Louder with Crowder - David Barton Destroys the 'America Is a Secular Nation' Myth | Louder with Crowder

00:00:00.000 🎵 You're a strange animal, that's what I know 🎵 🎵 I know, I know 🎵

00:00:21.000 🎵 You're a strange animal, I've got to follow 🎵 🎵 I'm a speedy goose 🎵

00:00:30.000 Uh, always glad to have this gentleman on the program.

00:00:35.000 We did them as a special, I think, last year, two years ago.

00:00:37.000 Yeah, last year.

00:00:38.000 And I was in my softies, my ranger panties, Uncle Sam.

00:00:42.000 You know, people always ask celebrities, or sometimes me, they ask Do you have regrets?

00:00:48.000 And people are like, no regrets.

00:00:50.000 That's a regret.

00:00:50.000 Yeah.

00:00:51.000 I have plenty of regrets.

00:00:53.000 I don't understand.

00:00:54.000 Like, I have no regrets.

00:00:55.000 You've lived a dummy's life, if you have no regrets. 0.89

00:00:57.000 Yeah, it's too safe. 1.00

00:00:58.000 And you're dumb now, if you have no regrets. 0.99

00:01:01.000 So that being said, I always love learning from you. 0.99

00:01:04.000 You'll probably not hear me talking a whole lot, aside from asking questions, because he is like the computer war expensive artifacts for shoes.

00:01:12.000 He founded WallBuilders.com.

00:01:15.000 Well, he founded WallBuilders, but WallBuilders.com is where you can go and learn about it.

00:01:17.000 He has all kinds of... I don't know what the value is of the historical artifacts that he has there, but you probably know who it is.

00:01:24.000 Mr. David Barton, how are you, sir?

00:01:26.000 Doing well, Steve.

00:01:27.000 Good to be with you, man.

00:01:28.000 I'm glad to be with you.

00:01:29.000 Do you have a number on... or am I letting the cat out of the bag?

00:01:32.000 I don't want to turn you into a target.

00:01:34.000 The value of... I would imagine that your little bunker is like... it's about on par with the Hope Diamond.

00:01:41.000 Yeah, it is.

00:01:42.000 The problem is the value is changing all the time.

00:01:44.000 We're adding new stuff.

00:01:46.000 Just added a bunch of space collection stuff from Moonwalkers and various things.

00:01:50.000 So we've got some of everything.

00:01:52.000 Actually, there's three of us collaborating on the collection.

00:01:57.000 And we just picked up Darth Vader's, the original 77 Darth Vader.

00:02:03.000 We picked up R2-D2.

00:02:05.000 We got the ruby red slippers from Dorothy in Wizard of Oz.

00:02:08.000 So there's all sorts of little things that keep getting added and growing and growing.

00:02:11.000 You got the slippers.

00:02:12.000 Gay people are going to be furious because they love Judy Garland and probably not your demographic. 0.99

00:02:19.000 But wow, that is incredible that you have all of those things.

00:02:22.000 And is it like a comic book where it's worth $10,000 and then if I breathe on it, it's worth $1.25?

00:02:29.000 Because when I was there, you were handing them to me.

00:02:30.000 Remember how nervous I was?

00:02:31.000 I was like, don't give it to me because I'm clumsy.

00:02:35.000 Yeah, some of the stuff you really got to be really delicate with, but it's interesting.

00:02:38.000 The 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.

00:02:48.000 They had a lot of ash in the paper in that time, and they didn't know what it did.

00:02:52.000 But back in the original founding era, they made all the papers, a lot of linen in it.

00:02:55.000 It was just a totally different world.

00:02:57.000 Did you say they had a lot of ash in the paper with Woodrow Wilson?

00:03:01.000 Acid.

00:03:02.000 Oh, acid.

00:03:03.000 Acid, yeah.

00:03:04.000 Wow.

00:03:05.000 Why is that?

00:03:05.000 Not the 60s and 70s acid.

00:03:08.000 It's different from the 60s and 70s.

00:03:10.000 I'm going to learn.

00:03:11.000 Yeah, it goes through your fingertips.

00:03:15.000 Why is that?

00:03:16.000 Why is it that something older, obviously we know the composition has more acid, but why did paper start including more acid?

00:03:23.000 Well, they found faster ways to make paper and cheaper ways to make paper.

00:03:27.000 But the way they did it, it involved components that had an acid base.

00:03:32.000 And even today, you can buy novel books that have an acid-based paper.

00:03:36.000 It's going to last about 20 years.

00:03:37.000 It's going to fall apart on your shelf.

00:03:39.000 Or you can get more like the academic books are going to last like 100 years because it's a different kind of paper.

00:03:44.000 A lot more expensive.

00:03:45.000 That's why you pay $100 for a school book and you pay $4 for a novel.

00:03:49.000 There's a paper in it.

00:03:50.000 So, 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.

00:03:59.000 It's the gift that keeps on giving.

00:04:04.000 Let me ask you this.

00:04:05.000 I 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.

00:04:14.000 Obviously, 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.

00:04:27.000 Something 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.

00:04:33.000 The idea, of course, there's the First Amendment and people misconstrue that with the word separation of church and state.

00:04:39.000 We hear a lot that the Founding Fathers specifically were deists, they weren't Christians, and it was really founded more on Enlightenment principles.

00:04:48.000 Can you, just as a jumping off point, let me know what's correct, what's incorrect there?

00:04:52.000 What was the intent for the United States from the people who created it?

00:04:57.000 Well, let's deal first with where they get their ideas, where the Enlightenment ideas.

00:05:01.000 And 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.

00:05:08.000 And then you get to a period of time where the world goes into the Dark Ages, about 1300 years of illiteracy.

00:05:13.000 Nobody's reading, nobody can read, only the elites read.

00:05:17.000 Books are not common for anyone.

00:05:19.000 Then you get to the point of what we would call Reformation.

00:05:22.000 And 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.

00:05:29.000 So that's why that those that first came to America, the pilgrims, the Puritans, others, they were big Bible guys.

00:05:34.000 And America had the highest literacy rate of anywhere in the world at that point, including for girls.

00:05:40.000 We educated both boys and girls, and that wasn't being done in Europe at the time.

00:05:44.000 So, literacy starts coming back in, really, in the 1300s, 1400s, 1500s.

00:05:47.000 Out 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.

00:06:00.000 And then out of that, you get philosophers coming out of Reformation and Renaissance, and that's where we call it the Enlightenment.

00:06:00.000 Right.

00:06:07.000 The problem academics have today is they separate all the Enlightenment as really an anti-Christian kind of movement of intellectuals, which is silly.

00:06:16.000 There are two strains in the Enlightenment camp.

00:06:19.000 You have the secular Enlightenment and you have the Christian Enlightenment.

00:06:22.000 And 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.

00:06:27.000 In the Christian Enlightenment, you're going to have Blackstone and Montesquieu and Locke and Grotius and Pufendorf, all these philosophers.

00:06:33.000 So, when you get into that point today, they just kind of say, if you're Enlightenment, that's secular.

00:06:38.000 That's absolute nonsense.

00:06:39.000 Matter of fact, I've got all these old things.

00:06:42.000 I want to pull out some things just for grins.

00:06:44.000 Well, that's a surprise.

00:06:45.000 You have a lot of old things.

00:06:46.000 Yeah, surprise.

00:06:47.000 Can you imagine?

00:06:48.000 These happen to be... My question is, do you have any young things out there?

00:06:50.000 Like, do you have, like, a Nintendo Switch?

00:06:52.000 Is that... Could... Would it be too much to ask?

00:06:54.000 Ooh! 0.96

00:06:55.000 I got that for my grandkids.

00:06:56.000 I got my grandkids' stuff in here.

00:06:57.000 So, I've got that.

00:06:59.000 All right, show us what you got.

00:07:01.000 So these guys are three of the Enlightenment philosophers that were the most heavily relied on by the Founding Fathers.

00:07:07.000 This book called The Origins of American Constitutionalism, political science professors said, where did the Founders get their ideas?

00:07:13.000 They looked at 15,000 writings from the Founding Era.

00:07:16.000 They found all the quotes, they tracked it back.

00:07:18.000 The number one most cited source in the Founding Fathers was this, The Spirit of Laws by Montesquieu.

00:07:24.000 So this guy is a Christian French philosopher.

00:07:27.000 The second most cited source was Blackstone's Commentaries, an English philosopher, four volume set.

00:07:33.000 This is one volume of it.

00:07:35.000 And the third most cited source was John Locke, particularly Spirit of Laws.

00:07:38.000 This goes back to 1690.

00:07:39.000 Interesting thing about John Locke is today he is considered to be one of the deist philosophers.

00:07:46.000 I have here a book from John Locke.

00:07:48.000 And can I clarify, too, for the audience really quickly?

00:07:51.000 A 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.

00:08:03.000 And I think that also deist has changed, and our view of what a Christian might be today has changed.

00:08:07.000 So I just want to clarify for people who may not know, because I know you do.

00:08:10.000 That's a great point.

00:08:11.000 Deus at the time of the founding fathers, by definition, meant someone who believed in the scriptures, believed in God.

00:08:16.000 They had questions about the divinity of Jesus.

00:08:19.000 That's all it was.

00:08:20.000 That was it.

00:08:20.000 A 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.

00:08:31.000 If you pray, he's not going to answer.

00:08:32.000 He doesn't get involved.

00:08:33.000 Today, if you look up the word deist in Thesaurus or any other source, you'll find that synonyms are atheist and agnostic.

00:08:41.000 Right.

00:08:41.000 So it really has come to be a non-God guy, is really what it was.

00:08:45.000 Back at the beginning, a deist just simply meant you believed in God, Jesus, the Bible.

00:08:45.000 Right.

00:08:49.000 You just weren't sure Jesus was divine.

00:08:51.000 Right.

00:08:51.000 So it was a doctrinal issue rather than a God issue.

00:08:54.000 So great point.

00:08:54.000 Right.

00:08:56.000 Today's writers say that John Locke was a deist, that he was a secular enlightenment guy.

00:09:02.000 He didn't have a great belief in God.

00:09:03.000 So what I have here is a book that he did.

00:09:05.000 It's called The Commonplace Book of the Bible.

00:09:08.000 A little hard to see.

00:09:09.000 This is all the scriptures out of the Bible that deal with the Trinity or the Divinity.

00:09:14.000 I mean, this is all the major doctrines of Christianity, and it's John Locke.

00:09:18.000 So, if they say he's a secular Enlightenment guy, they're crazy, because he's got writings like this.

00:09:24.000 As 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.

00:09:32.000 One of the signers of the Declaration, this guy, if I can point to him right here, this guy here is Richard Henry Lee.

00:09:38.000 He's the guy that actually made the motion for America to become an independent nation.

00:09:43.000 That's what led to the Fourth of July was his motion.

00:09:45.000 He said they copied the Declaration out of this book.

00:09:48.000 That was his term.

00:09:49.000 This book, John Locke, references the Bible more than 1,500 times.

00:09:54.000 So 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.

00:10:02.000 They're running on rhetoric.

00:10:03.000 If anyone today, if any senator, congressman, or president were to cite it, how many times did you say that he referenced it?

00:10:09.000 1,400.

00:10:10.000 If anyone were to do that today upon swearing in, they'd be considered a radical extremist and hauled out in cuffs.

00:10:17.000 They would be accused of establishing a theocracy somewhere.

00:10:20.000 They're trying to get an Ayatollah in or something.

00:10:24.000 Well, I don't know about the fatwas, but the principle remains. 0.98

00:10:27.000 No, 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.

00:10:34.000 By 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. 0.99

00:10:41.000 That 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.

00:10:55.000 And I think people need to understand that because it changes the context of the laws we have and where they come from.

00:11:01.000 Well, 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.

00:11:12.000 That's Franklin and Jefferson.

00:11:13.000 Now, here's the deal.

00:11:14.000 If 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?

00:11:23.000 Call them by name.

00:11:24.000 Tell me who you got.

00:11:25.000 Everybody will get Ben Franklin.

00:11:26.000 Everybody will get Thomas Jefferson.

00:11:28.000 That's two out of the fifty-six.

00:11:29.000 Fifty-four more.

00:11:31.000 Franklin's easy because of the glasses and something to do with a kite.

00:11:35.000 Yeah, and that's a lot of fun, too.

00:11:37.000 That's a different story, different thing.

00:11:40.000 And we get into the scuba flippers that he invented that went with that, and all the other stuff.

00:11:46.000 But 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.

00:11:53.000 And so they say, oh, well, they were deists.

00:11:54.000 Well, they were, by definition of their day, although Jefferson would, if you called him a deist, he would argue with you.

00:12:01.000 He called himself a Christian several occasions.

00:12:04.000 Franklin one time said he was a deist, and that's in his autobiography. 0.99

00:12:08.000 And 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. 0.66

00:12:17.000 So within two pages, he renounces deism, but professors still quote that one quote from Franklin, not paying attention to the rest.

00:12:23.000 That's important for people to note, and I encourage them to read the text.

00:12:26.000 So let's do this.

00:12:27.000 We'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.

00:12:32.000 You see a lot of atheists bring up Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

00:12:36.000 Jefferson 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?

00:12:48.000 What 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?

00:12:55.000 So what did Jefferson believe regarding faith, regarding America, what aspects?

00:13:01.000 What 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?

00:13:07.000 It's not some kind of an oligarchy.

00:13:08.000 But 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.

00:13:16.000 Give us kind of a snapshot as to who Jefferson was and what his vision for America was.

00:13:23.000 Jefferson, interestingly enough, when you look at him from a faith perspective, he was raised as a very orthodox Anglican.

00:13:30.000 An Anglican would be high church.

00:13:31.000 That's not someone we would call an evangelical like a Franklin Graham or someone else.

00:13:36.000 So he's high church, which means he's much more reserved with his expression of faith, but not necessarily his belief.

00:13:42.000 For example, he is actually one of the founders of an evangelical church in Charlottesville, Virginia.

00:13:49.000 A pastor that was in the Great Awakening, a guy named Charles Clay was his pastor, personal pastor.

00:13:55.000 And when Charles Clay got in trouble with the British Anglican Church for being too evangelical, Jefferson said, I'm raising money.

00:14:01.000 I'm going to fund you.

00:14:02.000 We're going to start you an evangelical church over here.

00:14:04.000 This is where I go.

00:14:05.000 And so, when you look at Jefferson's relationship with pastors, so many of the evangelical pastors, he was really close to.

00:14:13.000 People like John Leland.

00:14:15.000 John Leland helped do the First Amendment, and he worked with Jefferson on it, worked with Madison on it.

00:14:21.000 He worked with Jefferson to disestablish the Anglican religion.

00:14:24.000 So 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. 0.53

00:14:48.000 Right.

00:14:48.000 So 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.

00:15:00.000 Then when he became governor, He specifically did that.

00:15:03.000 He removed the professor of religion from William & Mary.

00:15:06.000 And people say, ah, that proves he's anti-religion.

00:15:09.000 No.

00:15:09.000 The professor of religion in William & Mary was the professor of Anglican theology at William & Mary.

00:15:14.000 And he turned William & Mary into a Christian college, not an Anglican college.

00:15:19.000 Right.

00:15:19.000 And so that's what Jefferson's after, is free marketplace of ideas, wide open for Christian faith.

00:15:25.000 So 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.

00:15:33.000 So 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.

00:15:50.000 It's called the Residency Act. 0.69

00:15:52.000 So George Washington said, I know where that land is.

00:15:54.000 I surveyed it, Virginia and Maryland will give it to you.

00:15:57.000 Jefferson goes there and he lays out the federal city.

00:16:00.000 He gets a French architect, Pierre L'Enfant.

00:16:03.000 He gets a black And so Jeff's in charge of building the capital city. 0.95

00:16:10.000 So as they get it out, it starts construction in 1793.

00:16:14.000 It's finished in 1800.

00:16:16.000 So the first year is in New York City as the federal capital, then 10 years in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia is the federal capital.

00:16:24.000 1800, November of 1800, they move into the capital, Washington, DC.

00:16:28.000 When 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.

00:16:34.000 Unlike Mike Pence today, the Vice President actually sat in the Senate every day and ran the Senate, instead of Mitch McConnell or whoever.

00:16:42.000 So, Jefferson's in the Senate, and they said, now that we've got this brand new building, here's an idea.

00:16:48.000 The largest room in the Capitol is the hall of the House of Representatives.

00:16:52.000 That'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. 0.73

00:16:59.000 Capitol every Sunday.

00:17:01.000 Jefferson and Speaker Theodore Sedgwick do that.

00:17:04.000 So for the next three months, Jefferson attends church every Sunday in the U.S.

00:17:09.000 Capitol.

00:17:10.000 Then three months later, he's elected President of the United States.

00:17:13.000 Jefferson came to church every Sunday in the U.S.

00:17:16.000 Capitol.

00:17:17.000 Even his political opponents who hated him said, we got to give to Jefferson.

00:17:20.000 He never misses Church of the Capitol.

00:17:22.000 And 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?

00:17:31.000 He said, I'm the chief magistrate of a Christian nation.

00:17:34.000 And that's the example you're supposed to sit as the chief magistrate.

00:17:37.000 So 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.

00:17:46.000 So, if you want to go to church in early Washington, D.C., you can choose four government buildings, and that's Thomas Jefferson?

00:17:51.000 Yes, that's Thomas Jefferson.

00:17:51.000 Well, was that like Mar-a-Lago and Trump's golf courses?

00:17:54.000 He had a financial interest in all of those churches.

00:17:56.000 Yeah, right.

00:17:57.000 People in the offering plate were none the wiser.

00:17:59.000 So, 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?

00:18:06.000 And, obviously, Jefferson is sort of seen as this godfather of the separation of church and state.

00:18:11.000 Obviously, 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.

00:18:16.000 They don't learn this in school.

00:18:18.000 Well, the very cool thing about the First Amendment is it's such simple language.

00:18:24.000 And by the way, separation church and state to them, and they advocated for it, meant separation of the church from being a state church.

00:18:32.000 They wanted church leaders to make their own decisions.

00:18:35.000 If you're in Great Britain, I mean, William Penn William Pence spent months in prison for going to the wrong church.

00:18:41.000 The government required him to go to an Anglican church.

00:18:44.000 He went to a Quaker church, spent months in prison.

00:18:46.000 I spent time in the principal's office in grade school, because I was raised in Quebec, and we would go to Mass.

00:18:53.000 So I went to public school, and I went to Catholic school.

00:18:55.000 Wrap your mind around that.

00:18:56.000 A lot of people don't understand it.

00:18:57.000 And 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.

00:19:04.000 When they found out, I was immediately sent to the principal's office, and my parents were called.

00:19:07.000 It 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.

00:19:12.000 He goes, do you understand what communion is?

00:19:13.000 I 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.

00:19:17.000 He goes, okay, you understand that?

00:19:17.000 You're praying about that?

00:19:18.000 And I said, yeah.

00:19:19.000 He goes, okay, my son's free to go.

00:19:22.000 And they did not agree.

00:19:23.000 You don't have to go across the pond.

00:19:25.000 A lot of people don't realize this was commonplace.

00:19:29.000 And 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.

00:19:41.000 Of course you can do that in the Navy Yard.

00:19:43.000 So, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

00:19:44.000 No, but that's good.

00:19:46.000 That's exactly it, and the example you gave regarding yourself is what Jefferson didn't want.

00:19:51.000 He 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.

00:19:58.000 By 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.

00:20:06.000 No, no, no.

00:20:07.000 All the history of the world, it's the government who takes over the church and makes it an arm of the state. 0.76

00:20:12.000 Right.

00:20:12.000 And so it starts back 391 A.D.

00:20:14.000 Emperor Theodosius said, I'm a Christian. 0.99

00:20:17.000 I now decree the whole world's going to be Christian or I'm going to kill you. 1.00

00:20:20.000 That's a state established church. 1.00

00:20:21.000 Right.

00:20:21.000 And so we have a number of documents here from Great Britain time, from the American Revolution.

00:20:27.000 Great Britain says, here's who can take communion.

00:20:29.000 And it's an act of Parliament.

00:20:31.000 Great Britain says, here who is licensed to preach is an act of Parliament.

00:20:34.000 Parliament's got no voice over that.

00:20:36.000 So Jefferson does not want to secularize the society at all.

00:20:40.000 What he wants to do is make sure the government can't stop it.

00:20:42.000 So 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.

00:20:57.000 Key word is Congress can't make a law establishing religion.

00:21:02.000 Congress 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.

00:21:09.000 Or in Pelosi's case, Satanists.

00:21:10.000 Yeah, in Pelosi's case, Beelzebub worshipers, but yes, go ahead. 0.99

00:21:15.000 Oh, don't go there.

00:21:16.000 That's close.

00:21:16.000 Potentially.

00:21:18.000 Allegedly.

00:21:19.000 Allegedly.

00:21:20.000 No, but that is important to note.

00:21:21.000 And 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.

00:21:34.000 Well, this is exactly why.

00:21:36.000 Because like you said, governments would would go into churches, just like people are concerned

00:21:39.000 about the IRS or the FBI or the DOJ becoming political weapons at this point.

00:21:44.000 You could do a lot of damage to, by the way, any religious institution if you're picking

00:21:49.000 and choosing who gets tax breaks and who don't.

00:21:51.000 So it's an even playing field.

00:21:52.000 But yeah, so Duke, because that is very clear in the First Amendment, but we hear this word

00:21:57.000 separation of church and state a whole lot, and it's attributed to Jefferson.

00:22:00.000 Tell people a little bit about where that comes from the context of his letter to the

00:22:04.000 Danbury Baptists.

00:22:05.000 Jefferson was such an advocate for all the other nominations.

00:22:09.000 As an Anglican guy, he advocated for every other denomination that's being persecuted.

00:22:13.000 And in America at the time, or the British, there were nine of the 13 colonies that had a state-established religion.

00:22:20.000 That was different from state to state.

00:22:21.000 It might be Congregationalism.

00:22:23.000 It might be Baptist in Rhode Island.

00:22:25.000 It might be Anglican in South Carolina.

00:22:27.000 So what he's wanting is freedom, religious freedom.

00:22:31.000 So 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.

00:22:44.000 Because 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.

00:22:52.000 And so when Jefferson got in, they say, hallelujah, you're our guy.

00:22:56.000 You've been fighting for us for years.

00:22:58.000 You've got more than 15 years of fighting for us.

00:23:01.000 We 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.

00:23:06.000 So one of those groups, Danbury Baptist Association, Danbury, Danbury, Connecticut, wrote him a letter.

00:23:12.000 It's October the 7th, 1801.

00:23:15.000 And 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.

00:23:25.000 We think that even the word Congress appearing there might someday cause the government to think it has the right to regulate our religion.

00:23:32.000 And so they're concerned that the words appearing there might cause Congress to think they could.

00:23:37.000 Jefferson writes back on January the 1st of 1802.

00:23:40.000 It's Friday, and it's the reason I say Friday.

00:23:44.000 Friday, January 1st, 182.

00:23:46.000 He writes back and it's a 233 word letter.

00:23:49.000 It's three paragraphs long.

00:23:51.000 Anybody can read it in under five minutes.

00:23:53.000 If you're a slow reader, it'll take you under five minutes.

00:23:56.000 And 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.

00:24:09.000 And 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.

00:24:16.000 And so he gave this guarantee of religious freedom.

00:24:19.000 Now, what's fun is that's Friday, January the 1st, 1802.

00:24:25.000 Sunday, 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.

00:24:40.000 So if you think separation of church and state is a bad deal, what's he doing on Sunday?

00:24:43.000 He just violated everything you wrote, no?

00:24:46.000 And this is what's really significant to me, Steve.

00:24:49.000 In 1947, the U.S.

00:24:50.000 Supreme Court quoted Jefferson's letter in a case called Everson v. Board of Education.

00:24:56.000 Now, what they did then was out of 233 words in the letter, they only quoted eight words.

00:25:01.000 A wall of separation between church and state.

00:25:04.000 Every Supreme Court that used Jefferson's letter prior to 1947 quoted the whole letter.

00:25:09.000 They put it in there, and when you read it, you go, this is a no-brainer.

00:25:12.000 You've got complete exercise of religious faith.

00:25:14.000 We'll never stop anything.

00:25:16.000 Since 1947, we have not seen a single court reprint Jefferson's full letter.

00:25:22.000 All they say is a wall of separation.

00:25:24.000 There have been over 4,000 federal cases on religion since 1947.

00:25:28.000 None of them quote the full letter.

00:25:31.000 Oh my gosh, there's no space requirement in the decision.

00:25:33.000 You can let it go on 500 pages.

00:25:35.000 You can make that a footnote.

00:25:37.000 Nobody does.

00:25:39.000 I'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.

00:25:47.000 No, I think that's very interesting, and I hope that people do go and read the letter.

00:25:50.000 I know I've talked about it before, but I'm sure you probably have the actual authentic copy lying around there somewhere.

00:25:56.000 Let me ask you, so let's go to Benjamin Franklin then, since I think we've addressed Jefferson.

00:26:00.000 Benjamin Franklin is another one that people say, well, he was just, he was a deist.

00:26:05.000 Give us a snapshot of Benjamin Franklin and what his vision for America was and who he was as a person.

00:26:11.000 Yeah, Benjamin Franklin, in his own autobiography, I mentioned earlier, he said he was a deist.

00:26:15.000 And he said within two pages, but I found out how silly that belief was and I quickly rejected it.

00:26:21.000 In his own autobiography, he has a number of personal psalms that he writes to God, how God answered his prayers on numerous occasions.

00:26:29.000 He talks about how important God is throughout his life.

00:26:32.000 As a matter of fact, he's the guy that brought Thomas Paine to America.

00:26:37.000 Now, Thomas Paine genuinely is a deist.

00:26:40.000 I mean, he believes in a God.

00:26:42.000 We actually own a six-page letter from Thomas Paine to Sam Adams where Thomas Paine's talking about his religious faith.

00:26:49.000 And what happened was, Thomas Paine loved France, loved the French Revolution, wanted to help them get rid of Louis XIV and all the kings.

00:26:57.000 So, after the American Revolution, he goes to France to help them.

00:27:00.000 But in the American Revolution, in 1772, Ben Franklin brought him from England to America because he was being persecuted in England.

00:27:09.000 When he got into America, he got him set up in the printing business with a guy named Robert Aiken.

00:27:13.000 And in 1776, they're sitting around, and Thomas Paine says, I'm going to write this piece, and we now call it Common Sense.

00:27:21.000 But they were sitting around, he and Ben Franklin, Benjamin Rush.

00:27:24.000 Benjamin Rush is this guy right here.

00:27:27.000 He 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.

00:27:35.000 So he wrote this piece, Common Sense.

00:27:37.000 Washington talked about how the death set the nation on edge.

00:27:40.000 It woke them up.

00:27:41.000 It's really kind of a spark plug that set everything off.

00:27:44.000 Washington praised it.

00:27:46.000 So all the way through the Revolution, Thomas Paine is this great writer.

00:27:49.000 He does all this great writing work.

00:27:51.000 Then he gets involved with the French Revolution in 1789.

00:27:54.000 1789 is over in France.

00:27:55.000 France is absolutely hardcore secular.

00:27:58.000 They're atheist secular.

00:28:00.000 In France, after the Revolution, they actually changed the week to a 10-day week.

00:28:04.000 They didn't want a 7-day week because that might make you think there's a Sabbath and a God.

00:28:08.000 So they changed the work week to 10 days.

00:28:11.000 I mean, they tore up all the churches.

00:28:13.000 So while he's over there, he said, I saw This is Payne's work.

00:28:18.000 I saw France running headlong into atheism, and they didn't understand how bad that would be for a nation.

00:28:25.000 So that's why he says he wrote The Age of Reason.

00:28:27.000 Now, when he wrote The Age of Reason, he wrote it in 1790, came out in 1794.

00:28:32.000 It's a very direct attack against Christianity.

00:28:34.000 It's a direct attack against Judaism. 0.80

00:28:37.000 But it is a defense of God.

00:28:39.000 And so he said, I was writing this kind of like a step for the French to say, don't get away from God.

00:28:45.000 And when it came out, however, because it attacked Christianity and Judaism, the founding fathers turned on him and said, this is terrible.

00:28:52.000 We established this nation on these principles, and now you're attacking them.

00:28:56.000 What'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.

00:29:04.000 Sam Adams did an op-ed piece against him in Boston newspapers.

00:29:09.000 Patrick Henry wrote an entire book trashing Thomas Paine when that piece came out.

00:29:14.000 I mean, Founding Fathers turned against him.

00:29:16.000 When Thomas Paine came back to America and died here, there was not a single cemetery that would let him be buried there.

00:29:21.000 They buried him in a church pasture because nobody wanted anything to do with Thomas Paine.

00:29:25.000 So, Paine is now exorcised.

00:29:28.000 What happened is in 1790, before Paine published the book, he sent it to Ben Franklin.

00:29:33.000 Said, Ben, you and I have been friends a long time.

00:29:36.000 Here's what I'm about to publish.

00:29:38.000 I really want to know what you think.

00:29:40.000 And Franklin wrote back and said, you need to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person.

00:29:46.000 He said, he that spits in the wind spits in his own face.

00:29:49.000 Right.

00:29:50.000 He said, this is like unchanging time.

00:29:51.000 I mean, Franklin tore him up.

00:29:54.000 for attacking Christianity and the Bible, and said, you do not understand how much we need Christianity and the Bible in the nation.

00:30:00.000 He said, think of all the young people whose bad behavior is restrained by the teachings of the Bible.

00:30:06.000 Without this, you have the Law of the Tiger and the Shark.

00:30:09.000 So it's the least religious Founding Father, Ben Franklin, who tears Thomas Paine up for going secular.

00:30:15.000 Which tells you something about Franklin.

00:30:17.000 Now, what I've got also right here, and I won't worry about pulling it up, I can.

00:30:21.000 This is the original Constitution for Pennsylvania, 1776, written by Ben Franklin.

00:30:28.000 In 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.

00:30:40.000 And that's Franklin.

00:30:41.000 Don'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.

00:30:49.000 That's not a deist.

00:30:51.000 And 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.

00:30:51.000 No way.

00:31:03.000 This is Governor Ben Franklin doing this.

00:31:04.000 Was it like Hershey's Kisses or something?

00:31:07.000 Was it some kind of potluck?

00:31:10.000 All sorts of incentives.

00:31:11.000 You know, he was a coercive guy.

00:31:13.000 He wanted to force you into God.

00:31:13.000 He was a free thinker.

00:31:15.000 No, I mean, he was the guy that was he wanted all these incentives for sure.

00:31:19.000 Right.

00:31:19.000 And part of the incentive was just intellectually.

00:31:22.000 Don't you realize how good religion is for a nation?

00:31:25.000 You know, one of the things that Daniel Webster said later, Daniel Webster talked to Thomas Jefferson.

00:31:30.000 Daniel Webster was the second generation of American statesman.

00:31:34.000 And when he was a young guy, he sat down with an older Thomas Jefferson.

00:31:38.000 And 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.

00:31:51.000 He said, you need to get in the Bible to make you a better citizen.

00:31:53.000 So what happened was Daniel Webster turned around and said, whatever makes men good Christians makes them good citizens.

00:32:01.000 And sure enough, it's not the good Christians who are killing people or who are breaking up and looting stuff. 0.93

00:32:06.000 Good Christians make good citizens.

00:32:08.000 And 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.

00:32:15.000 And so, I mean, that's Franklin.

00:32:17.000 So 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?

00:32:25.000 Well, that's a good point.

00:32:27.000 I did want to ask you about specifically, you know, John Adams, most people know him, Paul Giamatti.

00:32:32.000 In 1796, he did say that the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.

00:32:39.000 And 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.

00:33:02.000 Yeah, what's wrong with that is they're wrong on that quote in so many ways.

00:33:06.000 That quote is Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli.

00:33:10.000 The Treaty of Tripoli happened in the 32 years that we were having a war on Muslim terrorism, quite frankly. 0.98

00:33:16.000 We went from 1784 to 1816 fighting Muslim terrorists.

00:33:21.000 By the time that George Washington got in office, 10% of the federal budget was being spent fighting Muslim terrorists. 0.97

00:33:28.000 For 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.

00:33:34.000 That's right.

00:33:34.000 That was very interesting for me.

00:33:36.000 I thought they were wrist amulets, because people had very small necks back then.

00:33:39.000 They were.

00:33:40.000 Well, your average soldier in the American Revolution is between 5'1 and 5'4, and they only ate two meals a day.

00:33:45.000 Gosh, that's Danny DeVito.

00:33:46.000 So they were really small. 0.77

00:33:48.000 So 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. 0.99

00:34:06.000 And so that's when they attacked.

00:34:08.000 Prior to that time, all we could do was negotiate with them to not attack us.

00:34:13.000 And 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.

00:34:25.000 And so while they were there, after two years, Jefferson records it.

00:34:30.000 This is in the State Department records.

00:34:32.000 Jefferson and John Adams were still with the Muslim Ambassadors, the five of them, and Franklin had been sent somewhere else.

00:34:38.000 So Adams and Jefferson asked the Muslim Ambassadors, said, look, you trust us, we trust you.

00:34:43.000 We don't understand why you keep attacking Americans.

00:34:46.000 We've done nothing to you.

00:34:47.000 We have Muslims in America.

00:34:48.000 Why are you attacking us?

00:34:50.000 And Jefferson recorded it, sent it to the State Department, and he said, the ambassador told us, it's required by the Koran.

00:34:56.000 We have to.

00:34:57.000 You're infidels, we have to. 1.00

00:34:59.000 And so that was like the news to them.

00:35:00.000 That's when Jefferson went out and bought a Koran for the first time and read it. 0.98

00:35:04.000 Said, I can't believe you actually go to heaven by killing people. 0.94

00:35:07.000 Right.

00:35:07.000 That was before Hitchcock, so it was very scary.

00:35:09.000 Yeah.

00:35:10.000 It was.

00:35:12.000 So with all that's gone at that point in time, we're writing treaties back and forth with the Muslims. 0.99

00:35:19.000 How can we keep the Muslims from attacking us? 1.00

00:35:21.000 Because the Muslims in that period enslaved about 1.25 million people. 0.98

00:35:26.000 Capture, ship, men, slaves, including Americans. 0.79

00:35:28.000 And 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. 0.97

00:35:37.000 We fight you because you're a terrorist, but we won't fight you because you're a religion. 1.00

00:35:41.000 Well, the Muslims said, well, we fight you because you're Christians. 0.97

00:35:44.000 And 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.

00:35:56.000 In other words, in America, if you want to send a Muslim to your ambassador, they'll be safe in America.

00:36:01.000 But if we want to send a Christian to our embassy in Tripoli, then they need to be safe there.

00:36:07.000 And 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.

00:36:22.000 Period.

00:36:23.000 No, it's not.

00:36:24.000 It's 82 words in that clause.

00:36:26.000 People only quote 17 words.

00:36:29.000 17 words, they put a period there.

00:36:32.000 It says, we're not founded on the Christian religion as having an inherent hostility toward Muslims, and on it goes.

00:36:39.000 This is not the Crusades. 0.87

00:36:40.000 We don't attack you because you're Muslim. 1.00

00:36:41.000 We attack you because you're terrorist. 1.00

00:36:43.000 Right. 0.99

00:36:43.000 So, it does not say the United States is not founded on the Christian religion. 0.99

00:36:46.000 It says we're not founded on the Christian religion that you saw in the Crusades.

00:36:50.000 That's not us.

00:36:51.000 And that's why you read the 82 words.

00:36:52.000 Now, here's the other fun part.

00:36:54.000 The actual Treaty of Tripoli, which is at the National Archives, does not have an Article 11 in it.

00:37:01.000 It doesn't even exist in the actual treaty.

00:37:02.000 That clause does not even appear.

00:37:05.000 It appeared in the later writings, but it does not appear in the treaty itself.

00:37:09.000 Try that one.

00:37:10.000 So why do you think that is so often quoted and why didn't it make it into the treaty itself?

00:37:16.000 The treaty was written in Arabic and there is no article 11, there is no clause saying that.

00:37:20.000 It was translated from Arabic into Italian and from Italian into English.

00:37:27.000 And the guy who translated it into Italian was a lousy translator and added a bunch of stuff that wasn't in any of the treaties.

00:37:34.000 Then we got it translated from Italian into English.

00:37:38.000 The English version translated what's in the Italian But it wasn't in the original treaty.

00:37:42.000 So what you have is in the United States in 1797, that treaty is printed for the U.S.

00:37:49.000 Senate, who then ratifies the treaty.

00:37:51.000 So it has an Article 11 in the Treaty of the United States the way the Senate saw it, but it's not in the original treaty.

00:37:58.000 But the way the Senate saw it had all 82 words there, not just 17 words.

00:38:02.000 And that's the difference.

00:38:03.000 Why don't we go to war with the Italians over getting a proofreader? 1.00

00:38:08.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:38:09.000 Well, the problem was, it was an American diplomat that did the translation, a guy named Joel Barlow, who didn't even speak Italian.

00:38:17.000 He thought he could read it or whatever.

00:38:18.000 Should have never let the Italians in. 1.00

00:38:19.000 I don't care what Rocky Marciano did.

00:38:22.000 Let's fast forward a little bit, because we don't have a ton of time.

00:38:25.000 So we know that now about the Founding Fathers, and I encourage everyone, of course, to go to wallbuilders.com.

00:38:30.000 If you do have the time to look up all these artifacts, it really kind of puts things in context.

00:38:35.000 But let's fast forward to, you know, the Pledge of Allegiance, because a lot of people have a problem with that and any mention of God.

00:38:41.000 And they say, well, that's not something that is really original to the United States.

00:38:44.000 It was meant to indoctrinate kids.

00:38:47.000 And 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.

00:38:52.000 Because kneeling has been very popular lately, kneeling to people, which we do not have a storied history of doing here in the United States.

00:38:59.000 So first, tell me about how the Pledge of Allegiance came about.

00:39:02.000 Let's start there.

00:39:04.000 The Pledge of Allegiance came about back in 1892, Francis Bellamy.

00:39:08.000 He thought at a time when we had so many immigrants coming in, we thought, this is a really good way to show our values.

00:39:14.000 And it's interesting, by the way, to see there's a history of immigration that would kind of blow people away. 0.63

00:39:21.000 But until the U.S.

00:39:22.000 Supreme Court ruled in 1875 and 1876, immigration belonged totally to the states.

00:39:27.000 The 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.

00:39:36.000 So, 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.

00:39:51.000 We had a lot of immigrants who actually framed the Constitution.

00:39:53.000 They were a nation of immigrants.

00:39:56.000 Matter 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.

00:40:04.000 Now, 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.

00:40:13.000 It wasn't just come in and be here.

00:40:17.000 Here's an interesting term for it.

00:40:19.000 Hebrew, 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.

00:40:31.000 And 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.

00:40:38.000 And that's where people say, hey, the Bible says open immigration. 0.85

00:40:42.000 Talk to a rabbi.

00:40:43.000 I love him.

00:40:43.000 I've got a rabbi.

00:40:44.000 He's a great rabbi.

00:40:45.000 He says, no, no, no.

00:40:46.000 He says that word in Hebrew, he says in English, you only have one word.

00:40:50.000 It's alien or stranger.

00:40:51.000 He said in Hebrew, we have three words.

00:40:53.000 That word, which doesn't translate in English well, is the word proselyte.

00:40:57.000 It 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.

00:41:05.000 Well, that's what we did with immigration.

00:41:07.000 If you come in and become an immigrant, we treat you like a citizen. 1.00

00:41:10.000 But you gotta come here to be an immigrant, not to be illegal.

00:41:12.000 Right.

00:41:13.000 If you're a communist, it's back to Ellis Island or Fire Island, right next to Judy Garland's slippers.

00:41:18.000 Yeah, right there with Darth Vader and everything else, too.

00:41:21.000 So that's, yeah, it's very interesting that that word, so three words in Hebrew.

00:41:24.000 There 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.

00:41:32.000 They'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.

00:41:37.000 So, all that to say, we're in a big immigration time in the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s.

00:41:44.000 And Francis Bellamy said, hey, what better thing to do than to sit forth a belief of what we as Americans have.

00:41:50.000 This is something every immigrant can learn.

00:41:52.000 We as Americans believe it.

00:41:54.000 It helps them assimilate into the culture.

00:41:56.000 And so that's what it was.

00:41:57.000 Now, the way we got under God in it, really interesting.

00:42:01.000 When 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.

00:42:17.000 He 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.

00:42:26.000 He said, I don't know what to do because I'm not a preacher, so I can't preach a sermon.

00:42:29.000 But as he was going to inauguration, he thought, I know what I can do.

00:42:33.000 I can pray.

00:42:34.000 And so if you look on YouTube, Eisenhower actually praises on inaugural prayer.

00:42:38.000 It was not on the program.

00:42:39.000 He just prayed.

00:42:39.000 We actually own that original prayer here.

00:42:41.000 I mean, it's handwritten prayer.

00:42:42.000 We've got it's really cool.

00:42:44.000 So he gets in and he starts the national day, the congressional prayer breakfast,

00:42:49.000 which first Thursday of every February, about 8,000 people gather from 140 nations,

00:42:54.000 leaders across the world for the congressional prayer breakfast.

00:42:58.000 Now, really quickly, you say Eisenhower did, was that, you just mean by executive order

00:43:02.000 or kind of fill people in on that?

00:43:03.000 He worked with Congress on that.

00:43:06.000 He worked to establish that with Congress, also worked with Congress to get a prayer room

00:43:10.000 put in the capital of the United States.

00:43:13.000 He also is the guy who said, we need, and God, we trust on our money, all of our money.

00:43:19.000 And he said, while we're at it, let's make that the national motto.

00:43:22.000 Under God came about a really different way.

00:43:24.000 He was attending church at New York Street Presbyterian Church.

00:43:27.000 The pastor was a Scottish immigrant, had just got to America from Scotland, George Dockery.

00:43:33.000 And we actually have a sermon, you can see it on the website, the sermon he preached in 1954.

00:43:39.000 He 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?

00:43:48.000 And they said, well, we do the same thing we always do.

00:43:50.000 He said, well, I don't know what American schools do, what'd you do?

00:43:52.000 He said, well, we had a prayer and we had a scripture and we said the Pledge of Allegiance and we, you said the what?

00:43:58.000 We said the Pledge of Allegiance.

00:43:59.000 What's that?

00:44:00.000 Well, we pledge to the American flag.

00:44:02.000 The American flag has a pledge?

00:44:04.000 Yes.

00:44:04.000 What is it?

00:44:05.000 And 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.

00:44:13.000 He says, I've been thinking about that pledge all week.

00:44:16.000 And now this is at the time when the Cold War is really going hard We're in the Korean War.

00:44:22.000 We've got all the communism stuff.

00:44:24.000 He 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.

00:44:32.000 He said, that claim could be made by the Chinese.

00:44:34.000 He said, that claim could be made by any nation in the world.

00:44:37.000 He said, but America is not any nation.

00:44:39.000 He said, what makes America different from all other nations is you guys have God.

00:44:43.000 You guys really ought to put under God in your pledge of allegiance.

00:44:47.000 Well, sitting on the front row, you've got Eisenhower and senators and representatives in church, and guess what happened on Monday morning?

00:44:52.000 They introduced the bill and said, that's great!

00:44:54.000 Let's put God in the pledge, because that's our core value.

00:44:57.000 It's what makes us different from other nations. 0.96

00:44:58.000 That's how we got under God in the pledge.

00:45:00.000 Now, we can actually go back to the Star-Spangled Banner written in 1814, because The fourth stanza says, and in God is our trust.

00:45:08.000 So we had under God back then.

00:45:11.000 That was a state motto for states like Rhode Island since way back in the 1600s.

00:45:14.000 That motto, under God and in God we trust, appeared on a whole bunch of stuff before it went in the pledge.

00:45:21.000 So it's not a brand new innovation, but the way it came about is kind of a fun story.

00:45:25.000 It 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.

00:45:35.000 So let me ask you this.

00:45:38.000 Kneeling has been a big thing with the flag, right, with the national anthem.

00:45:42.000 We stand.

00:45:43.000 And I think that's a contrast that people maybe miss.

00:45:45.000 Why do we stand at the Pledge of Allegiance?

00:45:47.000 Let me ask you this first, kind of going back, so I know we're doing a little bit of looper here.

00:45:52.000 Were 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?

00:46:01.000 They would kneel for God, and they would kneel in church.

00:46:05.000 Other than that, you're not going to find them kneeling.

00:46:07.000 You'll find Washington kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge, and as an Anglican, he usually stood when he prayed.

00:46:12.000 That's like sackcloth and ashes.

00:46:14.000 When an Anglican kneels, that's big stuff for Washington to kneel. 0.65

00:46:18.000 But no, we didn't kneel to men, and that was a big deal.

00:46:21.000 They're not going to kneel to King George III.

00:46:23.000 uh... statues came down that indicated any kind of subservient we were not

00:46:29.000 serviced anybody we stood on our own two feet right so there was nothing really and that's interesting

00:46:34.000 symbolism to me because uh... and obviously people bring up slavery in the

00:46:38.000 injustices and we've done an entire segment on that i encourage people to go

00:46:41.000 uh... to go watch it even the idea of the old uh... party switch i

00:46:43.000 I think we've done a segment on that.

00:46:45.000 But 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.

00:46:59.000 And when you are standing at the Pledge of Allegiance, that's saying that as Americans, we are not subservient to any other man.

00:47:05.000 The President Or King George.

00:47:07.000 And I think it's an irony that's lost on people.

00:47:09.000 The standing is already a figurative flip the bird to some kind of authoritarian figure.

00:47:15.000 And kneeling is going back to what we left.

00:47:19.000 Yeah, it is.

00:47:19.000 It's going the wrong direction.

00:47:21.000 You know, it's designed to show some disrespect, and this is a little sidebar off to the side.

00:47:28.000 So 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.

00:47:40.000 Guys 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.

00:47:52.000 They were so loyal to the flag because it was the other flag that they didn't like.

00:47:57.000 It wasn't the American flag.

00:47:58.000 That's the one that brought all the liberty.

00:48:00.000 It's the other flag that they had trouble with.

00:48:02.000 And 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.

00:48:11.000 It's the other flag that was the oppression of slavery, you know, Confederate flag or whatever you want to say.

00:48:16.000 So 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.

00:48:26.000 That was four shots.

00:48:28.000 Right.

00:48:28.000 And so I don't think we understand history, even in the racial sense, Sure.

00:48:32.000 where the respect for the flag was. The early congressmen, the first 13 congressmen, seven

00:48:38.000 of them had been slaves five years before. I mean, what a change to be a slave and five

00:48:42.000 years later you're sitting in Congress. Sure. I mean, it's not. And no one's saying that we're

00:48:47.000 a perfect nation and with a perfect history, of course, because we've talked about that at great

00:48:51.000 length in the past and I encourage people to go watch it.

00:48:54.000 But we stood so that we stood and it took us a little while that everybody could stand figuratively

00:48:59.000 here. That's right.

00:49:00.000 That's right.

00:49:00.000 We ended slavery.

00:49:01.000 But keep in mind, if we hadn't stood at all, everyone, black, white, red, yellow, would still be kneeling.

00:49:07.000 Good point.

00:49:08.000 I think we're going to leave it on that.

00:49:10.000 Wallbuilders.com.

00:49:11.000 Mr. Barton, thank you so much for taking the time.

00:49:13.000 I always learn something, and by something I mean a lot, because I know very little.

00:49:18.000 Thank you, sir.

00:49:19.000 We appreciate it.

00:49:19.000 We hope that you'll be back soon.

00:49:21.000 Thanks, brother.

00:49:22.000 Have a happy Independence Day.

00:49:24.000 Absolutely.

00:49:24.000 Everyone else, too.

00:49:25.000 I think we're supposed to say fourth because Independence is a little iffy.

Louder with Crowder - June 29, 2020

David Barton Destroys the 'America Is a Secular Nation' Myth | Louder with Crowder

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