Constitutional Limits and a Republican Shift - on Foundations of Freedom Thursday

Rick Green: 0:12
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It's WallBuilders, where we're talking about all of the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, and on Thursdays we do that based on what you ask us. So send in those questions. radio@wallbuilders.com. That's radio@wallbuilders.com. I'm Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday, and we're going to be diving right into your questions. You can visit our websites and, by the way, we are working on getting those websites even better. We know there's been some trouble with them lately. Lots of attacks. Folks, I'm telling you, when you're over the target, you get flack, you take flack, and that's what we're doing. Man, we're over the target. We're getting a lot of folks across the country engaged and empowered and educated, inspired to make a difference, and so the enemy doesn't like that. So they're bombarding us online, but we're getting up those good defenses. So be patient with us and keep heading back to the website. You can get archives of WallBuilders there, you can donate there and, of course, you can be a part of what's happening out in the culture by getting some of the programs and teaching them to your friends and family and, of course, learning them yourselves. But let's get to your questions today. The first one comes from Melissa, and it sounds like a family that's really into WallBuilders and listening to a lot of stuff we're doing, guys. So I'm going to read this whole email because it's just so good. She says hey, guys, I'm a homeschooling mom of young adults four graduates and two left at home. Almost every morning I listen to your podcast. I have used resources from you for years. The Bulletproof George Washington was a favorite when my boys were younger and now we share those resources. So, thank you. In addition to listening, in February we watched every video you put out about the black American heroes. Last year we read through American history in black and white, thank you. We may not always remember what we've read, but we know where to find answers to questions because we've read them. We use your resources quite a bit and we spread the word about WallBuilders and the Constitution classes. We watched those two years ago with friends. I'm always surprised when I ask people if they know about WallBuilders and the response is negative. How can they not? I'm hoping to start a real impact team that Pastor Hibbs, jack Hibbs, our good friend from Cavalry Chapel, chino Hills at our church soon and hosting a class will be one of the first things I hope to accomplish. Thanks for all you do to spread the truth about America's history. Here's the question. My sons and I are currently reading through the Constitution and today we read Article 1, section 8, clause 17, about the District of Columbia, quote not exceeding 10 miles square unquote. We looked it up DC is 68.34 square miles today. We would like to know more about this. When and why was there a change in the boundaries? Help, we appreciate the answers. Have a terrific finish to March and a happy spring. May the Lord continue to bless you all abundantly. Melissa from Baltic South Dakota. Last thing, guys, and, by the way, we're past March, melissa. Sorry we didn't get to your email in March, but we're enjoying April so far. Anyway, she said PS. We were part of the citizen team that supported and rallied for the passage of HB1080 this year in South Dakota and we also encouraged Governor Noam DeVito HB1193. It's truly exciting to be a part of the process and it's great to hear you shout out about the good news that we keep seeing happening. We have our legislative conservative caucus in South Dakota to thank for our state remaining open during COVID. Alright, melissa, great email, thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us, David, tim. So encouraging. We know we've got a lot of listeners out there like Melissa and her family, but it's also just good to know that all that content we put out there, that people are using it, teaching their kids and then, as she said, even sharing it with other families Really good stuff. Now, how about that question on 10 miles square in Article 1, section 8, section 17, district of Columbia? What a small area to have such an outsized impact on the rest of the country. But that's another topic. How about this specific?

David Barton: 3:41
area limitation in the Constitution. Well, I've got to back you up, Rick, because there was a Good News Friday in there that you forgot to mention on Foundation Freedom Thursday. That was part of Melissa's question, so she mentioned from South Dakota. She called you.

Rick Green: 3:52
Wait, wait, wait. Let me follow that A Good News Friday point in the email on Foundations of Freedom Thursday from Melissa Just make sure we got this great Straight, so we're going to do this today instead of tomorrow, because it was in the email we're getting two days together.

David Barton: 4:04
This is economy, man. This is what you do to make things more efficient. We put them all together. So Melissa mentioned that she called Governor Noam about the veto, so let's talk about that for a second. That's the Uniform Commercial Code and this is what is being used right now. They send it to all the states. All 50 states will have to run this thing, and the Uniform Commercial Code is really tedious and it's long and it's really about making it so business and economics can work well between all 50 states. It's like having building codes. You have general building codes that every state adopts and there's overall general regulations how much electricity you can have on one circuit and how many amps you have to have, etc. So that's kind of standard state-to-state. And this economic thing, the Uniform Commercial Code, is kind of an economic standard for all the states. Except what they did. They're putting stuff in there that sets up for what Biden wants to do with digital currency, and so it's not mentioned in there. But when you read it and it's hard for these guys to read because this is, you know, it's tons of pages but when you read it, what it is is a framework for digital currency. So we've had a lot of attorneys go through and people who do this and they said no, no, no. This goes back to Biden's executive order, where he's trying to do digital currency, and that's not cryptocurrency. That's not what this is at all. This is moving from paper currency and coin into digital currency, which leads you to programmable currency, which means the government can turn on or off your currency based on what they want you to have. So it's a really dangerous area. So, as this was going through, it was just cruising through the states. It went through North Dakota and you know we're saying, guys, wait, you need to see what this is, you need to stop on this. And so, as it got into South Dakota, that was the first state that did a veto. And when Kristi Noem did that veto, she did a great veto message. She and people call like Melissa, and it really made a difference because at that point in time, the other states started saying, well, what were you guys saying about UCC? Wait a minute, kristi Noem just vetoed it. Tell us more. And so what's happened is, instead of 23 states running this thing down the track, more than a dozen states have now pulled it and they're not even going to consider it this year, not even going to take action on it, and we have, I think, two or three states now that have vetoed it. It looks like the Santas is about to do the same thing. They're killing it in Florida and we just got an amendment put on in one of the states today that says, hey, we're not going to allow any kind of digital currency in our code. So it's a little five word amendment that solves all of this. But thank you, melissa, for calling me, because what you've done is, out of South Dakota, you guys have started a national movement to stop this digital currency stuff. That Biden didn't his executive order and that's going to maintain freedom for Americans. So it's a really, really good thing. That's a good piece of good news. Just a little comment she had. Now, Rick, back to the question you asked that Melissa asked what do you do with DC? Because the Constitution says 10 miles square and what you have in DC right now is 68 square miles. So how do you reconcile? Well, a couple things. First, don't confuse 10 square miles with 10 miles square. And it's not that DC is larger. What it is is DC is smaller than the Constitution allows. A 10 square mile place is like three and a quarter miles by three and a quarter miles. 10 miles square. I mean 10 miles on one side, 10 miles on the other. In other words it's 100 square miles. So what the Constitution laid out was 100 square miles for Washington DC. So that's the way it was laid out. That's the way Thomas Jefferson became Secretary of State. He laid out the whole District of Columbia in this 100 square mile piece of property. But when you come to 1846, congress said you know we'll never use 100 square miles, so we're going to give a lot of this back to Virginia. And so they gave Alexandria and other cities back to Virginia and that's why it went down to 68 square miles. So they gave away 32 square miles that had been part of the original. So that's the difference. It goes to the fact that in 1830s they just didn't think they'd ever need all that much space in DC. I mean, congress didn't meet all year long. It wasn't that big a deal. It was still the federal government. The states are more important. So that's where the change came. Great question, melissa. But that's why it does not match up with what the Constitution permitted.

Tim Barton: 8:17
I would like to point out that David just said that Washington DC wasn't large enough and is making the case it should be bigger. You heard it here first David Barton thinks Washington DC is too small.

Rick Green: 8:31
Wow, yeah. So if they're already too influential and outsizing what they should have in terms of influence, you're saying they've got room to grow, David. No, no, no.

David Barton: 8:42
They need vicariously from 1842 or 46. So that's what that was back then. They're only in town a few months out of the year, so yeah, but that's a great question and that's a very observant question. I'm not sure how many people have thought about the size of the city in terms of what the Constitution says. That's one of those things where so much of the Constitution is based on principles, but that's one of the times when it really got down into the weeds, and that was about Washington DC. And so, by the way, this is another reason that Washington DC, you're going to have to have a constitutional amendment to make it a state. That's what the Washington DC license plates call for statehood, and I'm sorry, you can call for that all day long, but until you can get the states to pass the constitutional amendment, not going to happen, and that was part of the wisdom of the founding fathers in making sure that it wouldn't be a competition against the other states we had in the United States. So it really is a brilliant part of the Constitution. It's one of the more specific, explicit points, not just on principle but on application, and they did a great job with it.

Rick Green: 9:43
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, David, because we do get that question a lot too. Should DC be a state? How does that work? Who gets to decide? And the normal method for admitting a new state Congress can just do that. But in this case, like you said, I mean there are actually constitutional limitations here and there'd be really a conflict of power at that point, because the Constitution gives Congress power over DC, and if we just make them a state, now who's really in charge? So if they want DC to be a state, they need to do a constitutional amendment, not just make it a state through a majority vote in the Congress. That's what the Democrats want to do, because their theory is two more liberal US senators. That's really what they're after. And currently, what do we call those? There's actually delegates or something that DC has that sit in Congress, but they don't have an official vote, right?

David Barton: 10:29
Well, they don't have a vote, but they do have an electoral college vote and they are like the territories, like Guam and Virgin Islands and others. They send elected officials to college and I think Eleanor Holmes is still the elected representative from Washington DC to Congress, but she doesn't have a vote in Congress because she's not part of a state. So she does have a voice and she can have some influence, but we did a constitutional amendment, I think in 1968, maybe it was that allowed-. Yes, the 23rd Amendment that allowed Washington DC to have a voice in the presidential election. So they do get three electoral votes. The constitutional amendment says they can have the same number of electors as the smallest state, and so you take a Wyoming or you take a Delaware that only has one congressman, two senators. That means three electoral votes, and so DC gets that. They've got a couple million people there and that gives them the way to have a voice in a federal election without becoming a state, and so that was the constitutional amendment that's added. But you're right, Rick, they do have a representative that's sent to Congress, but not with voting powers.

Rick Green: 11:34
Alright, guys, we're actually going to take our break a little bit early, because the next question is a short question, but I think it's going to be a long answer. So quick break, folks. We've got more questions coming at you. You can send your questions in by emailing them to radio@WallBuilders.com. It's Foundations of Freedom. Thursday. You're listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 11:57
Hey guys, this is Tim Barton with WallBuilders, and I know you hear my Dad and Rick talk a lot about our founding fathers, about the original intent of our nation, the constitutional heritage that we have, and really we've seen how far we've slipped away from that, and I know a lot of us, as we hear my Dad and Rick talk, think I wish there was a place that I could go and I could see these documents and I could read and learn about the founding fathers firsthand, see the things they did, and I want to give you some websites today that can help you accomplish that very thing. If you can go online, you can go to places like Library of Congress and you can look under their Century of Lawmaking or historical documents. You can go to the Avalon Project, to the Founders Constitution, to Google Books or even the Internet Archives, or you can just go to WallBuilders website. We have a section for our library and under that section we have different subgroups for historical documents, historical writings, even a place where you can get helpful links to find out more information about other websites, where you can do research for yourself and find the truth for yourself. Friends, this is a time that we need to know who we are and where we came from. WallBuilders.com is a great place to go.

Rick Green: 12:58
We're back at our WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Next question for our Foundations of Freedom, thursday comes from I believe you pronounce it OMA. It's OMA, so OMA. Thanks for sending in your question. It says Recently. I found your podcast and have been listening. A couple of nights ago you mentioned the constitutional limitations on the federal government and I believe you said it was 17. Could you please tell me what those are? So, alright, guys, this is going to be a fun question because different people break this down different right. It just depends on where you kind of draw the line and all of that list in Article 1, section 2, and what you're going to make, because a lot of stuff listed in there and we sort of. We spent a little time on this about 10 years ago and sat down and said, okay, let's really break this down. What are the actual specific powers? And we came up with, you know, 17. Some people say 15, some people say 20. It's the same powers as just sometimes, you know, some people break out say, you know national currency and monitoring the supply versus all that. We put those into one. Or you know, maybe you know defining and punishing piracy and felonies committed on the high seas and they separate out some, you know, grant letters and mark and reprosal. Anyway, all that to set up our answer, to say to folks, when we say 17, you might hear other constitutional scholars, experts, whatever, say 15 or 19 or 20, we're all still referring to that list in Article 1, section 8, plus the amendments, because the amendments do add a couple of things, for instance being able to outlaw slavery or to you know, make sure that you know that you can prevent states from violating constitutional freedoms. That's 14th Amendment addition there. Alright, I set up a question along along the way there. David Tim, what would you say about those 17 specific things, because there's 17,000 that they're doing right now and I don't think they're listed, but what are the 17 things the founders thought they should do?

David Barton: 14:39
I think it's more than 17,000.

Rick Green: 14:41
I think 17,000 is the most important part of it. Yeah, probably so. Yeah, what we did was.

David Barton: 14:44
Rick, as you mentioned, we went back and looked at it and we really broke it down into 17 clauses and we didn't take all the commas and there might be two or three things and one clause and we didn't make that two or three points because those two or three things were all kind of related to that clause. So we took the clauses and you know here's kind of how it works. I'll just here's the first clause that we used and this is quoting from the Constitution says Congress shall have the power quote to lay and collect taxes, duties, impost and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. We could have broken that down into okay, lay and collect taxes and then pay the debts, and then common defense and general welfare. We said that's one, that's a single clause, and we said, all right, congress has the power to raise revenue to pay off the debt, to protect the nation and fulfill obligations established in the enumerated powers. So that was one. Then another clause says that Congress shall have the power.

Rick Green: 15:41
But all of that kind of fits together. So it's really one power to do this thing, to raise money and spend it on these very few things.

David Barton: 15:49
Yeah, and all that was related to the common defense and the general welfare. Everything is the overview. That's the big purpose of what government does common defense, general welfare but general welfare is defined by all the other clauses, so we don't just say whatever's good for the country, whatever's good for the country based on what the Constitution says, the government can do. So that was one. There's another clause.

Rick Green: 16:08
And David, before you go to that second one, just one other thought there real quick. And part of the reason we lumped that together is because it comes from the conversations in the convention to put the language in there, and then the ratification conventions, and in all those conversations the whole idea was hey, if the country has to go to war, they're going to have to spend money to go to war. So they're going to have to borrow money to do that, they're going to have to raise revenue to do that, and then they need to pay it off as quick as they can, because the general welfare of the nation would be at risk if we had too much debt. Hmm, interesting topic to cover as well, but anyway, so a lot of what we did here in lumping these things together also is not just the language you find in Article I, section 8, but the debates at the convention in 1787 as well.

David Barton: 16:46
And part of this too relates to the fact that, coming from one document of governance to another document of governance, they have a Republican-former government where they elect people, but now they were coming out of the Articles of Confederation and, because they didn't want government to have too much power, they really gave them the power to do nothing. So they said, okay, all these states have to ante up and provide 15,000 soldiers for the American War for Independence. Well, you can say that, but you can't force them to do that. And you can say and, by the way, you need to pay for all those soldiers, but you don't have any revenues to use. And so that's why it says you can lay and collect taxes for the general welfare and for the national defense. So it's also picking up, Rick, as you said, this part of the debates. But they're saying you know, we had the right ideas with the Articles of Confederation, but we just didn't have the authority to do any of that stuff. Now we're going to give the authority and so that's where it goes to these 17 clauses. And if you read the Constitution and just look at the clauses themselves, you can kind of see it yourself. Here's another clause to borrow money on the credit of the United States. So that's where debt can come from. But they have the authority to borrow money if they need. Here's another clause to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states and with the Indian tribes. So protect the pre-enterprise system. Here's another one to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. Okay, you can establish immigration laws and processes, and so as you go through, there's 17 clauses and we have these in various books we've done. But pretty much, if you just go through and look at what it says Congress can do or what the President can do and, by the way, when you get to the President Article 2, a lot of what he can do is the power to enforce what is said in Article 1. The President doesn't get all that many more powers. You know he can nominate federal judges but it's still Congress that confirms them. So the articles all kind of point to the same thing. The powers are really kind of given to Congress, and then Article 2 and Article 3 kind of help enforce those general powers or help implement those powers. So 17 is what we come up with by looking at the clauses.

Rick Green: 18:50
Alright, folks, you can learn a lot more about that by taking Biblical citizenship in modern America. Get your DVDs and workbooks at wallbulllerscom and then invite your friends and family over and you'll dive into all 17 of those. We'll walk you through each and every one of them. Here we go, guys. Next question comes from Philip. He said from reviewing black US legislators so I can teach about good black patriots in my classroom, I see that all we're Republicans. Until about the 1930s. What happened that caused this shift? Thanks, I listed your broadcasts on the podcast and appreciate all the great information. Philip, thank you for sending in the question. So first, before 1930s, he says, all the US legislators were black US legislators. We're Republicans. What happened, guys? What switched?

David Barton: 19:30
Well, what happened was prior to that. You would have some blacks elected, but not at the congressional level. It took a constitutional amendment to be able to do that. So if you look at the three civil rights amendments that result from the Civil War, 13th Amendment abolishes slavery. The 14th Amendment grants voting rights to black Americans in the state where they live. And so a lot of the states were saying well, you may have freed the slaves, but we're not going to let them be citizens in our state. And so we'll let whites vote, but blacks can't vote. And we'll let whites get the right to keep and bear arms, but you can't do that as a black. And so the 14th Amendment came through and said look, whatever right is guaranteed in your state constitution goes to every citizen in the state, regardless of race. So that's where blacks can now start voting in state elections in the South. Already in the North, way back to 1780, you had blacks voting. In Massachusetts, when they did their first constitution, blacks and whites could vote, and so in some of the New England states that was not an issue at all. But giving the Southern states, the Confederate states, the right for blacks to vote, that comes in 1868, where they passed the 14th Amendment and then you still had those states doing. Well, blacks can vote, but they have to pass a literacy test and they would give all these things designed to keep blacks and voting. Blacks can vote, but you know what? There's 13 different names on the ballot and for blacks you're going to have to go to 13 different polling locations to vote. You vote for sheriff over here, you go cross town to vote for school board, and so they're doing all these things to keep blacks and voting. And that's where Congress passed the 15th Amendment in 1870. It said no, no, no if you're black. This is now a federal position that whatever state you're in, you can vote in all the elections. And that's where you start having black Americans voting in federal elections. So when they start voting in federal elections in 1870, that's where you start seeing the first black congressman elected, black senators elected. Now Currier and Ives came out with a poster in 1871 showing the first seven blacks elected to Congress a black US senator, six black congressmen and over the next 20 years or so you've got 23 black congressmen elected to Congress. But it really takes off in the States and, as Philip indicated, it was Republicans. All those states. If you look at every southern state, the Republican Party was started by blacks, not whites. We're from Texas. The Texas Republican Party started in July of 1867 with 150 blacks and 20 whites. It was just that way in every southern state because all the slave owners were part of the Democrat Party. That's just where they were and they insisted on staying there and they didn't want blacks voting and they'd had this bias for all those years. And so the first 41 blacks elected office in Texas were all Republicans. The first 137 blacks elected office Louisiana all Republicans. The first 190 blacks elected office South Carolina all Republicans. The first 40 in Georgia, the first 44 in Florida, the first 99 in Alabama, the first 112 in Mississippi. So you literally within about 10 years you've got about a thousand blacks elected office in the South and they're all Republicans. We actually have a piece from one of the census reports back in the 1870s where the census investigators said they went through the entire state of Mississippi and they found one black in Mississippi who was a Democrat. Every other black in Mississippi was a Republican. So that's where it was. So how come it didn't stay that way? And the answer is in 1876, there was a fight over the presidential election rather than be Hayes and Samuel Tilden. Both sides claimed they won. There was election contest and for about eight months you didn't have a president decided. So they gave a commission of House members and Senate members and Supreme Court justices to see who the winner was, and they determined the Republicans won, but the Democrats said no, we won. And so finally Democrats said, okay, we'll let the Republicans have the presidency if you'll get all the federal troops out of all the southern states, if you'll take federal troops out of the south, and what that meant was no longer are there federal troops to guard the polling places when blacks go vote. Now you'll have all the state police and everybody else will do it, and they've been racist. And so this is when things started changing, and so 1876 is when Reconstruction ends, and over the next 20 or 25 years, what you get is about a dozen different voting laws to keep blacks from voting, and in places like Selma, alabama, you went from having roughly 100,000 black voters down to less than 100 black voters, because they just wiped them out. So what happens is there's no way of being a black and getting a Republican elected. The only party you can have any play with is a Democrat party and one of those black congressmen, richard Cain, said you know, if the blacks would ever stop voting the Republican ticket, if they would simply vote the straight out Democrat ticket, all the violence would stop. And that's kind of what happens. There's no protection anymore for blacks in the south. They start voting Democrat. It's a lot easier on them. And about the time you get to the presidential election at FDR in the 1930s, you still have about 72% of blacks voting Republican at the presidential level. But they can't win. And so FDR comes in and he doesn't do anything in civil rights, but he does start putting a lot of money into the black communities, and that was really important because we're going through the depression at that point in time, and so it saved the black communities. And by the time you get to Eisenhower it's down to 52% voting Republican, and that's where it changed. So the shift happened there and that's why it's been away from that and that's the difference.

Tim Barton: 24:54
Well and Dad, you really covered the vast majority. I would add one comment is that a lot of where the shift happened as well is Republicans over promised and Republican really leaders, president of the times. They promised to do things to help individuals. I mean, you can imagine if somebody's gone through slavery and they've grown up in poverty and lack and all of a sudden somebody says we're going to help you and then the Republicans didn't keep their word. If you look at a guy like a Hoover or something like that and then you have the depression and FDR says, hey, let's do these, these soup kitchens, let's take care of people. There was some dishonesty, which is shocking for us to hear that politicians might be dishonest, and at this point I think a lot of us recognize there's dishonest politicians on both sides of the political aisle and we look at that at the swamp in Washington DC. We recognize the corruption of so many in DC on the Republican and the Democrat side. Nonetheless, it was a dishonesty in corruption on some level that caused a shift and then when Democrat presidential candidates and leaders identified that this was a voting block, that potentially they could sway to their side and and and trench them in their side and strengthen their position. There was a lot of political games that were played in a dishonest sense. Nonetheless, Dad, you really highlighted the vast majority of where that shift happened.

David Barton: 26:07
Yeah, Tim, and let me add to that I did not mean to make it sound totally one sided, because you're right. In the 1920s, the Lilly White Republicans came in. They were racist Republicans. Denver did a terrible job of keeping his promises it was. It was political failures all over, for sure, but a lot of it was shifted because blacks lost the opportunity to be able to continue to vote Republican and they only had one of the choice. And that's where it ended up.

Rick Green: 26:30
Alright folks, we're out of time. That was Foundations of Freedom Thursday, here on WallBuilders.