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
Teaching America’s Founders With Principles, Not Trivia
Credit card APR creeping into the high 20s can feel like quicksand, and that’s exactly where we start—by asking whether a president can, or should, cap rates at 10 percent for a year. We sort the legal from the rhetorical, exploring the constitutional limits on executive power, the real-world ripple effects of price controls, and how a bully pulpit can move industries without writing a single rule. Through a biblical lens, we talk about profit versus exploitation, why Scripture warns against practices that deepen debt bondage, and how moral responsibility belongs to lenders and borrowers alike.
From there we zoom out to solutions that outlast headlines. We dig into practical reforms that reinforce a healthy market: more transparency, fewer subsidies that distort risk, and serious financial literacy so families recognize the cost of compounding interest before it traps them. That thread carries us into the second half: how to teach America’s founding in a way that forms judgment, not just memory. We make the case for principles over trivia—using primary sources, biographies, and site visits to let students encounter real people, wrestle with real choices, and extract lessons that apply to school boards, budgets, and daily life.
We also share resources for parents and teachers who want to start now: story-rich materials, digitized archives, and programs that bring history to life. The goal is a generation confident in reading the past for wisdom, not just facts—citizens who prefer persuasion over force, and character over convenience. If that resonates, hit follow, share this with a friend who’s battling debt or building a curriculum, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so we can bring more conversations like this to your feed.
Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Thursday edition of The WallBuilders Show, where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Thursday is what we call Foundations of Freedom Thursday, and it's a chance for you to ask us questions about the Constitution or maybe a policy being proposed by a governor or a president or maybe some history about a founding father. Anything you want to ask, send it in to radio@wallbuilders.com. That's radio@wallbuilders.com, and we will take a biblical historical and cons institutional perspective on that issue. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. Guys, we've got a whole line of questions. If y'all are ready, we'll dive into question one.
Tim Barton [00:00:44] Let's do it.
Rick Green [00:00:45] All right, first one is Jacob. He's asking already, this just happened a couple days ago, really, about the 10% cap that President Trump has proposed. So he says, I listen every day, gentlemen, from Western Pennsylvania and appreciate your perspective from a biblical, constitutional, and historical standpoint. My question is about Trump's recent announcement to cap credit card interest at 10% for one year. From my understanding, he does not have the authority to do this. It feels more like an ask of the companies or does he actually have a constitutional power to do so? Also is this biblical? I don't believe it is, but I would love to hear your guys's take. Thanks for all you do. Jacob, a quick correction. It's y'all's take, I'd love to hear y'alls take. You Pennsylvania guys, your guys' take no, just kidding. Jacob. That's great. Great question. And, and honestly, guys, I wanted to ask y'all about this too, because it does definitely feel like a interference in the free market. And I can't think of a constitutional provision. I understand what he's doing in terms of, you know, just trying to get the companies to you know back off a little bit. But man, I have the same question. What do y' all think?
David Barton [00:01:51] Well, it's interesting. I mean, there is an answer to this, but it has an asterisk that has to go along with it. So no, he doesn't have the constitutional authority to do this. There's no explicit authority to this. As you point out, the free market system, this is part of that. This is what business gets to do. But that's where the asterisk comes in is part of protecting the free enterprise system is making sure it does not get into exploitation and so if you go back to the bible things like Exodus 22 and Leviticus 25 this is where the bible covers lending practices and you can't have high interest rates that would increase the bondage particularly on poor people and others. And so, when you're getting above a 10% interest rate... That's where the Bible called usury and the Bible was not at all against making profit. I mean, it's where free market system came from. But when it gets to the point where it's being driven by greed and exploitation and you're harming people and putting them in debt, you know, debt, a lot of people do debt cause they're just dumb. And I'm sorry for saying that, but they just think that money grows on trees and they don't necessarily work hard. They want something. They'd like their eyes be their guide rather than their mind. And that's a problem. So on the one side, he does not have the constitutional authority to regulate private business, but in the other hand, he has to protect the free market and if you let it get out of hand, now you're getting into where it got with in ancient Roman and Grecian empires where you had really big differences between the classes, you had the really poor and the super-rich. And that's where you get tyranny coming in. That's where your revolution coming in, that's a real problem. But I don't think he's trying to do that. I think he is putting a shot across the bow of the lenders. I think that he is trying to tell the lender, you guys need to back off on this, or we might get involved. Not that I think we would get involved, but we've seen him so often use the bully pulpit with the possibility of the government over his shoulder looking at what they are doing, and that has worked in so many instances up to now with big business to get them to back off. And you know, big business, I mean, they make money, but they also have moral responsibilities as well. And that's one of the problems we've had in the last 50 years or so. So, we've kind of separated morality from business, from education, from other things and made it just personal. And so, I really like what he's trying to do here. If he came to a court suit, he's not gonna win that suit. I don't think there's any way, shape, fashion or form he can. But I do think he's helping protect a healthy free enterprise system. By trying to prevent that type of economic exploitation that is not healthy for a nation and it's not right biblically.
Tim Barton [00:04:42] Well, Dad too, I think one of the things to simplistically explain this is when you're talking about what the president can do, the president is the executive who's in charge of the executive branch. And even though he is leading the nation, the economic understanding from the constitution doesn't fall on the president. It actually goes through the legislature to some extent. Now, also we're talking something different with private property or with actually private businesses, which is like private property to some extent, although we could talk about. The overlap and Rick, you can get in the legal breakdown of what happens when you enter the marketplace and how that works. But let me back up because one of the things that President Trump has done such a good job doing this term, you know, this last year already this year, but certainly even his first year we saw it, he's a master negotiator. And so, he knows how to put leverage in places. Yeah. He knows how to use words as fodder and tools at times to help encourage and incentivize and motivate. And it certainly seems that that's more of what this is about. Although, even though there could be some very valid thought to the need for change, I think the question then comes, what is the best process? And I mean, guys, correct me if you see this differently, but it seems like in a corrective action like this, it ought to come through legislation. Not through an executive order, especially when it pertains to private business. And even then, there's a lot of danger. We don't need the government legislating what private businesses and practices do. But when you have an industry wide standard and now there's been so much cronyism, there's has been so many corruptions, there has been so much built up in a negative way. It's this is the kind of situation that certainly it would seem like that the government could protect people to some extent. And I'm saying that in the back of my mind, I mean, it's really hard saying this because I keep hearing Ronald Reagan's words, right? The most terrifying words in the English language. Right, right. We're from the government and we're here to help. The government should not be the solver of problems, but when the government has been the one propping up and protecting these industries, being so corrupt for so long, to some extent, the government needs to either remove protections, allow accountability, responsibility. Or change some of that structure. Rick, what do you think? How do you see it?
Rick Green [00:07:05] No, I think you raise a really important point. There's so many of these policies that in a pure, you know, free market economy and, and with, with no crony capitalism, which I don't even like that term because it makes capitalism sound bad. Capitalism is good. It's a, it's actually, you know, big brother collusion. And so yeah, I, I think you're right. It's so hard to detangle right from all of the involvement of the government with mortgage rates and housing and the fed and everything else that it's not as cut and dry as we would like for like the easy cut and right answer I would give is yeah, of course it shouldn't be the government not allowing for usuries. Some states have done that right. And we've seen that where states have passed like a 8% usury and it runs, you know, runs banks out of the state or it runs business out of state. You can't get car loans and it just makes it very, very difficult. So, I'm definitely against the idea of of you know setting a cap. But I also recognize what you're saying, which is, you know, he's a master at the, you know, using the bully pulpit and just throwing the shot across the bow to get companies to, to, you know, at least back off. And, you don't look, I think, you know, there's no question we've got a major debt problem in the country, not just with the government's 37 trillion, but with consumer debt. And man, when you get into that cycle and all of a sudden, you've got a card that has taken off and is, you know, you, you've, you got it at 8% or whatever. And now it's 25, 30%. And you get to the point where you're never going to pay it off. Bye. I mean, that happens to people all the time. So I think he's putting his finger on the pulse of a, a real problem out there, but I don't think, you know, just mandating a set interest rate pays off in the long run, because then it actually cramps credit and the money supply all the way down the chain, not just for the high interest, you know, what we would call hard money loans or, you know, quick money loans, or whatever it ends up, you know, then making it harder to even get the, even if you got good credit. You get the lower interest loans because there's just it just has a ripple effect. So yeah, I don't know guys. It's a tough one. It's great question. Uh, man, I'm really impressed even that, um, that Jacob asked that question and the, and the way that he asked it. So that tells you we got an informed audience. Their instincts are right. You know what I mean? But it is a complicated issue.
David Barton [00:09:18] You know, I think one of the things that will tell us a lot about this is whether there's any follow-through action on what he said. Because he said it, it's a shot over the bow, and I doubt that you'll see anything happen in legislative action or in executive action, either one, other than telling these guys that, hey, if you don't stop this, I may have to do something. And I think it really is more of that threat to kind of get a moral clarity back in some of these areas. But I think that'll be the real key if we see anything policy-wise coming out, which I doubt that we will.
Rick Green [00:09:51] Yeah, you know, David, part of, as you were saying that, I was thinking part of what he's really good at is what he is really doing is just acknowledging the problem. And it's kind of like, you know, and then just throws out this idea. It's the same thing with the 40-year mortgage thing that he threw out. Like I thought that was a terrible idea, right? That just increases debt and makes it longer for people. So, let's not use government to, you know, manipulate the market to start encouraging longer loans. Let's get government out of the guarantee of loans. So, there's a true market force where if you if you can't prove that you can pay it, you don't get the loan. But it's when he throws those ideas out, like you said, that one didn't lead to legislation. I don't think anybody's gonna follow through on that. But what he's saying is I acknowledge the problem, that especially these young people are having such a hard time getting a loan, getting a house, you know, that there are real challenges in the marketplace right now. And so that could be what all he's doing is just sort of tipping the hat.
David Barton [00:10:46] And by the way, I'll say something that I think is really superb going on in Texas right now. Texas is in the process of rewriting all of its standards and content, et cetera, for history and government and civics and et cetera. And one of the cool things that the state legislature has now mandated is that all students in Texas will take a one-year financial literacy course. And it is a really good, I've seen it. I've actually had the the pleasure of helping craft the course that's being done right now. And it is, it is just absolutely excellent on understanding personal financial literacy, avoiding debt and in as many ways as possible, understanding what debt does, how it accumulates, financial freedom, what that means over, and I think that that's a great thing because we have gone through probably 25 to 30 years where we have not really taught financial responsibility, the way we used to. Now I'm going to go back into church days, back when I was on staff and churches, we actually taught financial courses back at that point in time. You know, it's kind of like what Dave Ramsey, he was so popular 15 years ago and 20 years ago, I don't know if he is as much now, he certainly was back then and before that, you know, and Tim says that, you know Ramsey is still really popular now and those were courses that were actually being taught in churches. Because everybody needed to understand basic principles and those basic principles include biblical principles. So, I think that's gonna be a help as well. We've had such a surge of youth debt, particularly over the last 10 to 15 years. And hopefully we're gonna see some corrective action on that coming, even though what states like Texas are doing with this coming financial literacy course for every kid in the state. I think this can be a really healthy thing.
Rick Green [00:12:39] Yeah. And the last thing I'll say on this one is for, for all of our friends out there that, you know, when president Trump does something like this, that we go, well, that's not really lining up with our, our conservative principles. Just remember how much worse it was. What the lesson to the young people for Biden to just say, oh, I'm just going to forgive your loans completely. Like you borrow all the money you want. You're not responsible for it. I'm going to give loans. That's the problem with why they're taking on so much debt, because we don't have that sense of personal responsibility. We haven't You know, really instilled in them that, okay, yeah, if you have to borrow to go to college, you have borrowed whatever it is, you're going to pay that back and you need to be working while you're gone to college so that you don't take on too much debt. And, you know, just that that that old American spirit. We lost that with all the gimme programs and all the guarantee programs. And so that's more of a problem even then, you know, what the interest rate is, it's just the basic idea of personal responsibility. All right, guys, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. We've got more questions from the audience. So, stay with us, folks. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show.
Rick Green [00:14:43] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Next question’s from Texas. So, I'm hoping that Leslie uses y'all in here instead of you guys or your guys or whatever our Pennsylvania friend said. We gotta teach everybody how to talk right. That's our job. That's like part of it, right?
Tim Barton [00:14:59] Now, Rick, I can say, had the phrase been, hey, you guys, I might have felt a little different about it. For those of you who are in the 80s that maybe know the reference, if not, don't worry about it, I just was making stuff up. But y'all certainly is more Texas colloquial.
Rick Green [00:15:17] Yeah, we feel more at home anyway. Okay, Leslie is actually from Tyler, Texas. And she says, I first want to thank you guys for all the work you do in obeying God's call in your lives. I was homeschooled starting in second grade and now homeschool my children. Even with being homeschool, I am still learning things about our founding and founders that I don't recall being taught. I want my children to have a firmer understanding of our founders. First of all, Leslie, I'm going to interrupt your question for a second and say, we're all still learning. Every single one of us, we never stopped that learning. So I'm glad that you're still embracing that. That's awesome. She goes on to say, even though I spend hours in selecting our curriculum, I still think I'm coming up short in this area of their education. What books do or did you use to teach your children about America's founders? Is there a curriculum in this era that you esteem is better than others? Or do you prefer other individual books to this? A list would be much appreciated by myself for elementary through high school. May God continue to bless your work and your lives. And so yeah, so we've got so David, you and Cheryl homeschooled all three of yours all the way through right I can't remember if y'all started from I think you did
David Barton [00:16:21] It was, it was a combination of a Christian school and homeschool. At the time I was a principal to the Christian school. And then we ended up being on the road so much that it was homeschooling or actually van schooling in that case, our van, but yeah, it was, it pretty much definitely private independent schooling for, I guess all of their careers, I guess, as long as Tim can remember anyway. It was part of what we did.
Rick Green [00:16:47] Well, and then Karen and I homeschooled ours all the way through. And we were probably, I've never really thought about it. I guess probably about 10 or 15 years behind y'all. And now Tim, you and Gabby have your girls and I, I'm assuming y' all are homeschooling and doing a mix and we did a mix too when I was a kid, even I did homeschool private school and, and public school. But so we're going to get like almost three different timeframes of curriculum, right? So, what, what David, how you're going to answer this will be how you did that first. And then I came along a little bit later and how we did it. And then we're going find out what Tim's finding out there right now.
Tim Barton [00:17:22] I, it might be helpful to frame this thought in general, because I can say, Dad, I would love you to maybe say some of your philosophy, what y'all did, how you did it, that the places we traveled, the, the people we studied, the stories, et cetera. But what I would say is just looking back at my childhood, I knew more Founding Fathers than the average child. I knew, more founding fathers in the average high school student. But I didn't know all of them. I couldn't have named all 56 signers of the Declaration. Again, I could name more than most people could. And I couldn't tell you all their stories. I knew more stories than most did. But I'm saying that because any parent listening, going oh my gosh, I need my kids to know all 56 signs of the Declaration. Actually, if they could name 10 or 15 or 20, they're so far ahead. And Dad, this is where I think maybe even philosophically, I think you could speak to. Give some perspective, because it's not that you were not wanting us to know who the Founding Fathers were, but I don't remember an emphasis on, hey, you have to memorize all 56. You got to know, right, their faith, their family, their accomplishments, their challenges, you know, whatever. I don't remember that. I remember more us celebrating America, acknowledging some of the great things the Founding Fathers learning some of the cool stories. But I don't remember, and if you taught it, that just shows I was a poor student. I don't remember us going through all 56, and I wanna say that just again, setting the frame, because Rick, I would assume probably for your kids that I know and am friends with, and I don't think any of us learned all of them, although we knew more stories, we knew the things that made America great and special. We knew some of the sacrifices, the commitment, we knew some other challenges, but it's been an ongoing learning process and I would think Rick for your family, Dad, for ours. Y'all really instilled in us more of an appreciation for America, a appreciation and respect of the Founding Fathers, not the detailed, comprehensive breakdown of each one, but let me, let me throw it to you.
David Barton [00:19:42] I mean, you guys have kind of laid it out, but for me, the guidebook is history, is what did I see that worked historically? If I look back in history, what worked, what didn't work, and there's no better history than the Bible. And so for even those who don't think the Bible has spiritual significance, it has historical significance. And there are a lot of things I find in the Founding Fathers, they read history all the time. The read, you know, all the Roman guys, Cicero and all the Greek guys and others, they didn't read them because they wanted to be like Rome or like Greece. They wanted to find lessons they could apply from what had happened in those nations. And so, they were reading to find principles that could be applied. And I think that's a key thing. It's too often today we read to get names and dates and facts and places and we know all the details and, you know, we would be good on a trivia game show like Jeopardy, but they were after principles. And those principles. Those principles don't change, but you can always add attachments to those principles that will work in your generation. And so, I think that that's, and I would encourage, you know, she's asking a great question, and I would say don't try to do what we're doing right now, because quite frankly, historically, in the last hundred years, we've adopted a pedagogy that has been extremely unsuccessful. What we did, our pedagogy of education for the first three centuries is totally different from today. And one of the things we did was the same thing you see in the Bible. When you read the Bible, it's not about dates. I mean, how many years can you find in the bible that an 836 AD, you just don't find that because that's not the important part of the story. The important part is the human part of story. What did they get right? What did the get wrong? What principles can you learn from that? There's all the great economic principles, all these great governing principles, all these military principles. There's principles that are timeless because like gravity, they don't change over time. So, they read to learn the principles and how to apply those principles in their own generation. They figure that out. But reading for principles and reading for heroes and villains, because I think you can learn as much from a villain as you can from a hero. And that's why in the Bible you've got stories of the good and the bad and the ugly because you learn from all of them. And that the other thing about the stories that uses a lot of biographical history. You look at people and you realize, you know, I'm just like them, they're just like me. We all have the same kind of motivations and desires and we can learn from all of that. And so, I would encourage to go back and look more at historical kind of learnings. I would even send you back to things for your kids. Go to something like archives.org, which is where so many founding documents and biographies have been posted. They're just the way they were when they were printed 100 years ago or 200 years ago. Read that, have your kids read that and then discuss it. What'd you learn out of that? What are the principles you see there? What do you see today that doesn't align with that? What do see today does align with it? Would that be good or bad? And ask all sorts of questions. That's the other thing we saw from Jesus is he asked 339 questions. He was asking questions all the time. We don't do that much today. We discuss stuff, but we don't ask questions. And so that asking questions is the other thing that I think is really, really important. And AI can be helpful on this. But AI is also like an LSD addict in the 70s. It can hallucinate really bad at times. And so, you don't want to just take AI and what it says. And we know enough about it to know when it hallucinates. Not everybody does. So just be careful with AI stuff. But when you go back to original stories or documents, and again, I would send you, get on some of those archives and look at some of the biographies in the 1820s and 1830s. Read an autobiography of John Quincy Adams after his death in 1847. Read a biography of Daniel Webster after his death in 1853. I mean, you get so much American history and you get so much perspective, those are really good ways to learn.
Rick Green [00:23:39] Yeah. I just want to make sure I summarize this right David, you said read for principles and read for heroes and villains. And I think that is so good, man, to, to even, even like the vacationing with a purpose. Why are you, why do we encourage people to do that, to go to the battlefields and all, and to the museums and to cool places it's it's so you can kind of imagine your kids can imagine that hero or villain and that story as you're teaching them so that they can get that principle or that, or that character trait, right? That's why we want them to have the heroes and ‘cause, how, what kind of kid do you want to have? You know, you want them to, to hear those stories and have them come to life. And in there, in the back of their mind, it's going to be, I want to be like that. I want it. I want take on that particular trait, even way more important, like Tim's saying, than being able to rattle off all 56 designers of the Dec(laration) or whatever, whatever it might be. And, and, um, yeah, I think it's, it'd great questions. I certainly appreciate Leslie's interest in making sure that they're learning all they can. I don't think there's a a magic system or textbook out there. You know, we mixed all, we used a Beck and all kinds of things. But mostly we tried to go to those places and, and, and learn and like you said, but you both said, you know, reading those biographies, I mean, that's such a big part of it.
Tim Barton [00:24:49] Well, guys, I think it's also worth acknowledging that we've done a lot of work in these areas as well. I mean, Rick, you took your family and you did a whole series Chasing American Legends for people that might not be able to travel and see these places. You took your families, you filmed on location, telling stories. Dad, you and I did some of that with America's Hidden History. We have the American Story books, we have our friend Bill Federer who's got lots of history books, our friend Stephen McDowell who's got some history books. There are now some really good resources out there. And so, for people looking at this point, I would say, man, go to patriotacademy.com, go-to-wallbuilders.com and you can find some really good resources to help parents navigate this and some of them are books. Some of them or workbooks. Some of the are literally story series where we go and tell the story and you get to kind of see firsthand where it happened in those details and whether you get it go there or not, they're great, but If you're gonna go there, this might be a really good heads up on some of what's there and what the story is for when you get there.
Rick Green [00:25:52] Yeah, and I think like David said, don't try to plug into the typical education model that we're so used to. Cause like you said, Tim, some of it's not even what people might think of as curriculum, but that doesn't matter. You know, pull that story, teach that story. Play that, you know, interview with Bill Federer about, you know, Thanksgiving or, or whatever it might be. I mean, it's like, man, just, just have fun and tell those stories. And as, as, David said look for those principles and, and look for those heroes and villains and there's so much good stuff out there right now. No doubt, you got to have your antenna up. I think she's right. The more we can recommend stuff, great. But if you go to www.patriotacademy.com and www.wallbuilders.com, and Steven's www.providencefoundation.com. There's so many good resources out there. Fantastic question. Thank you, everybody, for sending in the questions. We only got the two of them today, but we'll get to more next Thursday. And then, of course, tomorrow, we've got a lot of good news to share with you, so be sure to tune in tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening to The WallBuilders Show.
