The WallBuilders Show
The WallBuilders Show is a daily journey to examine today's issues from a Biblical, Historical and Constitutional perspective. Featured guests include elected officials, experts, activists, authors, and commentators.
The WallBuilders Show
Faith, Freedom, And The American Future
Tired of hearing America is beyond repair? We make a grounded case for renewal—rooted in first principles, legal clarity, and a fuller telling of our national story. With Mike Berry from First Liberty, we unpack how recent Supreme Court victories have reopened space for faith and conscience in public life, including schools, and why that matters for culture as much as law. When rights are secured in the real world—teachers protected, students free to express belief, communities able to build moral formation—confidence rises and civic duty starts to make sense again.
We also confront a hard question: how do you recruit young people to defend a country they’re taught to hate? The answer isn’t spin or nostalgia. It’s honest history—the good, the bad, and the ugly—paired with the founders’ radical design that places sovereignty with the people and limits government power. That framework doesn’t make us perfect, but it uniquely equips us to correct course through peaceful means. Think Declaration of Independence, constitutional processes, separation of powers, and real elections that let us alter what’s broken and abolish what never worked.
From classrooms to chaplaincy to family tables, there’s a hunger for truth over ideology. We talk about practical steps for rebuilding civic memory, compare free societies with closed regimes, and apply a simple test—are people trying to get in or out?—to cut through noise. The takeaway is clear: teach the full story, protect liberty, and invite the next generation to serve something worthy. That’s how you restore faith in America and keep the American spirit alive.
If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who cares about the future, and leave a review to help more people find it. Your voice helps restore what works.
Rick Green [00:00:07] It's the intersection of faith and culture. Thanks for joining us today on the WallBuilders Show. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. Our websites are wallbuilders.com and wallbuilders.show. Show for all the radio programming and then wallbuilders.com for everything else. Including, by the way, it's not too soon to start telling your friends that are legislators about next year's Legislators Conference. You're going to get to hear more and more of those presentations from the Pro Family Legislators Conference over the holidays and through the next few weeks and months. But just take them. When you hear them, take a link there and send it to your friends that are legislators and tell them they are missing out if they have not been joining us for the annual Pro Family Legislators Conference. Okay, guys, Mike Berry will be joining us in a little bit. First Liberty, of course, a great attorney, Marine, just fantastic guy. And we're gonna be talking about actually faith in America, and it might mean two things. We'll find out.
Tim Barton [00:00:59] Well, it's gonna be great to have him on. We teased it a little bit yesterday with him coming on and he's been a great friend. We've known him for a lot of years. Of course he is a military veteran, but then he has been working with First Liberty. But more recently, he was actually working for Senator Ted Cruz up in Washington, DC, which we got to see him up on some of our pastors' briefings up there, reconnect with him again. And so now he's back working in Texas again, not just up in DC with a Texas Senator. And so, it really is fun that we've been able to connect and work with him for so many years on so many different topics and issues. And I say all this to give a little context, because he's someone who understands on multiple levels the significance of the First Amendment. Obviously, First Liberty with Kelly Shackleford over in Dallas, all the work they've done for decades protecting, preserving, defending the rights of individuals pertaining to the First Amendment, whether they be teachers or students, or mayors or city council or average parents and citizens, you know, grandma's going to the public park, whatever it is. They've defended all kinds of people who have had their religious liberties diminished or removed in many cases. And so, they've done incredible work. One of the things that we have been able to do with them over the last several years is partner with them on a project called Restoring Faith in America. And the reason is because over the last many years they've had multiple cases at the U.S. Supreme Court and they've actually won all of those cases. And in those wins, it was some pretty significant precedent that was set. Which have created and allowed new opportunities that we have not had really in any of our lifetimes to reestablish a lot of the moral underpinnings of the nation, which of course have a faith background in it. Things like the Ten Commandments of Public Schools, chaplains back in public schools. We can go down a very long list of things that are available. But this is the group, First Liberty, and I'm not trying to rehash all this because we've done many programs on this. So, if you don't know what I'm talking about, go back and listen to some of our other programs where we cover these topics. But First Liberty has been the group on the front lines of this legal fight trying to help restore these foundational rights. And so, this idea of restoring faith in America is the initiative that we've partnered with him on now for several years, working in multiple states to do things to restore the faith foundation that's allowed us to be free. So, I'm super excited to talk with Mike today and kind of see what all he has in mind.
Rick Green [00:03:21] Stay with us, folks. Mike Berry, our special guest, you're listening to the WallBuilders Show.
Rick Green [00:04:30] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Mike Berry back with us from First Liberty. Mike, always good to have you, man. Thanks for a few minutes today.
Mike Berry [00:04:37] Well thanks for having me. It's great to be back with you.
Rick Green [00:04:39] Well, looking forward to getting you down to Fredericksburg as we were talking about off air, actually what will soon be Constitution City, Texas. But anyway, get you out to the Patriot Academy campus. Love working with you, man. And of course, love First Liberty and all that you guys are doing and the effort to restore faith in America. So much fertile ground out there, so many good things happening right now. Great to get you back for an update. What's going on with restoring faith in America?
Mike Berry [00:05:04] Well, like you said, there it's a very fertile ground right now and one of the things that First Delivery has been doing and we certainly, you know, proud to be partnered with you all at Patriot Academy, is restoring faith in America. And it's funny, I was just tell talking to somebody earlier today that You know, it has a double meaning. It's restoring faith in America in in the sense of restoring American's religious freedom and keeping the door open for Americans to continue to be a people of faith, which we have been since our founding. But it's also restoring faith in America in the sense that I think for a lot of people over the years, they've kind of stopped believing in America. Whether it's through propaganda or the media or our education system. And I think it's time we got back to believing in America. We're not a perfect nation, but we are a great nation. And so, I think we have the opportunity, and in fact I you know, I wrote an op ed recently entitled, one of the ways to make America Great Again is to restore faith in America.
Rick Green [00:06:08] Amen. Yeah, man. It's I I was just talking to a group this morning and I said something to the effect of, you know, I'm all about, you know, wearing the red hats and saying make America great again. But if you don't know what made America great in the first place, then you're not necessarily going to get it right and get making her great again. And so, knowing the formula that made her great, obviously you discover that faith was not just a small part of it, as Washington said, it was an indispensable part of it. And so you're right. We can't, I don't think it's possible to make America great again without restoring faith in America.
Mike Berry [00:06:41] No, you're absolutely right. And you know, if you just look at one aspect of our society, the military, and I think anybody who's been paying attention over the last several years knows that the military has fallen on fairly difficult times when it comes to recruiting and retention. People can point fingers at lots of different things, you know, where there was the COVID vaccine. You know a strong job market or a bad job market, whatever the external factors are, I point to one thing in particular, and that is for an entire generation now, you've had, or maybe even more than one generation, you've had American kids K through 12 who've been indoctrinated to believe that America is an evil country, that America is racist. America is built on.
Rick Green [00:07:28] Taught to hate their own nation. Yeah.
Mike Berry [00:07:29] Yeah. And then and then you've got military recruiters are saying, hey, how would you like to come serve that nation and or even give up your life for that nation? And kids are like, are you kidding me? I hate America. Why would I why would I want to serve America? And so, restoring faith in America means getting back to the understanding that America, we don't have to argue that we were a perfect nation or have a perfect track record, because we don't. That's right. But we are still I think it was President Reagan that called us the last best hope. Right. And so the and I firmly believe that I would not have served in our military if I didn't believe that. I continue to believe that today and we need to, I think the things that unite us and the things that make America good and great are far more powerful than the things that we look at and say, gosh, I wish we had done things differently. And we can all we can certainly point to lots of things that we wish had gone differently in America's history. But let's also talk about the things that America has done right and has done well and that have made us the envy of the world
Rick Green [00:08:32] Yeah, man, you can't you know, you gotta do the good, the bad, and the ugly. I think if we only highlight the good, then we lose the faith and trust, especially in these, you know, Gen Zers or even high schoolers and middle schoolers now that can sense out a fraud. They want the whole story. And so, you got to do the good, the bad, and the ugly. And the good news is that when you do the good, the bad and the ugly, and you tell the whole story, that relative to every other nation in history, our story is absolutely amazing. And you're 100% right. There's, you know, of course, we have our national sins. We have, you know, you have leaders who are human. And so therefore, if you have a nation of humans, you're going to have you know, depravity and corruption and things like that are going to happen. But the beauty is our system is designed in a way that because of the checks and balance, because of the separation of powers, because of the American system, we have the best chance of rooting that out, and the best chance of having a nation that produces good results. And that's what we should be teaching our kids. And we'll if we teach them that, then they will come out proud to be an American, and as you said, be willing to defend her. And that's what I always tell the kids here at Patriot Academy is look, patriotism is being willing to defend your nation's values. So, you have to understand what the values of America are, what the flag stands for, not perfection, as you said, but the values that have produced the best nation in history. And you mentioned Reagan. I mean, go all the way back to Madison and he said this constitutional republic's the worst form of government, other than every other one. So, it's of course got its flaws, but despite those flaws, it's amazing. And I think your attitude about how to teach it, and I love the double meaning on the faith thing, is one hundred percent what needs to happen.
Mike Berry [00:10:09] Yeah, I mean you know if men were angels, government would be unnecessary, but unfortunately.
Rick Green [00:10:14] That's right.
Mike Berry [00:10:15] We're not angels, right? We're flawed people and so the brilliance of our founders, the brilliance of America and the way that our system was set up was they took the system that just about every other European nation, because our founders came here from Europe for the most part. And you look at every other nation at that time during the founding era, and the belief system was predominantly, you know, God establishes rulers, whether they're monarchs, you know, kings and queens and the aristocracy, etc. And then from those monarchs, then they are the ones that get to decide what type of government they’ll have, what rights the people will have. And if you have a king or a queen who can give rights, then they can also take away those rights on a whim. And our founders said, you know what, we're turning that completely up on its head. We're saying, no, power, political power comes from God to we the people. And it's we the people, we are the ones that are vested with the power, and we give that power, we delegate that power to our elected leaders and our government representatives. And then, but they don't have any more power than we the people have. The power resides with we the people. And if you just read the words of the Declaration of Independence, it even says, look. If the people believe that the regime has become despotic and tyrannical, they have an obligation to change that regime. Hopefully through peaceful means. I mean, that's you know, we still call our elections the what is it, the peaceful transfer of power, right? And we've had that in our country now going on 250 years, right? Next year it'll be 250 years, and Lord willing it'll be another 250 years. But the only way that that works is if the people continue to believe in the goodness of their nation and their government system. And the way that you keep that is we've got to restore faith in America. Too many Americans have lost faith, capital F and lowercase f in our country and what we stand for, and we've got to get back to the basics.
Rick Green [00:12:18] Man, so good, brother. I mean, you're everything you're saying is spot on, and it's a great opportunity to do it, as you said with the 250th. People are paying more attention, so they're willing to hear us out when we talk about these kinds of things. And they're also willing, once they learn these things, to do what you just said, which is that that that peaceable change. You know, the declaration talks about altering or abolishing that when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it's the right of the people to alter or abolish it. Well, that's the peaceable altering or abolishing because of the way our system has been set up, and you alter by you know getting new leadership or going and working to pass a law that alters what our government looks like. You abolish by getting new leadership that'll get rid of a you know, certain departments, completely abolish pieces of government that should have never existed. So, we get the chance to do that, but it starts with what you're saying. Before you go do that that citizenship work of you know, altering and abolishing, you gotta first study and you gotta first fall back in love with America. And you mentioned Reagan earlier, he had that great line about a warning of an eradication of the American memory that will lead to an erosion of the American spirit. And he prefaced that by saying, if we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. So, what you're describing is the formula for remembering what we did, teaching that history, do it in the context of world history, not sugarcoating it, but then by remembering who we are, the patriotism will be restored and we'll once again have that that American spirit to want to defend it. And even the schools now, don't we have I mean, it just seems like we have a better opportunity to influence the curriculum, to influence what's happening even in our public schools. And now, of course, with school choice, getting parents have the choice to get into schools that are more patriotic. But, you know, you deal with these lawsuits all the time, not only with the military, but with schools and defending teachers. And I mean, you guys at First Liberty are all over the place. It seems like even that ground is more fertile. It used to seem like a dead end over there, but now it seems like there's more and more opportunities to do good things in the public schools to restore that love of America.
Mike Berry [00:14:15] Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think there's a hunger for truth at you know, just within the people. I think young people tend to look at their older counterparts. I suppose I'm quickly becoming a part of that older cohort. But they look at, you know, whether the boomer.
Rick Green [00:14:32] You're young, brother. You're young. No.
Mike Berry [00:14:34] I'm a proud Gen Xer, I'll admit it. And my kids, you know, they look at me and they and they, you know, they'll even say, look, the way that you consume information, the way that you consume media, is now sort of antiquated, right? Is you wait for the media to tell you what has happened, what the facts are, what the truth is. And I think they're beginning to see that there are alternative ways to do that, other than to have somebody who purports to be the purveyor of all information tell us what we're supposed to believe. So, there's a hunger for truth, right? And you mentioned this earlier that our young people they can tell when they're being gaslighted, they can tell when they're not getting the full story. And so, I do think that the ground is ripe. To tell the full story of America's greatness. Right? The good, the bad and the ugly. Well, just like you said, you gotta and then let them draw their own conclusions because that is I mean, to use that word gaslighting, that's the one thing that I've noticed with young people is that they can quickly sense, their spidey sense goes off when they feel like they're being gaslit about something. I was talking to one of my kids and they were just like, well, you know, if America is so god awful, why is it that so many people want to come here from other countries? How come you don't see a flood of Americans fleeing America and going to other countries? He's like, he said just it seems to me that it must be because there's something good about America that other people from other countries sense and they want to be a part of this. So, I and I think as just said, you know, you're on to something. And they've heard me say it before, right? As you know, as a veteran, I've traveled the world, I've seen, you know, I've had an all expenses paid trip to Afghanistan. The fastest way to turn somebody into a patriot is to send them to you know, a third world despotic country to see how people in those places live under the thumb of a tyrannical regime and they'll quickly realize, oh my goodness, we are so blessed in America. We've got so many good things going for us, we cannot let it slip away and lose it. And they come back with like this this passion, you know, for what it means to be an American.
Rick Green [00:16:48] Oh, I love it. Yeah. In fact, their instincts are exactly right. There's we are we have one out of every five immigrants on the planet are here in the United States, and we have more than the second, third, fourth, and fifth nations combined. So why is that? You know, it's like yeah, I tell people I'm a simple country boy. Country boy test is are people trying to get in? Are they trying to get out? Because if they're trying to get in, there's something here worth getting in for. And if they're trying to get out, that means that system is not working. And we ought to be smart enough to look at those systems and say what works, what doesn't work. You know, what's producing a society or a neighborhood where you want to raise your kids, where the commerce works, where the products, where the products on the shelf and food is in abundance and all those things, you know, there are things that produce that and there are things that destroy that. And I think these kids, honestly, Mike, I think they I think they're figuring it out. I think they're asking the right questions. They're studying these things. I don't think this Mondami thing in New York is a trend of, you know, the Gen Zers moving towards socialism. I think that has more to do with the bad immigration policy and all those things. It's definitely an issue. You know, there's no doubt there's, you know, polling so and showing 50, 60 percent of kids think they want socialism, but when you get down to the issues, I don't think they actually understand the term. Yeah, I think you know what I'm talking about, but I just think they're man, they're asking good questions, they're studying the Charlie Kirk thing has made people want to have more civil discourse. Those are those all seem like healthy signs to me. What do you think?
Mike Berry [00:18:19] Yeah, you know, a simple question, right? You kind of brought this up who who's trying to get in and who's trying to get out. You know, we in this country are talking about securing our borders to prevent a flood of people breaking our laws and coming here illegally, right? Because they're trying to trying to get into the country. I just a couple of years ago I had the chance to visit South Korea and we went up to the DMZ and it's like, well, they’ve got a pretty strong border wall there too, but it's because the North Koreans are trying to keep their people from leaving and going south. That's right. I don't I didn't meet a single South Korean who said, you know, if it weren't for that darn border patrol and the wall, I would be in North Korea right now. No, it's the other way. So well, it's despotic regimes have to put up walls to keep their people from trying to flee and trying to leave. Great countries like ours, you know, we have to be a nation of laws, and a nation of laws means a nation of borders. If you don't have borders, then you're not a nation. And so that's you know, that's why we're trying to ensure that only the right people come in. But yeah, yeah, so I you know, it's pretty simple. And like you said, I think the young people are starting to figure it out. They're starting to question quote un kind of the conventional thinking about these things. And I think it's incumbent upon us, our generation, the Gen Zers, the boomers, and even soon to be the millennials to begin understanding the new dynamics you mentioned, Mandami. I really think that that is going to turn out to be, you know, nothing more than kind of a coastal elite anecdote. Right. I think it's just further evidence that the coastal elites have not learned the hard lessons of the 2024 election, which is that the vast majority of America in between the coast these coastal liberal enclaves, they don't want that. They don't want what Mondami is bringing and what he's promising, because they just they've seen the just the chaos and decay that it brings with it. Yeah. They just haven't got the message there in in in these coastal liberal enclaves.
Rick Green [00:20:21] Yep, absolutely right, man. Well, I that's cool. You got to visit the DMZ. I always tell people, you know, there's nobody, people aren't clamoring to dig tunnels to get into North Korea. There's no North Korean dream, but there is an American dream, and they are digging tunnels to get in here, and we ought to be appreciative of what we have and defend it. And so thankful for you guys at First Liberty. Thanks for what you're doing, Mike. Thanks for your service to our country. I appreciate you and love you as a brother, and it's always good to have you on. Let's restore both our faith in America and restore faith in America. I love what you're doing with that, man. Thanks for coming on.
Mike Berry [00:20:56] Thanks for having me.
Rick Green [00:20:57] That's Mike Barry, stay with us folks, we'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.
Rick Green [00:22:07] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Mike Berry and of course Kelly and everybody at First Liberty. Great team over there. And they are actually doing both things, guys. They're restoring faith in America through all the things that they're doing. And they're helping us restore faith in America. So love it. Good stuff.
David Barton [00:22:22] Yeah, you know, Rick, you had a good point. You said you can't restore faith in you can't make America great again without restoring faith in America. And that really is true. But to make it great again, you gotta know what made it great the first place, which is faith. And then I thought Mike made a great point. You know, him being a military guy, he said, we tell kids how bad America is, and then we ask them to serve in the military. And that's really crazy. Why would you serve in the military of a nation that's as bad as you've been telling them it is? And as I was listening to that, thinking about that, I guys, I don't know how I got there, but I took a spin over to a 1960 Walt Disney movie named Pollyanna. If you remember Pollyanna, she only saw the things that were good and you know, she had bad stuff going on around her, but she refused to focus on the bad. She kept focusing on the good. And at the end, when they kind of rebuffed her for being too positive, she made it really clear she knew all the bad stuff and she was going through bad stuff herself, having been injured and really bad injury. And I thought, Pollyanna, you know, that there's this thing about being Polly Annish and we kind of make fun of it and you're just too much of an optimist. And so, I went back and looked, and that that was actually a book that was done in 1913 and Walt Disney made it into a movie in 1960. But the theme of it was a statement that Eleanor Porter wrote when she wrote the book in nineteen thirteen. She said, If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will. And I thought, you know, that's what we've been doing with critical race theory and DEI and with America. If you're if you're going to look for the bad, you're going to find it because it's always going to be there. There's the good, the bad, the ugly. And then I was reminded of the Bible verse back in Philippians 4:8. And for some reason, I think I've only ever applied this spiritually. But in listening to Mike Go Through it and listening to you talk to him, Rick, I was really struck that even with America, the Bible says, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are noble, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there is any virtue, and if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. Now, why is that just limited to Bible? That's everything. Everything you think about. What why isn't that true with America? Now, we've not the good, the bad, the ugly of America. We can probably tell more bad and ugly than the DEI folks can. But you're supposed to meditate on the good things. And you know, suddenly it's like, hey, that Polly Annish kind of stuff, that that's not really all that bad. That's really pretty biblical because we're not ignoring what's there, but we're meditating on the good stuff.
Tim Barton [00:24:53] Yeah, it it's similar to if you look at someone like King David who was called a man after God's own heart, but then the Bible tells the whole story the good, the bad, the ugly. And yet it doesn't call him the adulterer of Bathsheba, right? No, it's the man after God's own heart. And you can look and go, how? And obviously we would point out that there's a lot of details that if all you do is tell the bad parts of the story, then then you miss the larger context of what's going on and you misunderstand maybe, or you would never understand why he was called a man after God's own heart. You miss the fact that he repented, you miss the fact. You can go through multiple events in his life where there were failures, and yet he continually turns to God that there is forgiveness, there's restitution, there is restoration. Like there's a lot of things that happen in the midst of some of these things going on. And not just King David, I'm talking general big picture Bible. And this is very true with America. It's not that America never did bad things, but to say America is really, really bad, we bring up the question compared to who, right? And this is where you can go back, Rick, what you and Mike were talking about. The basic immigration question, right? Are you trying to get in or trying to get out? And if we're saying America's really, really bad, why is everybody trying to get in? Well, if we're really bad compared to who, because nobody's trying to get in other nations like they're trying to get into America, this nation is special.
Rick Green [00:26:12] Amen. And guys, I'll close this out. Just thinking about Catherine Lee Bates. You know, she was struggling with her faith. She had questions about America when she wrote America the Beautiful, and originally as a poem became the most popular song in America, and all those lines about crown thy good with brotherhood, self-control, thy liberty and law. I mean, all of these, just faith-based lines throughout the song, she emphasized the good and it became an anthem for our nation. So absolutely emphasizing the good is a good thing to do. Thanks so much for listening today, folks. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.
