TRANSCRIPT
*Transcripts are auto-generated and reviewed for accuracy, but there may be some errors in punctuation or words. Listen to the podcast at https://rabbidaniellapin.libsyn.com/ for clarification
The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: The Importance of Faith and Friendship – A Conversation with David Barton
Date: 01/03/25 Length: 1:11:37
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, happy warriors and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show where I your rabbi, reveal how the world really works. And one of the ways in which it works is through friendship. Have you ever wondered why the Bible doesn't speak about friendship. Why doesn't it talk about the necessity to be a good friend and to have a friend and to find a friend and to be a friend and make a friend. It doesn't do it in the same way that it doesn't tell us to breathe regularly or eat three meals a day. The Bible doesn't have to tell us things that we will do automatically, and that is, we yearn for human connection. And as we teach in the 5f program, there are human connections that are based on financial matters. There are human in connections and relationships that are based on on family matters, people to whom you are related. But then there's a third category, friendships, where it's not financially, primarily it's not family, but it's a closeness common interests, a connection of the souls. I would not be the first person to try and to fail at defining friendship. It's something rooted deep in the spiritual nature of the human psyche. We just have this sort of thing. Anyway, I tell you all of that to tell you that today's show is going to be a conversation with one of those kinds of friends. We've been friends for many, many years. And I'm referring to the famous and notable patriot and historian David Barton. And you will if you don't know him already well, you will enjoy getting to know him. He's really a very important national resource in terms of understanding the nature of America. He knows things. He has things established, proven, confirmed by original source material that will absolutely astound you. Have you heard people speaking about how the founders of America were not religious. They were deists. They were this. Well, you may one day want to have evidence and proof that that isn't the case at all, that the founders of America were Bible-believing Christians. Nothing more, nothing less. David Barton can satisfy your curiosity about that and provide compelling evidence many, many, many other things. So Don't even dream of being in the Dallas area without connecting with his organization, WallBuilders. And you might be fortunate enough to be able to be given a tour of his museum. So it's WallBuilders, an idea taken from the book of Nehemiah. And my guest is David Barton.
You will also remember that usually at this time in the podcast, I ask you to subscribe if you haven't already done that. And I also ask you if you would be good enough to take a look at becoming a member of our Happy Warrior community. One of the things we like doing is making sure that there is a sequence of special podcasts made exclusively for happy warrior members. We don't have a better way to express our appreciation for those who actually become part of the community, connect with other members of the community, provide guidance and experience and help to people who are going through things you've already surmounted, and sometimes asking the community for guidance or steering or just ideas on something you may be grappling with. It's a very lively community, and I very much as does, my wife Susan, enjoy participating in the conversations that we happy warriors all have to gather. So please do that, and then you would also take a look. You know, here we are. I mean, literally, facing 2025 the new year has begun, and there's such a thing as kind of getting organized to make sure that next year doesn't go the same way last year did, where maybe there were things you want to do you didn't actually do. And so we created a program called Chart Your Course that you can read about on the RabbiDanielLapin.com website. So please do that, and I think you'll find to be as many people have found in previous years, aremarkably, incredibly effective tool for making sure that you do achieve some of the things this year that you perhaps wanted to but failed to do last year. Very often, there's one missing ingredient, and for many of us, it's been chart your course. So go for that, and now please enjoy my conversation with the American treasure and historian David Barton. Hope you enjoy it as much as you'll see me doing as well.
Here it is, welcome everybody, and a really special occasion here on the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I have the great pleasure of talking to an old, old friend, and I don't even know how far back we go, David, but it's been a year or two, and so this is David Barton. And I have regularly spoken of David Barton as the finest American historian on particularly on America. In other words, American historian, not meaning American that he is an American, but that in terms of understanding the story of America, I do believe that there is nobody better. And the material that David makes available is at Wall builders, and that's, of course, online and easily, easily available. This we just started talking before we started the recording. David and I have such warm memories of your ranch and the beautiful horses. And so I asked if you've been getting a lot of time with your horses lately, and you said that since since July, you've been home for six days a total.
David Barton 6:58
Yes, sir, it has been all hands on deck for the last several months and and we've probably spent most of that time and the seven political battleground states leading the election. And
Daniel Lapin 7:09
I was just gonna say, I I imagine November 6, you and your wife celebrated as joyfully as Susan and I did.
David Barton 7:16
It was fun, because we were for the last five cycles, I've headed up a broadcast team. A whole bunch of the cable networks get together, and so we do the live election coverage. And for the second time in a row with Trump, we were the first network to call the election. So the evening was a little shorter for us than it was for some of the other guys that went till 5:21 in the morning to call the election.
Daniel Lapin 7:40
Well, they were hoping,
David Barton 7:44
oh yeah, exactly it was. It was very interesting. It was a strange election, because I really felt like that when we saw the East Coast results came in, that if Georgia and North Carolina and Pennsylvania were all in play, then he was going to have it. And indeed, those were all in place. Even Virginia was in place for a while, which nobody counted on, yeah, and so at that point in time, we really felt like it was done. And then when, when Pennsylvania was finally called, that was when we called it. There's just no way for the other states to overcome that. So it was, it was a fun night. It sure was, gosh,
Daniel Lapin 8:18
so David, there's so much on this. I I supported President Trump for the first time publicly and wholeheartedly in early March 2016 as you can imagine, the many of my colleagues in the Jewish community on the non traditional side of the spectrum were furious at me and also advising me of what a mistake it was. Because Why do you want to back the losing candidate, and I explained I number one, I thought he would win. And number two, I believe he is the right candidate. Anyways, to me, there were several things that made it clear to me. One was, and this was the least important, but it was, it was kind of interesting. Susan and I were at a council, a cn Council of national policy meeting, and all the can, all the concert, all the Republican candidates spoke at that meeting. It was in Virginia, and Ralph Reed was sitting next to us and the speaker, just as the previous speaker finished, and just as they were getting ready to introduce Donald Trump, Ralph Reed said something which I found fascinating to me. I. He said, Watch, this is going to be the only speaker where the audience is not playing with their phones, hmm. And we had noticed that. I mean, you know who the the lineup was in 2016 on the Republican side in the primaries and and as they were, everybody was on their phones. And sure enough, he was absolutely correct on this. As Donald Trump got up to start speaking, phones went into pockets, and you didn't see one till the end. Wow. So you know, to me, that was that was very, very interesting. Far more important, though, was that, to me, he was a candidate who didn't use a teleprompter. He may have occasionally, but he certainly didn't need one. The president we had had up to that point for the last previous two terms literally fell apart on the several occasions that his teleprompter failed. And so a guy who can speak without a teleprompter is somebody who's speaking from his heart. He's just telling you what he really thinks. Yeah. And so to me, that was enormously valuable, and beyond that was also really important to me, was that I felt he was a business professional. And I thought, you know, somebody who's a pragmatic businessman who has coped with New York, that's that's got to be an improvement on Hillary. And so I had, I didn't know him, I didn't know his policies. I didn't worry about any of that. I only went on on those, on those factors and and people would come to you. You're a religious American, you're a man of faith. How can you go for such a terrible, terrible person? Let me throw that one right to you. You are a Christian. I had no trouble with that one. But how did you deal with the question? When people said, how are you able to support somebody who's not only not an evangelical Christian, but take a look at him. How can you support him? He's everything Christian said, For he does. How did you feel about that?
David Barton 12:30
And by the way, I am a Christian, and you're my rabbi, and I go to you all you know you've rightly said as many years if I've known you, Every Christian needs a rabbi, and you're right, and you've been my rabbi all those years. Thank you.
Daniel Lapin 12:45
indeed. And I love, I love it when you call me with a question. It's always stimulating and stretches me.
David Barton 12:53
Well. It is for us too, because it just, it really helps in so many ways. And you don't even know it, but a lot of the presentations I knew I have quotes from Daniel Lapin in there, and here's what Rabbi Lapin says. And so your teaching is going all sorts of places in the Christian community, so there's so much good stuff there for me. When I look at a choice like that, I'm not looking for the best candidate, I'm looking for the least, worst candidate. If that makes sense, in that particular cycle, I ran the super PAC for Ted Cruz. So that was my guy, and I ran a Super PAC, and he was the last guy standing, except for Kasich, up. And, you know, kind of a nuisance candidate. Kasich stayed until the end. The last series candidate was Ted. And so when Ted dropped out, what do I do? Well, my son, Tim, we talked about this, but it's kind of like, Okay, do I want Jezebel or do I want Samson? And Samson may not be the best moral guy that's ever existed in history, but he fought for the right things, and he, you know, he fought for the nation, and, okay, I've got that, versus somebody who's really on the other side and is literally like, Jezebel, in my viewpoint, spiritually, politically, everything else, and it was not a hard choice at all. And so I don't have this expectation that humans are perfect, or ever going to be perfect. I don't think they are, but which one's going to do the most, and really, which one's going to check the most boxes on my list of things that are important. And so even though Trump had been an opponent when we were with Cruz. It didn't keep me from supporting him at all, and was happy to support that, and was happy to introduce our crowd to him, and we set up meetings with him later in that cycle, where we went to New York and brought 1000s in to meet him, because there was a lot of people like us who didn't know him that well, and what we did know at that point in time, he didn't have a track record of politics, and so what you knew about him was more of his private life and personal life than you wanted to know about him, and that was what everybody was basing it on. And so, but he still for us, it was no choice, no choice at all. Was not hard choice. It was not difficult at all, and it was that way. This time. You know, there's a lot of people we did this just blows me away. Rabbi, but we did two really big polls before the election to see what was happening, because there's so much negatives out there, and the media spent so much time and running the logarithms on social media and everything else, just a lot of negative and so we did really big polls. One was for people of faith. And so that was everybody. That was, that was Christians, Jews, Muslims, anyone who considers themselves a they call themselves a faith is important enough to them. They call themselves a person of faith. And what we found was about 55 million of that crowd said, I'm not going to vote this election. I'm sitting this election out and 55 million, that's a massive amount. And so based on that number, it looked like it was going to be the lowest voter turnout in percentage wise, in American history. From George Washington until now, we've never had a percentage turnout that would have been that low. And then we did a second poll, and it was people who were serious about their faith, not just people of faith, but people who lived by their faith. And so, you know, in our community, that would be what they called the evangelical Christians and devout Catholics and others. And at that point, there were 32 million of that group that said, we're not voting. We're not we don't like the choices. We're sitting this out. And so at that point, it became alright, this is not a good deal. And so that's where that between July and the election, we were only home six days. At that point in time, we were out across the country.
Daniel Lapin 16:32
Tell me what you were tell me what you were doing and what the meetings were like. And tell me what did you learn like, what among the people you met and the experiences you had. Not only, how did you change, how did you and your team change the minds of people, but, but what did you What did you see that surprised you? What were some of the insights you got into these, into the people in these battleground states that I may not know about.
David Barton 17:02
You know, it was interesting, because going into it, we had Barna do the polling to say, what are the reasons that people give for not voting, of these 32 million or these 55 million that say they're not going to vote, what are their reasons? Or really, what are their excuses? And so once we knew that we could target more what we were doing. And I was surprised that, in my my case, we would do two to three meetings a day. We spent time in those seven battleground states, do two to three meetings a day with faith leaders. And so we would pull in faith leaders, and we had already done some polling to know kind of what they were thinking. And in my case, it was easy to go back in history and pull out history and show historically, people of faith have always been the leaders in politics, not they've not been off to the side. They they're not. This was not an optional choice.
Daniel Lapin 17:52
There was for abolition of slavery, right? That's
David Barton 17:56
right. That's right. Every every positive change that happened, it was people of faith that were driving that, and they were doing so using the Bible and David. And whether we go back to
Daniel Lapin 18:08
was this also true in the 18th century with the eventual War of Independence? Was it also faith leaders?
David Barton 18:16
It was interesting that in the war for independence, the British actually had a term that they used to call. They called the faith leaders. Because back then, faith leaders, basically all of them, were black robes when they were doing their their clerical duties, whatever that was. And so Catholic or Protestant, whatever. And so at that point in time, they were all with black robes. And the British actually called them the black robe regiment, and said it's the black robe it's these guys with the black robes that are really causing us the most problem. And so it's interesting that in 1777 when the British landed in New York City, there were 19 churches in New York City, and they burned 10 of them to the ground and desecrated the other nine, and the mortality rate for leaders of faith was higher than for any other group in the American Revolution.
Daniel Lapin 19:09
Are you saying even soldiers?
David Barton 19:11
oh, even soldiers, yeah, the mortality rate by percentage was the highest in that group. And that's because, I mean, if you go to the Battle of Springfield, it was the Reverend Jonas Clark, Reverend James Caldwell, who led that. The Battle of Lexington was the Reverend Jonas Clark. The Battle of Concord was Reverend William Emerson, the road to Boston. I mean, all these, these guys had their churches out there, had their faith guys out there. And by the way, it was Christian and Jew both. And that's what I've always loved, is the fact that it is, has been Judeo Christian. And when Washington's inauguration occurred, after all, the thing is over and we win. There were 14 rabbis and ministers who planned his inauguration. There were seven different religious activities in there. And so the. Side by side was just always terrific. It was, it was a very, very good situation. And so that made it easy to speak to where we are now, because you can take, all right, the American Revolution, but let's go to the war of 1812 No, let's go to the Civil War. No, let's get the abolition of slavery. And you can just take any era of American history where there's been a challenge, and it's always been people of faith who stepped forward and so to show and you know my case, so much again, that I've learned from you, but looking at the biblical principles. And one of the things that we saw early from you was the biblical principles that are behind the free market system, you know, God's economy. And I take that back, and in America, that was introduced with the pilgrims who came here out of a very socialist system in Europe. And they do that, and they passed the first civil rights laws, and they passed the first education laws, and they passed the first private property law. All these things are biblical concepts. And they came from these Christian leaders that came in and said, hey. And by the way, you may know this, but the leader of the pilgrims, William Bradford, 62 years old, and he went in and learned Hebrew because he said his desire was to be able to hear the language in which God spoke to Adam. And of course, you're the one that who taught us that you know in Hebrew language, what you can't say in Hebrew is important, is what you can say in Hebrew because God gave the language. And so we're trying to pass that on to a lot of these faith leaders and say, Hey guys, from the very beginning, these these faith guys are in and that was our message leading up to the the election. It turned out really well. The faith, across all denominations, including,
Daniel Lapin 21:37
by the way, just this morning, yes, this morning, Susan, I were looking
David Barton 21:41
at that, that faith. We saw a Jewish increase.
Daniel Lapin 21:45
We were looking at pictures.
David Barton 21:47
I'm sorry, Rabbi, go ahead.
Daniel Lapin 21:48
We're watching, looking at pictures just this morning, of William Bradford's grave, which has Hebrew on it, Hebrew. So that's it. Yeah. So it is remarkable. Yeah, it's anyway, sorry, I didn't it is remarkable. But,
David Barton 22:06
oh no, but you're right. I mean that that connection has has been strong, and there's times when we've messed it up as Christians, for sure, no question about that. But there's times we got it right, and that's been our model. And so in the election, we saw that the Christian vote went up, the Catholic vote went up, the Jewish vote went up. For Trump all these areas, and it ends up that we had a very high election turnout. And so we really felt like that. We were able to get those people off the ground, get them moving. We knew what their objections were, and we were able to address that historically, and show them history. And it kind of kind of moved them to something. So I think we've got kind of a mandate now, at least he does going forward, which will make it easier, at least for the first year. Probably,
Daniel Lapin 22:49
yeah, you think so. Did George get the eventual results right on any of his polling?
David Barton 22:57
He got them all right and but we had enough time to be able to step in and do something with it, and that's where we saw the results was we had enough time to go in and organize meetings in key areas. We went into key congressional district where we really thought that the house was going to be the most difficult to win. The Senate would be easiest. The President would be the next most difficult, but the house would be the most difficult. And so we spent time in house districts that were flippable, that needed to flip, and we wanted, we wanted to go into this session having the House, the Senate and the president. And here's a little piece of trivia in history the Republican Party has we've had presidents since 1861 our first Republican President, and the last 102 years of American history, going back to Calvin Coolidge, there's only been 16 years when the Republican president had a Republican House and A Republican Senate. He very rarely gets a trifecta. Now there have been 40 years when Democrat presidents had a Democrat house and Democrat Senate, and so there's been 56 years when it was split. But out of 102 years, Reagan had eight years, but he did not have a Democrat House or Senate in those eight years. In you look back, you know Gerald Ford didn't have one in his three years. Nixon had two out of his five years. So rare, rare opportunity to have the House, the Senate and the president at the same time. And that's really what we were working for, was trying to get that opportunity
Daniel Lapin 24:34
to quote papers like the Atlantic as well as the New York Times. All of this happened, David just because bigoted and misogynistic voters, in spite That's right, in spite of her running a brilliant campaign, people just couldn't bring themselves to vote for a black woman. I mean, you know how it is.
David Barton 25:02
Yeah, it is. It is fascinated to see. And there have been so many excuses that it's fun to just sit back and laugh at them. Quite frankly, yeah, it's because this is the same, you know, four years ago. This is the world crowd that had a mandate for Biden. And so are you telling me that public education is so falling apart in four years that they suddenly love Trump but hate Biden. It's not if they had a brain. This is going back to the Wizard of Oz, where the Scarecrow says, I wish I had a brain, kind of thing. That's what I feel like these guys are sometimes on the commentary that they really need a brain because they don't even remember the articles they wrote four years earlier, when they start making the criticisms. But it was, it really was funny to see that well,
Daniel Lapin 25:45
I mean, the key, the key to it, is that, I mean, in my view, just as you said, your Avenue to the electorate, that that changed everything was the faith community. It was people who have religion, people with a connection to God.
David Barton 26:07
On the left, that's right, it
Daniel Lapin 26:10
is their faith. In the final analysis, you and I will weigh up the Republican Party in terms of how faithful it is in its policies to biblical values. Am I right? That's
David Barton 26:29
right. That's That's exactly right. I don't like Republicans because of the way they spell their name or because they've been here since 18. See, I like them because of what's in their platform and what their leaders do. And they are the most faith friendly. Hands down, of all sides, are the most faith friendly. And, you know, Dennis Prager taught me something that was very striking, and I should have recognized it. But, you know, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, the beginning of wisdom. And he just boiled it down and said, you know, the fear of God is the beginning of common sense. If you don't have a fear of God, you don't even have common sense. And Rabbi, here I'm sitting on the ranch. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, sir.
Daniel Lapin 27:10
No, I was just saying that. I was talking about something very similar to that on a recent podcast where I was trying to draw a distinction between intelligence and wisdom.
David Barton 27:22
Yeah, and, and there's a big difference. No, it's a huge and I'm in time. I'm sitting here on my ranch, and I got I'm looking at cattle, I'm looking at horses, I'm looking at livestock. And everywhere I see I only see two genders. I don't see 81 genders. I don't see 150 genders. And it's like, I think, when you lose that, that fear of God, that that God awareness, your whole value system skews. I know, right now in America, the universities are a group called helpful professors is teaching there's 81 genders in America right now, and in Europe, they're teaching that there's 150 genders and and I'm sorry, you can come to my ranch and look at my cattle and there's only two genders, you know, God made them male and female. And I really do think it boils down to that secular versus that spiritual connection. When you lose that spiritual connection, you lose common sense, you lose you lose the ability to even reason well. And I know that, you know, those other guys will have a bunch of PhDs after their name, but that doesn't mean they have common sense,
Daniel Lapin 28:29
not only not common sense, but not wisdom, in other words, understanding how the world really works. So somebody who has high IQ, high intelligence might well study a great deal of university produced data on criminology and jurisprudence, and he might end up and say, you know, there's a lot of crime being committed in the San Francisco area, largely by one particular demographic, and so what we need to do to improve things is to decriminalize shoplifting, and that's a perfectly reasonable position for a highly intelligent person to take. But anybody who has wisdom would say, excuse me. Little snag here, if you decriminalize shoplifting, you will get more of it. That's wisdom, not intelligence and and that's a that's a huge difference. Intelligence. You need to become a grand master chess player. You need intelligence fly a fighter jet. You need intelligence to do high level computer coding. But having a high intelligence doesn't give you an advantage in building a marriage and a family or building a business. They actually give you. A disadvantage something, David, you'll make good use of when I tell you this is that Forbes magazine, about three years ago, ran an interesting story on showing how the victims of of large cons and scams are usually high intelligent people. In other words, if you're high intelligence, you stand a better chance of being conned and scammed than if you are of average intelligence. And we don't have to go into the reasons for it. Now, if you know anyone who's interested, can easily research it, but but that simple fact by itself, intelligence does not tell you how the world works. And for building a family and building a marriage and building a business, you need to be able to understand people. Intelligence doesn't help with people. Intelligence helps with abstract ideas and things.
David Barton 30:59
So yeah, well said. And really well said,
Daniel Lapin 31:03
and it's a huge problem. What do you think of this problem? I only became aware of this lately. I think about 97% of the members of Congress both houses hold university degrees, about 30% of about 30% of Americans do so where 65% or more of us who do not hold degrees are being governed by people whose entire world view is shaped by the deeply flawed university system.
David Barton 31:38
Yeah, I think of the 18 different demographic groups that voted in the election. And there's a lot of sub demographic groups, but when you look at major race, white, red, brown, when you look at age groups, the Gen Y, Gen Z, the boomers, the busters, et cetera, those 16, those 18 different demographic groups, the only group that went more for Kamala than for Trump. And that didn't say it, right? The only group that, compared to four years ago, went more Democrat than Republican was those with college degrees. That is the only group out of the 18 that went more Democrat more woke more. You know, it's like we have economic problems. So let's put her in there, and let's get some more economic problems. It's like, it doesn't even make sense, but that is the only one of the 18 groups that increased was college degrees. And for me, I think I'm a big fan of the free market system, but I'm a huge fan of its fundamental element of competition. I think competition always makes things better. It makes athletes better, it makes everything better. And we have not had competition at all at the college level to speak up. And when we have competition, there are accrediting boards that demand conformity to what they want it to be. So there's not an independent accrediting thing where you can be accredited and be independent in the same way. So I'm looking forward to one of the things that Trump is promised to do is get educational choice in all the states. And I look at the education system, and there's in Jesus as a quote where he says, Every student, when he's fully trained, will be like his teacher. And I believe that. I believe that's an axiom that you will, you will develop the traits of those who teach you. And so what we have is a woke system that's been woke for 30 years, but parents have just been finding out about it in the last 10 to 12 years, and so that but that's 20 years too late. Look at all the teachers that are teaching all that's not where did kids come up with all this furry stuff in schools that I'm an animal? Where did they come up with aiding one gender? Well, somebody taught them that. That wasn't their parents had taught them that. And so I really hope that we can I
Daniel Lapin 34:05
um, David, you told us once,
David Barton 34:07
I'm sorry, Rabbi, I lost you, brother, Oh, really.
Daniel Lapin 34:11
All right, just,
David Barton 34:14
just try and get there. It came back. All right, okay, I'm sorry. That'll be an edit for you. David,
Susan Lapin 34:21
okay, well, yes,
Daniel Lapin 34:26
well, we'll come say hello to David. Hi there.
Susan Lapin 34:30
It's been such a long time. ,
David Barton 34:31
Ma'am it's been way too long. It's indeed, right. It is really good to see
Susan Lapin 34:38
I want to come to your ranch and count how many genders you have in your cows.
David Barton 34:46
We need to get you back behind a rifle as well. We need to have you shooting some more. You did very well.
Daniel Lapin 34:51
Do you remember how good she was?
Susan Lapin 34:53
Not so good
David Barton 34:54
I do. I do.
Daniel Lapin 34:56
Yeah, we had her in the range last week with a couple of guns
Susan Lapin 35:01
anyway, please regard home to everybody, to the whole family, and I'll let you go.
David Barton 35:08
We sure will
Susan Lapin 35:09
Okay. Thanks.
David Barton 35:10
We think of you guys often. We appreciate y'all
Susan Lapin 35:13
we do too.
David Barton 35:18
Gosh, so All right, Rabbi dropped out for a minute, but it appears to be back. Are you okay? Yeah,
Daniel Lapin 35:26
we're good. We're good. Okay, your organization, WallBuilders, fabulous organization. You have a wonderful museum.
David Barton 35:40
Yes, sir, we actually have expanded to two museums now we have a couple of them, the Fort Worth Dallas area, both World Class museums. That's great.
Daniel Lapin 35:48
And what are the two?
David Barton 35:51
One is the American Journey experience. That's where we have a lot of the larger items. So we have, I mean, so many, for example, we just, we just picked up from NASA. We picked up the mercury seven space capsule they had on display there. And so that would be considered something larger, obviously. But we have so much out of the space program. We have so much out of World War Two out of the Civil War, so much out of Hollywood entertainment type stuff. And so that's where we keep a lot of the larger artifacts. We tell the story of American history through those artifacts. The other museum we have is where we keep a lot of the books and documents. So there's more than 100,000 items we have. We have the first paper ever to have the word America written on it back in in the 1460 era. So, you know, we have history all the way back to that. We have Chris, Christopher Columbus, the stuff with him. We have about 1300 items out of Jamestown and Plymouth, our first two colonies, and going right on through the we have something from every single sign of the declaration, every single signer of the Constitution, every president. We have all sorts of items. So it's a fun training area. In the summer, we take history teachers and train them on what actually happened in history, and let them see and hold the actual documents. It's not what their teacher told them often, is what actually happened, as they get to see and then we do the same for young people who are going into college, 18 to 25 or in graduate work, take them back and let them see what actually happened and equips them much better for what they're about to be faced with in college. And then we also do public public seminars for parents, and what we call them the their 14 hour history seminars, where there's an hour of teaching and an hour of looking at the documents and artifacts. And so Glenn Beck and myself and Tim, we do those several times a year. So it's a very busy place, for sure, but you can go online and schedule tours if you want to, and if you get
Daniel Lapin 38:02
can any listener of the show, if they're in in Dallas, can they be able to see some of this?
David Barton 38:10
Absolutely, and we would encourage them to do that again, their world class experience. It's always good to sign up for a tour, because sometimes the crowds are so big that you don't get to see everything you want, so signing up for tour, but American Journey experience or wellbuilders.com Those are the two museums, and they share things together.
Daniel Lapin 38:30
Another wonderful thing you do, it's one of my favorite events. I've been at it a few times, is your annual Pro-Life Legislators Conference. And I would think it's probably just, you just had it a couple of weeks ago, just after the election, right?
David Barton 38:47
Yes, sir, we were just about 400 legislators, and folks in this time, it's that's probably a big thing we do is we'll monitor about last year, we monitored 152,000 pieces of state legislation. And so throughout the year, we'll monitor all the pieces, and we'll choose what we think are 12 to 15 things that are going to be very significant in the coming session. And so at our conference, we'll bring in speakers that deal with those 12 to 15 issues and try to create model legislation. So part of this is things that are, you know, what we call the Uniform Commercial Code, whether they're trying to change banking and take, in other words, under banking right now, if you have stock certificates, you actually don't own stock. The banking company does. And so we're trying to make it where people actually own the stock, not a certificate, because if the bank chooses not to redeem that certificate, you don't get your stock back. But things like that, or ESG type of stuff, the attack on energy private property, we have states like Utah that is 67% owned by the federal government. Nevada is 85% owned by the federal government. So. So we have measures where the states are getting some of their land back from the federal government. So whether it's that, or pro life issues, or educational issues, whether it's any any kind of gender issues, whatever, we have all sorts of help for them on that, and that's what we do throughout the years, help legislators.
Daniel Lapin 40:18
David, in my own personal view, Biden is a horrid, mean, petty, vindictive, little man, and one of the things that he's been doing lately is very interesting, and I want to know, is there like, is this standard practice? Have a lot of people done it, and am I wrong for seeing these as as as examples of his pettiness? One of the things he did was, and we're talking now, he's only got a few weeks left of his presidency. His successor has a huge mandate, one one the likes of which we haven't seen for many years. Nonetheless, he went ahead and told Ukraine that they may now launch attacks with American weapons into Russia. In my view, this is designed entirely to make life harder for his successor. He also has released enormous sums of money to the Palestinians, and he claimed, well, it's for humanitarian purposes. Well, money is fungible, and when you release it for humanitarian purposes, firstly, that's not what they use it for. And anyway, we under you get the idea. The third thing that this one, he hasn't done yet, and God forbid, I'm terribly worried about it, but if he, if he issues a ruling that the Department of Energy has to pull back permits for five or six new liquid natural gas terminals, that would be extremely difficult. It would be a horrible blow to the country's energy independence. Would be tough for the for President Trump this business of doing horrible things to make things harder for your successor. How common is it in our history?
David Barton 42:07
Well, I can tell you, it's better now than it used to be, and that's simply because of duration. One of the constitutional amendments that was added was because, let me take you back to Abraham Lincoln. So Abraham Lincoln gets elected in November of 1860 but he has not sworn in until March of 1861 so it's four months of Elaine Bucha Congress. In those four months, they went in and did so much damage. That's where you have the 11 states secede from the United States. That's where war is declared. And you have the same thing, even going back to John Adams. When John Adams was in office and Thomas Jefferson won the election, John Adams took and did those midnight appointments of judges, I think 28 different judges. He's trying to load up the judiciary with his guys. The Congress passed laws creating new judicial positions, and then John Adams quickly filled them to get Federalists in to run. So it's very common. And it used to be four months between the election and the inauguration. That has now changed to just a few weeks. And so from the first November to the first week of January, as all Congress gets anymore and the President comes in in the 21st area. So that is shortened because of all the damage that was being done out of spite and out of I lost. And I'm going to show you, and I'm going to make it as hard for you as I can, that, unfortunately, that's human nature, and therefore it's common. And so that was why we had a constitutional amendment to reduce that period of time. And this time, I think Trump has done the right thing by contacting the nations ahead of time. He's already been talking to Putin, he's already been talking to China and others, and he's saying, Look, you know what's going to happen when I get in there. So, you know, don't take this Biden stuff that seriously, because here's what's going to happen when I get in and so, you know, we've already seen in the Middle East, a lot a lot of messages sent there that I think will have significant impact. Iran is fully aware of what's going to happen. And so I think that Trump has done a very good job of negating Biden's impact by going ahead and talking to these people ahead of time is saying, Hey, don't consider this policy, because here's what's going to happen when I get there. And I think that's a good way to do it.
Daniel Lapin 44:27
Good. Yeah. Can you speak publicly about what you told me in our private conversation about some Hamas activity outside the Middle East?
David Barton 44:39
Yes, sir. We have one of the guys who is part of the Trump intelligence. And I'll tell you, the Trump Intelligence Team is a formidable asset. These guys are very, very good. And you know, my faith, Christian wise, is. I don't believe man is inherently good. I think he needs God to be inherently good, and without the influence of God, he's going to do all the wrong things. I mean, I just think history proves that. So what we have is some really good faith guys in the intelligence community that know bad human nature. They know Iran, they know North Korea, they know Russia, they know China, and they know that they're not inherently good and that you don't expect the best from them. You have to use a you know, you can walk softly to carry a big stick, the big stick thing. So they have been monitoring all the stuff going with Iran and the Houthis and Yemen, excuse me, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. And what's happening now is, and I think Europe is aware of this as well, but the message I just got from these guys, and I'll just read it to you, it says, breaking German prosecutors reveal that Hamas has weapons stockpiles in the EU that are kept ready for the moment, and order is issued to attack synagogues and other Jewish targets. Again, according to German authorities, Hamas held secret weapons caches in Germany, Denmark, Poland and Bulgaria to be used to execute attacks in Europe. So that's part of what Iran and others are up to, and that's, you know when, when Trump left office last time, Iran was down to 400 million barrels a day. Now they're 1.5 billion. They have got more money than they know how to spend or where to spend, and they're spending it with everyone that hates the United States and Israel, the big Satan, the little Satan, those two, we know what their viewpoint is, and so it's not surprising they would be stockpiling this stuff in Europe. But I do think that there's an opportunity to change that with the new administration
Daniel Lapin 46:53
and David, are we? Are we good for another 10 minutes,
David Barton 46:56
or something like that? Oh yes, sir, absolutely. Brother, yes, sir. Thank you very much indeed.
Daniel Lapin 47:01
Listen. Tucker Carlson, a few weeks back, brings on a guy I've never heard of before, Darryl Darryl Cooper, I think. And he he introduces him as this incredible historian and and to me, he sounded like a moron. And what I'm asking you is, how does a moron get away with saying that Churchill was the villain of World War Two? Churchill wanted war when, like, is there anybody who doesn't know or could easily find out that Churchill was not in power when Britain signed a treaty with Poland, and Churchill was not in power when Britain declared war. Churchill had spent the whole previous 10 years before 1939 trying to avoid and warning people basically, what I'm saying is this is not rocket science. It's like really easy to discover that Churchill did everything possible to make a war less likely and a German victory unlikely. How does this? How do many people listen to this? What's happened? Why are people vulnerable to this sort of manure?
David Barton 48:33
This is something that progressives have taught, and that is that labels are everything, and content is not, and that's why they're good at labeling. They label people by groups. They always have to have groups. So you're either conservative or liberal, you're progressive or you're antiquated, or you're black, or you're white, or you're Brown, or you're Jew, or you're Christian, or you're why not just be people who have thoughts and beliefs and we deal with knowledge? No, no, you got to be in group. And so inherently, if you're black, you've always been a victim, no matter what's happened in American history. If you're white, you've always been the victimizer. And so they do this by groups, and one of the groups that is in their their end club, one Do they accept is academics who have credentials from their academic institutions. Now, if you're an academic like me that doesn't have their credentials, you'll always be on the outside. And so on Wikipedia, they talk about Hama, pseudo historian. We've got the largest collection of original documents in America outside the Smithsonian, largest private collection, for sure. And that's a pseudo historian, because your
Daniel Lapin 49:36
Your hundreds of or any of your hundreds of lectures on history, would not need any credentials to know that you are the greatest historian on America that is alive today.
David Barton 49:49
Well, I can just hold up the letter that I'm talking about, or hold up the book or the gun or the but these guys, they credential each other, and once they credential each other, then they become an. Expert in that field. And that's the problem, is they look for labels, and it's got to be the right label, so it's not based on what you know or what you believe. It's based on whether you agree with them, and if you agree with them, then they'll credential you. And this goes back. This is part of the progressive stuff, where that America didn't have a PhD program to speak of until the progressives got it and brought it in. And thank you, America. We're the ones. I mean, even in Mein Kampf Hitler credits the American progressives with giving him the ideas on eugenics, going back to Woodrow Wilson and others that he learned. You know, the whole thing is crazy. The record of progressives is so, so bad, and yet they have the cleanest record among themselves. If you go to university, you'll think progressives hung the moon. They did everything. They hung the sun and the moon, and yet they're responsible for 10s of millions of lost lives, and therefore they credential these nonsensical guys that talk about how church hill, you know, and it's just as you said, anybody who knows to go look something up. But this is the thing with progressives. They never challenge you on sources. They never tell you how to find original sources. And Daniel, you'll love this. One of the things we do with young people in the summer is we teach them about primary sources. And you always go to primary sources. So when we talk about secession of the south from the North. What's the reason for that? And people say, well, slavery had nothing to do with it. We say, okay, there were 11 states that seceded, and five of them wrote their declaration of independence explaining why they seceded. So let's go read those five documents, and one of them is Mississippi. And Mississippi, it's a very short document, but Mississippi document says we are leaving the union and joining the Confederacy because of the slavery issue. We think that slavery is a good thing for mankind, and it's right there, all right. So that whole document, Rabbi is just a few paragraphs long. If you go to that document on Wikipedia, it gives you the document, but has a warning up top. It says Warning, this document does not rely enough on secondary sources. Now wait a minute, you're actually reading the document, and having the primary source is not sufficient. You need someone to tell you what this thing means. You can't read it for yourself, and so we show that to kids. Wikipedia has a warning not to read the primary document because you would understand it and that would contradict their narrative. It's crazy, and that's where we are in American education right now.
Daniel Lapin 52:32
You said many, many years ago already, you said the university system is sick. It's only being discovered by normal Americans in the last few years, they're suddenly discovering what the American University has become. Susan and I were trying to remember something you told us years ago, and that is that you can get an advanced degree in an American university without ever having come across Thomas Jefferson. Was that the name you said,
David Barton 53:05
Yes, sir. Yes, sir, yeah, you can get an advanced degree without having covered any founding father at all. Now I will change that, because since the time we've spoken, you now will cover all of them, but you will learn how bad they were, how wicked they were, how they all own slaves, how they all beat and abused their slaves, how they all had sexual relations with their slaves, and on and on. Now you will cover every founding father, but none of it will be true essentially, at the time we spoke, and this is the thing we've learned about history, once you go silent on something in history, once you've been silent for a while, you can come back later and make it exactly the opposite of what it was. And that's what they did for about 20 to 30 years. They took all the Founding Fathers out of history, and now they can come back and say anything they want, because nobody knows who the founding fathers are anymore. And the example I've always used because, as you mentioned earlier, I get asked by a lot of states to help do their history standards. And so I always look for what's missing, not what's in there. They're not going to get the obvious stuff wrong. They're going to get the stuff that they take out. And so what I've always noted is, let's say that we didn't say anything about Abraham Lincoln for 40 years, then you could come up with the history book that said Abraham Lincoln dropped a nuclear weapon on Thailand to end world war 17, and people would say, Wow, I never knew that. Instead of saying, That's ridiculous, but if they haven't been taught anything about Abraham Lincoln, they don't know what era he lived in, where he's from, what his beliefs were, and you can make him responsible for him, and that's what's happened in American education. So when we talked earlier, they were not teaching Founding Fathers at all, and then now what they do is they teach everything wrong about them, because they went 30 years without teaching. So that's the problem,
Daniel Lapin 54:52
incredible, absolutely, incredible. But I'm, you know, I'm only pleased that it's becoming it's becoming aware. It's becoming known, and people are understanding that, which is wonderful, yeah, that's right.
Yeah. One could say that
One could say that American conservatives have sort of split a little bit and and they're two separate streams. One might characterize them, possibly by saying one stream is a stream of which Trump is a reflection. It's it's a where America is Central, and that our goal is to restore America. Our goal is to restore Bible based values to America in terms of how to educate and how to deal with crime and how to restore the country to a place where it's good for everybody to live. And then there's another side of conservatism, many of whom became anti Trump, but their focus was on spreading American democracy. A lot of these people were very involved during the George W Bush administration, getting the whole world to be like America, and this is going to be the end of history, and we're going to get everything right and and there are a lot of conservatives who go that way, I am wondering if a similar schism exists in Christian America today as well, in the sense that I have become aware of. You know, Christianity Today, for instance, is a magazine that I'm no expert on this, but it sort of feels to me that it's gone in from my perspective, it feels like it's got off the track a little bit, even even somebody like Rick Warren who became so well known with these Purpose Driven Life down at Saddleback Church in Southern California. I'm just wondering if a lot of people who, who I used to think of as hardcore evangelical Christians, are becoming a little bit universal. I'm going to use a bad word, a little bit globalistic, a little bit sort of, we're concerned with the whole world, as opposed to trying to deal with our family and our county and our town and our states and our country first before we deal with the whole wide world. I don't know if I'm making any sense here or not, if I'm not just move on to the next question.
David Barton 57:45
No, you're making sense. And that's something we deal with very often. This is something, excuse me, this is something we do a lot of polling on with George Barna, because for us, there's a difference between a professing Christian and a biblical Christian, and for me, it's like there's a difference between a Republican who's actually read the platform and knows the platform, and a Republican who just says, I'm a Republican, and you don't even know what it means. And so for us, the difference is, if your life is molded and shaped by the authority of God, if God is the authority in your life, you get a different result than if you're the own authority in your life, if you're the ultimate authority in your life, and there's a lot of religious people, well, I don't agree with that. I disagree. Well, who cares whether you agree with or not? If it's in the scriptures, it's in the Scriptures. And so we have now gotten and we've done this for a number of years. This is something we've been tracking very clearly in polling, and just an example among the Christian community, only 9% of Christians read the scriptures on a daily basis. Now that's a real problem. When you're not seeing what God says about any issue, you just go on with what you heard on the news, what you saw on the latest meme, what social media said. And so more and more, we find that Christians do not understand God's value system and don't live by that value system, or they reject it because they disagree with it. They're the highest authority in their own lives. And so from my viewpoint, God's got to be the highest authority in my life. I've got to take what I see in His scripture and live with that. And you know, if he says there's two genders and I say there's 81 he's right, I'm wrong. There's a whole lot of people that don't go that direction, and that schism has been growing. So at this point, polling wise, we have the lowest percentage of Biblically oriented Christians that we've had in American history polling, and that's for 120 years. So what you're discerning, Daniel is exactly what is happening now. What we are seeing is, of all, all places the youngest generation is where we're seeing a turn back traditional values, because I think they've been raised in such a no value situation that it's just decimated them, and they once. Something to base their lives on. And so we're seeing a return back with the younger generation coming back. Of all things, that was one of the groups where Trump had the biggest pickup was in the youngest generation. The Gen Z generation, really jumped over to his side. And last election, they were totally on the other side. And so that's one where we're seeing a change. And we think, from what we can tell, it's because their life keeps having crisis, and they need something solid to hold on to. And scriptures have always been that for everybody. I mean, just every generation that used it, it's been an anchor to help hold the soul together. So your observations are exactly right. Rabbi, exactly right.
Daniel Lapin 1:00:43
I don't know whether I'm happy to hear it or sad to hear it, but you're not just you're not just a great American historian, but you're also a husband and a father. And I'm really intrigued, because I've, you know, I've watched your leadership of of wall builders, I've watched your deep involvement in in so much of the country's political process and and then at a certain point within the last year or two, I think you ceased to be the president of wall builders and your wonderful son, Tim Barton, who I've also known for years and years, he has now designated as the as the president of the organization. How did you and Cheryl make the decision of when to hand over to your son and step back just a little bit when, when, and how did you make that decision?
David Barton 1:01:51
I actually made that decision probably 20 years ago, that it needed to happen that was going through the Scriptures, and I saw in Bible in Leviticus, where it talked about that once a High Priest reaches 50, he's not supposed to be the high priest anymore. Now you'll still be a priest. He'll still train the younger priest, but he's not going to be doing the high priest stuff. And I said, I need a replacement for me. I need someone to step in and do and I need to be turning this over, and as I have more experience and more years added to my belt. I can teach a lot of other things and teach a lot of other people and help them over the hump with some things. I don't need to be running everything. I can step behind the scenes and and give counsel and give wisdom and experience. And so about 12 years ago, we started moving Tim into that position. I think he's officially been president now for seven or eight years. For three or four years, he was learning all the all the books and all the procedures and all the laws and all the things we deal with and so on. About the last 12 he's, he's really kind of taken it over, which is great, because it's, it's a thing where that he connects well with generations down and up. It's harder for someone at the top to connect down. We can connect up, but it's hard. It's easier for someone at his age to connect both up and down, and that's what you need for growth and for health. And so that was the model I used. And you know, I saw that with John Quincy Adams in American history, at the end of his life, as he was going through, he was still fighting slavery, but he took a young freshman legislator named Abraham Lincoln mentored him on slavery, and so that's the guy he mentored who ended up being the Canadian slavery in the United States. They knew they did. It's interesting. John Quincy Adams, in his last term of office, Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in that last term. He was there, and Abraham Lincoln was 14 months under John Quincy Adams before Adams died in Congress. And one of the things that John Quincy Adams had come up with was a three step plan to end slavery. He could never get his party to go along with it. He was a Whig Party, and they wouldn't go along with it, but he had a three step plan. Well, once Abraham Lincoln becomes president, he goes, Hey, I know a three step plan, and that's what he used to end slavery was the same stuff that John Quincy Adams had been doing back in 1847, 1848 some 13-14, years before Lincoln finally reached office. So you have, you have John quince Adams actually mentoring the guy who ended slavery. So the thing is, John Quincy Adams didn't end it, but he mentored the guy who did end it. And so that's, that's the lesson that I've seen is, is you got to pass on to the next generation. You got to get them in positions of leadership and and train them to pass it on so that we guys who have more white hair can help mentor them through the problems they have, but at the same time, they've got the vision, the leadership, the energy to keep doing what needs to be done.
Daniel Lapin 1:04:48
I am sure that since you put Tim at the head of WallBuilders, I'm sure there have been unexpected areas where he's just blown you away. He's just astounded you things you. Ever thought anything you can share, anything comes to mind of of of where he has visibly grown in office?
David Barton 1:05:10
Yeah, you know, one of the things I've learned is that when I speak a lot of times, I make assumptions about what people know, or I think I do. I assume they know what I'm talking about, and that's not always the case. And so he speaks without the assumptions that I had, and he's explaining stuff that, but Tim, everybody knows that, and then I find out, no, they don't know that. And so he comes at it with a different knowledge base than what I had, and does not make the same assumptions that I make. And that communicates a lot better, because he fills in blanks that I'm just assuming people already know, and that's not necessarily the case. So that has been a real a real eye opener for me as men, I was assuming a lot of things I didn't know. I was assuming, but listening to him communicate and listening to how people respond to that, I clearly was, was making some assumptions, and then he is also more more into where things are. And I think I'm up to date on technology, but I'm nowhere close to where those kids are. And so he's able to do things that are much more creative, much more appealing. I see him say, What a great idea. Why didn't I think of that? You know? And so it's that, it's that new energy, that new vision, that new perspective. He's learned from mistakes that I've made, so he doesn't have to make those mistakes. He keeps wise people around him as well, and so he does all the right things, but he also brings all the things that I missed that I didn't. And so it's just been a real good situation.
Daniel Lapin 1:06:38
Well, please do convey to him my appreciation for all he's doing and my respect for how extraordinarily well he has stepped into the position. It's really something. So can we assume that you're going to be a lot less busy now that November the fifth is behind us, successfully and joyfully? Is that or do you see your schedule still being quite as busy?
David Barton 1:07:03
No, it's going to be just about the same. Now I'm doing a lot of work to institutionalize the knowledge that we come up with all the things we found in recent decades that nobody else has heard about. So how do we institutionalize that? How do we get that into textbooks? So I'm working now with staff placement personnel, getting university professors in where they need to be. We need better university professors. We need to train more university professors that have a good view of history, that have actually studied the documents. We need more people in office. We need more people on school boards. So I'll do a lot more, and I am doing a lot more behind the scenes, helping kind of get other people moving forward, trying to get the whole army moving forward. I've got a lot of experience that will help them. And so that is, that is a regular thing that happens now, is, I'm spending a whole lot of time with legislators, and legislatures, doing a lot of testimony, doing a lot of legal cases, other things where that all those years of experience now we can help put it into public policy. We've been building an army of people who now know this stuff. Now it's time to start making policy based on what we know. So
Daniel Lapin 1:08:13
what you're telling me is that any hopes I have of soon going horse riding with you across those North Texas Hills I can forget about.
David Barton 1:08:25
You know, I had a rabbi once that told me the word retirement is not possible to say in Hebrew. And I think it was Rabbi Daniel Lapin who told me that retirement is not an option, just just like fair and all those other words you told me about and so, but I am happy to take time off to go riding horseback anytime. I love that as still my connection and man, we need to do that. Rabbi, we'll get together and do some horseback riding out through what God's created. It is beautiful, beautiful. As soon
Daniel Lapin 1:08:57
as I have my next Dallas trip organized. I will check in with you and see if you're you'll be in town and available.
David Barton 1:09:06
I would love it. Always love being with you. Always benefit from you, brother. Thank you for all you've taught me. It's
Daniel Lapin 1:09:12
just, it's been wonderful and and it's really, it's this talking of technology. You know, 10 years ago, I don't think this was even conceivable what we're doing right now, where we're able to not only talk, but I'm going to be able to share this with the entire international listenership of the rabbi Daniel Lapin show. It's, it's so crazy, but, but so wonderful. So it's like, it's like Samuel Morse said on the Telegraph in 1844 What hath God wrought?
David Barton 1:09:49
It is amazing, and it's amazing that we get to live and be part of it. Yeah, that's that amazing stuff that we're part of. It is
Daniel Lapin 1:09:55
cool that it is, gosh, well, terrific. What, what we'll do is, I will, I'll stop the recording part now so that we can part from one another with personal things we won't broadcast. So listeners, I know you enjoyed that, and you stay tuned, because I'm still going to have a few things to say to you, Well, I do hope that you enjoyed hearing David Barton. For some of you, it actually might have been the first time you've ever met him, which seems amazing, but I know that there have been some people who've been thrilled to hear that they'll be having a chance to meet him on this show. So there you go. You just did and the name of his organization, wall builders, and when, as I said, when you're in Dallas, you don't want to miss the opportunity. If you can possibly arrange a tour of the wall builders museum, you don't want to miss that you will see things and discover things you won't hear or know about anywhere else at all. So thanks for being part of the show. And David Barton, thank you very much for giving us the time and the opportunity to chat together on the air. Really appreciate that. And warmest regards to the whole Barton family as we get ready to bid farewell for another week to all the Happy Warriors at RabbiDanielLapin.com, so until next week, I want you to progress onwards and upwards with your families, your friendships, your faith, your finance and your fitness. I'm Rabbi. Daniel Lapin, God bless you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
