In this episode, Bill Federer talks with Turning Point USA Youth President, Charlie Kirk, about his new book, Backfired: How America Became a Country That Tolerated Its Founding Beliefs. Charlie talks about how a nation founded on religious tolerance no longer tolerates its founders' religion.
00:00:29.000Tucker Carlson, Patrick Bett David, Candace Owens, Glenn Beck, Rob Schneider, Roseanne Barr, Dennis Prager, Allie B. Stuckey, Tim Poole, James O'Keefe, Jonathan Isaac, Riley Gaines, Ben Carson, Michael Anton, Jason Whitlock, Steve Bannon, Vivek Ramaswamy, Amfest.com.
00:01:09.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:43.000And it is a nation founded on religious tolerance no longer tolerates its founders' religion.
00:01:51.000And this Christmas season, I think it's a perfect topic to talk about.
00:01:55.000On page 136, you have the state constitutions here where you talk about Georgia, 1777, we the people of Georgia relying upon protection, guidance of Almighty God, and so on and so forth.
00:02:06.000Talk about the premise of this book and how we're increasingly a country that is intolerant of what our founders believed.
00:02:14.000Well, we go back to Europe, and in Europe, it was all Catholic, and then the Reformation happened, and then the Muslims invaded, surrounded Vienna in 1529, and the king of Spain was faced with a double dilemma: Protestant Reformation on the inside of Europe, and this Islamic invasion by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent coming from the outside of Europe.
00:02:37.000And so he makes a deal with these Protestants that it's called the Peace of Augsburg of 1555.
00:02:44.000It's the first treaty ever to recognize Protestants.
00:02:47.000And in the treaty is a little Latin phrase that had enormous repercussions.
00:02:52.000The phrase was cuios regio ius religio, which means whose is the reign?
00:06:31.000And he thinks his problems are solved.
00:06:33.000But the problem was people started reading the Bible and began to compare what's in the Bible to this king divorcing and beheading his wives.
00:06:41.000And so a group starts that wants to purify the Church of England.
00:06:54.000And so you did not make up your own prayers in England because you could make up one that's wrong.
00:07:01.000So the government wrote all the prayers down and put them in a book.
00:07:04.000It's called the Book of Common Prayer.
00:07:06.000You feel like praying, you just open it to the right page and read the prayer.
00:07:09.000And if you're caught with a small group of people in a Bible study making up your own prayers, the police, like the FBI, will kick in the door and will handcuff you and arrest you and drag you to the star chamber.
00:07:21.000It was a government hearing room, sort of like a January 6th hearing room, because they had stars on the ceiling.
00:07:26.000And they would twist your arm and brand you on the face as a heretic with the letters SL for seditious liable.
00:07:32.000And then they would cut off your ear or cut your nose in half and make you confess the stuff you didn't do.
00:07:37.000And then even if you didn't say anything, they'd put you in contempt of court for not saying anything.
00:07:43.000Then they would put you in a cell and they would let you waste away in this prison cell for days and weeks and months.
00:07:49.000Could you imagine a government doing this to its own people?
00:07:52.000And so a group of these people in Scotland, when they first read from the Book of Common Prayer in St. Giles Cathedral, a market woman named Jenny Geddes threw her three-legged stool and it whacked into the bishop and it started something called the Bishop's War.
00:08:14.000And in Scotland, the king sent his army to force these churches to read from this book.
00:08:47.000The Presbyterians in Scotland did not want bishops.
00:08:51.000But the king said, no bishop, no king.
00:08:53.000He wanted a hierarchical form of church government where he was at the top, where the Presbyterians and the Puritans and the Baptists and Congregationalists, they liked the congregational model of church government, where it's the pastor teaching the body to do the work of the ministry rather than the clergy laity model where you watch the clergy do the work of the ministry.
00:09:15.000And so the pilgrims, and they're the ones that we trace to America, they were a group of them sold their property and bought passage on a ship to Holland.
00:09:30.000Holland was actually one of the seven Netherlands, and these were seven provinces that spent 80 years breaking away from Spain.
00:09:39.000And they didn't always believe the same thing, but they were willing to have some give and take when it came to religion because Spain was wanting to kill them all.
00:09:47.000In 1572, the king of Spain sent the Iron Duke of Alba to commit the Spanish fury and killed 10,000 Dutch Reformed in Antwerp, Holland.
00:09:58.000And so the pilgrims said, you know what?
00:10:03.000It's the most tolerant place religiously in all of Europe.
00:10:07.000And so right before the pilgrim, the ship left, the captain robs them and turns them over to the police and they're thrown in jail.
00:10:15.000And then so another group of these pilgrim separatists, they arrange for a Dutch ship to sail up the coast and they would be in rowboats and they would row out.
00:10:24.000Pilgrims show up a day early and the waves are rough and the kids are getting sick and the women say, can we just wait on shore?
00:12:41.000It's a long story, but the bottom line was they came over here for religious freedom, freedom of conscience.
00:12:48.000And they based their form of government on the Bible, but what part of the Bible, that first 400 years out of Egypt before King Saul.
00:12:58.000And so this is called the Hebrew Republic.
00:13:00.000And it's the first time in recorded human history where you have millions of people and no king.
00:13:04.000And it worked because everybody was taught the law and everybody was personally accountable to God to follow the law.
00:13:10.000But the king of England looked to the Bible for his authority, but he looked to the King Saul and on part of the Bible, the divine right of kings.
00:13:16.000So King Saul, in a sense, is the divider between England and America.
00:13:22.000And so the kings of England, the Bible is their authority.
00:13:26.000America, we're the pre-King Saul period of a republic where everybody's taught the law.
00:13:32.000I get into it all, but it's for freedom of conscience that motivated them to come over.
00:13:37.000And then fast forward, every colony is founded by a different Christian denomination.
00:13:44.000So Virginia was Anglican and Massachusetts was Puritan right after the Pilgrims came, Puritan.
00:13:51.000And then Rhode Island was founded by Baptists.
00:13:53.000And New York was founded by Dutch Reformed.
00:13:56.000And Delaware and New Jersey were originally Swedish Lutheran, Gustav Adolphus of Sweden, and then sent over, but then it was conquered by the Dutch and conquered by the English.
00:14:07.000Connecticut, New Hampshire were Congregationalist colonies, and Pennsylvania was Quaker.
00:14:13.000And William Penn, who had been imprisoned in the Tower of London because he did not go along with the king's church, William Penn said, force makes hypocrites.
00:14:24.000Tis persuasion only that makes converts.
00:14:27.000And so Pennsylvania opened it up for anybody to come in who believed in God.
00:14:32.000And so you had the first Catholic church, English-speaking Catholic church in 1735 in Pennsylvania.
00:15:20.000Maine, which used to be part of Massachusetts, they tarred and feathered a priest and chased him out of town.
00:15:26.000They literally dipped him in tar and covered him with feathers and then put him on a rail, which is like a two by four between two guys on their shoulders.
00:15:35.000And they'd hold this guy's legs down and parade him around town and throw him out of the.
00:15:39.000I mean, they didn't get along, but then the Revolutionary War started, and they all had to work together against the King of England, very similar to the Catholics and Protestants working together with King Charles V to stop this Islamic invasion of Europe.
00:15:56.000So when the problem is big enough, then we work together.
00:16:00.000And so in America, you had these different colonies did not get along.
00:16:04.000But then when the revolution starts, there's an interesting story that a motion was made at the first Continental Congress to open with prayer.
00:16:13.000And the Anglicans didn't want to hear a prayer from the Presbyterians, who didn't want to hear a prayer from the Baptists, who didn't want to hear a prayer for, and it was about to fall apart.
00:16:23.000And Sam Adams stands up and he goes, I'm no bigot.
00:16:27.000I can hear a prayer of any man of piety who at the same time is a patriot of our nation.
00:16:32.000And so they get Reverend Jacob Duchet come and they open with prayer.
00:16:36.000And so the beginning of our country was this idea of we may not agree on everything, but the threat is so great, we need to work together so that we can each have the freedom to do what we think is the best way to heaven.
00:16:50.000And so the reason I asked you to lead all of that, and it's beautiful, is that there's this narrative, Christian nationalism, America was never a Christian nation.
00:16:59.000And I want you to respond to that from a historical perspective.
00:17:29.000The holidays and big family feasts are upon us.
00:17:33.000But in D.C., it seems as if there's no bigger turkey than Senate Bill 1339.
00:17:39.000S1339 is Bernie's latest attempt to sneak in a backdoor takeover of more of our health care.
00:17:46.000He falsely claims it will lower prescription drug prices.
00:17:50.000But S1339 will actually do just the opposite.
00:17:54.000It'll handcuff pharmacy benefit managers who are currently saving millions of Americans an average of $1,040 a year.
00:18:03.000Bernie, the trickster, the Marxist, is hoping that thousands of your fellow Americans are already going to lowermydrugprices.com to stand up against S-1339.
00:18:14.000That you'll be too busy making holiday plans or getting ready for a year-end vacation to stop him from a power grab on your health care.
00:18:22.000I'm urging you to keep up the pressure against the passage of S1339 by going to lowermydrugprices.com.
00:18:30.000The Council for Citizens and Government Waste says if you don't want a socialized system that takes away your personal health care choices, increases costs, and makes you wait longer to see the doctor that is chosen by the government, go today right now to lowermydrugprices.com.
00:19:03.000America was never really a Christian nation.
00:19:06.000It doesn't say Jesus in the Declaration of Independence.
00:19:09.000Connect all this together and respond to this whole narrative out there.
00:19:13.000So I read through every state constitution and every revision, every amendment to every state constitution.
00:19:19.000It was a couple year project and found some interesting things.
00:19:22.000Nine of the original 13 state constitutions required all office holders to be Protestant Christian to hold office.
00:19:30.000Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey.
00:19:34.000And they thought they were being very generous by saying Protestant because before then, you had to be a particular denomination of Protestant, right?
00:19:41.000And then you had three states in 1776.
00:19:45.000All they did was require you to be a plain Christian.
00:19:49.000And so you had Delaware's original 1776 constitution said every office holder had to make a declaration, a belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ his only son, the Holy Ghost, one, God bless forevermore.
00:20:02.000Yeah, because you could be a Protestant or a Catholic and say you believe in the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.
00:20:07.000Ben Franklin signed Pennsylvania's Constitution, and it required all office holders to believe in God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good, the punisher of the wicked, and acknowledged the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.
00:20:24.000In other words, Ben Franklin signed the Constitution and said, you not only had to say you put your hand on a Bible, you had to swear you believed in the Bible.
00:20:32.000And one state had zero religious requirements to hold state office, Rhode Island, founded by Baptists.
00:20:39.000They said if you required someone to be a Christian, they could say they were, even if they weren't, they would be hypocritical.
00:20:43.000So just vote for the best Christian person you know.
00:21:08.000So 98% of the country was Protestant at the time of the revolution, 1% Catholic.
00:21:14.000So there are 3 million people, 30,000 Catholics, 1% Catholic, excuse me, yeah, 1% Catholic and 1 tenth of a percent Jewish.
00:21:23.000There's only seven synagogues in the whole country.
00:21:25.000So 3 million people, 98% Protestant, 1% Catholic, about 30,000, and then 1 tenth of a percent Jewish, around 3,000.
00:21:35.000And so they had one overriding fear, and that was that the federal government would choose one denomination and make it the national one, which is what every other country in the world did.
00:21:57.000So the states that required, for example, Massachusetts and Connecticut, they had required the congregational Puritan faith up until 1818 in Connecticut and 1833 in Massachusetts.
00:22:11.000John Adams wrote Massachusetts' Constitution that required the state to have a tax for the public support of Protestant teachers of piety and religion.
00:22:21.000That was John Adams, and that was in effect till 1833.
00:22:24.000And so the states wanted to tie the federal government's hand so it would not pick one denomination to prefer it over the others.
00:22:32.000I've actually talked to people who have written books on the First Amendment on the Constitution, and they pretend like they are experts.
00:22:41.000I said, have you read the state constitutions?
00:22:56.000And the states dealt cards out and they only gave the federal government a few cards, provide for the common defense, like borders, navy, regulate interstate commerce, have a secure currency so that we can do trade.
00:23:13.000All the rest of the cards they kept close to their chest and laws that govern human behavior under state's jurisdiction.
00:23:20.000So some states had blue laws where everything was closed on Sunday.
00:23:24.000And like Massachusetts and Connecticut, but George Washington on his tour after being elected president was going through Milford, Connecticut on a Sunday, and the sheriff stopped the carriage and said, this is Sunday.
00:24:11.000But back then, it was one or the other.
00:24:13.000So in my book, I trace this progression where first it was the denomination that started the colony, then it went out to Protestants, and then there was an Irish potato famine in the early 1800s.
00:24:26.000Millions of Irish died over in Ireland and millions died on their way over.
00:24:31.000I mean, it was like they said if you were to put a cross in the ocean, wherever they threw an Irish person overboard that had died, you'd have a complete line of white crosses from, you know, Dublin to Boston and Philadelphia and New York.
00:24:44.000But the Catholic population mushroomed in 10 years from 1% to 20%.
00:24:52.000There was the stoning of the Archbishop John Hughes's house in New York.
00:24:57.000And you had the burning of Catholic churches in Philadelphia, the raiding of convents in Boston.
00:25:03.000I mean, it was Catholics and Protestants did not get along.
00:25:07.000But then after a while, it settled down, and they changed the states from requiring you to be Protestant to just requiring you to be a Christian.
00:25:15.000So North Carolina, prior to 1835, you had to be a Protestant, but in 1835, they changed it to all you had to do was be a Christian.
00:25:23.000And then there's a persecution of Jews in Bavaria in the early 1800s.
00:25:31.000They go from one tenth of a percent to 1% of the population.
00:25:36.000And then later they grow to 2% of the population.
00:25:40.000And so Maryland, its original state constitution required all office holders to be Christian.
00:25:46.000But in 1851, they changed it to add, and if the party shall profess to be a Jew, his declaration shall be of a belief in a future state of rewards and punishments.
00:25:57.000So as of 1851, you could hold office in Maryland if you were a Christian or a Jew.
00:26:02.000People say, well, what about the First Amendment?
00:26:11.000Well, first off, it's limiting Congress.
00:26:13.000Nobody else, just the federal Congress, which was the only lawmaking body.
00:26:17.000If they would have seen that presidents would make laws through executive orders, they would have said Congress and the president shall make no law.
00:26:24.000If they would have seen that the Supreme Court was making laws from the bench, they would have said Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court shall make no law, doing what?
00:26:31.000Respecting the establishment of religion.
00:26:33.000Well, respecting means concerning, means neither for nor against.
00:26:37.000In other words, the subject of religion is hands off to the federal government.
00:26:41.000So Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
00:26:47.000Two handcuffs on the federal government.
00:26:48.000They couldn't pick one denomination and make it the national one, and they couldn't prohibit the individual states from whatever they were doing.
00:26:56.000And so Joseph Story was the Supreme Court justice appointed by James Madison, and he said the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to state governments to be acted on according to their own state constitutions.
00:27:12.000But then you have the Civil War and many states rewriting their constitutions.
00:27:17.000And then you have something called the 14th Amendment.
00:27:21.000But in the mix of this, you have evolution and Charles Darwin, 1848, origin of species, descent of man.
00:27:29.000And you had a guy named Herbert Spencer that wanted to apply evolution to everything, including law.
00:27:36.000And so he had someone that he influenced named Christopher Columbus Langdell, and he's the president of Harvard.
00:27:42.000And he takes evolution and puts it into his law school.
00:27:46.000It's called the case precedent theory of law.
00:27:48.000In other words, instead of going back and reading the founding fathers, you just take the most recent case and bend it a little bit.
00:27:55.000And Harvard was the only law school in the country that taught case precedent theory of law.
00:28:00.000Every other one, you go back and read the debates on the First Amendment if you want to know what they meant.
00:28:04.000But eventually Harvard influenced the others.
00:28:07.000And one Harvard graduate was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
00:28:12.000He was notorious for in the Buck v. Bell decision where they decided to sterilize people they thought were genetically inferior.
00:28:20.000He said three generations of imbeciles is enough.
00:28:24.000Anyway, this Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., his biographer said he broke new trails of intellectual thought.
00:28:31.000Instead of the law being something given by God, it's an ever-evolving thing adapting to the changing economic and social conditions.
00:28:41.000It's like, I have no problem with it evolving, but it's supposed to evolve through the amendment process, not through a judge on a bench.
00:28:49.000Amendment process requires two-thirds of the states and then ratified by three-quarters of the states.
00:29:19.000And so you can have it evolve, but through the amendment process, not through a judge on a bench or Congress passing laws and leaving it to the executive branch to write the regulations to enforce the laws, but the regulations end up making all brand new laws themselves, like with the Obamacare.
00:29:40.000But you have the First Amendment was to prevent the federal government from establishing one denomination in preference to the others and then from prohibiting the free exercise of religion within the states.
00:29:53.000So we worked our way from the colonies, which were different denominations founding them, to the revolution and the first set of constitutions where nine of the 13 you had to be Protestant.
00:30:04.000And then the Catholic immigration with the potato famine and then states changing it from Protestant to just being Christian, then a Jewish immigration.
00:30:12.000And so now they, and then after the Civil War, many states rewrote it to just say all you had to do was believe in God.
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00:32:34.000And then you have draft dodgers, Vietnam War, wanting to be religious, conscientious objectors as atheists.
00:32:40.000And the Supreme Court said, when someone holds beliefs with the same conviction as those who believe in a traditional deity, to that person, those beliefs constitute their religion.
00:33:04.000He says, Sometimes I feel if Alice had, the First Amendment's gotten so twisted that Alice has never left Wonderland.
00:33:14.000But this idea that it was supposed to protect people of conscience, now it's being used to forbid people to have their freedom.
00:33:21.000I liken it to you see somebody on your front yard, you bring them in, you give them a meal, they don't have a place to stay, they sleep on the couch.
00:33:28.000The next day you wake up, there's two people.