I went to the Eagle Forum Convention on Saturday January 15. David Barton, of http://wallbuilders.com was the keynote speaker. I had heard of this guy years ago and got a video by him called “America’s Godly Heritage.” In that amazing video, he explains how the supreme court has exercised judicial legislation in things like outlawing prayer in school in the 60s. Judicial legislation like this has taken us away from our godly heritage. This lecture he gave on video was so fabulous that when I heard he was coming to Utah I knew I wanted to be there to hear him speak.

I had some obstacles to going but was determined to get there. One was my baby. I like to bring my babies to events because we are almost literally attached from breastfeeding for the first years of life. But he’s a toddler now and busy. He’s not a lap baby and conference-friendly any more. So it was time to leave him with an older sibling/babysitter. This was the first time I would be gone from him for so long, about six hours. It ended up working just great. He was happy at home and I didn’t have to chase him around at the event. Of course we nursed as soon as I got home, as much for my sake with my full breast, as for his. So I didn’t get to stay for the whole thing. Over the next few blog posts I hope to summarize what I learned. The first speakers was David Barton, and then it was Steve Russell, a really cool homeschooling dad who spoke at the LDSHEA convention one of the years that I spoke. Steve’s talk was about the legalities of vice. I learned so much from his talk. I hope to summarize his talk next and then Kitty Werthmann’s talk after that.

But for now, I will do David’s talk. David Barton has been on the Glenn Beck show recently. I wonder if Glenn Beck has given him a Book of Mormon. He’s a Christian and knows the Bible very well. He had to leave right after he gave his speech to catch his plane back to Texas. He had no time to mix and mingle with the admiring fans. I wondered if he scheduled it that way on purpose so that the Mormons who went to the conference wouldn’t have a chance to proselytize him.

Anyway, he gave this fascinating power point presentation where he outlined the five principles of good government. These came from Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural speech. They are:

1. Government acknowledges existence of the Creator. Barton said that no secular government can be limited. The government has only 18 innumerable powers in the Constitution, and it should stay within those. He also interpreted  Romans 1:28 as saying that if you have “Creator consciousness” then your behavior changes.

2. Frugality. The government has to restrain itself on spending money. China owns most of our debt, Barton explained. He said that last year at least two bills were dismissed from Congress because China didn’t want Congress to pass them. We are slaves to China because of our debt. Barton quoted Proverbs 22:7 as saying that the borrower is servant to the lender.

3.  Government should punish criminals, or restrict the infliction of injury. He said that 1 Timothy 1:8-10 says that the law is for bad people, not to restrict good people. Then he said that common law was the foundation of American law and comes from the Bible.

4. Allow the free market. Barton said that today, sadly, 67% of American businesses are owned by the government.

5. Protect citizens’ lives and property. He said that if the government can tax your property, it can take it, so it’s not really yours. He said that the income tax goes against the Constitution because it is a direct tax, and the Constitution forbids a direct tax. He also stated that Sam Adams prioritized our rights. The right to life is the most important, then the right to liberty, and then property.

David explained that if you tell him how someone stands on the abortion issue, he can tell you how they stand on any other issue. The desire to protect life is always linked to the desire to protect property and liberty, and that all issues can be connected to protecting those three rights.

He also explained that in the Founders’ day, the phrase “pursuit of happiness” meant pursuit of property. That probably doesn’t sit well with anti-capitalists. On the way home, my husband and I rode with Matt Hilton, my husband’s cousin who is also an attorney, somewhat famous in Utah among the legal crowd, and a speaker at the conference that day. Matt told us that he has lots of quotes at home from the Founding Fathers saying that the pursuit of happiness actually means pursuing God’s will for your own life. Matt said he didn’t bring it up because he didn’t want to argue with our guest keynote speaker.

In my burst of cleaning in the week between Christmas and New Year’s I found this really cool article that relates to David’s organization, Wallbuilders. It is from an old Ensign. It told the story of Nehemiah in the Bible and his desire to build the wall in Jerusalem. He was living in Persia and heard the news that the Jews, God’s chosen people, were having trouble in Jersulem. The wall had fallen down. Nehemiah wanted to go to help, so he made it his personal mission to get permission to leave his post as the king’s cupbearer in Persia and go back to Jersualem to build the wall. The author of the article, a General Authority, explained that this story is symbolic of claiming a destiny as God’s chosen people.

It’s time that the believers in God, the Christians of America, reclaim our identity as God’s chosen people and reclaim our Godly heritage. It’s time to become conversant in historical events, our godly heritage, and current events so we can persuade common citizens and our legislators how we have gone astray. It’s time to hold legislators accountable or kick them out of office. Then we can  push back the evil tide of debt, sin, greed, and out-of-control government, and unconstitutional laws that have washed over our land. David is modern-day Nehemiah. I may not agree with all of his points, especially on religion, but I plan on keeping up with what he has to say because he has impressed me with his history and Biblical scholarship. I am going to listen to his podcasts on http://wallbuilderslive.com and invite you to do so as well.