TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: What Did a Christian America Mean in 1776? What Does It Mean Today?
Date: 09/11/2026 Length: 01:16:19
Daniel Lapin (00:01)
David Barton, in my view, the most important contemporary American historian and a very good friend. David, as you know, we are trying to understand what is happening in America today. And particularly the lens through which we're looking at it is that we find that Jews who have been very well settled in some cases for a thousand years or more, for instance, Jewish communities in Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Jewish communities in England, in Spain, in Portugal, in France, in Germany, and then of course the twentieth century. Jews have into our DNA this basic idea. That at some point or another we are no longer welcome in the country in which we've lived. It's a weird thing because you know, people ordinarily who live in America live in America. I don't think many Irish Americans say, well, you know, one day they're gonna turn against the Irish. But there's such an international pattern over a thousand years of Jews running out of time in almost every place. And we've always said never in America, and yet with the growing influence of Islam, we're not so sure, but at any rate we do know that Jews, even strongly religious, right wing Jews who are solidly conservative, are starting to feel a little skittish and they're starting to say, is this finally happening here as well. And that's really what we want to explore. And Susan, I think you've got a clear picture of how you want us to take this.
Susan Lapin (01:59)
Yeah, obviously, we would like you to add in some history here because that is your forte. But specifically to hone into it, depending on what you what newspaper or podcast you listen to, I feel like I'm hearing two sides. One is the side that we've been hearing since the nineteen sixties in the United States, but it got stronger and stronger, which is stop talking to me about this being a Christian country. It's secular and it's meant to be secular and leave God out of it. And that is something we've personally, along with you, have pushed back on for many decades.
But now there's another side coming, which is saying, well, the founding fathers made a mistake by not explicitly saying this is a Christian country. And so we need to make this a s not only in psychology and in culture a Christian country, but we actually need to now make this legally a Christian country and I feel like that's the pit, there's a pressure. It's coming from both sides now. It was coming for a long time just from one side.
They leave God out of this and don't talk to me about being a Christian country. And now it's coming from the other side saying, No, it actually needs to be a Christian country and only welcome to Christians.
David Barton (03:15)
Yeah, that is a historical argument, and it's only an argument because Americans don't know their history. there were over 300 court cases that declared America to be a Christian nation. the Founding Fathers repeatedly in their writings declared it a Christian nation. But it's very different and using that terminology triggers so many people. But you have to understand that that being a Christian nation in their definition was not the historic Christian nations of Europe where you had a king, you had a parliament, and we will kill anyone who is not of that flavor. for the Founding Fathers, and as the courts explained in those more than 300 rulings, it is the value system. It is the scriptural Biblical value system. And that's why in this Christian nation we were electing Jews to office in the sixteen hundreds, when all of the colonies had Christian requirements, because it was the common Biblical value system.
Now, you did have for a long time in America as a Christian nation, they were literally - Virginia was probably the worst in killing other Christians that weren't of their particular denomination of Christians. So you had the Anglicans in Virginia when that that's what the British had been as well, with the British Anglican state established church, and they were killing Baptists, and they were killing Methodists and Quakers and people that weren't of their particular Christian persuasion.
Whereas, in other colonies they were much more different than that. Said, look, if you if you have the value system of Christians, if you have that Biblical basis, Christians, Jews, we're all protected here. So, when one says Christian nation, it's important really to define what that means. and from the court standpoint, it meant Christian values. because right now a Christian nation under the definition of a Pelosi or a Biden would exclude me as a Christian. I would not be welcome in their Christian nation. And that's what the courts were trying to deal with was the value system versus the theological system. and it's not establishing in the early areas with the founding fathers, it was not establishing theological standards. It was establishing value and principle standards and values that we would today, I think, safely call Judeo-Christian values.
Although I don't know we can say that anymore because there's a whole lot of Christians who have become anti-Semitic in just shocking to many Americans. But it all goes back to Rabbi to something you've said for a long time, and it's really the Bible. They're anti-Biblical. There's a lot of Christians who are anti-Biblical, and as such, they are anti-Semitic as well. they are anti-Israel. we're seeing that with a lot of the podcasters here. They profess Christianity, but they're not Biblically literate people.
They just wear that label. And that was the problem in Europe, they claimed to be Christian nations because of the king had declared them to be whatever, but their behavior did not line up with Biblical and scriptural values. And that's one of the hardest things to define. How do you legally define what we're talking about here? And it's just hard to do. So what the courts had done, especially and I have a number of of documents
We, at Wall Builders have two very large museums. We have the largest private collections of any group in America, about 160,000 items. But we have right now in display documents from all 56 of our founding fathers who signed the declaration. We're the only museum in America that has that displayed. And it's interesting that one of our founding fathers, Samuel Chase, who was from Maryland, signed the declaration. He was also justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. We have immigration documents where the immigration documents coming in.
The person coming in says, I do profess a belief in Christian faith. And again, that was the broad Biblical kind of stuff because under that were protected both Jews and Christians. So it's a hard thing for people today to try to figure out what Christian nation means when they use today's definitions. You have to go back to the definitions as they were originally used at that point in time.
And you have to apply all the American definitions 'cause if you apply just the Virginia definition of a Christian nation, it's gonna be pretty exclusive. It's not even gonna allow most Christians into that Christian nation.
Susan Lapin (07:27)
Could you share the beautiful story about the prayer, about whether or not the Continental Congress should open with a prayer?
David Barton (07:35)
Susan, that is such a great piece of history to bring out to illustrate this point, prior to that prayer, there had been over America a revival, a spiritual awakening that's called the Great Awakening. George Whitefield is probably the key person in that, but there were so many others, Samuel Davies and Jonathan Mayhew and so many other people were leaders in that spiritual a awakening, the Great Awakening. And at that point in time, of the thirteen colonies, nine of them had state established religions. So if you were in Virginia, the Anglicans run Virginia. If you happen to be in Massachusetts or Connecticut, the Congregationalists run there. and so there are the Presbyterians in North Carolina, et cetera. And so what happened is George Whitefield as he would travel all of these colonies sharing scriptures, preaching in all those colonies. You had people from different backgrounds of Christianity coming together. And they would often fight and have border wars with their other Christian colonies because they're like Europe. They're thinking that way. And he is the founder of the Methodist Church and he would preach a sermon that several of the founding fathers recorded and talked about.
And it was called the Father Abraham Sermon. And he, as founder of the Methodist Church, said, You know, I dreamed that I died, and last night I was taken to the gates of heaven, and Father Abraham met me there. And I looked at Father Abraham and said, Father Abraham, I am so happy to finally be here and be with all my Methodist brethren. And Abraham looked, Father Abraham looked at him and said, I am so sorry. There are no Methodists here. And he was shocked and said, No Methodist?
He said, Well, I have some really good Baptist friends. I can't wait to meet them. And he said, I'm so sorry. There are no Baptists here. There's no Baptist? And he went through all the various denominations. And he said, Father Abraham, who who's here? And Father Abraham answered by quoting a scripture that says, He that works righteousness will be accepted of him. He said, We don't have any groups or denominations here. It's those that do what God wants and obey his will. And so
It's interesting, Susan, when you talk about that first prayer in Congress, when they prayed, when they got together the first time and it's better to think of the first Congress not as America but more as Europe, because you had thirteen nations. You didn't have thirteen states, you had thirteen nations and they didn't necessarily even like each other. Virginia and Maryland had border wars with each other, as did the Carolinas. So when they're getting together, they're all Americans, but they're from different backgrounds.
Susan Lapin (10:16)
I actually say this are we talking seventeen seventy five at this?
David Barton (10:19)
We're talking - thank you. This is 1774. This is September of 1774. So they get together in the first Continental Congress. That was a motion made where they said, Hey, why don't we get all the delegates together from all thirteen colonies and let's talk about if we should join and work together. And so in May of 1774, and it was suggested at that point in time that they open with prayer. And that came from a very religious man out of Massachusetts, Thomas Cushing.
And he said, hey, why don't we just open this meeting with prayer? Really simple request. And it's interesting, a Presbyterian, John Jay, who became the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, said, no, no, no, no, no, no. We can't do that. We have so many different denominations here. And he was joined by a man from South Carolina, Rutledge of South Carolina, who also was a very dismissed and no, there's too many denominations. And it's at that point that Samuel Adams stood up and said, you know, he said, I'm a man of strong religious faith.
And I'm willing to listen to any person who fears God and will offer prayer. And he said, I suggest that not only we offer prayer, he suggested a guy named Reverend Jacob Duchey. Now, Sam Adams is what was called a Puritan. He was out of Massachusetts, and the Puritans were most heavily persecuted by the Anglicans. And so he reached over and said, I know an Anglican minister that loves God and loves America. Why don't we have him pray? And what you would think were enemies, he said, have him pray. And so he came in to pray quite different beliefs or quite different denominations from Sam Adams. and he led in prayer and it led to a two hour Bible study. They record that there were five chapters of the Bible, they all studied together that morning. some of the guys who had opposed it said, we watched, and even the stern old Quakers were crying as a result of all the prayer and stuff that went on. And so that the and it's interesting that.
Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson all talk about George Whitefield's father, Abraham sermon, that if you love God and work righteousness, you're accepted of him. And that's what brought them all together. And they finally realized, hey, you know what? We come from different college. We each have different state religions, but we all love God and we want to do the right thing.
So, it led to a bonding that is unbelievably strong had it not been for that first prayer in Congress, they probably would have got nothing done. There probably would have been no revolution, which goes back to teaching of the scriptures that George Whitefield and others had done for 30 years leading up to that point. So it's a great,
Daniel Lapin (12:51)
Hmm.
David Barton (12:51)
great story. there are famous pictures that were done at that time of it. You can go online and look up for images, first prayer in Congress, 1774, and you'll just see a wonderful picture of 40 delegates kneeling and praying.
Various postures of prayer, some with their head raised, some with their head bowed, some kneeling, some standing, reflecting all the diversity that was there. But the fact that they love God, they love the scriptures, they wanted to do what's right, brought all together.
Daniel Lapin (13:22)
It seems so true that without that opening nothing could have emerged from that meeting. David, earlier you alluded to non-Biblical Christians. And I mean as you know, we've been closely allied with the Christian community such as it is for many, many years. But I must say that phrase startles me. Could you elaborate how do you have a non Biblical Christian or are you saying non old testament but yes New Testament Biblical Christian?
David Barton (14:07)
Well, any New Testament Biblical Christian has to be Old Testament because the teachings in the New Testament and as a Christian I would point specifically to the book of Romans where that Paul talks about how that Christians don't exist by themselves. Without Jews there are no Christians, and that he gives the example of an olive tree and grafting into the olive tree, and that Christians have been grafted into the olive tree of the Jews, and that it's not Christians that hold up the Jews, it's Jews that hold up the Christians. So that is a very strong, very vivid, very clear teaching of Christianity, in the book of Romans, in the Christian New Testament. And so anyone who becomes anti-Semitic at that point clearly does not know the teaching of their own Bible. For them to turn against Israel, become anti-Zionist, they don't know the Bible. And so I'm going to speculate as an outsider who is not Jewish, but what my observation is, you have many, many, many Jews in America who don't like Israel. And you say, how can how can a Jew be anti Israel? And it's because of their belief system. And in the same way you have many, many, many Christians who don't like the Bible and they make up their own stuff about it. You cannot be a Christian and say that there's more than two genders and those genders are male and female if you read the Bible. But we have a lot of Christian denominations who say there's as many as eighty one genders. That's because they're not Biblical. They're not used
Daniel Lapin (15:39)
Right.
David Barton (15:39)
in the Bible. They wear the name badge that says I'm a Christian or I'm a Jew or whatever, but they don't know the book. That's right.
Daniel Lapin (15:44)
So it's a cultural affiliation, but it's not the core of their belief system or the core of their value system. So if we look
David Barton (15:50)
That's right. There
Susan Lapin (15:52)
at it though, it's generational and it's very scary. It's very where
David Barton (15:55)
Yes, it is.
Susan Lapin (15:56)
and I know you've been working for a long time trying to let people know what is being taught on college campuses and how anti-American and anti-God it is. And yet people's children kept on going to college.
We have so many friends, Christian friends, who brought their children up in the church, brought them up as patriotic Americans, then they went to college and it got completely turned upside down. I think people are more aware. You were you were trying you were yelling and people weren't listening to you know, in large numbers. People were ignoring what you were saying. I think pretty much everybody or most people now say, that's what he meant. Now I understand what he was saying.
Do you see a way to pull young people in who've been and it goes past the college because they become the people who are the journalists, they become the people who are the politicians. So even people who don't go to college get affected by those who did. Is there a path you see for turning around the younger generation?
David Barton (16:56)
Yeah, the thing that's interesting about history is it takes so long to happen. I mean, literally it's generational, g it just generations. And so nothing ever happens in a generation. It happened it started three generations before and nobody noticed it. And then it shows up in this generation. And so you know, in in my case I go back to both Darwin and Marx and their anti-God position. And their interpretation of the world without God. And that was radical thinking back then. And we kind of blew it off, and people blew it off, and the church blew it off and they scoffed at it. We had legal trials like the Scopes trial that upheld that you can't have secular creation. We know that we're created from God. Our declaration says that we have a creator. So we have all of that, and most people blew it off, except a bunch of academics took it seriously. And they started getting college degrees, and then they started becoming the professors, and they started becoming the university presidents. And so you go from, let's say, the 1860s to now the 1890s. And you're starting to have universities produce people like Woodrow Wilson, ardent secular progressives, who he professed Christianity and then had a viewpoint that is directly against many, many, many Bible teachings. And then from Woodrow Wilson, that starts. He becomes the president of Princeton University, he starts mainstreaming that nonsense. And so then you're looking at the 1930s and that's where you start seeing this nonsense show up on the Supreme Court. And they say, well now wait a minute. We don't really need the Bible in many ways. We can be a secular nation. And so then in the nineteen sixties, the Supreme Court for the first time in our history, says we don't think it's appropriate to have prayer and scripture study in public anymore. That needs to be relegated to private life. And then you move into the 1880s and now, or 1980s, and now you've got Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden and a whole group of people that profess Christianity and don't believe any of its tenets. Well, they didn't get there overnight. That's a hundred-year process. And so where we are today is the result of a hundred years of, in the scriptures there is that it talks about that when the good men went to sleep, the enemy came in and sold tares in his field. That you had a guy with a good farm, good crops, and he all went to sleep, and his competitors came in and sowed all this junk in the field so he wouldn't have good crops. And that's the way I see America. Is this has been the enemy we went to sleep, the enemy came in, we weren't paying attention to who our teachers were.
We send our kids off to school and think that they're not going to teach radical stuff like that. And then we find out when our kids are 20 years down the road that they did teach that radical stuff, and now we don't know how to regain our kids. And so it's a slow process. But because of that, and because when I look at awakenings we've had in America's history, they're generational type things. That the 34 years that George Whitefield preached that Father Abraham sermon.
It took people hearing that for 34 years before you get the founding fathers willing to apply that at the first Congress. And and so it's generational. And so when I look right now in the polling, we do a lot of national polling, but when you look at what are you have the the boomers, you have the baby boomers, the Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z. Now
Daniel Lapin (20:27)
Yeah, yeah.
David Barton (20:28)
we're in the alpha generation, but the Gen Z right now, and that would be in your early twenties.
Those groups, by all polling accounts, are back into the scriptures and studying the scriptures, and that younger group is becoming much more pro-Israel. It's the Y group that's the worst, which we call millennials. And that Y group, they're the worst on scriptures, on believing the scriptures, they're the worst on Israel, they're the worst on all those things. But the Z is better, the excuse me, the X. Yeah, the Y is the worst. X was okay, Y got worse, but Z is showing a turnaround. And so with that, I've got great hopes. We do a lot of training in the summer of that Z generation. We're right now in the middle of training at our facilities. We we bring these kids in and try to ground them in a Biblical, historical, constitutional approach to things. And that generation, polling wise,
They're back in the scriptures, they're reading the scriptures, they're back to liking Israel, they're back to liking Jews, all the things they should be because of what the scriptures teach. So I see the swinging.
Daniel Lapin (21:40)
David, what is reaching those Gen Z? I mean, given that the most dominant influence in American cultural life has been the university, you're telling us the most hopeful and uplifting news that these people in their twenties, early twenties and up, are coming back, are rejecting the secularism to some extent. Where's that coming from? Who is guiding, who is leading, who is influencing?
David Barton (22:07)
You know, that's a great question, Rabbi, and I've got to make a distinction. I hate doing this, but I gotta make a distinction. Even in the Gen Z, it's the Gen Z young men that are coming back. The Gen Z young women are still radicalized. and so the young men are coming back. The young women are not there yet. They're about twenty points behind the young men. But what's happening with the young men is they are studying the scriptures.
Daniel Lapin (22:34)
Everything comes back to the Bible.
David Barton (22:36)
Everything comes back to the Bible. They are they are reading the Bible themselves. And as they read the Bible, it changes their value system, it changes their outlook, their worldview, it changes I hope this is not sacrilegious, but you hope to get the mind of God the way He thinks. You hope to implant that in the way you think. And so that's what's happening is they're getting that scriptural thinking, that scriptural perspective, that scriptural worldview back in, and they're
rejecting socialism, which the scripture does. They're rejecting the liberalism, which is anti-scripture. They seem to be having genuine experiences with God themselves, genuine experiences in getting into the scriptures. And the more they do that, the more it comes back to that traditional positive relationship that has been there. And it's always been, and you know, France, they've been called a Christian country. They're certainly a Western civilization country. They have the highest degree of atheism anywhere of any country I know of. I don't know why they're called a Christian country, but they are. And so with that perspective, that's the problem with labels, is there's an idiom that we have in Christian scriptures that you judge a tree by its fruits. And I don't care if you say you're an apple tree, if you have Peaches hanging on your branches. You're not an apple tree, regardless of what you say. And like France may call themselves a Christian nation, but they're not producing the fruit that goes with a Christian nation based on scriptures. And what I'm seeing with this Gen Z generation, especially the males, they're coming back in kind of what I think you could call a revival, if you will. Revivals always spend generations and they always span years.
But coming back in a revival of scriptural thinking, which I think will, they're our next generation of leaders. They'll start running for school board another 10, 12 years, they'll start running for office. They'll start being the ones who have a different viewpoint. So policies will change. And that's always what I hate about history, is you go in cycles. We seem not to learn from the previous generations and we seem to repeat it because surely we wouldn't be that dumb. Surely we wouldn't do that, and then we are. We do that.
And so what I'm seeing right now is a good shift back in a positive direction. Although we've still got all the Gen Xs and the Gen Ys that are running things right now. And you know, we're seeing but I say that also pointing to the fact that I'm seeing policy changes in several bodies now and that are very positive, things I was not expecting. A rise of patriotism, I will say for me is a very
A rise of traditional patriotism is a very good sign because that's kind of a God and country thing. We're proud of God again, we're proud of the country, we're proud of the flag, we love seeing the flag. Well, that's good because we've gone through about forty years where that we'd rather burn the flag, would rather disparage the flag, and I love coming back to a love of country, but it it's it starts with the love of God and the love of the scriptures, and that's what we're seeing in that younger generation.
Susan Lapin (25:46)
So would you say that we're reading about Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens and they're getting the and Tucker Carlson, they're getting the attention, are you not worried that they're a growing influence? You're saying they may be a waning influence.
David Barton (26:03)
They are influencers for sure. And they've got, you know, a big influencer has forty five million. All right, that's about one and a half percent following in America. And it doesn't mean that everyone who follows them agrees with them. You know, we keep up, we watch what they're doing, we would show up on their social feeds because we watch and see what they're doing, not because we agree with it. We don't. And so right now
If you have a following of three and a half million, you've got one percent of America, which doesn't even mean that one percent agrees with all the things you're saying, because there's many followers who just want to keep up with it. So what has happened is the media and other groups highlight the people they agree with, and so it's really a loud cacophony of voices that seems like there must be a growing massive movement. And there is to some degree, particularly among the Gen Y.
Gen X but Gen Y is the worst right now. They're moving that direction, but the Gen Z is not, and a lot of the boomers are not. You know, people like me, we're not moving that direction. We haven't changed our position. But we're finding a good way to say it is I work a whole lot in politics and government and very familiar with polling. And right now the Democrats are pulling their hair out because at this point, they think Trump should be down 35 points in the polls, and he's only down five points in the polls. And it's not because the loud voices aren't disparaging him and tearing him up because they are. It's just that a lot of people keep their mouth shut and they're not saying anything and they're not going with it. And so the polling shows that Democrats aren't having the support they are. And so now we're seeing with Graham Platner up in Maine, Democrats this morning are backing away from their own Democrats.
We're seeing eight Democrats in Congress said these guys are too radical for us. We're gonna have to start our own Democrat movement. And they've been silent for years. Where were they criticizing Pelosi or where were they criticized? They weren't. And that's where most Americans are. They're on the silent majority. And so when you look at a influencer like Candace or Tucker, all right, so you've got three or four percent of the nation that is watching you. Doesn't even mean they all agree with you.
And I'm just not really impressed with what impresses a lot of other people on, wow, Kansas has gone off. Yeah, she has. But there's a whole lot that haven't. And so the issue we have so often it's been an issue for generations, is trying to get that silent majority to step up and speak up and show up and start supporting, for example, Israel, which many do. And I the other thing that I'm encouraged about is a lot of Christian pastors.
Who have had their mouths shut for way too long are now starting to stand up for Israel. And good, you should have been doing that ten years ago. And then a lot of those kids that go to your church wouldn't have been influenced by their professors. But nonetheless, it's starting to catch up. So for me, I see things coming back in a favorable direction, which does not mean they're going to be good next year. Doesn't mean they're going to be good five years from now. It means we're headed back toward a good direction with a lot of fight along the way.
Daniel Lapin (29:13)
It's always so good talking to you, David. You know, you sound a lot like Winston Churchill. Yeah, it tells the truth, not gonna be easy. Things aren't over, the problem hasn't gone away. But here are the positive signs. There's reason for hope.
Susan Lapin (29:30)
But can we deal with the elephant in the room?
Daniel Lapin (29:32)
Well, I was thinking and in I don't want to speak about the elephant, I actually want to speak about the horse. Okay. The Trojan horse. The Trojan horse, okay.
So, they wanted to attack the city, so they put a lot of soldiers in this big wooden horse and wheeled it to the gates of the city, and then in complete innocence the city people wheeled it inside to take a closer look at it, and then the soldiers tumbled out and attacked the city. Is it possible that the Trojan horse here is looking at Islam as a religion?
When in reality it is not a religion as much it is a religion, but a more importantly, it's a political movement. It's got soldiers ready to tumble out and take over. I don't know if what's happening up in Collins County at Epic City is significant. It's in your backyard, so you would know. But I do know that just a couple of miles from where we have grandchildren living in New Jersey is Patterson, New Jersey, which for all intents and purposes is today a Muslim city. Michigan has places that are Muslim cities. And it's not the same as saying there are a lot of Catholics living in that city, or there are a lot of Presbyterians living in that city, or there are a lot of Baptists. It's not the same. Because None of those Christian faiths, or Jewish faiths for that matter, as far as I know, have any religious obligation to take over and to impose a system on everybody else. But Islam does, and in that sense, it's closer to what communism was in the twentieth century than it is to a religion. Please help me with my thinking on this.
David Barton (31:31)
This is gonna sound so weird. I'm gonna answer your question by going in a different direction and eventually coming back to it. So, what we face in America right now, I mean, it is the wildest thing to me that the people who most support Islam right now are progressives. And the problem with that is the very first group that Islam wipes out after it gets control is progressives. But of course, they don't know that because that's history.
And with progressives having taken education now, did you know the only major academic course in America now in high schools, all 50 states, that does not have an end-of-course test is history. We do not require an end-of-course test in history because history, who cares about that? We're always evolving, we're always changing, we're always moving forward. You can't learn from history. And so progressives have eliminated in education any end-of-course test on history. And if you knew history, you would know that progressives are the first ones that get killed by Islam when they take over. And so it's progressives moving Islam forward because they want to be against that Judeo-Christian value system. They hate that value system. So Jews and Christians both are both enemies to them. And it is so weird. So I'm gonna back up a little bit. I'm gonna back up a lot. So back to when America got found in very early on. Our education, our public education system came out of the colony of Massachusetts. Massachusetts, the first public school laws there were the pilgrims, the Puritans. They passed them in 1643, 1647. And the laws required that you teach children to read out of the Bible. They spend time in the Bible. It's called the Old Deluder Satan Law. It said it being the one chief project of that Old Deluder Satan Law to keep us from knowing the scriptures.
So it was all about studying the scriptures. But studying the scriptures, and it's interesting that Governor Bradford so loved the traditional Hebrew education system that he taught himself Hebrew at that point. He didn't have anybody to teach him. He taught himself, and so 12 pages of his journal is written in Hebrew. He's just so proud of himself. He's learned Hebrew. He can read it from the original scriptures. It's awesome.
Daniel Lapin (33:42)
Yeah, I have a copy of that. It's incredible.
David Barton (33:45)
Yeah, at a time when that was not going on. I mean, it's just self-study. So out of that, we look at we look at New England as being the birthplace of public education and the education systems. That's where the higher universities were, Princeton and Harvard and Yale and others, and they were all seminaries of religious training. What I what I find intriguing is going through those early original records. See how I can say this.
We have four centuries of American history going back to the early 1600s, we're now four centuries. And for the first three centuries of American history, education systems taught students how to think. Now they teach them how to learn. And there's a difference between a thinker and a learner. A learner doesn't know how to feed himself. He relies on someone else to put that food into him. And a thinker is capable of self-feeding.
And so we find the change in the early 1900s. We literally have the documents where that in the early 1900s they say, look, we're having assembly lines, Henry Ford's got assembly lines, we have textile mills, we have these massive factories, we're in high production. We don't need workers who think, we need workers who will take orders. And so that is when you see the pedagogy of education in America changing in the early 1900s. That's the first time ever.
That we introduced true, false, multiple choice, or fill in the blank. Because that says, Did I the teacher tell you A, B, C, or D? Did I the teacher tell you this, true or false? so what you're doing is you're learning to repeat back what your teachers told you. And so now we're not thinkers anymore. If I go back to those early universities, Hebrew was a language that those kids studied. And as a result, and I'm no expert on this, but you are.
One of the things that at least stands out as a story looking back is that that Jewish education system was all about catechisms and all about asking questions. And that makes you think. And so one of the most exciting pieces I have in our collection is a letter from John Quincy Adams when he's 18 years old. And he's a senior at Harvard University, and in the letter, he's talking about a forensic he is going to do the next night. So he writes this letter on a Tuesday night, and on Wednesday night, he's going to do a two-hour debate with another student. The student is William Cranch. And so as a typical 18-year-old, this letter is just trash talking the other guy. Because he says, you and I tomorrow night, tomorrow night, you and I are going to debate for two hours. You have an hour, I have an hour, and I am still going to mop the floor with you. And he just goes into this thing of how you might as well give up because I'm going to beat you.
The debate for two hours was on a stalk of asparagus. And the stalk of asparagus is green on one end, it is white on the other end. And the question was, did God intend you to eat the green end first or the white end first? How can you have a two-hour debate on a stalk of asparagus and which end you should end first? That wasn't the point. The point was, I'm learning how to think. So I'm going to find the weaknesses in your argument and point them out.
I'm going to make strengths in my argument and assert those strengths. And so they had debates on the most ridiculous things simply to teach them how to think. What we have today is a bunch of learners. Whatever their teacher has taught them, whatever they got in school, that's all they know. They didn't ask questions and say, wait a minute, is there another side to what you just said and that's where progressives are. They don't ask questions. And so they're all for Islam and they want Islam out because Islam take care of the Christians and Jews that they hate.
Nobody asks the question, what happens to you after the Christians and Jews are gone? What is the history of Islam with secular folks, with progressives like you? What nobody is asking those questions. And so they're absolutely stupid now in what they're doing because they're promoting their own suicide, but they don't know enough history to know that because they're not thinkers, they're learners. They've gone through an American education system that for a hundred years.
Has indoctrinated them with thoughts. And it's like when you get a kid who likes socialism, we just ask a simple question. Give me one example anywhere in the world and all the thousands of years of history, show me one example where a socialist nation has been able to prosper and provide and protect individual freedoms. Give me one example. They can't. So why is it that 71% of American college students prefer socialism over the free market? Because they don't think. They don't know history, they don't know what's out there.
And that's literally what's happening with progressives. They have wiped out history. They hate history. They're always looking forward. They don't want to go back. And because of that, they're walking right into their own suicide. And they're well-intentioned, they're really stupid, but they're well-intentioned. And because they don't know history, they don't know scriptures, they're killing themselves and they just don't know it.
Daniel Lapin (38:51)
What do you think of the theory that socialism is the almost default position to which people deprived of a Biblical worldview will automatically slide to. It's not an accident and it's not only stupidity, it's almost a form of spiritual gravity that pull socialism is where basically good people head in the absence of a God centric worldview. Anything you'd add to that?
David Barton (39:28)
100% agree. America proves that. The colonies up north that started reading the Bible, which was forbidden in Europe at that time, when they were reading the Bible in America, it was forbidden to read the Bible in Europe. And they came here as socialists, and it was reading the Bible that specifically got them out. There are five Bible verses that we point to that moved the pilgrims out of socialism. It's interesting. They were socialists for the first seven years. And they have excellent records. Governor Bradford, he records all that.
They moved out of socialism over a period of seven years because they were studying the scriptures themselves and they were watching and analyzing by experience that socialism wasn't working. And so they moved to a different and Bradford points out, well he didn't point out, but he well let me let me point out. The first free market business in America was started in 1627 in Aptepic, Massachusetts by the pilgrims. What happened, Bradford points out, was after they went to the free market system and left socialism, he points out that within two years their productivity had increased sevenfold. And they became the most prosperous colony in America and remained that way throughout the entire colonial period. So he points out that when they shifted from socialism to the free market in 1627.
Within two years their productivity was through the roof and they never again went back to it. Now they're back to it now, but that's because they don't know either history or scripture largely in Massachusetts.
David Barton (41:02)
that they really stumbled on that. There wasn't someone teaching them and saying to students, and by and large, having come out of a very high illiteracy nation, and having come out of a nation where that they were being killed for reading the scriptures, which is why they went to Holland for twelve years to get away from England.
Daniel Lapin (41:20)
Yes.
David Barton (41:21)
When they got in the scriptures themselves and started applying it, that's where you see the free market prosper. Now, what you'll find is in the southern colonies, like South Carolina was an Anglican colony, Georgia was an Anglican colony, they didn't read the scriptures well at all themselves, and they stayed socialist for a long time. Even as you get into the American Revolution, they're still pretty socialist. so the difference between the North and the South is how well do you know your Bible? And how well do you understand the freedoms that the Bible provides and the culture that it creates? So in the southern colonies, which is why the position they took even after they won independence, they became still oppressive. They did not recognize individuality, and that's where the rise of slavery goes and leads to the civil war, etcetera. That wasn't the thinking up north. Thinking up north is the same thing, men and women, because coming out of Europe, women are low class citizens. And in Plymouth area, they said everybody needs a relationship with God. Everybody needs to know the scriptures. And so the highest literacy rate in the world at that time was actually in Backwoods, Massachusetts. It was higher than Lisbon, than Rome, than Paris, than London. Highest literacy rate in the world was in Backwoods, Massachusetts, yes, because everyone reads the scriptures for themselves. Everyone has that relationship. And that's what they lacked in southern United States. They were still very Anglican, Very state oriented, very government oriented.
Daniel Lapin (42:51)
I just have one thing before you if you don't mind. I just want to jump back to after the first seven years of socialism with the pilgrims in the 1600s was it any particular section of the Bible, was it a New Testament, Old Testament, was it everywhere that guided them out of socialism and towards a free market system?
David Barton (43:15)
it's interesting, it was both, but in different ways. Institutionally, it was the Hebrew scriptures because you have the Hebrew Republic. And the Hebrew Republic, particularly in the Torah, the laws that are laid down there, that became their laws. And so when, for example, the pilgrims left England, there were 223 death penalty crimes in England. When they got into Massachusetts and created their own code. There were only 13 death penalty laws, and they all had a Torah scripture beside them. It was same laws that Moses had given. And so as they looked to form the structure of their systems, they went back into the Torah. They went back into especially Deuteronomy and heavily came from Deuteronomy. As they went forward with their community, they went very much into the Christian scriptures as they're kind of a body of believers, kind of the, if you will, the Christian sort of the temple model is they were a community of Christian believers. So they were very much both parts. And that the Hebrew Republic absolutely hands down is what created civil government in America to which they added the teachings of Jesus and the values and the morals and the behavioral aspects. So those two together, which is I mean, you can't describe it anything other than Judeo-Christian. That's the true meaning of Judeo-Christian, not today's meaning, but that's the historical meaning of Judeo-Christian.
Susan Lapin (44:56)
Okay, so going back, what you're saying is so blatantly true that progressives are going to be the first victims of Islamic victories but not knowing history, they don't get that. But also history shows Islam is pushed back with the sword. The question is how can we keep the progressives from committing suicide and taking America down with them? And we see the most recent elections where people are coming into office who clearly hate the founding principles of the United States of America. They are coming in. It's local offices. They are not in the State Department. They have nothing to do with international matters. But that is what they're running on is a hatred of the state of Israel and Jews and they're getting elected. Well, once you're elected, you know, you can do things and yes, maybe the Supreme Court, if you have fifteen years down the road, maybe the Supreme Court will say, well, you actually couldn't do what you did. But Sharia law is now beginning to govern parts of the United States. So how do we stop Islam taking down America as they rise to power, if we're not able to say as we were with communism. We said, Well, if you believe in communism, you don't get to become an American citizen. We're not gonna let you in. But we say, but Islam is a religion and we have religious freedom and it's as if we're in this catch twenty two. I remember Madeline Murray O'Hare's son writing about his mother saying, I'm going to use their laws to destroy them, meaning the United States.
David Barton (46:30)
You're spot on, exactly correct. You know, you're describing something that Baron Charles Montesquieu described back in 1750. In 1750, Baron Charles Montesquieu wrote two volumes called The Spirit of Laws. That's one of the three most cited individuals by our founding fathers. So the founding fathers cited number one the Bible, thirty-four percent of all their political quotes came from the Bible, but then the three philosophers they cited most often was number one was Baron Charles Montesquieu, number two was William Blackstone, and number three was John Locke. Montesquieu in his said, I'm in France. If there were absolutely no theological beliefs, and you simply judged all nations by the religions they used to guide that nation, he would say you would unequivocally conclude that Islam is the most brutal, despotic nation in the world. Because everywhere Islam prevails, the sword rules, death and destruction rule, no individual freedoms. And he's saying this as a guy who's not a religious guy himself. He's just saying, if I just simply look at what each religion produces, and he went through the major religions and he said, You would have to conclude that the most despotic religion of all is Islam. Well you also have to go back. This goes back a little bit, and this is where I think progressives fully miss it. They hate religion, but they love Islam. Tell me how that works. You know, that clearly says they don't think Islam is a religion, it's a political philosophy, but they don't understand the religion that drives that political philosophy. And so in the case of America, as soon as we won the American Revolution, 1783, the next year. Congress sent ambassadors to negotiate with five Muslim nations that were attacking and killing Americans. We have never done anything to those nations. We had not had any interaction with them. And they're taking nine of what they called Christian nations, which is Sweden and Denmark and France and others, and anywhere they find a Christian, they're enslaving them and killing them. And so it was the Barbary Powers War. And for America, that was 32 years of war. The longest war we've ever had in our history was against Islamic terrorism.
From 1784 to 1816. And in that period of time, in 1786, I said 1764, 1784 to 1816, in that period of time, Congress dispatched Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to London to try to negotiate with the Muslim ambassadors for those other nations, see if we couldn't arrange something where they would stop attacking us and stop oppressing us, because we've done nothing to them.
And at that point in time, it's recorded in Jefferson's and Adams' writings. Franklin had gone on elsewhere on another diplomatic assignment, but in London, those two sat down with the Muslim ambassador and said, We don't understand. Why do you keep attacking us? Why do you keep killing us? We have done nothing to you. We're isolated over in America. Why do you do this? He says, Because our religion mandates this. This is our theology. This is our doctrine. We have to conquer and kill you.
And they said, really? He said, Yeah, our holy book requires it. That's when both Jefferson and Adams went out and bought a Quran for the first time. They both bought a two-volume Quran, 1746, in London, and said, No wait, that there's no way they and so they read the Quran for themselves and said, my gosh, these guys do believe that. They believe that they go to heaven by killing people, that they have eternal rewards by destroying other religions.
And so that changed everything for them. They came back and Adams, particularly Jefferson, that's where we create the Navy and go crush the Muslim terrorist. I mean, it took a bunch of wars. It took the first trip first Tripolian
War and the First Barbary War and the Second Barbary War. But that's where we did that. At the time that we did that, 20% of the American budget was being spent. At when Jefferson took office as president in 1801, 20% of the American budget is being spent. To pay off Muslim terrorists to keep them from attacking us, just paying the gypsia. So American history all by itself should teach progressives what happens with Islam, and it's not a religion. And if you take what Montesquieu said, judge it by its behavior, ignore its theology, who cares about its theology, what does it produce? And you can't see what that's going to produce in America. You can't tell that this is an unchanged religion for you know, fifteen hundred years it's been the same religion, the same beliefs, the same doctrines, the same behaviors. Again, they hate history, they hate theology, they don't study history, so they keep repeating the same stupid mistakes over and over, and they hate Christians and they hate Jews, but they found someone else who hates Christians and Jews, and so that's gonna be a political ally, not understanding that ally also hates them, but will use them to get to that end. And so it's from American history, if they had if we were still teaching American history, we would not be facing where we are now. Now, here's where the good news comes, Susan, in that
Susan Lapin (51:42)
good, I need some good news. Thank you.
David Barton (51:45)
The pushback against what is happening right now across America, about 8% of America right now has become Islam. So that's a big enough percentage that they're now starting to rise above ground and demand political rights. We saw some of these things happening 30 years ago, when we started seeing Islamists. Now, I’m going to make a distinction between Muslims and Islamists. Because if I look at UAE, I'm not scared of UAE. You get me to Qatar or something like that, that's a whole different thing. y you get me to you know, Iran, that scares me. I'm not scared o of what's going with UAE. They're very tolerant as Muslims. I don't consider them Islamicists, and maybe that's a distinction that I make and nobody else makes, but they apparently don't read their own book very well because they're not conquering all the other nations like so many are. So we started seeing Muslims running for school boards in DFW area and getting elected on school boards. Then we started seeing curriculum take a little change. We started seeing teachers take a change. We start and so now in Texas, we've got more than 600 mosques here in Texas now. And interestingly, they are mostly in rural areas because they move into rural areas and rural people are friendly folk. We get along with everybody. you got a mosque over there, that's great. I hope it goes well for you. you want to serve on the school board? Sure, why not?
And what's happened is they've taken so much of the rural areas that now they can come into the urban areas and do the same. And so what has happened is there are a number of states right now very, very, very concerned that are very aggressively working on this. Texas has passed what's called ALEC, the American law for American courts. We will not use Sharia in Texas. We've made it illegal to use Sharia in Texas. That is happening in many other states. We're behind the curve, but the pushback is significant. It is happening. Working right now with many states on legal and legislative means to stop the rise of Islamicism in the United States and how to get that back to where that you can provide a religious liberty without giving over control of government and institutions and education and so many other things.
So the good news is that there's a whole bunch of states that are moving that direction right now. it's early in the fight. We haven't been able to test all the laws we want to pass. They're going to get challenged. Islamicists are going to take them to court. It's going to take two or three years to get through the court. It's going to be a battle, but knowing the courts in Texas and the courts in Oklahoma and other courts, we think we're going to win that. It's just going to take a little bit of time to do it. So the pushback has already started. The pushback is very big for example in Texas, we just passed our history standards.
So for the next 15 years, kids in Texas will be taught a historical view of Islam, historical view of Christianity and Judaism, which gives you a whole different political feel for what's out there. So we're now starting to raise a generation of students with a different view of what religion is and what religious liberty is and what it looks like and the historic fruits of both Judaism and Christianity versus the historic fruits. And Christianity's got plenty of bad fruits, there's no question.
We have so many non-biblical Christians who have persecuted so many people and killed so many people across the years. Again, I don't consider them Biblical Christians. They were Christians by name only. just as I would point to a lot of I got to be careful, a lot of Northeastern Jews who are atheists. How do you do that? You know, I don't understand that. You guys are in that culture and for me that's God's people to be atheist doesn't make sense to me. Just like Christians being anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic doesn't make sense to me, you're clearly not reading the book you profess to follow if you have that viewpoint. So I have to be careful when I talk about Christians not to include all historical Christians in that. I include Biblical Christians in that versus non-biblical Christians.
Daniel Lapin (55:50)
Yes, like we never talk about the Jewish community 'cause there is no such thing.
David Barton (55:53)
Yeah. That's right. And so for me I forget and sometimes the people I run with because we we're kind of in that Biblical Christian community, we just say Christians kind of loosely. and I understand there's big distinctions. So the news is, Susan, that there's a lot going on right now, but nothing happens quickly in government, but there's enough subterfuge of people rising up, especially in rural communities. That said, this is gonna stop. And we're seeing more and more people elected to office right now on that platform. So that is happening, that is starting. It usually takes three to four sessions of a legislature before you get a bill passed. So we may not see much passed in the next session. Probably two sessions from now, we're gonna see a whole lot passed in three sessions. In the meantime, you're gonna have
all these rising people talking at school boards, talking at city councils, pushing back. we're seeing we're seeing what I consider to be a very healthy movement that I think will last for a long time. Right now we're behind the eight ball, so to speak. That they're a way a lot further down the road than we are, but there's more of us than there are of them and our guys are starting to wake up and get engaged.
Susan Lapin (57:11)
Well, that is a piece of optimism. That's good to hear. Who we interviewed a gentleman who was born Muslim in Jordan and converted to Christianity, which, you know, means basically a death sentence under Islam. But he said he felt and it's a bit in line with what you're saying, he said, I don't think Islam will take over the United States, but I think it will take over some states.
David Barton (57:35)
Yes. Yeah.
Susan Lapin (57:37)
And that's a scary thing in its I mean in itself, because obviously that's the end of the United States of America, really.
David Barton (57:45)
Susan, this is a great concern to me, but historically speaking, we're playing around right now with two opposite ideologies that resulted in the Civil War. For them, it was slavery. Right now, it's going to be, I'm gonna say, pro-scriptures, anti-scriptures. It's whether you have that Judeo-Christian worldview or whether you have a secular progressive worldview that hates Judeo-Christianity. That is the divide that's going right now. You can see how that states like California, states like Washington, Oregon are treating Christians and how they're treating that people and how they treat, for example, atheists and secularists, which they elevate. And you see that cultural civil war, and I hope to God we do not have any kind of a violent conflict, but we are having the same philosophical divide that produced the Civil War back in the day. Now it was over slavery. You know, one side could not agree with the other side. They were incompatible beliefs. there's just no way to agree, and that's why they went to war. I don't know of a secular progressive who agrees with anything Judeo-Christian. And so that's why their legislature does the crazy stuff they do. That's why here in Texas, we passed a law last year requiring that every grade level in Texas read excerpts from the Jewish and Christian scriptures every year as you go through school. We're reading those excerpts. That law is being picked up in in 27 other red states. So you've got all these states that are saying, hey, 27 states now have are in the process of passing laws to post the Ten Commandments again. What a great deal that is.
Daniel Lapin (59:29)
That's amazing.
David Barton (59:30)
You're never going to see that in California or I say never. Right now you're not going to see that in any of the Western states, the Western progressive states. And so there is a spiritual divide happening over God and his authority and his word versus anti-God and everything that hates it, like the French Revolution. And that's my biggest concern is that this this is so right now divided that it could escalate into something none of us want to see. And I'm hoping we can win that philosophical battle. And I'm hoping that on the Christian side there is enough of a spiritual renewal going on. We're seeing it especially with young people. If those young people on the West Coast can go in the right direction and start running for office themselves, then maybe fifteen years from now we're in a whole different position. Maybe we're in a better spot. But I don't want to see us get to that divide. But that's where we are now. We have a philosophical divide that could lead to a political divide, that could lead to a cultural divide that would split the nation that we don't want to see.
Daniel Lapin (1:00:32)
David, we cherish you as a national treasure and we honor your time very much. But with your schedule, could you allow us each one more closing final question?
David Barton (1:00:44)
Absolutely, brother. I'm at your disposal.
Daniel Lapin (1:00:47)
Okay, great. Well, mine is that I've never heard this before and I've only started hearing it in the last year or so. and I'm baffled by it. Now I'll tell you what I'm referring to. I am hearing people assert that Jews today, like me, have no actual connection to Abram, Isaac, and Jacob. We are some recent interlopers. But the people of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob are gone. Israel today has nothing to do with Israel of Jeremiah the prophet. It's something completely new. And the sometimes stated, sometimes unstated corollary to that is and so I can really dislike you without being an anti Semite, and I can really dislike Israel without it diminishing my Christianity. Help me I mean I'm baffled by this.
David Barton (1:01:57)
I go back in Judges and the scripture it talks about in that day every man did that which was right in their own eyes. And what
Daniel Lapin (1:02:04)
Yes.
David Barton (1:02:06)
we have created in America is a system without any spiritual authority, any political authority. I am my own king. I make my own theology and I make my own religions and I make my own beliefs, and when other people gather together with me, then I now have a following.
And that's how every cult, every movement has always gone. They'll start with some really weird belief, then they get other people talked into it. And this goes back, in my view, to the fact that we're training learners, not thinkers. Nobody's asking those people, where did you get that? On what basis? What historical basis? What scriptural basis? Do you have a new set of scriptures that no one knows about? Where did you get that set of scriptures? Who gave you that set of scriptures?
Why did it just now appear? Why has this not appeared in any previous generation? Nobody's asking those questions, which they would scratch their heads and say, it just came to me. That's a great way to start. And so we're back at this thing where we're followers because we're learners. And because you get someone with a charismatic personality that communicates well, that says something that appeals to them.
it's like, you know, the old progressive thing of man you vote for us, we'll give chicken in every pot. You'll have you'll have plenty of food, plenty of bread, plenty of air. And you just appeal to those prurient self-interest, and that's where the stuff grows. And so this is the position of anarchy that happens when you no longer respect traditional scriptures, traditional faith, traditional God. You make your a God in your own image.
And that is the thing that man has always done is he makes God in his own image, whether it be in Babylon or anywhere else, will erect an idol and you come worship me and what I believe. And so it's a new thing for sure in America, but it's coming from an old source. And that old source is a rejection of I'm gonna say Western Judeo-Christian culture, but especially Biblical culture. And there's no Biblical basis for that. They have to make up their own doctrines.
And they have to prove themselves and I'm my own authority. And if you doubt me, just ask me. I mean, that's you we would never get away with that on an academic level. You can't be your own source, you got to have other sources. So we're in that silly spiraling down position of every man does that which is right in his own eyes, which is what progressives lead to is anarchy. It's what France finally had. They became a secular anarchy. And so that's part of it. I know I've never heard it either.
But I understand it. I understand where it comes from. And it's just people who do not want to be restrained by typical beliefs and they want to be their own God and they want to have their own following and their own cult. And so I look for even more stupid stuff to come out. but there's no basis for it. Now they will always claim authority. They will always point back to somebody somewhere that said something, or they'll make a characterization that throughout all of history, everyone else has misinterpreted the scriptures except for me.
I'm the one that finally gets it right. And so they're what you know and and that's the other and people go, that's really interesting, instead of you're an absolute fool. You don't have a clue what you're talking about. And that's the result also for me of progressive education is we've not been taught to ask questions or challenge or think about things or prove things, test the fruits of things, see what really works, what works and what doesn't. And it is a dangerous thing that's happening now.
But it's not working well with the Gen Z. And that's what I really like is that youngest generation is not buying into that stuff. They're kind of raising their eyebrows at the Tucker and the Candaces. And yes, they've got a lot of followers, but again, it's only a tiny, tiny percentage of the nation. there's
Daniel Lapin (1:05:44)
Even the university culture prohibiting the asking of prohibited questions is exactly what you're talking about.
David Barton (1:05:49)
That's right.
Great point. Yeah, the diversity culture eliminated diversity and made conformity to the rule. Exactly right. Diversity culture does not ask questions. Great point, brother. Hey, and by the way, I would be amiss if I didn't publicly acknowledge all the influence you've had on me. You're still my rabbi. I go back to even 20 years ago when I was testifying before the Senate on global warming, which now is no longer a thing. And I called you and said, Hey, how do I handle it? And you took me through Genesis in such a brilliant way. And what you've taught me in so many areas, the all the things that cannot be said in Hebrew, Hebrew is God's language. And you know, there's so many words we can't say. You've had a massive impact. And even most recently, going back to you on how to handle the immigration question when all these Christians are quoting Leviticus 19, 30 or 1734. You've been my teacher in so many areas. So thank you, brother. Appreciate it very, very much.
Daniel Lapin (1:06:47)
Thank you very much indeed. And you've had an enormous influence on us. And the only thing I'm bothered by is how is it that with all our visits to Dallas we've never been to the Wall Builders Museum?
Susan Lapin (1:06:58)
That's a good question.
Daniel Lapin (1:06:59)
Isn't that crazy?
Susan Lapin (1:07:01)
But I still have one more question. Yes, I know. Go ahead. My closing question.
People who there are some very kind people who are sponsoring this podcast series we're doing, and we have many people who support you, people who support us, support good things, and they go out and vote, but it is horrifying, and this is something I learned from you, what percentage of church going Christians do not even vote, let alone get involved further politically. What can people do to just change that to wake people up and say, you really have to pay attention now because you may not be able to pay attention if you don't pay attention now. In twenty years, you may not have that option.
David Barton (1:07:47)
You know, that's such a good question. And I've struggled with what are the best motivating factors to get people to vote. I'll point to Washington State right now. Washington State, only about twenty-five percent of Christians vote in Washington State. Now, if we raise that to fifty percent of Christians voted, and if they voted their Christian values, Judeo-Christian values is what they literally are, they would own most school boards. They might not own Seattle, but they would own everything to the east side of Seattle, they would probably own everything south of Seattle. So what has happened is they see I don't know why this is part of the cultural teaching we've had in the last 40 years is we don't like conflict. We're going to avoid conflict. And I don't want to get in a confrontational situation. Why not? Because the other side does, and because we keep backing up every time they confront us, they keep taking the ground. And so literally
It's come back to me, to my relationship with God. I believe that I will stand before him someday to answer for what I've said, what I've thought, what I've done, all my actions. And I don't want him to say, I gave you this nation. Why didn't you do anything with it? Why didn't you keep what I gave you? Why weren't you a good steward of it? I don't want to have to try to explain to my Maker
Why that I was not actively involved in trying to take care of the stuff that he's given us a blessed nation. Look, 250 years, we just celebrated it this week, 250 years. France had their revolution 20 years after we did, and they're now in their 15th constitution of that period of time. According to the University of Illinois, the average length of a governing document in the history of the world is between 17 and 19 years. And we're sitting here at 250 years? Come on, guys.
And we're gonna give this away to people who've destroyed every other nation they've ever taken, all the progressives. So somehow faith people have to get back to individual accountability. I don't care what anybody else does, here's what I have to do. And if they will go vote just because they're supposed to vote, then by the millions they would go vote. If they just individually and they keep looking at groups, and that's the progressive thing is to look at groups. Stop the group stuff. I don't care what group you're in.
You've got individual responsibilities. You're going to answer to your maker for what you do with the country he gave you. I believe we're supposed to be stewards of it. I'm going to answer for the family he gave me. I'm going to answer for the possessions he gave me. I'm going to answer for the country he gave me, for the community. And I don't want to have to explain why I didn't do anything with it. And so if we could get people of faith to go back to that individual accountability that I account to my creator and maker for what I do, I'm responsible for the community in which I live.
I may not can fix it, but they're gonna have to get there over me fighting them. You know, I'm not gonna back up and sit down and let the Nazis take over Europe like they did in World War II with so many people just backing up and sitting down. That we can't do. And so this is the other interesting thing. The Gen Z kids are voting at a higher rate than the others. Gen Y, Gen X is still okay. Gen Y was the worst. Gen Z is starting to have the right beliefs and they're starting to re engage politically. we're actually seeing some older Gen Z kids start to run for office now. So we're talking the young twenties running for office. Good for them. We need more of them in office. So I see it going back, but in the last part of the year, just quite frankly, I'm gonna be in forty five different congressional districts working to get Christians out to vote in those districts because literally if we cannot keep the House and it will probably be decided by 17 or 18 house seats, but we're going to work in forty five because that's they're all there are forty-five seats within three points of turning one way or the other. If we can keep our Judeo-Christian value people in there and let Trump have a couple more years of trying to root this progressive stuff out of our systems and institutions, then we're going to be in much better shape than having two years of a lame duck and having nothing happen, having no progress made. so my goal in that period of time is to get the faith community out, get them engaged, show them how poorly engaged they have been. it not every state is as bad as Washington is with only one out of four voting. most states it's usually in the vicinity of about thirty five to forty percent don't vote. So that that group needs to be turned down. That's what?
Susan Lapin (1:12:20)
There's so much opportunity there.
David Barton (1:12:23)
some we lose we lose elections by one or two thousand votes and we've got millions that didn't go vote. I mean, they shouldn't even be close.
Susan Lapin (1:12:30)
You know what, if I can add just one more question. I'm sorry, I know this is beyond what I said we said we would do. How do you what do you say to a Christian who says, Look, a pox on both their houses. There isn't an upright good person who I am happy to vote for. So I'm going to you're telling me to vote for someone who I disagree I mean, I may disagree with on major, major, major issues. Maybe it's abortion, maybe it's whatever it is. You're saying go out and vote for this person even though you really, really don't stand behind them. You don't think they're a person you want to be associated with.
David Barton (1:13:10)
You know, if I hear somebody say a pox on both your houses, I say, you lazy, selfish bum, why don't you go run for office? If you've got the solutions, why aren't you, why are you so selfish that you don't want other people to be blessed with what you think is the right solution? You think you know what the solution is, why don't you go help other people and implement that solution? It's just pure selfishness on your part. And so I don't have much tolerance for that, but I will under I do understand their frustration. And I do understand that, you know, there's some stuff back. I love the scripture in Exodus and Deuteronomy where that as children of Israel go into the promised land, God says, I will not give it to you all at once. I'll give it to you only little by little, lest it be increased against you. That's the way politics works. You're not gonna get this in one election. This is a five, six, seven election process. So you know what? This election is not gonna turn everything around. But this election, I think I'm gonna. Commit myself to recruiting three people in my community to run for school board. And I'm going to find two people I can recruit to run for city council. Now, when they run, probably only half of them are going to get elected, so that means after this election, maybe I only have one or two people on council, one or two people on the school board, but I'll do it again two years from now. And I'm going to go recruit three or four more people, and then I'll have a minority on the school board. And maybe after three terms, I'm going to have the majority on the school board. And it's that thing of we want it all done right now and God has clearly said I'm not going to give it to you all at once. It just does not work that way. And so for our willingness, our unwillingness to be committed for the long haul, it's like TV channels. You know, we got 500 TV channels we can choose from and we can click instantly and choose anything we want. That's not the way life works. And that's not the way politics works. And so if you don't like what's out there, go find somebody better. You recruit them, you help train them, you get them in an office. If they don't know how to train,
Go to Leadership Institute, which does training for every level of office running. They're conservative, solid folk constitutional folks. You can you can fix this. Don't make an excuse for why you don't like it and do nothing about it. You got to do something about it if you don't like where it is. So that would be my response to them. It and it that's an ugly response, but I do that to kind of wake them up and make them think about it. They're so used to complaining and doing nothing that
I want to put the pressure back on them. Don't complain and do nothing. Go do something.
Find one person for office or go find one person you like and go vote for that one person. You know, even if you don't like the other six on the ballot, vote for that one. Do something. And it starts with doing something. If you start doing something, you'll do a little more and a little more and a little more over time. And you just got to get your feet wet at some point.
Daniel Lapin (1:15:47)
That's it, isn't it? I mean that we could all there's so much more. But David, we pray for the success of your efforts. We really do, because upon the success of those efforts rests the future of the Republic. So thank you so much for everything you've done, so much for all you've taught us and everybody else. God bless you.
David Barton (1:16:06)
It is fully mutual. Love you guys. Thank you for all you've taught me. Please keep doing so. God bless you guys.
Daniel Lapin (1:16:13)
God bless. Thank you, David. I hope we'll be together soon.
David Barton (1:16:16)
Look forward to it.
