Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture . It's WallBuilders . We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical , historical and constitutional perspective . We appreciate you joining us . Be sure and check out our website at WallBuilderscom . That's WallBuilderscom .
A ton of great tools there for you to educate yourself and your family and just to get equipped on how to be a better citizen and just do a better job . All of us together do a better job of stewarding what God has given us . I'm Rick Green , America's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator .
It's my privilege to be here with David and Tim Barton and , of course , David's America's premier historian . Tim's a national speaker and president of WallBuilders and we're just thrilled to have the opportunity to educate , to exhort , to bring these things to you . It's an honor to be a part of WallBuilders and this radio program .
Alright , David and Tim , we've got Dr . Carol Swain coming on a little later and of course she was with us for Foundations of Freedom , the television series . So we've got Foundations of Freedom Thursdays . We encourage everybody to listen right here on Wallboulders to Foundations of Freedom Thursday .
But we also did a TV series a few years back called Foundations of Freedom and , David , you did several programs with Carol and , of course , have worked with her on other projects as well .
She's going to be with us later to talk about her new book , the Adversity of Diversity , and I guess this whole CRT thing and DEI and all these other acronyms, the left's solutions , you know, they tend to cause more problems , as always , than what they're going to solve , and they tend to be solutions looking for a problem .
But they've become the problem for a lot of companies now because they went so far into this honestly, just discrimination , using race to discriminate with their employees .
She's always been a problem for the left in many ways , because even back when the courts in the left were pushing for all this diversity , before they called it that , they were dividing people into groups and saying some groups aren't treated the same as other groups because of who they are not particularly because of what they did , but just who you are you're
automatically discriminated against . And so here was Carol Swain , a black law professor teaching at Vanderbilt University , and 10 to 15 years ago she was talking about how nonsensical it was to use race as any kind of a standard for receiving extra benefits or receiving extra attention or you're discriminated against , etc .
And so she's always been a really clear voice for, I'm going to say that the biblical conservative position, that individuals are , as the Declaration says , created equal and that they have that equal worth at the time of birth and that they have to do something with it . It's up to them .
It's you know, not because you're one race or one group that you have less rights . Sometimes there's political things you have to fight , but she's always been a voice for constitutionalism , for originalism , for so many good things , even back at the time when the progressives were really pushing groups and diversity .
Well , she's also somebody that has several videos on PragerU and so there might be some listeners that aren't really familiar with her necessarily , but you might have seen some of her videos where she delves into some of these issues about race .
I think she actually has a video on the notion of the big switch , where you know the Democrats , they used to be the racist . Go back to Andrew Jackson , go back to the time of the Civil War . Democrats were very pro-slavery , they were generally very racist individuals .
But then the way the argument goes is that even though Republicans were founded as the anti-slavery movement right , the party of Abraham Lincoln, oh , somewhere in the 1900s was a big switch where both parties agreed we're just going to switch sides and Republicans who were anti-slavery are now going to be super pro-slavery .
Democrats who were racist , pro-slavery are now the anti-slavery . And so she has a video kind of debunking that , showing a lot of the fallacies in that notion , a lot of the gaps in that argument, why that is not historically accurate at all .
All that to say is she has several videos and , kind of to this point , she's not been afraid to take on the culture where , a little bit like a Thomas Sowell , a little bit like a Larry Elder , even a Candace Owens some of the more controversial , so to speak , black voices on the conservative movement that have not fit into kind of the parameter , the shell
that the left says they should be in .
She's been a pretty solid voice of reason , of truth , for a long time and fortunately with somebody, that Dad and Rick , as you guys mentioned, we got to work with her several years ago , Dad , when you guys did that series , and she has just been so rock solid on so many issues and I think actually she even has a new book coming out addressing some of the
nonsense and culture going on with race-related issues .
And recently with the Supreme Court having ruled what they did in striking down affirmative action and saying no , you can't use external traits , you have to go to inherent traits , you have to go to inherent equality . You can't look on the outside and make those decisions .
That is a ruling that , from the left , is under attack almost as much as the Dobbs decision that ended abortion on demand across America , and it's a very controversial ruling for the left . They certainly are decrying that ruling in university settings were progressives or so dominant .
And so here's Carol , who by her external appearance would be someone who could speak to this , because she has been discriminated against in such a . . . she's on the other side .
She continues to hold the constitutional principle , she's got a new book coming out , and so it's really good to get her as a voice to be able to push back against some of this and help us know the things we should say in the way we should carry this , because this race inadmission stuff is not limited just to college admissions . This permeates the culture .
This is the way progressives think , and so she's got some really good responses , really good defenses to help all of us in being able to argue some of the things that we hear, not just in academia , not just in law , but all the way across the culture , business and everywhere else .
Dr Carol Swain , our special guest . Stay with us folks , we'll be right back on WallBuilders .
This is Tim Barton from Wall Builders with another moment from American History . In 1963 , the United States Supreme Court decided that voluntary Bible reading could no longer be part of the school day .
Founding Father Benjamin Rush , known as the father of public schools under the Constitution , pointedly warned that the Bible should be read in schools in preference to all other books .
He specifically warned that if America ever ceased promoting biblical principles in schools , then we would waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them . He was right . We now have 7 million Americans in prison on probation or on parole , and the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world .
Sadly , this was unnecessary , but is the result of no longer teaching the morals of the Bible in schools . For more information about the Founding Father's views on the positive impact of the Bible in schools , go to WallBuilderscom .
Have you noticed the vacuum of leadership in America ? We're looking around for leaders of principle to step up , and too often no one is there . God is raising up a generation of young leaders with a passion for impacting the world around them . They're crying out for the mentorship and leadership training they need . Patriot Academy was created to meet that need .
Patriot Academy graduates now serve in state capitals around America , in the halls of Congress , in business , in the film industry , in the pulpit and every area of the culture . They're leading effectively and impacting the world around them .
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Help us fill the void of leadership in America . Join us in training champions to change the world at PatriotAcademy . com . Welcome back to WallBuilders . Thanks for staying with us . Always good to have Dr . Carol Swain with us . Thank you for your time today .
Well , thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about my new book , the Adversity of Diversity .
Good title too , and you've been on the front lines of this one for a long time , even back when we did Foundations of Freedom and you and David talked about a lot of these things even back then .
But this new book , very timely as we have this , you know, continued fight on CRT and just the efforts to literally bring Marxism into our education system , but you also cover DEI and all these other things . What made you decide now is the time to put this into a book . I mean , you already travel and speak and influence the culture in a lot of good ways .
What do you hope happens with the book ?
Well , you know , it's the next, you know, stage after the CRT , because when the Supreme Court struck down race-based college admissions , it sent a signal to every workplace in America that uses diversity , equity and inclusion programs and sensitivity trainers , it sends them a warning that they too are on the chopping block because they discriminate against whites and
Asians or non-favorite groups in the same way as the Harvard and North Carolina admissions policies did against groups that were disfavored .
How do you give folks just a quick response to why shouldn't we favor someone who comes from ? What's the terminology they use ? I'm not even going to get it right- historically discriminated against class , or you know whatever they use . How do you respond to that ?
It's very easy for me to respond to it . I can say that you cannot address discrimination by discriminating and that in 1964 , americans came together . We passed the Civil Rights Act that prohibited discrimination on the basis of race , sex , national origin and religion , and that Civil Rights Act protects all persons .
And what is taking place now with DEI violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution as well as the Civil Rights Act . And when you look at affirmative action , it was never passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by a president .
It was a series of executive orders that started in 1960 with John F Kennedy and then after that you had Lyndon Johnson , Richard Nixon . In fact it was Richard Nixon and the Republicans that brought us quotas . So affirmative action from the very beginning violated our Civil Rights Clause and Equal Protection Clause . White people tolerated it .
There was a lawsuit in 1974 , the Bakke case that went to the Supreme Court . He won his case , but affirmative action remained .
I love that first line . You cannot fix discrimination by discriminating . It is that simple . I mean , we can't right wrongs from hundreds of years ago by doing more wrongs today . What do you think happens in the culture if we remove discrimination completely ? No quotas , no affirmative action , you just treat everybody the same .
Well , Rick , we would go back to the intent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act , which was nondiscrimination , equal opportunity . Now , equal opportunity and equity don't mean the same thing . Equal opportunity opens doors and it opens doors for people like me . We got our foot into the door of colleges , universities , workplaces .
You had to prove yourself and some people failed . Some people succeeded .
Equity is about equal outcomes , and I believe we can have diversity , true diversity without discrimination , and that we should go back to the original intent of the Civil Rights Law nondiscrimination , equal opportunity , outreach , recruitment and what we do to help disadvantaged groups needs to be offered on a non-racial basis for whites .
If someone wants to target a certain group of people , it has to be non-racial and it shouldn't be based on sexual identity or sex .
We can help talented individuals without discriminating against anyone , and I guarantee you that our workplaces and our educational institutions will not be lily white , because they were not lily white before the passage of the Civil Rights legislation . They were just not as diverse as people wanted .
Yeah , and that's the whole equal outcome thing is just straight up Marxism . And that's what the left and the Marxists claim is that , oh , if you get rid of this , then all of those outcomes , all of those workplaces , everything will be , I mean , what a racial statement to say that they're going to all be lily white if you don't give an advantage .
I mean , that is racist in and of itself .
It is totally racist and in my experiences as someone that has gone through the system , the progressives have always been the most racist and they today argue for lower standards for racial and ethnic minorities because they believe minorities are inferior .
In my day I benefited from the equal opportunity , the non-discrimination , the outreach , the search for talented, talented minorities or talented persons I think we still should look out for talented people , but we don't have to lower the standards in a way that discriminates against other persons and we should not have bullying and shaming of any group because of the
color of that skin or because they happen to be male or they happen to be heterosexual or whatever , they want to discriminate on the basis of . They happen to be Christian , because Christians get criticized a lot . We shouldn't tolerate that because it's a violation of our civil rights laws and fortunately , people are filing lawsuits , winning those lawsuits .
White people in America have discovered that they have civil rights and I think that's good .
You point out in the book, and the book , folks , is the Adversity of Diversity . And you point out in the book the constitutional arguments against DEI and that sort of thing and why it's just wrong from a moral perspective and legal perspective .
But then you also talk about it's just bad business and you're encouraging all these woke corporations that have adopted these things to put some effort into measuring what's happened in their companies so that they, you know, fiduciary duty to their shareholders .
Yeah , and I mean the last chapter talks about a business that the idea I birthed right after George Floyd's death and the company's name is Unity Training Solutions , because I believe we can return to e pluribus unum, out of many, one, and that we can educate people about our civil rights laws . There's nothing wrong with educating people about civil rights laws .
There's nothing wrong with having diversity . There's plenty wrong when corporations forget their mission statements , they forget why they were founded and they focus on programs and policies and mandatory training that divide workers and they end up losing their most valued employees because white people are not going . . .
No group is going to respond well to being forced to sit in a training where they're being harassed and accused of things .
And for the black people who were content , the minorities , they love their jobs , all of a sudden you bring in a DEI trainer and they're told they should be further along , they should be running the company and if they haven't been promoted it's because of their race , and they plant that seed and it sows the vision , because Marxism is about dividing groups .
DEI comes out of conflict theory , CRT , critical race theory , conflict . You can never , ever bring people together doing DEI , diversity , equity , inclusion and critical race theory .
You are a master at turning the words on the left . I love it . So unity training instead of diversity training , the adversity of diversity . So good , so good , Dr . Swain . Always good to have you . Other books , Black Eye for America , Countercultural Living . We appreciate you . Thank you for your time today , Dr Swain . Stay with us , folks .
Be right back, with David and Tim Barton .
Hey guys , we want to let you know about a new resource we have at Wallbillars called the American Story .
For so many years , people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today and , we would say , very providentially , in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America , whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery
, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement , the organization itself , not the statement Black Lives Matter , but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology . There's so many things attacking America . Well , is America worth defending ?
What is a true story of America ? We actually have written and told that story , starting with Christopher Columbus , going roughly through Abraham Lincoln .
We tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people , but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation , and it's a story you want to check out . Wallbuilderscom the American story .
We're back on WallBuilders . Thanks for staying with us and thanks to Carol Swain for joining us as well .
You know , guys , as Carol was saying , I mean , if diversity causes so much adversity and it's creating so much turmoil inside these woke companies that are hurting their employees and hurting their company , it's also going to hurt them , as more and more of our people vote with their dollars and say we're not going to support woke companies either .
So it really is this whole diversity thing , the way they do it , which is discrimination , is harming everyone .
Yeah , we should not support those companies because we are supporting a bad philosophy . But you know , there was two things that she said that really drove home to me as really strong principles . And she was talking about how the progressives have always been the most racist and they're the ones who decry racism the loudest .
So here you are with racist , and this is what they target and this is what they condemn , and yet they are the most racist of all those groups .
And she said that and I was thinking back in Romans , chapter 2 , verse 1 , where that Paul starts that chapter by saying you know , you , that condemn others , you're actually condemning your own self , but you use what you're condemning to excuse you by pointing at other people and saying they're the ones that are doing it . And it's like progressives do that .
They want to be racist , they want to stay racist , so they call everybody else racist . And it's like the magician saying watch my hand . You don't want to watch the hand , they tell you to watch , you want to watch the other hand . And so by using racism , they get people to be silent . And I thought what she said too , about how this was tolerated .
She went back and you know , I don't think that I realized that affirmative action was the result of executive orders . Somehow it was in my mind that this is a federal law , that this was part of the Civil Rights Act , of the '64-'65 . And , as she points out , it was not a law passed by Congress .
Affirmative action was never decided by the people in a constitutional manner through their representatives , through the senators , signed by the president and on into federal law . So we've been dealing with a policy here that has been by the edict of presidents .
Now , as she pointed out , it was Nixon that really kind of upgraded this thing and went into affirmative action , but nonetheless it's by executive order . And so here you have this thing . The comment she made , she says , and white people tolerated it .
That comment of white people tolerated it , it's like if you know the Constitution , you're not going to tolerate it for any group . No group should get special treatment above any other . And the group that's now being discriminated against , as she points out , at that time was white people . They didn't say anything about it .
They'd been beaten in the guilt by saying you are the inherent racist because of the color of your skin , and that's just not accurate and I thought you know she made a really good point that when you tolerate something it grows up to become a really big problem and because the voices were not back there saying this is wrong , principally on principle-based , on
constitutional basis, this is wrong . So you know , even as we're talking about this , I'm thinking about a ranch and a couple of years ago , when I was trying to eradicate weeds , there was a part of the ranch that I didn't see that there were weeds in it and I let it go because I just didn't see it , didn't think about it , wasn't a big issue .
And two years later that whole area of the ranch has now been lost to that weed . They've flat taken it over . It is now a lot of work to get it out of there because it's really become embedded . But that's the same thing when we tolerate what's wrong .
If we say you know I don't want to make a controversy over this , I don't want to seem like a racist by speaking up . If you tolerate what's wrong , it grows and gets bigger and gets stronger , and I think she really has articulated that well because this was tolerated back when this happened in the 70s .
It has grown into a monster now with DEI and CRT and other things , and it could have been much more easily eradicated back when it was smaller , but now it's embedded , as she said , even in our businesses . And our businesses are going this way because they think that's the way the culture and the government and everything else is going .
So I think she really put her finger on some important principles , and that is that oftentimes , again , those who are the loudest condemning something are often the ones who are doing it themselves , and they want to deflect attention away from what they're doing . So watch for that .
And the second thing is don't tolerate stuff that's bad , because it will grow up to be something much harder to deal with .
And I would point out too and you know , Dad , you mentioned a couple times that the people that are promoting this themselves are racist . They want to keep being racist .
I think we have to clarify a little bit , right I mean , there could be some very good-hearted people that have bought into a very strong , powerful lie right now that if you remove a biblical foundation , you remove a biblical philosophy , then you have to fill the void and gap with something else .
And so if you don't believe that God created all of us in his image and therefore there is created equality, not necessarily that we've all grown up with the same circumstance and situation , but that , as far as value is concerned , we all have the same value , we were all created equal , as the Founding Fathers explained it, but if you don't believe there's a God
, you don't believe in God given rights , you don't believe in this equality under God and therefore , if there is no God , there's no equality under God then even that notion of that standard , of what we should be striving and achieving for , of trying to come to the place that we are all equal under the law , equal justice under the law , which certainly is not
where we are right now , but if that's what we're striving for as a believer , as a constitutional conservative , as a Christian , this is where I would point out , for those that aren't Christians , they're filling that philosophy , that gap , with something .
And so if you're buying into this secular , humanist , postmodern perspective and therefore you're going say that , well , we should treat people based on the color of their skin and we should judge them based on the past and we should hold people accountable for something that happened hundreds of years ago , even if they didn't participate in it , even if it didn't
happen to them . It's a very bad philosophy and worldview , but there could be good- hearted people that believe it and they might not necessarily promote it because it's racist , but they're promoting racist ideas , whether they're intentionally being racist or not , and I think that's a bigger picture and I think it's what Carol pointed out .
When you are saying that certain people are good or bad based on the color of skin , that's a racist thought , that this notion eve n of Ibram X . Kendi , who says that you fight racism with racism and that actually it's good to be racist against white people , now . This is what he argues . He gives speeches about this , wrote about it in his book .
He said it's good to be racist against white people because it's the only way we can restore the balance for all the racism that was done to black people . Well , that's a terrible philosophy , it's certainly an unbiblical philosophy , and it's one that's not going to produce the desired results , unless the desired results are the destruction of the nation .
And this is where I think Carol did a great job of pointing out that a little bit along the lines of MLK, right ? She said that you don't fight racism with racism . But it's kind of like what MLK said , that you don't fight hate with hate . You don't fight evil with evil . Hate doesn't overcome evil , love does that .
And as a Christian , we've been called to a very different response , which certainly is part of what she pointed out .
You know I would add too , Rick , as you were struck by the comment she made , that instead of diversity training , we need unity training . And that really is something we all need to work for is finding unity , common ground and recognize that Marxism , CRT , all of its affiliates at their very heart , are at division . They're not at unity .
They want to divide , they want to have group fight group , group hate group . We need to work on unity and that's a hard thing to do because it's so easy to want to retaliate and do tit for tat with whatever they do to us . Can't do that .
We have to be unified and unity minded and look for unity and reject everything that causes division , everything that separates and sets us against one another .
Alright, folks out of time for today , be sure and visit the website WallBuilders . com . And I also want to remind you we're down to well right at two weeks for Constitution Day , September 17th, big celebration in Fredericksburg , Texas . Kirk Cameron , Brad Stine , I'll be there .
We're gonna have a great time, coaches, Constitution Coaches from all over the country coming in and then staying afterwords . So the big party's on the 17th, Constitution Day .
We're gonna do that at Arch Ray Resort in Fredericksburg and then the next day go ahead and stay in Fredericksburg and do your handgun defense class the next day at the Patriot Academy campus .
What a great opportunity to get constitutional defense, the intellectual ammunition you need to defend the Constitution and defend your family and deal with situations , but also the physical training that you need that most people have never had .
So what a great opportunity to come in , celebrate with us , have a great time on Constitution Day and then get your constitutional defense course . You can learn more at PatriotAcademy . com that's PatriotAcademy . com .