:47:40.000Guys like that, that fought in the Civil War, Folks don't understand that seven black patriots got the Medal of Honor for not allowing the American flag to be disrespected.
00:47:52.000They were so loyal to the flag because it was the other flag that they didn't like.
00:47:58.000That's the one that brought all the liberty.
00:48:00.000It's the other flag that they had trouble with.
00:48:02.000And so the quotes by black soldiers in the Civil War and their absolute admiration for the flag, that that's what gave them hope and optimism.
00:48:11.000It's the other flag that was the oppression of slavery, you know, Confederate flag or whatever you want to say.
00:48:16.000So these guys, to have Medal of Honor winners, if you watch the movie Glory, but if you read the real story, he got shot four times because he would not let the flag touch the ground, be disrespected.