Lecture: David Barton on The Philosophy Of Early Education

years now into having schools and the original philosophy education for several actually several centuries was very simple it had three objectives the first thing education in America was to teach you was to teach you religion morality and knowledge in that order that is the wording out of the very first federal education law ever passed schools existed to teach a religion morality and knowledge which is why I said yesterday the US Supreme Court ruled in the 8/0 decision that if you're going to be a public school you have to teach the Bible we're not going to have a public school one teach to the Bible so that's what education was to do second thing that it was to do was to teach thinking skills now today we're all into learners we're learners and we have learning skills who we used to be thinkers we had thinking skills big difference I'll show you the difference because that really is part of where I went ahead today and the third thing we did was to instill very high expectations it was that until 1920 you finished school when you were 13 years old and at 13 years old in 1920 everybody finished school you either went to college you got a permanent career because you're an adult when you're 13 that's what it was in the Bible when you're a Jewish boy at 13 or Jewish girl you have her Bar Mitzvah Bosman so you're an adult or you're an elder in a synagogue at the age of 13 you already know the Bible you've already gone through it so we are to the point now with it according to the US government today the age of adolescents which used to end at 13 and then it was moved up in the 1970s 80s 90s it was the age of 18 is when you became your adolescence ended today according the US government adolescent in somewhere between the ages of 35 and 40 so we're considered an analyst we become we seem to becoming more immature as a nation so we used to excel very high expectations now I want to go back to this one about thinking skills the way we taught thinking skills very different from what we do today forensics is something we use to do that forensics is a latin word it comes from 1650 it means to learn the art of public argumentation I want to show you some of the forensics that thirteen-year-olds did in America it's going to be hard for you to read I'll read it out loud because the print is small but this is a this is an early book but one of the founding fathers Robert true Payne and these talks about the forensics they were doing again this is for 13 14 year old forensics here this one it says whether the conduct the Patriots who destroyed the tea in Boston Harbor in 1773 is to be condemned here's what happened you walk into the classroom the teacher says okay today we're going to talk about whether the Boston Tea Party is something that should be praised or something that should be condemned and I'll tell you now if you know that incident in history and if you think about it you can take either side of that I mean there's not a clear right and wrong on that that that's not like a Bible verse that says this is right and this is wrong this is one that both sides can argue and that was the point they walk in the teacher said okay you take four you take against you guys go after it right now and so you start having to argue it didn't matter what your belief is you have to argue and see what the weaknesses is and the other guy's arguments see if you can find those weaknesses and see if you can make strengths and yours and after you get done sit okay now flip it let's go the other way and so you had to learn the art of public argumentation you had to think through all the weaknesses all the logic that wasn't there what was missing you had to develop your own strengths of arguments find out where your own weaknesses were you thought through all of that and you had to be able to present that publicly here's some more thesis are a forensic I associate with no one I employ no one who's not of my party and religion and politics if you ain't in my group I'm not gonna hire you okay let's talk about that you take four you take against now let's flip it go the other way another one is there less danger and believing too much or too little is it more dangerous to believe too much and believe too little let's go at it and one more is there more to be gained or more to be lost by a new translation of the Scriptures for common use now this is the stuff we were doing this is this is over 200 years old what we're looking at here this is the kind of arguments that we had for thirteen year olds all across America this is what we see we're teaching how to think we're not causing you to be learners we're teaching how to think this this concept of learning the art of public argumentation that's thinking through something so what happens is we also have Bible verses that speak to us very clearly you may be familiar with this Bible verse most Christians tend to hear it a whole lot from their parents and church and pastors proverbs 22:6 train up a child in the way should go when he's old he one depart from it you know if we'll just teach a teacher this stuff when you're young when you're old you'll come back to the faith if you leave no that's not what it says if you look at the actual original Hebrew it doesn't say train up a child it says catechized child now catechism is a specific teaching method it is the way that you teach subjects it is it's the use of questions and answers we believe this so much than America back in that day when we had we had thirteen year olds going to college all the time and by the way one of the things that we do in the summer we have leadership training in summer two weeks at a time we bring in eighteen to twenty five year olds and we'll go through this leadership training going back to a lot of this stuff we have now we have kids that come in they were working on their PhDs and they have their master's degree isn't they already teaching eighteen through twenty five and we give all of them the eighth grade exit exam from nineteen twenty haven't had a single person passed the eighth grade exit exam from nineteen twenty it's like they are so much more advanced than where we are and this is even for those that are working on PhDs so catechized a child you know it's exactly what we did let me show you I mentioned yesterday we have 120,000 documents from before 1812 we have thousands of documents out of Education look at the textbooks and the titles of the textbooks a Catechism on ancient history we talk world history but using the Catechism we have a catechism of agricultural chemistry and geology we have a catechism on American law we have a catechism on etymology which is Sciences study of insects you have a catechism on American history you have a catechism on astronomy you have a catechism on music you have catechism on electricity you have catechism on géographique you have catechism of mineralogy you have catechism of chemistry you have catechism on the Chi we did everything with catechisms we had a lot more knowledge we had a lot more retention we thought a lot better because the Bible says if you catechized someone when they're young when they're old they won't lose that well that's a teaching method it's not just teach people the Bible and they're young and they'll always remember that's not true if you teach them through a catechism they're gonna remember it and that's what we did we believe the Bible so this is the educational teaching method we use now we don't like it say oh the question answers that is so boring let's have something that's a lot more interactive and yeah we got a lot more interactive stuff but we're not doing real well on educational achievement now it's actually slipped and that's why I say an eighth grader X exam from the 1920s we haven't found anybody that can pass today and that's at the college level and above so what happens with the catechism is you learn to answer questions you ask who what when where why and how and if you can answer those questions you have thought through something you now have ingested the content you understand the content and you can argue it to someone else you can persuade them convince them you can stand your own ground you're not gonna get picked off you've thought through all the stuff so this is what we did with catechisms now this changed and the reason it changed and the time it changed it changed in the 1920s we said a lot of educators back then said let's not do this thinking thing anymore and so particularly what was called the progressive Education Association in the 1920s they came up with five systemic changes to the pedagogy of the way we teach what we do in schools today is the result of what they implemented a hundred years ago the five things they did one of the things they did and by the way these are the leading educators back at that point in time you had Robert Ingersoll and Francis Waylon Parker and Lester Ward you had Kirk Kilpatrick and you had John Dewey all these guys usually guys say oh no we got to do education there we've been doing it this way a hundred years let's try something new and so we started doing something new just cuz it was time to do something new and these guys wanted to do it everybody bought into it and so what happened was we changed from thinking and said instead of emphasizing thinking listen let's make everyone a learner let's do learning and so what happens is when you change an emphasis from thinking to learning what you do is you take the emphasis off the student and you put the emphasis on the teacher you're going to learn what I tell you now no longer are you going to feed yourself and you're up in C being a thinker is like learning how to fish as opposed to someone giving you a fish when you're a learner if someone's giving you the food you're going to eat and you eat what they give you when you're a thinker you can go out and catch food for yourself and you can think freeze and that's the difference so we've had this fundamental shift and so the emphasis on the student of the teacher this is the first time in American history that we introduced testing that was fill in the blank we introduced the testing of true and false we introduced the testing of multiple-choice and it was because I am your teacher did I tell you this or this true or false I told you this and fill in the blank did I tell you ABC we're teaching you to recite back to us what we told you say we're now we're in charge of all the information negotiated which makes us a smaller into the fumble everything comes through us this is where Jesus said in Luke 642 B you want to be able to feed yourself and train and grow bigger than your teacher and have the right view you want to be able to think through everything and your teacher may have a bias that's not accurate you don't want that bias if it's not an accurate button you want truth and so that's what we did but that changed in the 1920s and so this is what we do today is we don't teach thinking we teach learning that's the way our tests are as well as a result that makes American people a very gullible people we're open to indoctrination whatever the views of our teacher are that's what's going to become my views as well which is why as I pointed out yesterday four out of five do not believe there's absolute moral truth in America how can you say there's not absolute well two out of three Christians don't think there's absolute moral truth because we've been indoctrinated we we've gone through and dr. nation that says oh no you get to live your own life you can determine your own truth you can be whatever you want to be there's 92 genders you choose the one you want to be no just because someone believes that doesn't mean that's true and so what happens is we're now very gullible for a lot of things that would never have flown in previous generations when we were thinkers they've never flown in any other culture any other civilization any other era any other millennia they're now floating in America because nobody questions them it's just we're in this gullible kind of state so having said all of that what I want to do is talk about how we used to use reason in a way that we don't now we used to use thinking skills to do that I want to just start with with America for a moment let me put America in perspective if you're from other nations don't know what you think about America what I'm going to show you really doesn't matter what you think about America it's statistical is factual when you look at where America is with our form of government the Constitution that we've had since 1787 you look at where we are now under the Declaration Constitution our governing documents we are unique among the 195 nations of the world they're 195 nations this year at the UN it goes up and down every year Jesus said there'd be wars and rumors of wars it was that when we left would be that wait till he gets back you got a revolution over here if somebody has a civil over here this nation took over the it changes every year the numbers go up and down this year there's 195 nations that the we have had our Constitution for 231 years now that's the only Constitution we've ever had in our entire history we've had one let me show you what's happened to other nations in the world in that same period of time for example if you're from France you've had 15 constitutions at the same time we've had one just look at the other nations now whatever you think about America there's something unusual here and the fact that we've only had one constitution in our entire lifetime this is significant Poland earlier this year dealing with government officials over there took a congressional delegation to Poland and I Pope I spoke to people in Poland that in their life they have lived through nine constitutions and their own life they've experienced nine cups we never think about that do you know if the average length of the constitution of the history of the world is the average length the constitution in history world is 17 years that's what most nations average we 231 and by the way most nations in the world average a violent revolution every generation or so we've only had one that's different so regardless of whether you think America is any good or not any good we are unique with stability we have stability like no other nation in the history of the world we also have creativity there's a lot of ways to measure creativity you have particularly what I call an international copyrights and patent laws America represents four percent of the world's population we're not a very big nation four percent of the world's population should produce four percent of the world's whatever if you're 12 percent of the world's population you should produce 12 earth America's 4 percent of the world's population every single year produces more innovations more medical discoveries more cures more more technology we have more science we have more entertainment arts media DVDs movies than the other 96% of the world combined now we are so used to technology that we think it's pretty normal natural and it's not I was in Germany recently with military bases over there and I got to stay at a five-star hotel which is pretty cool I don't get stay at many five-star hotels and then I found out they don't have internet at that five-star hotel are you kidding me even motel 6 is over here have internet I mean we're so used to totally different stuff and you find that across the world what we take for granted many other nations even advanced nations don't have what we what we get to enjoy here in addition to our creativity there's our productivity there's our prosperity you see we are four percent of the world's population we produce 25 percent of the world's gross domestic product show you kind of how this works and I'm a cowboy I've have a ranch out west of here and I'm in agriculture farming and ranching farming and ranching in America is only 1% of the world's gross excuse me is only one percent of America's gross domestic product in other words agriculture is only 1% of what America produces but every year that 1% produced in America produces enough food to feed the entire world now the problem is we can't get it to everywhere in the world that needs it but we produce enough in America every year to feed the entire world America is only 66 and the world and percentage of farmable land 65 nations have a greater percentage of farmable land than we do and don't produce near as much for some reason we're able to take what we have and make it go further than any other nation we have a higher productivity again 4% of the world's population we produce 1/4 of the world's products unbelievable stuff this is called American exceptionalism if this is something that a lot of professors don't like I wrote a book about this a few years ago professors came out of the woodwork to say that's a myth America is not different America's not special now I'm sorry statistically speaking in America is exceptional you're welcome to your opinion but it's wrong because truth is what it is statistics are what I don't care what do you think gravity takes you up if you jump and when I jump it's gonna take me down just like it will you you can have your opinion but you're wrong it's gonna take you down it's easy stuff so you can say America is not special that's fine you have your opinion but the statistics prove otherwise I mean that's just that's the way it is so American exceptional so what is it that made us different what is it that made us unique and what happens is no professor likes to define it today and there are some good professors across the nation but generally by and large they're they're pretty hostile to America American exceptionalism is what describes the unimpressive dented stability freedom and prosperity that is the result of institutions and policies that are produced by unique governing philosophy and notices sequence here we have a philosophy of government and that's what produces our institutions of policies and those institutions and policies are what produced the stability freedom and prosperity but it's the institution it's the philosophy of governments that the most important is whatever every nation has the philosophy of government and it will produce fruit every idea is going to produce fruit of some kind good or bad so when you look at our philosophy we're producing fruit different from any other nation in the world therefore our philosophy must be a little bit different and let me take you back to 8th grade earth science and 8th grade or science we were taught about the fruit trees that in fruit trees there's three parts of a fruit tree you have first what you plant down in in the ground you the seed you plant that seed lean that seed and then it starts growing and then as it emerges above ground it starts building the trunk and the branches and the infrastructure and that's the second part and then finally it gets to the foliage up top and that's where it produces the fruit and that's the third part of the fruit tree well that's exactly with it the way the nation is we planted a seed in the ground that was the philosophy of government it grew the institutions and policies that grew the infrastructure and that infrastructure is is our institution policies and that's what produced that foliage up top that produces the fruit that everybody likes everybody likes the freedom the prosperity the technology all the stuff we have but the most important part is the seed you planted I mean if you like apples don't plant a lemon seed because you will not get apples on a lemon seed there's a reason that no other nation of the world is producing the fruit up top that America is produced because they haven't planted the same seed now I speak nations across the world help them do governments and constitutions and I always take them back to key principles it's not that the American Constitution is what school it's the principles that we used in the American Constitution because they will work for any nation at any point in time across history it's just you have to use those principles I mentioned yesterday so many of the principles what we have the free market system what we have in our educational system used to have in our educational system what we have in our system of government they were all Bible based any nation that will take those Bible principles they will prosper when they use them God's no respecter person's he's no respecter of Nations if you take except for Israel if you take those principles and apply them he will he will make them work it's real simple so what is the seed or the philosophy that caused American exceptionalism that's real simple we said it in our founding documents when the guy has created this nation they told the world what they were doing it was in the Declaration of Independence and that Declaration of Independence they started with a hundred and twenty six words that gave five principles of government everything and the Constitution goes back to these five principles of government this is the foundation this is the seed we planted and we told the world and that's what the declaration says we want to declare to the world the causes which impel us to the separation so we told everybody what the philosophy was and nobody pays attention to it today most folks have never even read the Declaration of Independence is relatively short starts with one hundred and fifty five words that set forth our government twenty-seven grievances showing how those rights are violated and then it concludes with the declaration saying we're relying on God to get these principles brought forward and so we we said with a we told the world that we're doing this with a firm reliance and the protection of divine providence appealing to the supreme judge of the universe for the rectitude of our intentions I mean we told the world we're going to God over this so what happens is let me read you those 126 words right out of the Declaration it says one in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed 126 words five principles let me take in the fire principles the first thing they said in that section they talked about what was called the laws of nature and nature's God that's a phrase that we don't understand that much today it was a very popular phrase back then it was if you want to an idiom that they used all the time everybody knew what it was they knew the origin of it but I'll tell you what it is it establishes that there is an absolute right and wrong there are morals that are right there are absolute morals kind of like the Ten Commandments so the first thing we told the nations we believed there is absolute moral truth that there are things that are absolutely right absolutely wrong and once we establish what the rights and wrongs are then we can hold these to be self-evident you can't have truth and tell you establish what's right and wrong truth is based on absolute I mean like gravity I don't care what you think about gravity if you jump off the top of the Empire State Building you will splat on the ground below it you can have all the opinions you want the gravity won't affect me it's going to moral laws affect to you whether you agree with them or not you may not agree with God's moral laws they will have an impact on you one of the things we have a national radio program we have about 371 stations where we do daily broadcast and one of the things we do about every two weeks is bring out all the new statistical scientific information that absolutely shows unequivocally that what the Bible said in certain areas was absolutely right science will end up always proving God right because God has absolute truth that's what we believe let me take you back to this phrase the laws of nature nature's God it came out of the most famous law book of that generation it was a law book written by Sir William Blackstone commentaries on the laws he wrote it in 1766 it took four years to write all the volumes that finished in 1769 Thomas Jefferson said an American attorney studied that book like Muslims Muslims studied the Quran every American knew that book top to bottom and what Blackstone says and there on the loss of nature nature Scot he says this is the dual revelation of God Wow God doesn't have to revelation yeah we didn't say to God she said one God a dual revelation he said the first part the loss of nature is exactly what we see in Romans 1 for example I don't know about you but I have I have critics who come to me and say you know you Christians you you claim to have a loving God how can you have a loving God if he would send people to hell who have never heard the gospel ha what do you say to that great question what I say that that's exactly what Paul said to that in Romans 1:20 Paul said everything that can be known about God including the intricacies of Godhead have been revealed through what he has created so that even the heathen are without excuse now according to what Paul God has so revealed himself in his creation in nature that you don't need anything else to know and by the way Paul said even the intricacies of the Godhead Godhead that's pretty deep theology yeah but it's all their nature see what happens is we don't spend time thinking much about nature today we're told in Psalm 46:10 be still know that I'm God if you get out in God stuff and you just sit down and you have no agenda except to just watch and observe and learn it is amazing because everything God wants us to know is there now as Blackstone pointed out in addition to Romans 1 which is the first revelation of God the laws of nature the laws that God has put in nature the second revelation Blackstone said you know after Adam and Eve sinned sin entered the world and it clouded our thinking and because of sin we don't see as clear as that we used to so God and his compassion for our human frailty said let me just write it down for you because you're not seeing this and that's what we call the scriptures that's the laws of nature's God squared the Bible is the laws of the God who created nature so between the laws of nature that God created and then after sin he said you're not seeing it let me just write it for you the laws of nature and the laws of nature's God that's where we find exactly what's right and wrong now for a few minutes let's just put the Bible aside I'm going to show you how that we can establish absolute rights and wrongs without any reference to the Bible whatsoever we can use the laws of nature and this is where it requires the reason and thinking and using our brain and asking questions etc so let me take you into some of the first part just on the laws of nature let me start with the law of self-defense someone asked me about it yesterday after we were done so let me talk about this for a minute and by the way I told you I'm a cowboy my cowboy from Mount Westar here we got the ranch we do all the stuff for the horses that go with it and we end up in really rough parts of the kind of wind up in places with our horses you go ahead you get your horse in there and they cave like that and it's just a whole different lifestyle and what we do tends to be fairly rugged and we can be in very rough parts of the country I just got back from up in Wyoming we were driving cattle and Wyoming we had a you had to go over the top of the mountains driving cattle and we had 16 miles and we drove cattle and the cattle were stretched out for two miles and so it's it's like the Old West and that is that's me that's what I do and so a matter of fact where we ride is often very dangerous we happen to be going around a curve here and I want to make a left on this trail right when he turns around this trail which we're going down my right stirrup was hanging over the valley for about 400 feet and so if my horse slips we're both dead I mean that's just yep and so what I do what I do with with horses I've got to have a horse I really trust we get long really well spend a lot of money I'm taking care of that horse getting good feed having good good vets and getting the place for it to stay I mean we put a lot of effort into that because our life depends on it if I come to the edge of a cliff and put my horse's nose over the cliff and say go down that goat trail on the side if she gives me any grief at all we both die if I come to the river and say you got to swim that River we got to get to the other side she does and so I've got a great relationship my horse I have several horses and a great relationship and we spend time together she knows how I think I know how she thinks I know how she's gonna react she knows what to expect to me and it worked really well until she had young foal and when that colt was born I went into the barn to feed her and she came after me with her teeth to tear me up she came after me with her heels to kick me out because you see God is put in the nature of what he's made that I will defend my life I will defend the life of my young and I will defend where I live my property I do not need Exodus 22 to to tell me I have the right of self-defense I didn't need not need the two passages in Nehemiah I do not need what Jesus said in Luke I don't need this I've got them but I don't need because everything in nature if you mess with if you try to take its life the life of its family or if you try to take its home they will come after you and I don't care if it's a mouse if you're trying to hurt a mouse they will turn and bite you there I could do much damage but they will do everything they can to try to defend their life and their home so that's a law of nature the law of self-defense the the right to defend myself against any kind of attack or aggression I don't need the Bible to justify that I can do it without that and literally that's what we that's a law of nature God has put it see we also raise sheep and raising sheep we've got had a little kitten just a really cute little kitten I really like it was a people cat and for whatever reason that cat and that that wanted to use in the flock they kind of bonded up I don't know why but they did and so at night when that you would lie down in the pasture that kitten would go and crawl under her wool and sleep Minh is nice warm place to sleep and it was just a really cute relationship and tell that you had a set of twins and then when she had a set of twins that kitten went out too not to crawl under the you and she just stomped that kitten in the ground I mean she wouldn't go now it didn't kill the kitten but it was the nature kicked in you don't mess with my kids you don't and so Congress can pass any law it wants prohibiting used from stomping kittens in the ground and it's not going to make any difference it's a law of nature there's no human law that will change or alter or regulate what God has put in the nature of what he's created so that's one the law of self-defense if you go to the law of Liberty there are ten million known species in nature ten million there's not a single species that enslaves any other species ever any we used to be told well there's one species of ants and enslaves another and now they said you know that's really not true it's symbiotic they both help each other and it's not an enslavement there is nothing in nature ten million speed there is no slavery in nature now that's a law of nature the law of nature is the law of Liberty that's one of the laws of God well why didn't our founding fathers believe that because they were all a bunch of pro-slavery no they weren't 1/4 of the founding fathers who approached Lavery three-fourths were ardent anti-slavery and the three-fourths told the 1/4 guys what you're doing it violates the laws of nature and of nature's God because we're talking Isaiah 60:1 we're talking Luke 4 we're talking Leviticus 25 all these verses on Liberty in the Bible you're violating that today our problem is we can name the pro-slavery founding fathers we can't name the anti-slavery and so we get taught a particular viewpoint you need to get taught the good the bad the ugly you need to know what truth is from side to side so the law Liberty was a law of nature and by the way the same thing with abortion 10 million species in nature there's not a single species that kills its young while still in the womb abortion is violation of all law something I don't care if you believe in evolution creation I'm a huge creation guy your evolution great you show me anything in your system that kills its young while still in the womb never does it's a violation of all laws of nature now I can also show you all the Bible verses where this John 1 or Psalm 135 or Jeremiah 1 and go through all the Bible verses show you the pro-life positions I'm sure what Deuteronomy and Leviticus said it's about protecting the unborn child I don't need to the laws of nature tell me that abortion is wrong same thing with homosexuality there are again 10 million species in nature there's only half a dozen species where homosexuality ever exists in nature and even though species that is never a lifestyle there is not a homosexual lifestyle anywhere in nature period even in the half dozen species where it does exist it's always an aberration even in that species now I can show you 1st Corinthians 6 and show you Leviticus and show you all the Bible verses what the Bible says about homosexuality romans 1 don't need to I'll show you the laws of nature the loss of things you know that our US Supreme Court even fifteen years ago and it's not a bible-believing conservative Supreme Court the Supreme Court even 15 years ago said that homosexuality was a quote crime against nature they didn't use the Bible says wrong they use the loss of nature say it's wrong and that's what nature tells it tells us is homosexuality let me take you to transgender because this is the new kind of thing that's happening I mentioned yesterday today you got 92 legally recognized genders today your Facebook profile you get to choose from 74 genders go back to cowboy world for a minute I was in North Dakota we were doing a round up in North Dakota Badlands in North Dakota a pretty rugged area where all this true trees are that's where creeks are but that's where the that's where the cattle hang out they see people about once a year their wild is deer and so what we have to do is go down and those this would those tree areas and drive the cattle out we get them up on top of the Mesa we start a cattle drive so we had 1,200 cattle going across top of the Mesa and what we do is who drive into pens on top of the Mesa and the reason we do is we want the calves out of them because the calves are seven diseases that will kill cattle we have to vaccinate the cattle we need to put ear tags on them so we know what you ranch they belong to because they've been born out on various places and so what we do is we send a cowboy in and he will rope a single calf and bring that calf out we had 590 caps and so they bring the calf out and there's four or five of us that'll drop on top of that calf I happen to be the one in the blue plaid shirt in the middle and what I'll do is I'll drop down and give them an injection to make sure they're healthy and make sure they say and so five hundred and ninety calves that we did and the families all get together this there's the cowgirl there on the left from one of the ranches cowboy on the right for one of the ranches you know what we treated five hundred and ninety calves and nobody had any difficulty telling me which was male and which was female it was really easy to do all you had to do is use your eyes for fifty five hundred years if you wanted to know what gender you were you look between your legs now we look between our ears what is this deal you know as it's crazy stuff so I don't need anything in the Bible to tell me there's two genders although the Bible does tell me that we're told four times in the scripture and God created them male and female period in the story the laws of nature and the laws of nature's God they both say the same thing so this is the standard that we use in the beginning I'll keep going there's other examples in addition to transgender property doesn't matter where you are nature from the time you're born you will stake out something that you consider to be your territory your home then when you die something else is going to take it but while you're alive you have a right to property where you're going to live where you're going to stay what's your territory is so whether it's an elk or whether it's an eagle or whatever they get these territory if it's a crocodile they stake out territory that's their home and it's there as well they live and so the right of private property now I can also take you to of the ten commandments dual protecting private property not to mention all the other Bible verses and addition to that accumulation of profit you're allowed in the Bible to accumulate as much as you can and to keep it we see that in the parables that Jesus told in Luke 19 in Matthew 25 but in nature nobody says oh mr. squirrel you have way too many acreage you need to share them with everyone else there is no socialism in nature it does not exist now they may cooperate together in families but they have the right to accumulate and keep as much as they can whether that's a mountain line whether that's the alligator that takes its prey to the bottom of the lake whether that's a pack rat whether it's a beaver who stores up stuff in his Lodge doesn't matter you have the right to accumulate and keep you don't get penalized for having too much the right of Association you know if I'm an Angus cow I can decide I'm gonna hang out with the Guernsey cows or I can decide that I'm gonna hang out with the Santa Gertrudis or the char light I can even decide I'm gonna hang out with goats or donkey I get to choose where I hang out today the government says oh you're a baker you will bet you will hang out with homosexual wedding you know I get the right to choose who I hang with that's the right of Association and that's a natural right and that's a right in the Bible as well 1st Corinthians 6 we also have the right of theft what are you talking about theft well see this is where it's really kind of difficult for me because when I look at the laws of nature theft appears to be fairly common in nature I mean with my four horses when I feed my whole four horses none of the horses eat their own food they all go steal it from the other three so it's kind of like musical feed they all go steal from the others and the same thing with adultery monogamy is not common in nature I mean that's why in a cow herd you got one bull in 20 cows and a herd monogamy is not common incest is very common that's why cowboy usually just not right a Mustang some of us thinks gonna be good but Mustangs had been inbred for so many generations that they're small they don't have much strength or stamina we don't use Mustangs because they've been inbred for some incest is really common in nature the same with murder I mean if you don't see what murder looks like in nature you need to have a chicken coop and let a skunk into a chicken coop what a skunk doesn't chicken could they bite the heads off all the chickens and they sling the body around it just sprays blood every their murderous their mass murders they go in and just wipe out chickens they don't eat them it's not for food the digis murderers so if we're saying the laws of nature teaches what's right and wrong then what do you do with things like that this is where Blackstone said you know since sin came in things just aren't the same so God had to help us out so he wrote it down for us and that's why things like the Ten Commandments the Ten Commandments tell us real simple don't steal don't commit adultery don't commit murder see between the laws of nature and the laws of nature's God we have a very comprehensive code of what is right and wrong we have a good understanding of what is right and wrong and by the way and the fifth and the seventh and methey US Constitution this is what we call the common law the common laws the laws of nature nature's God that's the laws on which we're supposed to run the country is the laws of nature nature's God so that's the first thing we said that made us different from all of the nations we believe that God has established absolute rights and wrongs and that's what we're going to use and that's what we're gonna recognize the loss of nature and the loss of nature's God and by the way I will tell you that if you want to work on use in your mind and get out and just think about nature and I'll do this a time I was working on the ranch a few weeks ago trying to kill off weeds and I had an epiphany because I'm trying to kill thistles and cockle burrs and graspers out of the pasture and it struck me you know if I have a great pasture and I have one thistle that grows up in that pasture within five years the entire pastures thistles on the other hand if I have a field of thistles and plant a seed of wheat in it that seed will never take over the thistles it's always the weeds that take over the good stuff it's not the good stuff that takes over the bad stuff the only way I can get wheat to take over the field is if I plant so much of it that it has an abundance and that really struck me that's why Jesus tells us to be really careful about sin in our life a little leaven leavens the whole loaf if you let one thistle grow up it will take over your life and you can't just assume that because there's something good there I don't have to cultivate it if you don't cultivate the good the bad will take it over I mean that's a law of nature briars take over forests all the time kudzu takes over Tennessee and Kentucky I mean the weeds take over it's not the good things to dominate unless you put attention into it which is why we're told back in Genesis 1 that it's gonna be with the sweat of your brow that you bring forth good stuff and it really became clear when I was working in the pastures I can look at an anthill and tell you how the federal budget is supposed to operate because if I study an anthill you see ants understand that there are seasons in life that there's times when you have great abundance and there's times when you don't there's times when the winter comes and there's not going to be any seats for us to eat so what we do is ants as we create a savings account we go out in the spring and summer and we just bring it all in and we save it away because we're gonna have to live the rest of the year when nothing's growing see what the government does is this oh look at the great income we have we're gonna budget on the spring its spring we have great income and because they budget on the spring when the winter comes and it always does in economics there will always be times in your life when you're gonna have less than other times you don't budget on the springtime you budget on the wintertime trying to have a say if you don't have a savings account you should proverbs 6 says go to the ant slugger and he lays up his provision the ant has a savings account see there's so much in the Bible that God tells us even about economics and the way budgeting should work so that's why the loss of nature initially this is where we used to think about things and this is why we had totally different policies than we do now because there's just some things we do they don't make sense at all but we've been taught that that's what we should do but it doesn't match up to the laws of nature nature's guy the second thing that I would point to real quickly is after you get the absolute rights and wrongs the second thing is it says all men are endowed by their creator now they're created equal endowed by their creator what we just did here was we just told you there is a creator you say I've been involved in seven cases the US Supreme Court they all deal some kind of religious expression way shape fashion form can you have prayer - football can you have prayer - high school football game can can you have prior to graduation and so these these cases we get involved with the court says oh no wait a minute there's there's people in America who are atheists they don't believe in God and so in government we can't take a position either for or against God we got to be completely neutral that's not the way we were formed this thing that there is a creator that was as they said the unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America we're telling you we in America believe there is a God now we don't require every individual to believe that you're free to believe what you want to but as a nation we believe that there's a God and it's very significant when you look at the early state constitutions written by for example 1776 Ben Franklin talked about Ben Franklin yesterday Ben Franklin wrote the Constitution Pennsylvania for 1776 and Ben Franklin who is not a Christian he was a Bible guy but he was not a Christian Ben Franklin said you can't hold office in Pennsylvania unless you believe that there is a God and unless you believe in the scriptures and unless you believe in a future state of rewards and punishments now what does that mean a future state of rewards and punishments means I believe that those are God and I will stand before him an answer someday first Corinthians for all I answer for all the thoughts I've had Romans our Hebrews for I'll answer for all the deeds I've done Matthew 12 Jesus said you'll account for every idle work I will give account from my words my thoughts and my actions if you know that as a public official your behavior suddenly changes because you see every session of Congress there are between 10 and 13 thousand bills introduced every session of Congress if we talked all this morning got everybody together said aren't I want you to name every single measure you know of that Congress has dealt with this year will probably come up with 25 or 30 got news for you it's between 10 and 13 thousand there been thousands of votes cast by every congressman we don't know about it which means most of what goes on the government goes on out of our site which means that if those guys don't feel a direct accountability to God if they don't have a fear of God this as man if I sell out the people God's gonna nail me and I'm looking eternal judgment ain't gonna do it I'm gonna do the right thing if you don't have a cognizance that you going to answer to God then you don't have a reason and incentive to do the right thing in private you do the right thing in private because you recognize that nothing's private to God he sees everything he keeps up with everything and so when we lose that cognizance of being God conscious that's where our government turns and directions it shouldn't and that's why we stayed God conscious as a government our philosophy of government is we're going to be God conscious because if we don't you see this is the first way of limiting government the Bible teaches there should be limited governments the Bible only gives a certain jurisdiction of things to governments I mentioned yesterday the Bible does not allow the government to take care of the poor they give them civil justice but it's individuals and churches and and families that take care of the poor there's a jurisdiction that God put government in limited government the first step in limiting government is to acknowledge that there's a God at the power higher in government because you see the problem is government across the world secular government thinks that it is God it's going to tell you what's right and wrong and what you can do and can't do and what's yours and what's not but when you have a God that's higher than government you can have a limited government see I can point the nation's in Europe right now if you homeschool in certain nations in Europe you will go to jail because children are not belong to you they belong to the state that's just the position everything belongs to the state I can take you to a nation in France a very advanced modernized nation that if you share your faith there you will go to jail they call it proselytization you don't have the right of free speech see we have so many things that we take for granted but it came from the belief that God gave you certain things and government's not supposed to regulate it so that's how we limited government I love the way George Washington dealt with this on the day that we finished the Bill of Rights the first 10 amendments of the Constitution George Washington called the entire nation to a day of national Thanksgiving in prayer and this is the reason that George Washington did I mentioned we have all these old documents this is the actual proclamation he did calling the nation to pray and thank God because we've just finished the Bill of Rights which protects to iron a liberal rights this is what he explained right here this is the reason he did it he said it is the duty and the word duty is a very important word it doesn't mean to what it meant then and their dictionaries the word duty is a legally binding contractual obligation today the word duty defining dictionary says that which one ought to do I'll tell you there's a big difference between what you ought to do in a legally binding contractual obligation he says we have a legally binding contractual obligation as nations not as individuals our nation has a legally binding contractual obligation do four things to acknowledge the Providence of God number two to obey his will number three to be grateful versus benefits number four humbly to implore His protection favor that is the duty of Nations see we weren't secular in any way shape fashion form we had a legally binding contractual obligation to acknowledge God to obey his will be grateful to him and to humbly and pour his protection and favor so that's the second thing that made America unique was we were not started as a secular nation we said there is a God who gives absolute rights and wrongs and God is in charge we're not this is not a secular nation the third thing that we said was that to see they're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights so what we've said here is there are certain set of Rights that come from God the reason that is significance in another way of limiting government is what we've done there by telling the government there's certain rights that didn't come from government we have created jurisdiction so let me see if I can explain this on my ranch I have a red pickup and got it outside I like my red pickup I've had a red pickup for several generations of red pickups I keep buying new red pickups my son Tim also out on the ranch he does a lot of speaking of colleges universities etc Tim comes out the rants and the problem is he's got a black pickup and you shouldn't have black pickup so when he was out there I just spray-painted his truck red because everybody in his red truck it's just real simple actually no anything I own I can spray paint red I can spray-paint my cows red I can spray paint my pastures red I can spray paint my road I can't spray-paint his truck red because it doesn't belong to me and what happened here was we said government there are certain rights that you can't spray paint red you can't regulate them you can't touch them because they didn't come from you they came from God they're not your property and so what we did was we acknowledge there are certain rights for example in the Declaration of Independence and by the way let me define enable rights because that's not a term we used often a day John Dickinson who's one of the founding fathers a signer of the Constitution strong Christian guy john dickinson said an enable riot is a right which god gave to you much known for your parents right to take away if god code told you you can do it government nor anybody else can stop you from doing it because god told you could you have the same thing Alexander Hamilton Alexander Thomas is that an enable right is a their rights not to be rummage for among old parchments or musty records they're written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature but the hand in divinity itself and can never be erased or obscure but any moral power these are rights that God Himself gave to individuals he didn't give him to Americans he gave them to individuals just because you're human there's a certain set of rights that you get the third person talking about this is John Adams I really like the way he said it he said in an a double right is a right that's antecedent to all earthly government it's a right that can't be repealed or restrained by any human law it's a right derived from the great legislature of the universe but here's the key word he said enable rights are antecedent to our earthly governments now in the history of the world fifty-five hundred years of recorded history whether you read the Bible or whether you read secular history doesn't matter what is the first known civil government in the history of the world because he said in a Nubble rights came before earthly governments and ailable rights are what God gave to people before governments existed so governments clearly didn't give those rights because they came before governments exist the first known human government in the history of the world is recorded in Genesis nine it's when Noah got off the ark and God gave him seven laws we call them the Noahide laws here's what you'll do with murderers here's what you do with thieves seven laws that regulate how we treat each other horizontally that's the first civil laws in the history the world Noahide laws now significantly John Adams said enable rights came before the first human government well Genesis 9 is the first human government so Genesis 1 through 8 that's where yeah Genesis went the right they identified nearly two dozen inalienable rights got rights that God gave to like the right of self-defense you know we talked about the right of self-defense the right of Liberty etc so all of those were there and what God created before we ever had governments so that's what we believed and by the way those rights what were those two dozen well the Declaration of Independence Sam Anna's father Revolution said look we told you in the Declaration that among other rights you have the right to life liberty and property and then eleven years later when we finished the Revolution we said you know we told you there were three enable rights among others we'll hear some of the others Bill of Rights you have the First Amendment right to worship God according dictates the conscious you have the Second Amendment right to defend yourself you have the third Amendment right to the sanctity of the home you have a Fourth Amendment right to justice of course there's about sixteen rights given in those ten amendments so those sixteen rights the three and declaration give us about nineteen and there's about two dozen some of the ones they didn't put in the documents called the right of expatriation other things so there's about two dozen rights they found out of the Bible that existed before human government did and those are the rights of governments not allowed to regulate so that's our third philosophy of government is there a certain set of rights that government can't touch they can't regulate how you worship God they can't tell you where you can worship God they don't have the right to tell you you can't mention God at graduation at a school they don't have the right to tell you you can't have a Ten Commandments outside see that that's not the government's role and that is in the second world but in a world where God said acknowledge me that's the first thing in the Ten Commandments I'm the LORD thy God acknowledged me that's what we used to believe so that's our third point the fourth point that made America different was that to secure these rights and governments are instituted among men to secure what rights in a little rise to make sure that you have your in a double righteous why we have government see government was created to make sure you could practice those two dozen rights with that interference James Wilson and founding fathers signed the Declaration Constitution started the first law school in America I have his original law books George Washington put him on the Supreme Court as a justice he said guys he's telling lawsuits here's why we had the American Revolution he said the principal object of government was to acquire new securities of possession of those rights which we were previously entitled by immediate gift or all while beneficent creator you see in Great Britain as British citizens we used to have an eight liberal rights we had the Magna Carta we had the British Bill of Rights we held these rights and then King George the third comes along and says no no you can't choose what church are going to you're all going to be Anglicans and then he comes along and says no no you don't own property I'm the King I owned all the property your properties they said we we used to have all these naval rights and then the King took a so we had to create a new security for the enjoyment of those rights that we previously had so that's why we had the American Revolution was so we could go back to protecting and nadle more rights that was the purpose of government that's what it explains in law school that's why we did the American Revolution you also have Sam Adams who said very simply he said government was originally designed for the preservation of the Enable rights you see when that first law was given to Noah in Genesis no remember before Noah you had Adam and Eve yep okay then you've got Cain that wasn't too good when he killed Abel but you have Enix and Seth and all the others and so the earth grows and grows and what happens is it becomes so wicked they're killing each other they're stealing from each other raping each other God says I've had it I'm gonna wipe them all out we're gonna start this again so here comes the flood then we come with Noah and his family his three sons and their wives and they get off and God says all right now that we're starting this again here's what we're doing first thing he tells Noah in Genesis 9 for us whoever sheds man's blood by man will his blood be shed if you find a murderer among you you take him out now why would he say that because he's trying to protect the inalienable right to life what a murderer does is take someone's right to life he kills someone innocently he shouldn't be doing that so if you find someone who's violating someone else's right to lie you take them out and here's what you're gonna do with these because private property is enabled see the Noahide laws were all given to protect rights that God had already given to man that man was not respecting that's why government exists is to protect the rights that God has given us so that's the fourth the fifth thing dealt with the consent of the government what we call the will of the majority but it is significant that of the five principles that created American government for the five or god-centered God gives us a set of rights and wrongs to which we must conform that establishes morality and truth second is there is a God by the way and it's our duty to acknowledge him the third is God gives us a certain set of rights and the fourth is government exists to protect the rights that God gave us see that was the philosophy of American government the fifth is above and beyond that you can vote on other things we can vote on how wide the sidewalk should be but we can't vote on whether we have the right to defend ourselves the right to worship God we can't vote on that because those are god-given rights we vote on whether murder should be a crime or not or whether marriage should be between a man and woman those are already established by God we don't get the right to bet on that we get the right to vote on things that God hasn't dealt with that was the American philosophy of government that's what's made us different for so long that's what we're getting away from right now we're trying to act like so many other nations in the world but it's interesting all across Europe there are Christian nations trying to get to what we're running from in Poland in the Czech Republic in Ukraine and Hungary there I mean I've spent a lot of time over there at their leaders they want to be solid Christian nations there are Christian nations population to an 85 and 93 percent Christian most of those nations they want to be biblical well we're trying to run from it they want what we used to be so you guys you're the next set of leaders understand the foundations understand that this is not a secular thing that God has

Channel: Christ For The Nations

Views: 154,665

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Keywords: David Barton, cfni, christ for the nations institute, christian education, bible school, biblical worldview, Christian Philosophy, Christian worldview, history of america, history of united states, education in the united states, philosophy of early education, jesus, bible, theology

Id: ilnsw3odRI4

Length: 51min 56sec (3116 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 04 2018