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Freedom Isn’t Free: The Truth About American Liberty – Episode 164

Listen To The Article

Bible_Flag_GavelHosts Bill Heid and Brian Brawdy sit down together in the studio to talk about Independence Day and the foundation that was used to create a platform that drove the Constitution and the original laws that formed our freedoms. I’ll give you a hint, the platform was not based on tyranny, but instead on beliefs and faith. They were principles to guide us to a happy and successful life. Where has this all gone?

Heid and Brawdy take us through the history behind the driving forces of the American Revolution. In teaching us some history they encourage listeners to teach their children the good and the bad that comes with this profound holiday and celebration. They encourage everyone not to dive right into the BBQ and fireworks, but to take a moment to recall the price that was paid for our American Liberties.

All of this links directly back to Heid’s Independence Day article //www.offthegridnews.com/2013/07/04/liberty-for-all/

Off The Grid Radio
Ep164
Released: July 3, 2013

Brian:   Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Off the Grid News, the radio version of offthegridnews.com. A very special holiday edition, especially if you’re fans of the Fourth of July like we are around here. Brian Brawdy here, as always, with Mr. Bill Heid. Bill, how are you, sir?

Bill:      Brian, I’m excited to be with you today. It’s always a pleasure, man, and to be talking about the things we’re going to be talking about today always gets me excited. I think you know that. I love talking about freedom. I love talking about the Fourth of July. Not necessarily the Pleasant Valley Sundays, like in the Monkees’ song…

Brian:   Sure.

Bill:      …you know that we’re doing. But kind of the…

Brian:   Why do you do that to me? Now my head’s singing “Hey! Hey! We’re the Monkees!”

Bill:      Charcoal burning everywhere.

Brian:   Okay, let’s go to commercial, Jeremy, because I’m going to have to think of those guys jumping out of that Beetle van.

Bill:      People will say we’re monkeying around.

Brian:   Oh, there’s a van we can use for later; the Beetle van.

Bill:      Good point, we’ll start that up. Well listen, here’s the thing. I think a lot of people jump into the Fourth of July with a lot of presuppositions, a lot of notions about the Fourth and where our independence came from. And so I think it’s always good to go sort of—to maybe use Tony—Tony’s in the studio with us; to use Tony’s metaphor, hit a reset button a little bit and go back to, “How did we get where we are?” Maybe that includes a little bit of a negative. But how did we get the freedoms and liberties to begin with? What is their nature? What’s their origin?” And that’s what I’m fascinated with. That is what I always love to chat about, especially this time of year.

Brian:   Well and I think it’s always a great reminder, that reset button you speak of, because if you get too far away, right, from your belief structure or the belief structure of the country that you live in, then you turn around and look back and it’s such a distant past that it doesn’t really make sense to you. You think you have a right to an iPad. You think you have rights to tickets to the Justin Bieber concert.

Bill:      Do I have those tickets?

Brian:   I don’t know. But do you know what I’m saying? Some people are like “Oh these are our rights, these are this, these are that.” So if it’s cool with you, Bill, I’d like to read a quote from Chief Justice Earl Warren. Oddly enough, he was born about the same time my grandfather was. He passed away in 1974. You’ll remember him as the one that lead the way in gaining a unanimous—which we don’t see anymore, my friend. When’s the last—I mean there’s been one of late when there was a unanimous decision. But when it comes to Supreme Courts we don’t get a lot of the unanimous opinions anymore. But as you know, and our listeners will absolutely remember, Brown versus the Board of Education decision back in the early 50’s, Bill. And it helped in terms of setting the tone for what we’re going to discuss today.

So if it’s cool with you I would like to start off with Chief Justice Earl Warren when he says “I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have from the very beginning been our guiding genius. Whether we look to the First Character of—I’m sorry; the First Charter of Virginia, or the Charter of New England, or to the Charter of Massachusetts Bay, or to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, we have the same objective in present; the Christian land governed by Christian principles. I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it: freedom of belief, of expression, of assembly, of petition, the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the home, equal justice under the law, and the reservation of powers to the people. I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.” And again, Bill, as you know, Chief Justice Earl Warren back in the early 50’s.

Bill:      And, Brian, no real Tea Party member—from that sense, I think Earl Warren later in some of his rulings probably would have been maybe a little more on the liberal side, actually, compared to maybe how we would see things. But, my point being here with him and your point in reading that, I think you’ve got a case where during the 50’s even sort of folks with a little more liberal perspective, perhaps than what maybe a Tea Party member or someone might have today, even they knew the basis upon which they had their rights and their freedoms. So what used to be common is just no longer common. And I think it’s a function of that generational slippage you were making reference to, right? Every generation that is born, if they don’t have to kind of earn their freedoms and liberties somehow, it just becomes history; dates and dead guys, and not really a part of their lives.

Give you a good example; when I was young—I’d mentioned this when we talked about Memorial Day and I’d mentioned this with the Fourth of July just being here, is that when I was young I could go out to the park and there were a lot of World War II vets still alive. So, what was that situation? What did that look like? Well, everyone went to the park, there were speeches, there were a bunch of people dressed up with their gear or their regalia from that war and even the Korean War; those vets were there. And it was a big deal. People talked about liberty and there was a celebration, but the celebration was predicated on something. You just didn’t walk to the Fourth of July fireworks and barbeque. You had this thing that happened, almost religious in the sense of a ceremony. How did we get our freedoms? How did we get here? Why are we so happy?

Brian:   And maintain those freedoms.

Bill:      Mixed in with that, you had the people dying and so there was this giving paying tribute to the folks that had passed away while ostensibly trying to make sure that our freedoms—the republic was kept.

Brian:   Sure.

Bill:      And so it was very profound for me as a child. Fast forward to today; we forget that, the speeches, right, because it is a distant thing and we move right into the barbeque and the fireworks. If we don’t get the kind of fireworks we want, we even leave early. You know how that is. I think we’ve just—the whole culture has changed and I think it’s really good to go back and talk about just where did this stuff come from.

Before the show today, you were kind of talking a little bit with me about, what is this history and how did we get here and who gives rights, things like that. One of the things that bugs me most, and you’re aware of our friend Alex Jones; one of the things that he says that just bugs me to no end because I think as right as he is about finding some things, and I think—listen, Alex is a little crazy on some side, on some aspects, but he does some things right. I think that his big mantra is the solution for 1984, Orwell, is 1776. And here is where I would just—I almost go ballistic because look, Alex, here is a history lesson for you. And I say this with all due respect to him and the folks that believe this; 1776 was a byproduct of something else. And if you don’t get that…

Brian:   Right.

Bill:      …it wasn’t the thing unto itself. Right? If you don’t get that, you’re going to miss everything because you’re talking about what is a disease and what is a symptom of a disease. For example, if a doctor just treated you and said—well let’s pretend that you had cancer and the doctor said, “Well, jeez, it looks like you’ve lost some weight. Why don’t you go home and eat some Twinkies and maybe drink some water and rest.” If that was your advice—because all he looked at was the fact that you had lost some weight but he didn’t know what caused that weight loss. He is going to prescribe something for the individual. In this case what I am prescribing is something for the country. Right? His prescription would be wrong because he doesn’t see what actually happened.

So what predicated, what the presuppositions were, what happened before 1776 is really from where I am coming from and where I think Earl Warren was coming from, when he made those comments that you read, was what is the nature of this country? How did we get here before the Constitution? Before they said, “Hey look, we’re broke from you, George III. We’re no longer a part of your little family. We’re off on our own.” Not too many people know that.

Brian:   I think, Bill, why it’s so important…and I know we’re not going to go in it at length today, we’ll do that some other time. But like the work you’re doing with all the Henty projects, some of the other things that you’re doing; there is in psychology—anyone that’s spent five minutes in psychology class in probably high school now and most certainly in college, knows if there are 25 people in the room and I say, “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent.” And I whisper it to person number one (whispering) “Four score and seven years ago” and you take it and whisper it to person number two. Number two whispers it to person number three. By the time you get to the end of just 20 people, Bill, it’s been totally re-written, not to any fault—we’re not saying that the younger generation is a bunch of snotty, self-indulged anarchists. But if you’re not reminded of what the original verbiage was, in just twenty people… If you’re sitting around some time with your family, try it. Think of something easy to repeat and by the time it gets to the 20th person, you have a totally different paragraph, or a totally different sentence. And that’s why the work you’re doing with Henty, that’s why the stuff that we’ll focus on in this morning’s show, I believe that’s why it’s so important. We’re not attacking anyone, we’re not saying, “Oh, they’ve grown out of the custom.” They just may not have heard of the custom. They just may not know the right words.

Bill:      Well, Brian, you just hit on something, I’ve got to just barge in again and say you just hit on something major and I think instead of attacking all of the things around us that we perceive as being the sort of ‘what are the big problems—and if you talk to conservatives, what are the big problems? The big problems are President Obama, gay marriage; you know it’s a big long list of things. What I’m saying we need to do; and I say this only because my finger points back at myself, a number of fingers point back at myself when I say this, have we taught our children well? In other words, one interesting thing—we’ve discussed this before on the show. But one interesting thing about if you took a class in anthropology and you went—let’s say you were able to go to Ecuador and go visit a tribe and just say, “What is the nature of that tribe?” One of the things that anthropologists love to look at, Brian; well actually there are two things whereby they analyze a culture. What’s the law code? What creates the law code? And if you can find the source of the law, right, like a detective. You’re like Matlock here, right?

Brian:   Absolutely.

Bill:      If you can find the source of the law, you find that culture’s God. Right?

Brian:   (Inaudible 0:11:17) the Monkees.

Bill:      What’s the source of the law…?

Brian:   Right. Absolutely.

Bill:      And if you can find the source of the law, you find that culture’s God. The second thing that anthropology examines when they go to find a tribe like that, and I’m going to turn this fire hose back on us in a second.

Brian:   Groovy.

Bill:      The second thing is what do they think is the most important thing that needs to be inculcated to the next generation? So they find out when children come of age—we’ve all seen these specials on TV where the kid’s got to go set—he’s got to go climb up into a tree and put a bee’s nest on his head for four days. I know Jeremy had to do something like that growing up in Clinton. So, what happens—you know, what is that? So look at our culture now. Let’s pretend we’re not in Ecuador and you’re examining our culture. What’s the source of law today and what is it that we think is so important that in the public schools, our public, what do we say to our kids that they absolutely have to know as the most important thing? What do we want our graduates to know? And I would assure you that the answers to those two questions are totally different today than they were during the colonial and revolutionary period; totally different.

Brian:   Totally different, Bill. But what I’ve always dug, as you have, dug about the Bill of Rights is that it’s timeless. It’s not like our country has evolved to where your God given inalienable rights are passé. Right? They’re not out of vogue, they’re timeless. So it becomes the responsibility, like Under Drake’s Flag, some of the other stuff that you’re working on now, our shows, other shows, just to remind people what the original paragraphs, what the original sentences, what the original font structure was, because if we don’t then you’re raising an entire generation of folks that go, “What?”

I bet you today you could run around the state of Illinois, and people don’t know the name of the governor. Don’t know the name of—I bet you could run around the city of Chicago, you could go wherever you want, and people don’t know the name of their own governor. So you could say, “Oh, they’re just philosophically lazy.” No, there was a time where that was important and unless you learn the importance of knowing who your elected officials are, you’re off to Shania Twain, Kim Kardashian; that’s a big name I think now. You’re off to a Kim Kardashian concert, if she even sings.

Bill:      I don’t think she sings.

Brian:   She doesn’t sing?

Bill:      What does she do?

Brian:   What does she do?

Bill:      She doesn’t do anything.

Brian:   But you get my point, right? Use a limited amount of brain space. They asked Einstein, “What’s your home phone number?” He goes, “How would I know? I never call myself there. Why would I put my own phone number in my own mind?” Well for younger generations, if we don’t do things like you do in some of these other projects, we don’t talk to them and say, “I know you’re a huge fan from 1641, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties.” If we don’t just suggest in between everything else you’ve got going on, you may want to look back and realize a few things. Right? Because the Bill of Rights is a human document, I believe. I never believed that it had anything to do with a particular government. I think it was a human document, right? Talking about your relationship with the Divine.

Bill:      It’s not infallible, but yeah.

Brian:   Right.

Bill:      And I think, Brian, what you’re getting at and the reason why this is so important—so important for—if we think that our kids are valuable to us, we think about the next generation as valuable. And I can’t personally think of a more valuable thing than sort of telling what the narrative is of our county. How did we get here? And if you’re going to do that—I mean—Listen, Lennon had it right when he said, “If you control the present, you control the past. If you can control the past, you control the future.”

Brian:   Was that Lennon or was that the Board of Education—the National Education Teacher’s Union? We’re laughing because we have to move on, but that’s a big point.

Bill:      You’re capturing the hearts and minds of a generation and you’re telling them where they came from. You’re telling them who their roots are. Remember, the movie Roots came out when we were younger? What a revelation that was to a lot of people that didn’t realize that they may have had some family members that had some unbelievable travails. And just refreshing, in a sense, to sort of—it’s always fun to learn what our ancestors were and then I think that movie opened up a lot of that kind of, “Let’s figure out what really happened.” Well in the vein of that, let’s look at something that I think has disappeared from the landscape. A lot of things have.

But Donald Lutz a couple of years ago when he wrote a book called Colonial Origins of the American Constitution, so folks need to know credit where credit is due. This isn’t my point; this is Professor Lutz is making his case. He tried to create a little bit of the “Where does this come from? What is the history? How do you get here?” We did a little research and from Dr. Lutz’s perspective, the single most important document that influenced our Bill of Rights, influenced the freedoms that kind of came along with the constitution, was this body. And here this body was, in 1641, written by the Puritans. And again, you remember, Brian, what happened in early colonial history; you had Jamestown coming in in 1607. And then you had a little bit later—I think that colony, for the most part, didn’t really work very well. But then you had—later you had the Massachusetts Bay. You had a bunch of folks that were headed towards Northern Virginia and for whatever reason, ended up some place else in very harsh conditions. And yet, these folks had a very profound idea of what they thought government should be.

And if you remember we talked about this during Thanksgiving time; they didn’t even want to come ashore. After all that sea-going sickness and death and loss of health and life on the way over, they refused to come ashore until they had an agreement, a covenant. These were reformers. These were people who wanted to keep covenant with each other and they wanted their government to reflect that covenant. So, we call that now the Mayflower Compact. But, it’s the Mayflower Covenant. Right?

Brian:   Sure.

Bill:      How then should we live together? There were people on that boat that weren’t Christians. There were people that were. But the main folks that did it were Cambridge educated Christians that created that compact and in God’s providence had been trained to do things just like that. That’s sort of the beginning of all of this. That’s why you have this such a heavy body; not today of course, but a heavy body of where our freedoms come from in the form—in Massachusetts because that’s where these folks landed. They were self-conscious. Some people are self-conscious and some people aren’t. These folks were self-conscious about where their rights came from.

Brian:   Absolutely and it’s fascinating to me, Bill, when as you said we did a little bit of research on it and to find out that the US Bill of Rights a century and a half later after the formation of this body of liberties, the Massachusetts Body of liberties, our Bill of Rights contained 26 specific rights taken, one could argue, directly from this document; and if not directly, then at least in that vein. Think about that. 26 of them; that’s a pretty formidable list.

Bill:      It’s an amazing document and the reader should—the listener should go read a little bit about this because you’re looking through this and right away I see something really amazing. Because I think the perspective that you’re taught in—basically in public schools and our universities today is that the Puritans are a bunch of folks that hated fun, a bunch of repressive people that wanted to tyrannize everyone else. This is the message and so there are some historical points in history where one might make that case, even with context, we could talk about that. But, for the most part, I’m looking at just—I get right into it right away, into number two. Here is the second—the second rule or the second way they are going to govern themselves and one of the things that they say, “This is one thing we know that we are going to do right.” “Every person within the jurisdiction whether an inhabitant or a foreigner, shall enjoy the same justice in law that is general for the plantation which we constitute towards one another.” Now so, here you’ve got people that’s saying—and remember these are people that’s supposed to be bigots and hate everybody in the world, but what are they guaranteeing? The freedom, the liberties of foreigners, equal justice for white people only? No, for everybody; equal justice for everybody.

Brian:   It’s the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Bill:      There you go.

Brian:   Now they spell their words… That’s why I love reading this document.

Bill:      Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian:   It wouldn’t make it through one of our spell checker’s today. But they’re basically talking about the 14th Amendment, which would be 100 years or more, the mid 1800s when that came about, but equal protection.

Bill:      “No monopolies shall be granted or allowed amongst us.” The government wasn’t going to ensure that the brother-in-law of the governor had all the cell phone service; I don’t know who had the cell phone contract in the 1641.

Brian:   Right.

Bill:      The whole thing is just an amazing body of rules and regulations that, as again, we were talking about before, weren’t just restrictive but there is a context to this. And these guys were—they had been in Europe and been, I’ll say maybe tyrannized actually by the Anglican Church and by the king at that time. And in fairness to the Church and State, they weren’t well thought out at this time. You have a progression of thought in so many cases in Europe; the church, and including England, the church and state were one thing. So, you had these folks that came over saying basically, “We don’t want those tyrannies to happen again.” This was the bull work that they placed.

Another important point that Lutz makes, Brian, and this isn’t to take anything away from James Madison, one of my heroes and someone that really kind of was the guy that put a lot of the Constitution together. I think if you read Donald Lutz’s work, one of the things you start to realize is what he did is not read, necessarily, Locke and all the other sort of enlightenment type thinkers and read the Greeks and so forth and look at classical stuff. But he realized something and that is that the 13 colonies, the 13 states, already had constitutions that guaranteed freedoms. There were 13 constitutions that already existed. What the battle was was who—what elements from whose constitution got in there. So it may sound like a revisionist history a little bit, but really what Madison did was try to bring the best points from Massachusetts, Virginia, Rhode Island, and kind of center them and make sure that they all came from. So there’s no—at this point, he is bringing all these Puritan, which actually, Brian, had established churches; each colony had an established church so there was no disestablishment other than they just said that they didn’t want to have—they’re probably a little bit against the Anglican church because a lot of them had come before the Anglican church was big in a lot of these colonies.

Brian:   Sure.

Bill:      But, the Anglican church was big in a lot of those colonies. But they had an established church. And I think when the Constitution—basically when they put the thing together they said, “Well, how are we going to organize the Presbyterians versus the Catholics and Maryland versus…” So, what did they say? That the federal government shall not…

Brian:   Right.

Bill:      …because we had an Anglican church that wanted to govern all the colonies. I remember, Brian, one of the more interesting letters that I had read years ago was from John Adams to Jedidiah Morse. And in the letter Adams is basically saying—telling Morse, “The reason I can’t take this, the reason I’m willing to go to war,” and it had nothing to do with tea and taxes. You know what he said? The real reason he wanted to go to war? Because Parliament, there’s two sides to this; Parliament wanted to establish an Anglican Bishop over the colonies. Right: Number one he said, “Parliament? What the heck do they got to…? I’m a subject of the King, but I am not a subject of Parliament. They have nothing to do with me, so I’m going to die before I go down that road.” The second one is, “Bishop? You’re going to put an Anglican Bishop over me? I’m willing to die for that.” Most people think this is a tea—they threw some tea in the bay and that was the main thing. But, the Anglican bishop thing, from Adams’ perspective and from a lot of his friends, was the biggest deal.

So, there’s that religion. Yes, religion; all the states having their own established religion, all the charters and all the colonies having it written into the Constitution. In many of these, Brian, as we’ve said before, in many of these states you had to be a Trinitarian Christian to even vote, let alone become a magistrate. So, that’s just the way they saw the world.

Brian:   Sure.

Bill:      And we had 13 of these governing themselves. And as you look at the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, you see quite a nice body of guaranteed liberties, way out ahead of 1776.

Brian:   Right. There are some that we would no doubt look at today and go, “Well, there’s a little bit of it there…” But it’s like any other document.

Bill:      It’s hard to pull things out of history and say, “Hey, I’m not going to do that.” Certainly we have to sort of say, “This is a good law, this is not a law.” Some things, obviously, pertained less because our circumstances have nothing to do with the context that they had.

Brian:   An amazing read if you get a chance to get through them. I mean, just broken down, as we said before, the 26th of (inaudible 0:25:03) liberties for women and liberties for children.

Bill:      Let’s start with the liberties for women thing. Here’s the thing; and again, these—like what’s the—why aren’t these Puritans misogynist jerks? Right? Here’s one, “Every married woman should be free…” Again, as Brian said, look these up and you realize that they don’t spell these words the same way.

Brian:   It’s great, though. Isn’t it?

Bill:      They actually spell like I do, kind of.

Brian:   I’m with you.

Bill:      “Every married woman shall be free from bodily correction or stripes by her husband,” and get this, because you’ve got these feisty Puritan women, “unless it be in his own defense upon her assault.” In other words, it’s against the law to hit your wife.

Brian:   Absolutely.

Bill:      It’s against the law to be a big shot in your own house. You know big shots, people who think they’re big shots and they want to punch their wife around. Well, you couldn’t do that in Massachusetts. If people found out that you did that, you would be prosecuted. But you could hit your wife if she hit you first.

Brian:   Well, we hope that still exists today, the ability to defend yourself, right? In order to make sure that you’re not subjugated to someone that you shouldn’t be. So it’s just—you know, even though you go down a little further of the brute creature liberties, as you mentioned earlier, Bill, liberties for foreigners and strangers. Can I give you—just because this hit me this morning, can I take 30 quick seconds?

Bill:      Certainly.

Brian:   I’m driving into the studio this morning, and remember all hate mail to Jeramy@abuhbuhbuhbuh… I’m driving in this morning and in a neighboring town I saw this sign that said, “All Christian Brethren Welcome.” Right?

Bill:      Where did you see that sign?

Brian:   What’s that little town, Jeramy, just out the way, where the Dairy Queen is as I come in?

Jeramy: Morrison.

Brian:   Morrison. Right? So all the people from Morrison, don’t send the hate mail to me, send it to Jeramy. And it says on the sign, “All Christian Brethren Welcome.” And I thought to myself, “If I had control of that sign, I would have put, ‘All Atheists Welcome.’” I would have put, “All Agnostics Welcome.” Right? Because for there that speaks to this foreigners and strangers. If all you’re going to do is invite the people that already believe the way you believe, Jesus would not have done that…

Bill:      I bet that sign was put up a long time ago.

Brian:   Could be. And I know I’m a mental patient; I get that about me. But if you’re going to be a church you welcome everyone, not just Christian brethren. Right? Jesus didn’t just welcome Christian brethren. Jesus wasn’t even a Christian the days when he was walking the earth. So he just didn’t walk—he just didn’t welcome people that believed what he believed, he welcomed everyone. So just a little side. When I see this thing and it says, “The liberties of foreigners and strangers” even in this document, it’s about welcoming people of diverse opinions.

Bill:      You’re treating people like you would like to be treated. It goes back to the Golden Rule. This is an extension of that.

Brian:   Absolutely. I’d rather be a preacher of a church that welcomed atheists and agnostics in an attempt to show them a different viewpoint, right? Oliver Wendell Holmes; since we are doing Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes “A man’s mind, once stretched, never regains its original dimensions.” So if you’re a preacher, Bill, don’t you want more than just Christian brethren attending a service? Maybe I’m putting you too much on the spot. Let me answer it. If I were, I’d want everybody in because that’s what you’re tasked with doing.

Bill:      And I’m not sure—let’s break this into two categories, Brian, because I think you’re making an important point. But let me give you a little bit of definition on it. Number one, I think in the early colonies you didn’t have to be a Christian to be there. However, you had to be a Christian to vote in Massachusetts. Right? So you couldn’t—you were welcome, you were protected by law on a lot of different levels as you can see here, but you couldn’t shape policy.

Brian:   Right.

Bill:      So, that should tell you a little bit about, something about what Earl Warren was making reference to when you read his perspective. So, those two things can be equally true. In other words, you can have—you can be an Atheist, you can be a Muslim, you can be in this case, there were Jewish colonies in the early colonial period; you could be those things but you couldn’t vote, you couldn’t shape it because the very nature of the system was Trinitarian. The very nature of the system that they had, it’s origin, like I was trying to say before when we were using the metaphor of someone being sick, what is it that breathes the life blood to this system? If we cut that out or water it down, we’d be dead. That’s what they said. So, they weren’t willing to give that up at any price.

Now later it sort of—you know, their grandchildren became Unitarians and it sort of all went downhill a little bit for them and things, and you had a different kind of world. And then if you look at Massachusetts today, you probably see a state basically that shakes its fists at God more than anything else. I mean, not everyone in Massachusetts, but I’m saying there is no… People say, “Is this a Christian country?” What a great question because I think you can be playful on both sides of that. It definitely was a Christian country and I think there is enough documentation that I would invite anyone to come on the show or call us and debate that fact. Is it now? Well, let’s analyze it from the anthropology perspective. If you go to a public school and say to the average graduate, “What is the most important thing?” microphone up to their mouth. If you said, “What is the source of our law?” You ask them those two questions, any graduate from a public school in the United States, they are going to give you something very very different than what Benjamin Franklin would have said, or even Thomas Jefferson would have said, let alone Adams and Washington. So, you have a totally different world. This is a post Christian country in terms of how we think and breathe. I’m just suggesting the freedoms that we have—we’re going to lose all of our freedoms because we have lost our Christianity.

And so back to Alex Jones again, right? What is the answer to 1984? It’s not 1776. It’s where do the liberties come from? Of course, I’m always going to make the case as a Christian that liberties are a function; just like a railroad car operates best when it’s on the tracks, there are some moral responsibilities and some obligations that we have to have to keep our freedom. So you can’t have freedom as an abstraction. It can’t exist out in space and not have any obligations. Is there—you know it usually ends up in just, “I want to be free to do whatever I want to do.” And a culture does not exist when everybody’s free to do whatever they want to do. I’ve always talked about shooting all the ducks.

Brian:   Sure. Great point.

Bill:      I’m always talking about taking—destroying myself with drugs or whatever, and do I have the freedom to become a social liability on the rest of the culture and drain it down? I don’t think that I do. I don’ think the government should pay for my drug addiction. You see what I’m saying?

Brian:   Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would say—you know this—and I keep going back thinking about the next generation of people that, when you continue to do shows like this, Bill, and some of the other things you have coming down the pipe, why it’s so important. It’ll take me 45 seconds to get it out. I was heartbroken earlier in the week. As you know, I called you as I often do when I want to kick around something of this silk. Glenn Beck and The Blaze put up an article that references–and although I later went after them on Twitter saying, “Look, If you’re going to be a news organization and report the news, then you should in fact report all the news.”

But outside of that, there was the story of Syrian rebels who had attacked a Christian Church, a Catholic Church, in Syria and set out, captured the priest and two of his assistants, and on video in a crowd of people, decapitated all three of them. Right there on the video. So when you follow the rabbit hole you get the link, you get the link, you get the link. So what was so troubling to me was not—well of course the decapitation was troubling. What was so troubling to me, Bill, was the age of the people in the crowd cheering them on. Kids Parker’s age, kids Page’s age. You looked around in that crowd—and you know me, as an ex-cop, I think “Identify them, find them, do unto others.” But then you realize whole entire generations…there were little kids, there were teenagers, there were people there in their 20’s. The older guys may have been doing the decapitating but look at what is passed on to the next three generations of people in those communities. They think it’s a good idea to decapitate a live human being because he disagrees with you. So when we talk about the need to do things like you’re doing in this show, the need for the Henty project and some of those other things, it’s to remind those generations that there is a personal sovereignty that any normal mind wouldn’t decapitate. That broke my heart. I keep thinking of those little kids.

Bill:      Yeah and maybe it’s the fallen mind, Brian, and it goes back to the basic crux of the Christian premise is, “The fallen mind would decapitate.”

Brian:   But they’re teaching entire generations of little kids.

Bill:      But what’s the source of their law. Let’s go back to this. Let’s finish up with this because we’re about done with the show; we’ve got a few more minutes. But here you go; here’s a different law code. Let’s go back to anthropology. What’s the source of your law? Are we talking about Sharia law? So they are enjoying the freedom under their law, the liberty under their law to exercise what the highest value in their culture is, right? Isn’t that basically what you’re saying there? Those people just simply analyze and understood. That’s ultimacy for them and everybody’s cheering it on. Why? Because that’s what our collective culture says is the right thing to do.

Brian:   But that’s why it’s so important with, as you say, going back to documents like this, going back to the beginning, going back and trying to do what you can to teach future generations. I don’t care about the guys that did the decapitating on camera. You know what I mean? They are lost. I mean, you talk about fallen. They’re about as disconnected and dysfunctional a human being as possible. When you look at the video, Bill, and you see all these younger people without the opportunity to hear another mindset. Right? Those are human minds that are being raised because they don’t have a concept of personal sovereignty; they don’t have a concept of inalienable rights. They don’t have a concept of the connection of all humanity that Jesus spoke of. So when you watch that video, for like three days I was in a funk. Not because of these guys. Someone will find them and kill them and get on them. It was for all these kids in the crowd cheering this on; kids with iPhones trying to capture videos. I mean it just rips the heart out of you to see that adults tasked, right, with creating a human mind at that young age, like you mentioned at the beginning of the show, without the stuff, those young minds don’t know that the Massachusetts Bill of Liberties exists.

Bill:      Let me be so bold as to say this, that Islamic culture does not produce freedom. It’s not Trinitarian, it’s Unitarian and Unitarian produces oneness and oneness is where Saddam Hussein or someone holds a gun at your head and says, “You have to believe exactly what I believe.” I mean this is—you can’t close with this in a minute or two, but Trinitarian where you have both unity and diversity, you have the one and the many, you have the harmony of…We often ask, “What’s the most important thing, the Church or the members of the church?” “What’s the most important thing, our country or the individuals in our country? Christianity, Brian, has got a history of harmonizing and equalizing the balance.

You can’t say the individual is the most important thing; people shoot all the ducks. You can’t say that the collective is the most important thing, total tyranny. So you’ve anarchy and tyranny and I’m just making the case that these Puritans, despite what we’ve been taught about them, created an amazing body of law that really reflected a lot of freedom; freedom, of course, under God’s law, not freedom unlimited. I can’t do anything I want any time I want. I can’t decapitate someone and call that my freedom. That’s it. That’s where we’re at. That’s the show. That’s the message. And here the nice thing about what you just said is you’ve got ability to—the ability here to see two different worldviews and the production of law coming from a Trinitarian versus a Unitarian world. That’s a great way to close this show.

Folks should also know that over at our website we’ve got an article that should be up there still, called Liberty for All. And I’ve kind of gone into this a little bit more, how do we keep that train on the tracks and stay free? If you want more of this kind of thing and kind of develop that, something to teach your children with, trying to develop some material for us to do that as well.

Brian:   And I would say, Bill, that my take away from the show is this Fourth of July, take ten minutes and actually impact the long term mental health of your children by letting them know what the Fourth of July is all about. Now, it’s a personal challenge for me because, as you know, my daughter was born on the Fourth of July. So at ten years old, she still thinks the fireworks are all about her, the parades are all about her, the mayor will call and say, “Happy Birthday, Page.” She still thinks it’s all about her. But for everyone else other than me, sit your child down because you are doing them a disservice by not telling them what we’re all about in our past. You’re doing them a disservice by not telling them what we were founded on. You’re most certainly inhibiting their mind in the future. Don’t inhibit your child’s mind in the future. Tell them what we’re all about now. Take that ten minutes and then go play volley ball, then go do the cook out, then fight to get your seat in the best part of the park to watch the fireworks and argue…

Bill:      Play the Monkees?

Brian:   Play the Monkees. Argue who forgot the deet; the mosquitos are killing me. Do all that, but for ten minutes…

Bill:      It’s not too much to ask.

Brian:   I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

Bill:      Get the Declaration of Independence out and read it to your kids.

Brian:   Sure, why not?

Bill:      …and tell them how we got it.

Brian:   It’s a great document. And the Bill of Rights.

Bill:      There you go, Brian.

Brian:   All right, my friend, happy Fourth of July. As always, I wish you and your family—God bless you. I wish you and your family always the absolute best. Thanks to Jeramy, as always, for producing our show. Ladies and gentlemen, you know how to get us by now on Facebook, on Twitter. Please keep sending us your emails because Bill and I have a chance, and Jeramy most certainly has a chance to read those emails, and we use some of your suggestions, your thoughts, your critiques, even your criticisms. We use some of those things to craft future shows. So on behalf of Mr. Bill Heid and everyone here on Off the Grid News have a very happy holiday.

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