The United States Navy is as relevant today as it has ever been. Sea travel has played one of the largest roles in history as it relates to global trade, lifting the world out of poverty, and bringing huge swaths of the population into what you now know as the modern world. Today, throw in chaos in the Middle East, a gutted defense industrial base, and the looming prospect of a great power war between the United States and China, and you start to get the nautical picture.
00:00:21.000The truth is that boats and the United States Navy are as relevant today as they've ever been.
00:00:27.000Sea travel, Has played one of the largest roles in history as it relates to global trade, lifting the world out of poverty, and bringing huge swaths of the population into what you now know as the modern world.
00:00:40.000Today, you throw in chaos in the Middle East, a gutted defense industrial base, and the looming prospect of a great power war between the United States and China, and you start to get the nautical picture.
00:00:54.000To understand, though, The crucial importance of the United States Navy, what role it's played, and really what role it will play going forward, it's imperative that you understand its history.
00:01:26.000David Barton of Wall Builders is with us today.
00:01:28.000And we're going to be talking specifically about, this will be a little bit shorter, because we've covered the First Amendment, Second Amendment, we've covered sort of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, a little bit in some other videos, but this was something that was really interesting to me.
00:01:40.000You were talking about the history of the United States and its wars with Islam.
00:01:45.000Yeah, what happened was, as soon as we finished the American Revolution in 1783 and 1784, Congress sends Ben Franklin, John Adams, and they sent Thomas Jefferson to say, we're getting attacked all over the world, all over the Mediterranean, which was our world, our commercial world, by all these Muslims.
00:02:48.000And so they read that, and so what happens is, over the next years, this escalates.
00:02:53.000And they finally reach an agreement that says, look, What would it take for you guys not to attack our ships?
00:02:57.000Because every time they saw an American flag going across the Mediterranean on a commercial ship, they attack it, they enslave the crew, they enslave the captain.
00:03:06.000In our terms, it'd be up to a million dollars a ship because they sell the captain back for $6,500, they sell the officers back for $3,500, and they sell the sailors back for $1,500.
00:03:15.000So we'll give you your crew back for a million bucks.
00:03:17.000So we're financing their jihad, essentially.
00:03:20.000And so the question was asked, what does it take for you to not attack us?
00:03:24.000And they said, well, If you'll build us two or three frigates, and if you'll give us several million a year, we won't attack you.
00:03:30.000We had five nations that were going after us.
00:03:32.000We had Algiers, and Tunis, and Morocco, and you had Turkey, and you had Tripoli.
00:03:36.000And so we signed these treaties to stop that.
00:03:39.000And Washington comes into office, and this is the very... This is what you were saying, right?
00:03:43.000Yeah, this is the very first federal budget.
00:03:59.000So at this point, but what's interesting is the biggest line item for the next four presidents, single biggest line item, was paying money to keep Muslims from attacking us.
00:04:11.000And so it becomes up to 10% of the federal budget.
00:04:13.000So effectively that almost seems as though we started off negotiating with terrorists.
00:04:17.000We negotiated tariffs because at that point we didn't have a Navy.
00:04:23.000And that's why in Washington's seventh year, after having paid this money, he said, would to God that I had a Navy able to crush these enemies of mankind into non-existence.
00:04:33.000And so we asked Congress, will you fund me a Navy?
00:04:36.000Congress gave him the funding to build our first Navy.
00:04:39.000And so it's now congressionally funded.
00:04:40.000It was built under John Adams, who's called the father of the American Navy.
00:04:44.000And so now Adams is out and Jefferson comes in in So, the reason we have a Navy is entirely due to ships being attacked by Islamic terrorists.
00:05:10.000We do this every two years in Congress.
00:05:11.000So, what they did was they built a Navy, and when Adams built it, and then Thomas Jefferson inherits the Navy, and at that point, he's paying about 15% of his budget on Muslim terrorists.
00:05:28.000And so he, that was the motto back then, millions for defense, not a penny for tribute, because we were paying this huge amount to these Muslim nations.
00:05:37.000And that actually brings up, I've read about this, but when I first came here, I said, well, what is this?
00:05:48.000Because they got over there and they were going through these nations fighting these Muslim groups that were attacking Americans because the Muslims said you either have to pay well or fight well.
00:05:56.000Well, we've been paying well, now we're going to fight well.
00:05:58.000At first I thought it was like something from the Game of Thrones, you know, a craft truck for the unsullied.
00:06:25.000And so our guys are in battle, and they're getting beheaded, and they find out Muslims like going for your neck with swords, and that's where they started wearing leather.
00:06:32.000And I noticed, if you can see this, there are what appear to be blade marks.
00:06:37.000Do you think this was something that actually might have stopped an attempt?
00:06:39.000I doubt that it was, but it certainly is what they used to try to stop attempts, and this is what the attempts were coming with.
00:06:44.000That's actually one of the blades from back then, and so this is called a quicksword because it leans out in front, and it gets to your neck pretty fast.
00:06:52.000Does the curvature Does your catcher help with decapitation?
00:07:12.000It's also capable, you know, if I come this way in a crowd and see you, I'll just come back after you this way, or after I catch you, maybe I just put your eyes out with it.
00:07:20.000Oh, geez, I didn't even see that there.
00:07:30.000Well, after five years of fighting on the ground conflict, the Muslims came to the table and said, okay, we'll sign a treaty with you guys.
00:07:36.000And so they signed a treaty with us, and at that point, this book came out in 1806.
00:07:53.000And the question is, why did we spend so much time fighting these guys?
00:07:56.000We don't understand what this is about.
00:07:58.000So the largest publisher in the country at that time, Isaiah Thomas, kind of like the Simon Schuster today, put this out with a two-page introduction.
00:08:05.000He said, guys, Americans, if you will read this, you'll understand why they went to war against us.
00:08:10.000And he says right here, he says, Now obviously a lot of people in the Muslim world say, well there isn't any accurate, you can't really read the Quran unless you read it in Arabic.
00:08:50.000Dr. Ben Carson got a lot of flack for saying that.
00:08:53.000He didn't say Muslims can't live in the United States.
00:08:55.000He said Sharia law because it is a legal doctrine.
00:08:59.000It is superior to the Constitution, and it does not give the freedoms or due process or anything else.
00:09:04.000So that's what we had, and we thought we were okay, and now Madison becomes president, and we get involved in the War of 1812 against the British.
00:09:11.000And at that point in time, the Muslims go, oh look, they're all occupied, let's attack them again.
00:09:15.000So they started attacking us again, and that's where we first learned that you need to be able to fight a war on two fronts.
00:09:20.000Because Madison is so tied up with the British, we couldn't do anything with the Muslims.
00:09:24.000And so as soon as he finished with the British, he went over and whacked the Muslims again and got another peace treaty.
00:09:29.000But it was 32 years that we fought Muslims in Barbary Power War.
00:09:33.000And if you even think of the Marine Corps hymn, From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli, Tripoli was the nation.
00:09:40.000This is the map that was used in 1780.
00:09:43.000Tripoli is the entire nation right here that we call Libya.
00:09:46.000And by the way, Benghazi is sitting right there.
00:09:49.000So the nation of Tripoli, this is where we spent so much time with Marines and fighting Muslim terrorists.
00:09:54.000So that's a 32 year war that America has.
00:09:57.000So this idea that it's a new sort of radicalized portion of the Islamic world, and I want to make really clear, we're not talking about all Muslims, we're certainly not talking about all Muslims living in the United States, but this idea that the war in the Middle East or the Islamic portion of the world is really new with only more recently radicalized factions.
00:10:16.000It sort of is refuted by the mere notion that the Navy was created solely with the express purpose to fight.
00:10:22.000And we have a number of newspapers recording the atrocities done to Americans by Muslims after they would capture them, and it's ISIS kind of stuff.
00:10:39.000You know, this one's gone almost two decades now.
00:10:42.000But we think this is a new thing and that we can sit down and negotiate.
00:10:46.000Adams and Jefferson found out back then you can't negotiate with the philosophy that says you go to heaven by killing people.
00:10:51.000And while not every Muslim believes that, certainly the radical, what we call the radicalized parts and the more devout parts, whatever you want to say, that's incompatible with our thinking.
00:11:01.000That's why we had to go to war because you can't negotiate with the, we say, hey, let's all be nice to each other.
00:11:05.000They say, well, if we kill you, we go to heaven.
00:11:07.000And is that why we sort of create, or at least it's seen as a truism, the policy of we don't negotiate with terrorists?
00:11:13.000That was part of it, because we were negotiating so heavily back then, it irked the Americans, and that's why that pen came out that says, not a penny for tribute, but millions for defense.
00:11:22.000We'll fund the Navy, we'll send the Marines over, we'll do what we have to, but you're not going to hold us captive by making us pay you.
00:11:30.000And by the way, they were attacking nine nations at the time, not just America.
00:11:33.000Yeah, but Great Britain and they were going after France and Spain and Sweden and the Dutch and others, what they called Christian nations.
00:11:39.000They had a war against all Christian nations.
00:11:54.000You can watch the other videos that we've done, the other installments on Second Amendment, First Amendment, Civil War, and we are going to have to come back and do a whole segment on World War II because this is just an absolute museum.