Rick Green

A few months ago, David Barton and Rick Green invited early Mitt Romney supporter Jordan Sekulow onto their "WallBuilders Live" program to make the case why Religious Right votes can and should be excited about supporting Romney in the general election. 

Sekulow made the case that Romney would nominate good judges, especially to the Supreme Court , and while that certainly appealed to Barton and Green, the fact of the matter is that regardless of how unexcited they might be about a candidate like Romney, their vehement opposition to President Obama meant that they were going to do whatever they could to see Obama defeated. 

And that was more or less the argument put forth by Matt Barber last month in a column he wrote calling on Christians to support Romney primarily because Obama was so bad that no "Christian in good conscience" could ever vote for him or even consider sitting this election out.

Today, Barton and Green invited Barber on to the program to make this case to the WallBuilders listeners and the general consensus among all three was that it was a sin for any Christian not to vote for Mitt Romney:

Barber: We are admonished in Scripture to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Now the wise thing to do is to go in and support Mitt Romney because, again, the alternative is catastrophic.

Green: Absolutely. And like you said, not voting is not only a dereliction of duty, it's really anti-Biblical. It's actually being the servant, remember the parable where they gave the talents? It's being the one that buried their talent. Well that was described in the Bible as being a wicked and slothful servant. I don't want to be that one, man, I want to be one of the other guys.

Barber: Well, absolutely. Well, it's worse than that; not voting is essentially a vote for Barack Obama because it fails to cancel out a vote for Barack Obama so it's absolutely a dereliction of duty.

...

Barton: I don't care if Romney calls himself a Mormon [and] Obama calls himself a Christian. Here's my question: where are you on judges, because Isaiah 1:26 says the righteousness of a land is determined by the judges of the land. Who's more biblical on judges? Romney or Obama?

Green: No question, Romney.

Barton: Let's ask marriage, who's more biblical on marriage? Romney or Obama?

Green: Romney, no question.

Barton: Let's ask where we are on the life issue, who's more biblical? Romney or Obama?

Green: Not even close. Obama supports infanticide he's so pro-abortion. Romney has become very pro-life.

Barton: We know the free enterprise system was started out of five verses in the Bible, the whole economic system that God created we used in America. Who's more biblical on the free enterprise system, Obama or Romney?

Green: Obama's a socialist without question on free enterprise. Romney's a great example on true biblical free enterprise.

Barton: So why do we have a question here? Because he's a Mormon? Hey, we've got to get past labels. Just like Obama's Christian label means nothing, Romney's Mormon label means nothing. What matters is the fruit, which one is going to produce more biblical fruit ...

There's only two options Christians have. Christians do not have the option of sitting this one out. You do not have that option, it is not a possibility. You will stand before God and He will say "I gave you your vote, what did you do with your vote?" And we can't just say "well, I chose to sit this one out."

Green: Especially in a situation like this where so much is at stake. What's the verse, when you know what to do and you do nothing? That's sin!

Barton: James 4:17; when you know what's right to do and you don't do it, that is sin.

The guest on today's edition of "WallBuilders Live" was Gerald Molen, the producer of the new anti-Obama film "2016: Obama's America," which is based on the book "The Roots of Obama's Rage" by Dinesh D'Souza.

Molen was on the program to discuss a recent incident in which a scheduled speech he was to deliver to some high school students was supposedly canceled because of his conservative views, but after the interview, David Barton and Rick Green talked about how excited they were about his forthcoming film, with Barton revealing that Texas Governor Rick Perry was so enamored with it that he has "agreed to raise millions to put this thing in theaters":

Green: Well this new project he's doing - you know we had Dinesh on when he wrote the book "The Roots of Obama's Rage." I love Dinesh D'Souza, I think he's the C.S. Lewis of our day, just a great guy. But to make this a movie now that's going to reach far more people that's actually going to be in theaters even.

Barton: Well, I was just with Governor Perry and Governor Perry has agreed to raise millions to put this thing in theaters. He is committed to this thing in a big way ...

Green: To getting the truth out there for people to really know ...

Barton: He said it's phenomenal ... because they called him and asked him to help and he said "is it okay if I see the movie first before I agree to raise [money]?" And so he saw it and, man he is all over this thing.

On yesterday's installment of "WallBuilders Live," David Barton and Rick Green complained that government regulation was destroying the free market system ... not too much government regulation, mind you, but any government regulation.

In fact, Barton declared that the mere existence of federal regulatory agencies represent "the most dangerous attack on our liberties since the British" while Green explained that there was no need for federal agencies to prevent companies from dumping toxic waste because the truly free market will hold them accountable when they get sued:

Barton: What's going on right now in DC is government at the regulatory level, particularly at the cabinet level, whether it's the Department of Agriculture or Health and Human Services or whatever, those are now pretty much unaccountable agencies. And what they're starting to do to the country, they have no sense of accountability, they fear no one - they don't fear the President, they don't fear Congress, they sure as heck don't fear the people because we don't elect them. the stuff that's now going on with those agencies is, I think, unprecedented and the most dangerous attack we've had on our liberties since the British, quite frankly.

By definition, a free market means there is no government intervention or regulation. So the more these agencies get involved, the less you have the free market and the less prosperity you will have and the less freedom you will have.

Green: You know, people say if you don't have [regulatory agencies] you're gonna have some company that dumps toxic waste or whatever; well then you the company and you go through the civil courts and there's accountability there.

Yes, I am sure that if some company recklessly dumped toxic waste that ended up making one of Green's children seriously ill, he's response would be "thank goodness our truly free maket has no agencies in existence that can prevent things like this from happening so that now I have the opportunity to sue this company and hold them accountable for gravely injuring my child."

One of the central components of David Barton's entire brand of pseudo-history is the way in which he holds up obscure documents, sermons, and individuals from the Founding Era and presents them as representative of the entire generation. 

Barton will cite some textbook with references to God, or some sermon discussing the rights of conscience, or some Founding Father who delivered an impassioned defense of Christianity and declare that at the founding of this nation, everyone knew these things and held these views.

Barton is constantly citing unfamiliar individuals from the Founding Era, discussing how religious they were and then asserting that they were extremely influential in drafting the Constitution and shaping the nation.  The fact that nobody today has ever heard of any of them is, for Barton, proof that secularists have been succeeding in erasing our Christian history.

Today, Barton provided some insight into just how his mind works when making these sorts of claims when he hosted Rep. Todd Akin on his "WallBuilders Live" radio program.  Barton and co-host Rick Green were discussing how people today might be aware of maybe 20-25 high-profile members of Congress despite the fact that there are more than 500 hundred serving in office.  Lots of the lesser known members, Barton said, are dedicated Christians while the better-known members frequently are not, giving the American public a skewed view of just how truly Christian our Congress really is.  

Barton and Green held up Akin as proof, explaining that when he speaks to the Pastor's Briefings they regularly host on Washington, DC, the pastors are always blown away by just how deeply religious and biblically knowledgeable he is, prompting Barton and Green to compare Akin to John Witherspoon during the Founding Era:

Green: It's probably like with the Founding Fathers when you start pointing out all these guys that went to a seminary and were pastors and did all that, it changes people's perception of the Founders. I figure Todd Akin, he's like the John Witherspoon, you know Witherspoon was probably quoting a lot of the same stuff that Todd Akin is out there quoting to fellow members of Congress and to these pastors.

Barton: But the problem is, it's like today, you know I show that slide of the 56 signers of the [Declaration of Independence] and I get kids at really sharp schools, I mean Ivy League schools, and the most they can give me is two of the 56. And I start going through like John Witherspoon ... John Who? Never heard of John Witherspoon. Well, her served on a hundred committees in Congress, he was George Washington's boss, he was on the Board of War during the Revolution to direct the Revolution, he was the President of Princeton. You've never heard of him but he's a really significant Founding Father and, by the way, he is a preacher and a minister and wrote a dozen books of sermons and did two bibles - it's kind of like Todd Akin. If you throw Todd Akin out there, people go "Todd Who? Haven't heard of him." He's like that Witherspoon guy. We know the 20-25 out of Congress, not the 535 so the perception is bad.

This is rather telling because is reveals a bit about how Barton operate because, while Akin is certainly an influential member of Congress, he is probably not a "really significant" figure that future historians will be writing about two hundred years from now ... except, of course, for future Barton-like psuedo-historians who will probably look back on this current generation and hold up somewhat obscure elected officials like Akin as representative not only of the views of this Congress, but of this entire generation.

Last week, we unveiled a campaign featuring a website, web ad, and report exposing Mitt Romney’s dangerous agenda for America’s courts, as demonstrated by the fact that Robert Bork has been tapped to lead Romney's constitutional and judicial advisory team.

As the report noted, Romney's choice of judicial advisors "spells serious trouble for the American people" ...  and it is no surprise that it is also music to the ear of the Religious Right.

On today's episode of "WallBuilders Live," David Barton and Rick Green invited Jordan Sekulow, who worked for Romney back in 2008, to make the case as to why the Religious Right can and should support Romney.  While Green was skeptical at first, Barton needed no convincing because Jay Sekulow (Jordan's father) was going to be involved in picking Romney's judges and that was all he needed to hear:

This has not been a hard thing for evangelicals to get over and support Romney and it shouldn't be a hard thing. When Romney ran four years ago, he wasn't my first choice but the reason I never got really worried about Romney was Jay Sekulow. And I tell you he has been very intimately involved in helping get folks like Alito and Roberts on the court. And four years ago, I heard that Sekulow is the guy that Romney has tapped to choose his judges and I said "that's it." I don't have any trouble with Romney because Isaiah 1:26 tells me the righteousness of nation is determined, not by the legislature, but by its judges. And if Romney's got folks like Sekulow picking his judges, I can live with that in a heartbeat.

When Jordan Sekulow joined the program, he made the case that conservatives should support Romney because he has pledged to nominate judges like Samuel Alito and John Roberts and has filled his campaign with people who are going to keep his feet to the fire:

Green: How important is it for us to recognize that if Romney is president, who has his ear? Who are the people that will consider those judges versus another four years of Obama if he gets another quarter of the judiciary appointed?

Sekulow: You've already got people who are long-time Romney supporters like my dad, who has argued thirteen cases before the Supreme Court and was very involved with President Bush - he was one of four people that were involved in the nomination process in the Bush White House - and so if you like Alito and Roberts, these are the kind of people. You have Judge Bork, who was filibustered by the Senate, voted down by the Senate actually, and he is on the Romney committee.

...

You want Kagan and Sotomayor, and I was at the Supreme Court during the 'Obamacare' oral arguments, you probably don't want more of that, or do you want more Alito and Roberts? And he's made those pledges; I think we need to come to the campaign say "alright, you made these pledges, we're going to keep you honest to them and keep your feet to the fire."

As we have noted multiple times before, the "experts" over at WallBuilders routinely teach that just about every aspect of our government and culture has been explicitly based on Biblical principles.  Thus we are constantly hearing that the three branches of government and separation of powers, our due process clause, elections, all manner of other Constitutional provisions and various other institutions were explicitly rooted in the Bible.

David Barton in particular constantly teaches that our free market economic system came directly out of the Bible and routinely cites Bible passages to justify that claim.  In fact, Barton frequently cites the the famous "Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard" from Matthew 20 to justify employment discrimination, the right of employers to treat their workers unfairly, and the elimination of the minimum wage.

As we have pointed out time and time again, the message Jesus is teaching in this parable is that "the Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner" who pays all of his works the same amount, regardless of how much they worked. The entire point is that no matter how late in one's life one comes to Christ, the Heavenly reward is the same; those who embraced Christ on their deathbed will receive the same eternal reward as those who were Christians all of their lives because of God's generous love.

Recently, Rick Green, Barton's colleague and co-host at "WallBuilders Live," was speaking to a church in North Dakota and making similar claims about how our government and social institutions all originated in the Bible.  So it was no surprise that Green likewise made the case that our free market economy is rooted in Matthew 20, though he added yet another interpretation of this passage when he flashed a PowerPoint slide on the screen claiming the lesson of this parable is that "labor is rewarded":

Has Green even read Matthew 20?  The parable is about workers being hired at different points thorough out the day to work in a vineyard and then all getting paid the same amount, regardless of how long they had worked.  This is equal pay for unequal work, plain and simple. It makes sense when understood as a parable about God's generous love, but sounds like Communism when help up as an economic principle.  So how can this passage possibly be interpreted as a Biblical free market principle that "labor is rewarded" when, if interpreted as though an economic lens, it is actually teaching the exact opposite? 

Last year, David Barton released a six DVD program entitled "Building on the American Heritage Series" in which Barton, along with co-host Rick Green, "navigates our nation’s unique religious, moral and constitutional heritage and answers the questions Americans are asking today."

Today, we noticed that a few of these programs had aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and were archived on its website.  And so, being gluttons for punishment, we set about watching them. 

In the episode entitled "Revival And Reformation," Green asked Barton just how people would know if a revival was taking place in the nation and Barton stated that the spiritual changes brought about by revival lead to political changes, so one of the signs of revival is that society stops tolerating homosexuality: 

Yesterday's episode of "Wallbuilders Live" featured an interview with Kyle Olson, author of the book "Indoctrination: How 'Useful Idiots' Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism."

Olson was bought on to explain to co-host Rick Green how "useful idiots" (i.e. liberals) are using the public schools to promote their pro-gay, anti-business, America-hating agenda to the nation's students. When asked to provide some examples of how this is happening, Olson singled out an episode in Texas where a teacher used the book "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type" to supposedly promote a "pro-union" message!  And, as if that wasn't bad enough, David Barton then weighed in to warn that it was also an "anti-Creation book" because it makes kids think that cows are equal to humans:

Olson: There is a book called "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type" - and I have gotten a lot of heat for talking about this book, but it's very clear that this book is about union organizing because the basic story of the book is that the cows are cold at night and they want to be warm at night so they go to the farmer and say "we want electric blankets." The farmer says "I'm not going to give you electric blankets, you're cows." So then the cows go on strike, and then the chickens go on strike and then, of course, the farmer capitulates and gives them blankets and it's this great story of union power.

What some of the teachers .... have done is they find subtle ways to get this book in front of kids. And so the example from Texas was there was a teacher who decided to make this a science lesson and so, what she did was she read the book to the students and then they did a science experiment to figure out the difference between electric blankets and regular blankets. So, that's just one example ...

Green: No, but that makes sense, so then they use these maybe legitimate exercises of a science study to get the left-wing indoctrination in because I'm assuming that with a book like that, you're talking elementary school kids right?

Olson: Yeah, very young kids. I think those were kindergarteners.

Green: So you've got these kids who have never been exposed to any of this kind of stuff, have never thought about this kind of stuff, but you're already planting in their minds the whole union philosophy.

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Barton: By the way, that's not only a pro-union book, it's an anti-creation book because it makes the animals equal to people. Those kids who come out of that kindergarten class are going to grow up to be attorneys who fight for the rights of cows, because cows are just like we are. Speciesism .... how arrogant to think that humans are a higher species than anything else. No, God does that. That's in Genesis 1-3, different days of creation, different levels, He put man at the top, said "now you go subdue everything, it's all under you, you're the apex of this thing, you're just a little lower than the angels and I'm putting everything under your feet." Real simple stuff. But now, not only are we teaching unionism, we're going against that Biblical viewpoint.

Today on WallBuilders Live, Barton reflected on the alleged persecution of same-sex marriage opponents like himself. Barton compared himself to Jeremiah, which is actually modest for Barton who previously likened himself to Jesus Christ. He claimed that like Jeremiah, he doesn’t care what people have to say about him and doesn’t listen to his critics “as long as I’m speaking the right thing that God told me to say.” Of course, this is the same David Barton who is currently suing three of his critics for libel and defamation and whose cohost Rick Green is suing several people for libel over his unsuccessful campaign to serve on the Texas Supreme Court:

Barton: Anybody who goes out and looks for me up on Google or anything else is going to be appalled at how terrible I am, I mean there’s stuff I didn’t even know I did until I read about it on these articles, but if that matters to you, you lose your voice. One of the things the Lord really dealt to me early on was Jeremiah 1:17, because Jeremiah was going to deliver a message that was extremely unpopular to people, he said, ‘listen guys we are going into bondage but God’s going to bring us out,’ nobody wants to hear that, so Jeremiah’s been commissioned to give a message that nobody is gonna like. That’s why they threw him down in the miry pit and he was gonna die down there and they finally brought him out. So Jeremiah, a doom-and-gloom kind of guy in some ways, and God told him in Jeremiah 1:17 ‘do not look at their faces when you deliver the message I told you, if you do, if you pay attention to the way they respond, I will break you to pieces in front of them,’ and that’s one of the things I learned early on.

People don’t like the fact about the Christian heritage of the nation but I gotta speak whether they like it or not because if I watch the reaction, if I watch their faces, if I gage what I do by the criticism I get, I’ll soften my approach and he’ll break me to pieces in front of them. For people who are enemies, I don’t care! I don’t care whether they like me or not, as long as I’m speaking the right thing that God told me to say!

Green: You don’t want to be a man-pleaser.

Earlier in the show, David French of the American Center for Law and Justice told Barton and Green that gay rights advocates who claim that marriage equality has no victims are wrong as “the victim is our culture.” French claimed that marriage equality would devalue the institution of marriage by taking God out of the equation, but his only evidence that the legalization of same-sex marriage undercuts the institution of marriage is the existence of no-fault divorce policies:

French: Unless there are radical developments that I can’t foresee there’s going to be that challenge of dealing with that assertion that somehow same-sex marriage is a victimless phenomenon, but you know the reality is that when you’re talking about the conversion of marriage from a God-given and God-created institution into a contract between consenting adults, the victim is our culture. Because what you’ve done is you have taken one of the most fundamental building blocks of all society and you’ve converted it into an arrangement of convenience, even loving convenience, between adults that ultimately exists for the fulfillment of adults. That was never its intention. The consequences of turning marriage into that, as we’ve seen through the explosive fault of no-fault divorce, have been catastrophic.