Ballot Access And Party Power

A party label feels like a gate, but it’s often just a sticker. We start with a sharp listener question: why not require a Constitution test before someone can run as a Republican or Democrat for Congress? We break down the difference between what election law controls (ballot access and constitutional qualifications) and what parties can actually do (endorsements, funding, volunteers, and public signals). If you’ve ever wondered why “the party” can’t simply stop a bad candidate, the answer lives in how our system protects access while still leaving room for real accountability through association.

Then we tackle one of the most misused lines in American history: the Treaty of Tripoli and the claim that it proves the United States was not founded on Christianity. We dig into the Barbary pirates context, the scramble to protect American sailors, and the uncomfortable reality that treaties were negotiated across languages and agendas. We also explain the translation chain (Arabic to Italian to English) and why the famous “Article 11” quote is routinely pulled as a fragment instead of being read for what it was meant to communicate: not a holy war, not inherent enmity, and not the secular “gotcha” it’s often made to be.

We close with a listener who wants to get the Ten Commandments back in schools and push woke and gender ideology out of public education, especially in Washington State. Our answer is blunt and hopeful: recruit and support better candidates, build local momentum, pass legislation with leaders who will actually fight for it, and plug into training and organizing opportunities like Patriot Academy and FreedomCon.

If this helped you think more clearly about the Constitution, political parties, the Treaty of Tripoli, or education reform, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's Thursday, so we're getting to your questions, Foundations of Freedom Thursday is what we call it. And it's your chance to send in your questions about the Constitution, Founding Fathers, Declaration, what's going on in DC right now, or maybe in your own state or your community and applying that biblical, historical, constitutional perspective to the issues of the day. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And we've got actually guys, we don't do this very often a follow-up question, so we covered a topic. I don't know. I think it was last week actually. And I got a follow up question to it. And so we'll, we'll take this question from Joel diving back into a great topic. He said today's WallBuilders Show address the question about people having to pass a test on the Constitution before being able to run for Congress. You rightly explain how adding that requirement would be unconstitutional without a constitutional amendment and you address different angles of how it has been tried before. But why wouldn't we be able to make a party rule? We have other party rules that determine if someone can run as a Republican. Why couldn't we make the requirement to run in the party to show a basic understanding of the Constitution? We aren't taking away their ability to run as an independent or in a different party. So I don't see how that would be unconstitutional. Joel from Davenport. Thank you for sending that question in. Well, guys, interesting angle here. And I know parties do have some rules, but I don t know. I honestly have no idea. Like does the state constitution typically in a state limit what the party can do or is this a potential solution? 

David Barton [00:01:34] Well, since running for public office is something that is under the state law, the state constitution, federal law, federal constitution, you can't create more requirements, no one can create more requirements for running for a federal office than what, than what those laws and constitution require. However, there is an angle on this that does, that does make sense. And states like Colorado is actually a state that kind of does this.  Colorado and I guess I'll let me back up and say it this way what a party can do is they can vet the candidates and they can give them official party endorsements is what's happening in Colorado so they can say hey we've checked this guy he can't pass the Constitution test, which is what we talked about last week, he does know at least as much as an immigrant who comes here and so from the party standpoint we're telling you this is a good Republican, Democrat, whoever. But you don't have to have the party's endorsement to be able to run as a Republican. You can sign up as a Republican even if everybody in the party hates you. I mean, I literally could go sign up and run as the Democrat for Congress right now and Democrats don't to have to like me and they wouldn't like me and they would even let me in their party but they can't stop me from being on the ballot with that party and name affixed to me. So the parties cannot control who goes on the ballots. 

Rick Green [00:02:54] I sense a reality show in the making. David Barton runs as a Democrat. What happens? We should do, we should, we should do the, okay. Maybe not, maybe not.

David Barton [00:03:01]  It would be the shortest reality show in history because I'm not going to do it and they're not going let me do it. So it wouldn't even make one episode. It wouldn't even make the introduction to an episode. But here's what could be done. You could say, look, if you as a Republican don't take an immigration test, the state party is not going to give you any funds or financing. Now you have to raise it on your own. You don't get the benefit of the party workers unless you just go get private people yourself. But you could withhold the party mechanism. And that takes a lot of clout away from it. The party could even say, hey, this is not an officially endorsed Republican. And you could put that out, but you can't stop someone from running for office or being on the ballot because that is established by state and federal law and Constitution. However, you can use some of the right of association to say, well, you're not associated with us. And so you're getting any of our money, our help, our endorsement. We're not going to talk about you on the radio. Matter of fact, we'll talk bad about you on radio, media, whatever, social media. And that's the stuff you can pass. So it's a really good question and it goes more to the power of parties to kind of limit. And this is, you know, this is another thing I'm going to get back on the parties you're not doing well. They don't recruit well. They need to go recruit people who have the right values, who represent their platform, who represent the community, who have that the traits that you want in a candidate. And if they get those kind of candidates, a whole lot easier. I mean, at that point, when you're recruiting, I'll make sure you can pass an immigration test before I'm going to put you on a school board or anything else. City council, public utility. I don't, I don't care. You at least need to know it. And so if parties got back into recruiting, it would help them a whole lot on this rather than just taking everybody who walks through the door. Or as we've talked about before, kind of the Republican mentality is now, if you can fund your own campaign, you're the candidate we've been waiting for. And that's just not the right stuff. So it's a great question, but it goes back to keeping people off the ballot and you can't keep them off the ballad other than being excluded for state or federal legal violations. But it's great question association. What I started to say about Colorado is Colorado has a kind of a caucus convention where that they will endorse their official candidates for various offices. Now, you can still get on the ballot and you can you can get a certain number of signatures and bypass the caucus kind of thing. So there's ways of getting around it, but Colorado does attempt to at least show the official Republicans or those that are more aligned with the Republican Party by that party apparatus, but they're not able to exclude people from the ballot. 

Tim Barton [00:05:43] Well Dad, that is disappointing. That's what I tried to bring up last week thinking this is the solution. Like parties ought to be able to have rules. If you were playing on a sports team, we said, hey, here's the conditions of being on our team. You don't have to be on our team, but to be in our team, here are some basic conditions. You have to wear our Jersey. You have to show up to practice, et cetera. And so I understand what you're saying. I totally get it. But it does seem like that even though even though you should be able to be eligible to run, if you're gonna be part of a party, there seems like there could be some basic rules for that party, not to digress. This is what I thought last week. So I'm not the only one that was thinking this. We got a question this week. Yeah, so ultimately it sounds like we just need to make sure we are recruiting better candidates and then educating the citizens and voters to who these candidates actually are. 

David Barton [00:06:37] And you know, kind of a follow-up to that, Tim, is if the party was able to exclude people who didn't believe like it, then there is absolutely no hope for the future of the Democrat party. The Democrat party will never move back toward the middle. It'll never move toward the right because the people that have it now are so stinking left, progressive, secularist, whatever, that they would not allow any other Democrats that didn't hold their views to be part of it. They have such a litmus test at this point. And so, you would never see the Democrat Party move back even toward the center if they had the right to exclude anybody from running as a Democrat, including some rational people. 

Tim Barton [00:07:15] Yeah, but then it would be, it would be death by suicide for their party. And I also don't mind sitting on the sideline watching that happen. So, so I don't think you've talked me out of this. 

Rick Green [00:07:28] Well, and we're about to see if, uh, if Talafrico is, is death by suicide. Like if they get so far crazy to where they put the guy up in the Texas for the Texas, you know, the U S Senate from Texas race that, uh that, that believes all this nonsense, you know, I guess it's not the first time they've done it, but wow. What a horrible example in Texas. We're going to go see how that plays out. 

David Barton [00:07:50] Rick, I gotta add to that. I'm told, I haven't checked the stats, but I'm that that is the most expensive Senate race we've had is the one that just happened with Cornyn and Paxton, et cetera. I I'm told at least the media reported the most expensive house race that ever occurred was the Massey race that occurred last week when Thomas Massey got knocked out. So what was interesting to me is I was looking at the numbers on this Texas Senate race between Cornyn and Paxton. And now Paxton is going to be running against Talarico and I'm not anywhere even close to Texas right now. I'm out of the state.  I'm speaking to other states and I am shocked at the number of people who have told me that they saw the ads with Paxton, Talarico, other, the Texas ads are running apparently nationally, maybe that's how they spent so much money on that thing is they didn't just run in Texas, they ran another, well, I guess everything from a Texas standpoint, everything is part of Texas, but nonetheless. I've been shocked just being on the road, how many people have talked about seeing that Talarico ad that the Republicans ran to say, hey, here's the guy you're going to be running against in November. And it's just amazing to me how widespread Talarico already is now. He may become the absolute poster child for the previous Obama. You know, one of the things that got Obama elected was he was such a nice appearing guy in the sense that he talked really well, he didn't trigger, and go off irrationally, and he talked in a soft tone and modulated tone, and people really liked him seemed like a nice guy and that's the way Talarico is except they've got him saying so many absolutely irrational things and that great tone of voice etc. But it's definitely making the nation and I'm shocked about that but I'm glad it is. 

Rick Green [00:09:37] Yeah, I think those videos are just, they're going viral on social media. And that's why everybody's seeing it. But yeah, that'll be a race that the whole nation pays attention to. A lot like Beto, Beto O'Rourke and Ted Cruz. What was that? Seven or eight years ago, very similar. There'll be lot of national interest, a lot of money flowing in. I can't imagine what the total race is going to cost between the primary and the general when it's all said and done. But back to our questionnaires, our listeners sending in questions. Next one comes from, I'll see if I can say this right. Shinobu Parker. And it's a great question and not the first time we've heard this type of question, I even remember calling you, David, like 20 years ago, right before a debate, cause a guy was wearing a shirt that said this and I was like, man, I know there's something about this in your book, Original Intent. And you knew the page number off the top of your head. That was really, really weird. But anyway, here's the question. What can you tell us about the treaty of Tripoli? Why does article 11 say quote, as the government of the USA is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion dot, dot, dot, question mark. GROK says it was ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate on June 7th 1797. Is the treaty still in effect? Does this conflict with the Declaration of Independence? But I want to say hats off to Shinobu because you put the ellipse in there dot, dot, dot meaning there's more to the story whereas that t-shirt when I was walking into that debate 20 years ago had a period. Alright David, Treaty of Tripoli I don't even know if article 11 is right but I do know this line is somewhere in the Treaty of Tripoli. 

Tim Barton [00:11:06] Well, Dad, I know that you have done a ton of research on this. One of the guys who worked for us, Eric Hansen, he and I have been doing a lot of research to update the article on the website because this has circulated around again. So Dad, let me, let me throw out some of the stuff that he and I have found at this point. And then certainly come in and clarify. But, big picture, there already is an article on the website we are updating and by updating, we are trying not to lengthen the article more than the couple of pages it already is. You know, the hard thing for us oftentimes is in answering questions, there's so much story and context. And so we can give a very simple answer, but it doesn't always alleviate the, the broader questions. We're like, all right, so here's the context behind it. And, and so, with all of that being said, one of the things that's worth noting is there were lots of treaties with the Muslim nations of North Africa before we finally had a peace resolve that lasted. And actually, even for Tripoli, there was more than one treaty with Tripoli. People often say, well, what about the Treaty of Tripoli? And I love asking, saying, well, which one are you talking about? Well, the Treaty Tripoli, right? Which one? Because there was one more than and again, if you look at the different nations of North Africa that we're all part of these, this this Barbary powers, these Barbary pirates, it was like 10 different peace treaties that America had with these different nations. And the reason I bring up the multiple treaties, this is very important. There's only one treaty that says America was not a Christian nation. And by the way, that's not the entire thing it says. It says America is a no sense found in the Christian religion, as it has in itself no enmity toward the Muslim men and on it goes, et cetera. It's giving context, first of all saying, that we're not one of the Christian nations that you've been warring with i.e. One of the nations from the Crusades that you declared war against. So that's part of the context already. But, there again, the reason I bring it up, that there's multiple treaties, this is the only treaty where it says America is not a Christian nation. And again, it's not giving the full context. It's not even giving the whole sentence. I'm just saying the phrase that people think they know when they repeat. Why is that the only treaty we know? And this is an important question. If you go look at the other treaties, there are multiple of the other treaties that actually say America is a Christian nation, that it was Christian sailors and, and that the Christian men on our ship, there's multiple uses of the word Christian and the other treatise and none of them are saying we're not Christian. It's acknowledging we are Christian. So why don't we reference those treaties? Cause it doesn't fit the narrative that people are promoting. Let me go back to this famous Treaty of Tripoli. That people often refer to. The other question I would ask is, hey, what language was this written in? It, it, it any guess? And I'll wait for the listeners. Uh, oh yeah, by the way, it wasn't written in English. You can go look this up. It was written in Arabic. Okay. So which one of the American ambassadors was speaking Arabic? And the answer is none of them. What happened is they were dealing with the, the ambassadors from these Muslim nations where they were trying to find a piece. We didn't have a Navy to defend our trade ships. We had trade ships being captured. We had sailors being killed, being captured and sold into slavery. And so we have American leaders going, how can we bring an end to this? Just guys figure it out. Whatever we got to do, let's get an end of this. And so they're dealing with the ambassador. They're having a conversation back and forth and they say, guys, we're not part of that. And they said, okay. So the Muslim ambassador, it was their team that actually write this document and they're writing it based off the conversations they are having. It's agreed to, now ultimately, when it comes back and John Adams is the one that kind of gives authority to this. Yes, he probably saw what it was at that point, but the goal of what they're trying to do is in the war and the conflict. And again, we're not the ones that wrote that treaty and that's not the only treaty we signed. But this is the only one that has a phrase "America's a no-sense founded on the Christian religion" and that's not even the whole phrase. Again, if you go read the rest of them, it says something very differently. And that's not even all of the context because all of the military men involved in this conflict and we finally go to war with these Barbary powers, they acknowledged it was Christians against these Muslims and that's what the war was about, etc. etc. etc. So the big picture is it's vastly and wildly misrepresented. It's taken out of context again, kind of like when people say, well, Benjamin Franklin was a deist. And you're like, wait a second, Franklin's a guy who suggested the solution to overcome the problems at the Constitution Convention was they should have more prayer. He's not a deist. Now I don't argue Franklin was Christian, but he's not the guy you're accusing him of being today. That is a lot of what's happening with things like this Treaty of Tripoli is it's being misrepresented for the purposes of people promoting this false notion. That America was secular from her inception. The Founding Fathers believed and intended and created a secular nation. None of that is correct, but this is one of those faulty things they point to. Again, that is wildly misrepresented. And we have a far more detailed, extensive, and footnoted document on our website that gives a lot of these details. 

David Barton [00:16:30] And I'm gonna complicate history even more on this particular issue, because after this treaty was written in Arabic, it was then translated into Italian, and then it was translated into English. And in the actual Arabic version, there is no Article 11, but it showed up in the Italian version that was translated in the English. So if you go back to the actual original treaty, that article is not even there, but it showed up. And it showed up later. So where's all that come from? All right, back up. So Tim, you mentioned we had such a small Navy in America. In the time of the American Revolution, by the time the American Revolution ended, Great Britain had nearly 500 ships in their Navy and we were under two dozen. That's why we had to have France come be our ally. France brought their Navy with them. They were used to fighting Great Britain. They had hundreds of ships. And so that was essentially our Navy. So we didn't have a navy except for a literally a couple dozen ships and that's not enough to take on any global power and what was really strong in all these these Muslim powers in North Africa, well they had powerful navies Their navies would go after the British. Their navies would go after the French. Their navies would go after the Italians and their navies would whip them from time to time. So they had a huge navy, but we didn't we didn't have anything like that. So what happens is after the Revolution the Muslims start attacking all these American ships, any American flag they see, they attack it over in the Mediterranean Sea. We don't have naval ships to protect them like Great Britain does, or like France does, or Italy does. We've just got commercial sailing ships that maybe have two or three cannons on them, just in case they need to signal in the fog that another ship's around or whatever. It's really not for defense. And so they were capturing our seamen and enslaving them. As a matter of fact there were nine countries that the Muslims called Christian nations and they said jihad the Quran requires us to go to war against Christians. America you're a Christian nation we have to go to war against you. And so Washington, frustration of his life, is that he can do nothing to free the Americans that are now being enslaved in significant numbers over in northern Africa, just off commercial ships going there trying to sail to Brussels or sail to wherever else and be able to trade cargo. They're now ended up being enslaved. And this is when Washington, prior to that, Washington had really been somebody who didn't wanna get involved in anybody else's war anywhere in the world. If you come attack America, we're going to defend ourself, we did that against Great Britain, but we're done with that and we're done pretty much with needing a full-time standing military. That's why at that time the Constitution prohibits a permanent military in America. We have to reconstitute the military every two years. The military is not a permanent military. If it does not get funded this year by Congress, the entire military goes away. Every base, every ship, every plane, every tank, it's gone. So we have to do this every two years. Washington, this is when he had a change of heart. He said, would the God that I had a Navy able to crush those Muslim infidels into non-existence. And so he's begging for anything to go save them. And this is the first time he thought, you know, maybe we do need a permanent Navy. So that we can defend ourselves elsewhere across the world. And so it's all framed in the sense, and by the way, John Adams, Ben Franklin were ambassadors for Washington on this, and they talked to the Muslim ambassador and said, why are you attacking us? And the Muslim Ambassador said, because you're Christians, and we as Muslims have to attack Christians, we have to subdue you. So this is all in the official documents. And as Tim points out, there's all these other treaties that say we are a Christian nation. So the short part of this story is. If you look at the actual article 11, I think it's like 81 or 87 words. I don't remember it's 80 something words and all they ever quote is these 11 words right front, where it says the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion dot, dot, dot. It says the United States is no sense founded in the Christian religion as having an inherent enmity against Muslims. You read the rest of the phrase and says, look, we're not in a Jihad. We're not at a holy war with you. We don't hate you because you're Muslims. We hate you because you're attacking us, but not because you're Muslims So the whole concept, once you get the history on this, it is so easy to understand. And Tim, it's awesome that that article is gonna be updated with all this new stuff, because you're right, this is making a cycle again now like it did 20, 25 years ago, and it's coming to a new generation of college students who don't know how to respond to it. So it's a great question. It turned into a longer answer than maybe was needed, but it helps understand what was going during the Revolution, and immediately after the Revolution, and all the way up until the Muslims were defeated 1801, 1805 with American military troops on the ground. Army, Navy whipped them in Tripoli and they signed a treaty 1805. Then they started war again and then Madison sent ships and whipped them again in 1815, 1816. So there's two long wars that went with that but that's the full story 

Rick Green [00:21:49] Well, that is a lot of great information and counter-arguments. Good luck, Tim, making that article shorter. Yeah, we'll see how that goes. All right, quick break, guys. Then we got one more question from the audience before we're done today. Stay with us folks. You're listening to Foundations of Freedom Thursday on The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:23:11] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Last question from the audience today is from Matthew. He said, hello. After hearing about you guys winning in Texas with putting the 10 Commandments back in schools, I'm inspired and would like to know how this can be done in Washington state where I live and how to get woke and gender ideology out of the public schools. Well, let's see guys. Tim, we got three minutes left today and, you need about an hour and a half to answer this one. 

Tim Barton [00:23:38] No, it's actually really easy. The, the verse that says "What's impossible with man is possible for God. That that's the answer. So there's, yeah, there's several things that would point to. So first of all, there, there is a little bit like in California, uh, there is a rising movement of conservatives and Christians that are waking up. I see some of this happening in Washington state, our good buddy, Josh McPherson has been on the podcast. Incredible stuff what he's doing out in the state, but he has a huge conference coming up in just a couple weeks called the Freedom Conference. It's a men's conference. It is Father's Day weekend. Absolutely incredible and this is part of the action steps. The speakers that are gonna be there are everybody from a John Lovell and a Chad Robichaux, Nick Freitas, Eric Metaxas, Josh Howerton, Josh McPherson, me. I mean there's just so many, so many cool people and I'm not including myself with so many cool people. I am the homeschool kid at the prom just happy to be there. Right? Like I'm, I'm so pumped about hanging out with these guys. But this is part of what there's levels of intentionality being given from some very significant leaders from the pastoral and even from some of the social media side going, how can we do things to influence Washington state? So that is something that will be happening. That would be my highest recommendation right now. On June 19th and 20th. Check out FreedomCon, and this is really for anybody, for dads, grandpas, men, anywhere across the nation. If you wanna go to Washington State, it's gonna be a Friday and an all day Saturday, Friday afternoon and evening, all day, Saturday. We're actually at WallBuilders taking up some of the artifacts. We're gonna have an artifact booth. We're taking up muskets and some really fun things from our museum for people to come and see. But, that's something that if you are a man anywhere in this nation, we'd love to have you come hang out with us as you will be encouraged and challenged. And there'll be a lot of action steps of what men can do, obviously in their families, but certainly in their communities and in their state. And the 10 commandments is something that definitely will come up because we will talk about legislation and people that should run for office and how we find those people, recruit them from our churches, et cetera. And so really the answer is we have to get more godly people involved in the process. We have to recruit better candidates. We have to support those candidates, get them elected. And once we get the right elected officials, then we work on passing the right kind of legislation. That ultimately is how it has to happen. But again, FreedomCon is a place to check out, to find more information. And I hope there are people that will be there and come and say hi and tell us you heard about it on the WallBuilders Show. Would love to see you there. 

Rick Green [00:26:15] Yeah, Tim, that's the kind of event where big legislation like this can be championed. There'll be a lot of people coming out of that event excited, looking for something to do. And if the movement is strong enough and big enough, we can make this kind of change happen even in Washington state. FreedomCon26.com is where you can go to sign up, find out more about it. Take a lot guys from your church. What a great opportunity for some iron sharpening iron and some great fellowship. Thanks so much for all the listeners sending in the questions today. Don't miss tomorrow. We got Good News Friday for you. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.