Rick Green: Welcome to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. Thanks for joining me today. The phone number is 888-589-8840. That's 888-589-8840. Kind of whatever you want to talk about today, comments, questions, insults, bring it on. Let's go. 888-589-8840.
Rick Green: Man, oh man, I had an amazing last few days with some incredible events across the country. I just want to tell you, pastors are starting to wake up. There is an increase in churches willing to engage in the culture more so than any time in my lifetime. Now, we have a long way to go, believe me. But there are a lot of pastors now that are coming to these events. I think I have had three in the last 30 days. One with Turning Point, had a big event out in California. About 500 pastors came out for that. Really, really encouraging. A lot of great iron sharpening where these pastors could share and engage and talk about what they do in their churches to address cultural issues and other ways to basically disciple.
Rick Green: That is all we are talking about here, discipling and not leaving anything off limits. That is the problem with the current view of the pastors who are not engaged. They think they are preaching the gospel, but they are only getting part of the gospel. They are doing the salvation part, but they are not doing the discipling part. Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything I commanded you. They treat it like it says, teach them to obey everything that is not politically controversial, but stay away from anything that is politically controversial, which is, of course, not what the Bible says.
Rick Green: So anyway, we had that great event out in California, then went all the way to the other end of the country in Florida and had a Citizens Defending Freedom Faith Initiative, and another, I think, maybe 100 pastors there for the weekend. Again, great speakers, great iron sharpening. Then turned right around and went to Phoenix, Arizona, actually Scottsdale, and did another one of these Liberty Pastors events, which that one is probably the longest of all of these groups, been in the trenches the longest. Paul Blair has been at this in Oklahoma for years. In fact, man, I remember going out and speaking for Paul. I think I am going to age myself here, but two decades ago, when he had this thing called Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ. That was a long time ago.
Rick Green: Anyway, then he started doing these Liberty Pastors events where he is helping to train the Black Robe Regiment of today. I think we do maybe four of those a year, sometimes five, and they are all over the nation in blue states, red states, you name it. This one was in Arizona, pastors from all over, and it was really encouraging. Again, just great speakers, incredible fellowship.
Rick Green: I did something a little different at that one, though. I had basically a stakeholder meeting, if you will, about Patriot Academy's Leadership Congress in Arizona because I was there, had an evening off from the conference, and so we just kind of contacted all the folks that have been involved with us in the past and said, let's talk about the new season in America and what are we going to do post-midterms, and what do we do after November? I know we are focused right now. Turnout is really important. Everybody needs to be making sure you get out and vote. But what do we do after that? What do we do to continue to raise up the farm team so that we have good biblical citizens that are leading in every area of the culture in the next generation?
Rick Green: So what do we do to train these young people? And of course, that is our bread and butter at Patriot Academy. We have been doing that for nearly 30 years and started just in Texas doing our Leadership Congress, which is the opportunity to take over the Capitol for a few days, take it over and put all these young people in the hot seat. When I say young people, I mean 16 to 25. Some of them are not so young. In fact, Walker, my co-host, came, I think he was 25 when he came. He was right on the tail end of the age group. That has been a while. Anyway, he came, and just a lot of great young leaders just like him from across the country. They come to this Leadership Congress and they live the life of a legislator, so they really learn in the process.
Rick Green: They are certainly learning biblical worldview and the philosophy of what makes a good government, a good society, but then they learn how to do that in our constitutional republic through the legislative process, and they learn the skills, public speaking and media and all those different things that it takes to be effective. Well, anyway, long story short, I had started that in Texas and did it only in Texas for the first 10 or 12 years. Then we expanded to Arizona and Idaho. I think the first time we did Arizona was 2012, 13, 14, somewhere around there.
Rick Green: Honestly, it was a little bit weird for me because I am a proud Texan. If you listen to this program much, you know that. I had the Texas Capitol wired, man. I knew where everything was, knew who everybody was, knew how to operate there. So we had to go into these new states, Idaho and Arizona, not knowing the Capitol, not knowing the logistics, not knowing the people. It was crazy. But we had some great people on the ground. One of those guys, Paul Parisi, he was actually at the stakeholder meeting the other day. He just set up meetings for our young man that had been our governor of Patriot Academy a few years before and wanted to lead the effort there in Arizona. Juan Ciscomani was his name, is his name. Juan and Laura, just a power couple, man, amazing couple. I think they have six kids now, just an awesome family.
Rick Green: Juan went to the Capitol, and Paul got him a meeting with Andy Biggs. Now, you probably know the name Andy Biggs now because he has been in Congress for a few years, and he is running for governor of Arizona, hopefully going to win that in a few weeks. At the time, he was the Senate president in Arizona. So Paul Parisi gets Juan a meeting with him, and he just opens the door and says, yes, I would love for you all to do Patriot Academy in Arizona. Then we had the treasurer at the time come over and speak and brought ice cream. The treasurer was Doug Ducey. So he became governor later. But anyway, that was kind of our first time to go outside of Texas and do Patriot Academy.
Rick Green: We did that for 12, 13 years, and then Juan got elected to Congress, and he and Laura, with obviously that many kids and him having to fly across the country to do his congressional duties and back and campaign all the time, it eats up a lot of bandwidth. They just could not do both, and we did not really have anybody to fill their role at the time. So the last couple of years, we have not done a Leadership Congress in Arizona, and yet the need is huge. Huge.
Rick Green: This last week, man, I was so excited. Fifty people showed up to this stakeholder meeting, and I am talking leaders of all the grassroots organizations in Arizona, some of our graduates that have been through, had a couple of our what I call student ambassadors speak on what Leadership Congress does for them. I explained why Leadership Congress is the Navy SEALs of civics, that just like with the Navy SEALs, which basically means you have a spec ops guy that can take you out on the sea, in the air, land, does not matter. You are done. If you are the bad guy, they are going to take you out. What we do with the Navy SEALs of civics is we retrain these young people how to take out bad ideas.
Rick Green: Wherever they crop their ugly head, it might be in the classroom, it might be the mechanic next to you at work one day, it might be somebody in your family, but learning how to do civil discourse and tear down bad ideas, which is a biblical concept, tear down bad arguments. Basically 1 Peter 3:15, be ready to answer for the hope that is within.
Rick Green: So anyway, this Arizona meeting, I am telling you all this here to a national audience. I know you are not all in Arizona, but I am telling you this because I think there is a really cool season coming for this next generation. I think a lot of things that have happened over the last few years, and obviously this week we are going to observe the horrific, tragic, terrible day last year on September 10 when my friend Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and we are going to talk about the effect that has had on this generation.
Rick Green: I am telling you, they are exactly as Dr. Joseph Warren said in that speech on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre when he gave that speech on March 6, 1775. The Boston Massacre was March 5, but on this particular year, the fifth fell on the Sabbath, so they observed Sabbath, as we should, and had the speech on the sixth. Anyway, when Warren gave that speech, he talked about being fired by your example and emulating your virtues. Great quote. I think it applies to Charlie, and I think this generation has been fired up by his example, and they are doing everything they can to emulate his virtues. So they are hungry to learn, they are hungry to be trained, and Patriot Academy has been doing it for almost three decades.
Rick Green: It is an interesting merger of different things happening in the culture, and I think Arizona is going to be ground zero for launching these Leadership Congresses into all 50 states, by the way. So if you are listening in a state, not Arizona, where we will be relaunching this year, I want you to know we are coming. We are coming to your state. You will get to have a Leadership Congress in your Capitol and help train up young people right there in your state to go work in government and media and entertainment and journalism and the arts, ministry, business, all of those things, but as good biblical citizens.
Rick Green: We are right now working on the strategic plan for a 50-state expansion of Leadership Congress in the next five years. This next summer we are going to reignite the two states that we did not do last year that we have done in the past, Arizona and Indiana, and of course going to do Florida again and Delaware and Colorado and Idaho and Texas and all the ones we normally do. Then we are going to add six or seven states next summer, and believe it or not, it is going to be California. Can you believe that? Yes, we are going into California. We are going to go into Arkansas, Tennessee, Wyoming, of all places. Get this, Alaska. Then we will just add from there.
Rick Green: If you are wondering, what about my state? Well, I will tell you right now, we need people that are willing to volunteer, we need donors that are willing to donate, we need a legislator that is willing to be a legislative champion, and then we need graduates of Patriot Academy's Leadership Congress to be able to go be student ambassadors in your state and go speak to groups, everything from a Republican women's group to a Lions Club to a tea party, you name it. Let one of my graduates come give a 10-minute presentation on what it did for them, and I promise you that group will turn around and sponsor a student to go to the next Leadership Congress and help find a student to nominate.
Rick Green: So that is a lot. I know. I just felt like this audience should know help is on the way. We are going to be bringing this Leadership Congress to every state. Again, this is not new. We have been doing this for nearly three decades. It is a proven system for training up the farm team, training up the leaders. Arizona, here we come, and we hit the ground running last week. Just super, super excited about that.
Rick Green: Just be ready. If I did not list your state, then the best thing you can do to bring it to your state, get signed up at patriotacademy.com as a coach, start hosting biblical citizenship classes, and send some kiddos. Send some young people, 16- to 25-year-olds, to one of the other Leadership Congresses, some state close to you or maybe here in Texas. Send them to the National Leadership Congress, and then you will have some graduates to help us get ready for launching the Leadership Congress in your state.
Rick Green: Once we do this, at the end of this five years, when we are in all 50 states and we have got local groups all over the country sponsoring a kid every single year, the system just is solid at that point. It perpetuates itself. Every year we are going to be raising up, instead of right now, I train about 400 or 500 students a summer at these Leadership Congresses, we will be training 3,000 or 4,000, and we will be getting them into all of these areas, in these positions of leadership to be able to serve and be the ones to bring about this rebuilding of liberty.
Rick Green: Anyway, all that to say, what a week, man. Arizona. Then I went to Las Vegas, had some great meetings there with some incredible supporters, and then Colorado. When I come back from the break, that is what we are going to talk about. Colorado and this split in the Republican Party that both Colorado and Texas are experiencing. If you are in Texas, you know what I am talking about. It is the Cornyn and Paxton knockdown drag-out back in the primary. We actually have Cornyn supporters saying that they will not support the Republican nominee. They would rather have Talarico as the U.S. senator from Texas. We have Republicans in Colorado not willing to support Victor Marks, and they would rather have a transgender, child-mutilating, baby-murdering up until five minutes before birth, stop ICE from being able to deport the rapists and murderers and gang members that have come across the border illegally. They would rather have a governor like that than a governor that is 100% pro-life, that wants to stop the mutilation of children and all of those things.
Rick Green: This is a real problem, and it is a divide and conquer tactic of the left, of the enemy that they have used. Well, frankly, the enemy that is Satan has used it from the very beginning, dividing even the angels. The dinner we had Saturday night, Bill Federer and I keynoted the dinner, and man, I am telling you, Bill put it on them. It was so good. Really laid out the dangers of this division and what we need to do to prevent that from happening. So we are going to talk a little bit more about that. We will come back from the break, and we will take your phone calls as well. 888-589-8840. That is 888-589-8840.
Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. Thanks for staying with us. By the way, I forgot to mention since it has been a week. I guess I did mention it briefly last week, but we did close on the cottages. Just wanted to celebrate again. If you missed any of those announcements last week, thank you to all of you that donated. This is great for us. Yes, that is worth cheering, man. I am telling you. It was a crazy six weeks. What a roller coaster ride. We were so close to basically an Islamic invasion into our 80% Republican county and the property right next door to the Patriot Academy campus. Man, people just came through. We were able to buy that, and now we are putting students in there. We are already working on getting that ready for the Patriot Institute this fall.
Rick Green: So praise God, man. It was just a faith-stretching experience for me, for sure. I can definitely say all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose. And without doubt, also over in James, count it all joy when you experience various trials. I have always quoted that, but man, it is getting to the end of that. You have got to go through the trial to get the patience, to get the perseverance, and then perfect and complete, lacking nothing. So thank you, Lord. Thank you that we are able to now use those cottages for His glory. Really, for generations, that will be the place that patriots stay and get trained.
Rick Green: Some people, for short term, will come in and do maybe a constitutional defense handgun course with us, which we are really, really good at and have trained thousands of people on that. You get the Constitution, intellectual ammunition, and the handgun training. But mostly it is going to be people coming in and doing the legislative experience, doing that Leadership Congress I was talking about in the first segment. It is adults that go through it, and they get a chance to be the legislator. That is what we do here at the campus. Folks come in for a few days at a time to do that.
Rick Green: Then these kids, these students that God is raising up, man, this remnant is incredible. These Leadership Congresses, like I said, we are going to be in 50 states, and we will be training up those young people. We only get somewhere between three and seven days, depending on which one it is, and a lot of them come, let's say more than half come back to a second or third or fourth year. But man, we dreamed about it for decades, being able to have them for a year, not just a week, even if it was a week three or four times. That was not enough. We said, man, if we had them for a year, what we could do to ground them, to equip them, to create an environment where they could discover their purpose and plan out what God really has for them.
Rick Green: Anyway, so we started that two years ago. That is the Patriot Institute. That is what we built the campus for, and these cottages will be perfect for that. We were going to build a different kind of student housing on the main campus, and as it turns out, again, all things work together for good. So we are moving kids into those cottages at the end of this month. What are we, on the first week of September? We are just going into the second week. So three weeks from now, roughly, we will be moving them in, and they will spend the whole year with us. They will get master's-level training in apologetics, in biblical worldview, in the Constitution, and leadership skills, speaking skills, communication. I mean all of that.
Rick Green: Now after we have done it two years in a row, we have seen the product of the product. We know what this does for these young people. It is incredible. So super excited about that. Anyway, celebrating. Thank you, Lord, for the cottages and the opportunity to use those for His glory and to train the next generation.
Rick Green: By the way, I do have, I know this would be very spontaneous, but if you have got a young person in your life, 16 to, or 17, sorry, for the one-year program, it is 17 to 25. I have got scholarships, and I would love to give some of those to some American Family Association folks, to some American Family Radio listeners specifically, some At the Core listeners. So if you have got a young person in your life, maybe they are going into their senior year, we do what we call the super senior year where they finish their last year of high school and get some college credit with us and get the incredible experience of the institute and the training. Or maybe they are just done with high school and not ready to go into their career or college or whatever. They are trying to figure out really what they want to do. This is a perfect opportunity for them, and I would love to scholarship them.
Rick Green: They have got to go through the application process and be approved, and that takes a little bit, so make sure that you get word to your friends and family that this is available, patriotacademy.com/institute. We are at the buzzer. That needs to be done really well this week if they want to have any time to plan their move down to Constitution City, Texas. But that is a big reason why getting the cottages was a big deal, that we could actually increase our student body and have the housing to be able to do that. That is part of why we can do the scholarships. So anyway, just a wonderful praise, Lord.
Rick Green: Okay, I said I was going to get to the phones. I need to do that. I also said I was going to talk a little bit more about Colorado and Texas and these unbelievably childish and immature Republicans that are saying they are not going to vote. Since when is burying the talent and not participating an option that you can actually defend?
Rick Green: Friends, I am telling you, if I had a terrible Democrat on the ballot and a terrible Republican on the ballot, and the Democrat is 80% bad, like only 10, 15, 20% of the time votes in any way good, and the Republican is 70% bad, only 30% of the time votes good, I still do not have an excuse to stay home. If I do not vote for that 70% Republican, number one, I am getting a worse person in my U.S. senator, governor's mansion, or whatever that race is, but I am also helping the Democrats, who have vowed at this point to completely bring communism into our country, get rid of the Senate, get rid of law enforcement, get rid of the military. I mean, these people are nuts. They are nuts. They have refused to save children from child mutilation. They are okay with killing a baby right up to birth. That is who you are helping when you stay home.
Rick Green: Even if you elect a lousy Republican, you are still helping to get a majority in Congress that can stop the bad stuff, or in your state legislature, or whatever it may be. That particular member from your district or your state may be lousy, but it is better. It is much better than having Chuck Schumer as the Senate president. It is much better than having a governor that is going to now populate all of the agencies underneath the governor with the same left-wing philosophy.
Rick Green: So I actually started this dinner the other night with this. It was Saturday night in Colorado, in the largest Republican county in the state, El Paso County, Colorado Springs. A buddy of mine actually chairs that county. He has been a Constitution Coach forever. In fact, he was a coach before we had coaches. He was teaching the Constitution with our videos before we even had a coach program. Anyway, he invited Bill Federer and myself in, and he had supported another candidate, not Victor Marks. He had supported a pastor in the local area there that a lot of people in that area supported, and I totally understood and respected their position to support somebody else in the primary.
Rick Green: I never thought that people coming out of a Republican primary in Colorado, where your Democrats are nuts, would refuse to support the Republican, no matter how bad you think the Republican is. I am telling you, it is in Texas too. Tons of Republicans, they are saying, I am not going to vote for Ken Paxton, which means they are going to help Talarico win. It boggles the mind.
Rick Green: So I got up at this dinner, and I do not think I have ever done this before. I have keynoted a lot of dinners, which was part of the problem. This dinner was going on and on and on. If you have ever been to one of those, you go to the dinner and it drags on for a while getting started, and then it finally gets started, and every candidate on the planet gets up and says something. Then they serve the meal, and then the first keynote goes. Then they do a live auction, and the live auction is dragging on and on and on, and it is not a good live auction. I have done a lot of events, folks. I have been the keynote for other people's events, and we put on a lot of events ourselves. You do not have an auctioneer that sucks the oxygen out of the room and puts everybody to sleep. You do not ever, I am just telling you this, everybody out there that is ever going to put on an event, do not have an auctioneer that spends five minutes trying to get another 10 bucks on an item or 50 bucks on an item. It is such a waste of time, and it just drains the whole room.
Rick Green: Okay, so this happens Saturday night, and I am the last one up for the night, and people are leaving. I mean, it is a packed house. It is, I do not know, 1,000 people in the room, 500, I do not know. It was big. It was a big, big ballroom. But people are starting to leave. It is getting late, and I am last one up. My mission in being there that night was to try to unify this party. So I am talking right now to anyone in the sound of my voice that is having trouble voting for the Republican nominee in your state for whatever it is, governor, state rep, whatever, because you either really dislike them, or they have a position you really disagree with, or whatever it is, but they won the primary. Your guy did not win. Your gal did not win, and they won the primary, and you are really struggling with whether or not to vote for them. Maybe you have made up your mind you are not going to vote for them. I am talking to you.
Rick Green: Anyway, here I am. This dinner is dragging on. I lean over to my wife, and I say, baby, you need to pray for me because I have got all these thoughts bouncing around in my head, and I just need God to bring them together. I need clarity, and I also need to figure out how to wake up everybody in the room. So my wife leans back over and whispers in my ear, and she says, honey, just keep it simple. Do not forget, keep it simple. So then I am sitting there for another 20 minutes, and I am thinking, okay, what is a simple way to point out if your candidate did not win the primary, it still makes sense to vote for the person that did win the primary and vote against these crazy radical leftist Democrats, Socialists of America people.
Rick Green: So it just hit me as I am walking up to the stage. Just lay it on the line. Just ask the question that you would have asked at the end of your speech, but start the speech with it so that you can wake everybody up, and in case anybody else leaves, you have made your main point, even if you could not build up to it. I mean, I had a great opening I was planning. I was going to do this whole thing on the UFC fights and the 250th and the red, white, and blue all year long and just engage you in that fight. Then saying, Joe Rogan saying you were a six-to-one underdog, and he says, man, America was a worse than six-to-one underdog 250 years ago. This is in our DNA. We are Americans, blah, blah, blah. I was going to do this great patriotic opening to the speech.
Rick Green: Instead, I get up there, and the first thing out of my mouth, I said, is anybody in this room supporting the mutilation of children? You could have heard a pin drop. Everybody is looking at me like, what is this guy doing? This is a Republican Lincoln-Reagan Day dinner. Nobody raised their hand. I said, okay, is anybody in this room, and then I described some of what they do to these kids. I am not going to say it on the air, but I did it at the dinner. Is anybody for that? Nobody raised their hand. I said, is there anybody in this room that supports the murder of a baby five minutes before it is going to be born? Nobody. They are just all staring at me.
Rick Green: Then the last one I did, I think, was, is anybody in this room support stopping ICE from being able to come in and deport a rapist, murderer, gang member, thug, whatever, that is terrorizing your community? ICE is going to get rid of them, get them out of the country. Do you support a governor that would stop that from happening in your state and prevent ICE from operating and instead protect the thug? Of course, nobody raised their hand.
Rick Green: Then I just let them have it, man. I laid into them, and I said, then why in the world would anybody in this room not vote for the Republican nominee for governor or Congress or any of the other several Republican candidates in the room? So I just kind of rattled them all off. Why in the world would you say, I am going to stay home and therefore help the Democrat that is for all of those things that I just mentioned and not help all of these Republicans who are against everything that I just mentioned? I mean, that was the simple heart of the matter.
Rick Green: That is for every one of you listening right now. If you are thinking, I will not vote for the lesser of two evils, you will never have an opportunity to vote in an election in a constitutional republic where you do not vote for the lesser of two evils. Unless Jesus Christ is on the ballot, which He is not, you will not ever get to vote for a perfect candidate. There is none righteous, no, not one. We are all flawed jars of clay. So to think that I am going to wait, I am going to stay home, I am not going to vote until there is a candidate that I agree with 100% of the time, I do not even agree with myself 100% of the time. It is the most childish, spiritually immature position that you can take. So I am sorry if I am stepping on your toes right now. My intent is to stomp on them, and I told them that at that dinner as well.
Rick Green: We cannot be so foolish as to think, I am not going to vote unless I have the perfect candidate, or because this guy lied to me, or this guy voted the wrong way on this, or that gal, she stabbed me in the back on this or whatever your excuse is. There are good reasons. I understand. We are passionate people. I have lost races where our family poured our hearts into the race, and we campaigned all over. I lost in the Republican primary, barely, one vote per precinct across the state, 10,000 votes in the whole state of Texas, and I turned around and supported the Republican. Why? Because the Democrat would have been 10,000 times worse. Even if they were only a little bit worse, you have got to be smart enough to calculate that and say, I am going to make the best decision. You have got to do as my mom always says, do the best you can with what you have got, where you are.
Rick Green: So if you are even considering the possibility of not voting in November because Donald Trump has done something to make you mad or whoever the Republican candidate is on your ballot has done something to make you mad, grow up. Grow up and stop being a child. Put away childish things. You are Caesar. You are we the people, and in America, that means you are Caesar. You are in charge. You are the only one that can cast your vote legally. You are the only one.
Rick Green: I actually told this candidate that had lost in the Republican primary, this pastor, I said the same thing to him. You are the only one that could bring all these people back to the table and support somebody instead of the child-mutilating, abortion-supporting Democrat. The guy hung up on me. Literally hung up on me. Can you believe that? I mean, what kind of spiritual delusion has to be entering you, and what kind of offense have you allowed to create a bitter root, a root of bitterness within you, that you would turn around and allow a baby-killing, child-mutilating, illegal-alien-protecting candidate win because you do not want to do your part? You do not want to support the person that offended you for some reason or did something that, and maybe did something really bad.
Rick Green: Look, I am voting for, and have in the past voted for and supported, candidates that did bad things, things that I certainly disagreed with. John Cornyn. I tried to beat John Cornyn in multiple primaries in the past and did not succeed. I did not turn around and vote for the Democrat in November. I voted for John Cornyn. I supported him. Well, now that we finally beat him, he has got supporters saying they are not going to support Paxton. It is unbelievable, folks. Come on.
Rick Green: Division leads to being conquered. The enemy is dividing so that they can conquer. Let's defeat their division so that we can win and prevent them from conquering. That is what it is going to take, and it is going to take some spiritual maturity and some courage. Anyway, I know I was supposed to get to the phones. We will do it when we get back.
Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. Thanks for joining me. Phone number is 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840. Again, sorry if I stepped on your toes. I intended to stomp on them. I hope that I woke up something in you that realizes you need to be a good steward.
Rick Green: In fact, I will just leave you with a Bible verse, and we will change the subject and move on to something else. But I always think about when it comes to stewardship, when it comes to voting, it is just like the parable of the talents. The talent you have been given is your freedom, and it is a vote. It is like those talents. If God gives you the talent, if the Master gives you the talent of freedom and the ability to vote, and then you bury the talent and you do not vote for whatever reason, maybe you are the wicked and slothful servant. Maybe you are doing it because you are lazy. Maybe you are doing it because you are bitter. Whatever the reason, if you bury the talent, you are the wicked and slothful servant. But if you use the talent, if you use it to do the best you can with what you have got, where you are, you work hard to create more freedom for other people, multiply the talents, then you are the good and faithful servant. Well, which one do you want to be? I want to be the good and faithful servant. I am going to do the best I can with what I have got, where I am.
Rick Green: That is another reason, I will just nuance this real quick. Some people say, I will not vote for a candidate unless they are 100% pro-life. I am not going to vote for them no matter what, at all, ever. Well, you have got to realize that I totally support that in the primary. I am going to support the most pro-life candidate. Actually, I am going to go down the list of requirements, which is in Exodus 18: able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness. So they have got to have four things when we vote for them, or at least we have to rate them on those four things. Nobody is going to be perfect in all four because again, flawed jars of clay.
Rick Green: But they have got to be able. So they have got to be capable. My friends, if you are voting in November for a candidate who is polling at 0.005, or frankly, in a November election where you really have two choices, once in a while a third-party candidate can shoot up in the polls, and if they get up over 25, 30%, maybe it makes sense to vote for them. But if they are polling at less than even 20%, you are throwing your vote away if you vote for them. You have to vote for someone that is able. They are capable of winning, and then they are capable of governing. They are an able person, capable of governing, making good decisions, all that. So that is how you rate them. You have got to decide, are they able? Are they capable of winning? Are they capable of governing?
Rick Green: Then are they a person of truth? Will they tell me the truth even if it hurts? Again, no perfect candidate. You might catch a candidate in a lie. You might feel like they have been deceptive with you. I have rarely met a politician I did not feel like laid it on a little thick once in a while, right? So you have got to rate them on that. Again, nobody perfect, but you have got to rate them on that.
Rick Green: You have got to rate them on whether or not they love God. Do they believe in God? If they do not believe in God at all, then obviously they are going to get a zero on that one. Sometimes you only have candidates that are secular. Sometimes you do not have a good Christian candidate in the race, but one of the secular candidates is at least going to support some good policies, and at least more good policies than the other secular candidates. So again, you are making this, this is part of living in a free society.
Rick Green: Now, I understand it would be a lot better if I were the dictator. I get it. Look, I would be a benevolent dictator. I know. So listen, all of you should support me as the dictator, and then everyone will live happily ever after. I promise. It will be just perfect. We will be in nirvana for about a week, and then it will all go to my head, and I will start treating people different, and all that absolute power will probably corrupt me absolutely. So obviously we do not want a dictatorship. But in a constitutional republic where we choose leaders, when we have representative government, we have to recognize that there is, in fact, never going to be a perfect candidate, and therefore I have to make smart decisions and do the best I can with what I have got where I am.
Rick Green: Okay, I did not think I was going to go that long on that one again. All right, let's go to the phones. It looks like, if I can get my mouse to work here, James in Oklahoma up first. James, go ahead.
James: Sir, good to talk to you. I am the Messianic believer that talked to you earlier this year after you went to your Passover.
Rick Green: Yes, sir. Earlier this year. Yes. Are you planning on going to a Passover next year? I do plan on that. Yes, we are actually going to do one here at our campus again.
James: Can you hear me?
Rick Green: Got you, got you. Go for it.
James: Yes, okay. Well, I meant to mention, I go to a congregation called Bet Ami, and we record our service on YouTube if you are interested in seeing what we do anyway. Most congregations, some do Friday night. We do Saturday, the closing of the Sabbath. Also in the next week, Rosh Hashanah, which is the head of the new year. So anyhow.
Rick Green: Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate your call. I do plan on having another Passover here at the campus this next year and very much looking forward to that. Let's see, guys. Let's go to Rosa. My call screener is locked, but if you guys can pull up Rosa, we will take her call if she is still with us. Rosa? Rosa? No Rosa, we lost Rosa. Okay, I will just let you guys pick because I am unable to get back in the call screener. Mark from Texas, go ahead.
Mark: Yes, this is Mark. I am a veteran from the Navy nuclear power program, but I just love your program. I noticed how occasionally when you are passionate, you get to talking fast. Sometimes you will apologize for talking fast, and I just want to encourage you to say, I just love it. I get more passionate. Well, I have a short attention span. If people talk slow, my mind wanders between words. I just love it when you talk fast, and you are pumping it out like a fire hose, and it is all good stuff. I am just loving it.
Rick Green: I bet you probably like that old FedEx commercial too, the one where the guy is talking 100 miles an hour.
Mark: Yes, I just love it. It keeps my attention, and I get fired up too.
Rick Green: Believe it or not, when I listen to a book or a podcast, I listen at two times speed because I am the same way, man. I like it when everybody goes 100 miles an hour, and plus I get more information in a shorter period of time. That is good stuff. Hey, thank you, man. I appreciate it. I do try to slow down. People always tell me to slow down, though. So you are a rare breed that is asking me to stay fast because most people are like, slow down, slow down, I need to take notes, or whatever it might be, especially in presentations.
Rick Green: But the brain actually can operate about four times faster than you think and what somebody is speaking. So you can comprehend it if the person is enunciating. That is what I always tell the kids when I am training them on public speaking. I say, you can talk fast, but you have got to enunciate. Depending on how much coffee I have had, I speed up a lot and do not always enunciate. So all right, guys, who have we got next? Scott is calling in from Mississippi. Scott, go ahead.
Scott: Hey, Rick. You guys are all great that we are made different, but we are still headed in the same direction. I am one that requires the slower talking myself because I do not process audible communication nearly as well. Part of that is an 80-year background, and part of that is just, it is not my learning style. My learning style is more kinesthetic and visual.
Rick Green: Kinesthetic.
Scott: But I was talking to the screener during the call before last. I may have missed something related to what I was going to bring up about the pastors. But in our church, our pastor is a great Bible teacher and a great leader and has a lot of vision, but there is zero, that I can tell, zero cultural leadership toward the young people or all the adults in matters of government, politics, cultural relevance of today. Most people really do not know much about the culture. They are just spinning their plates during the day and during the week.
Scott: But I find when we get together on Wednesday nights and then when I interact with people on Sundays with shared groups and Sunday schools and lessons and stuff, people are pretty illiterate, our Christians. My suggestion or my thoughts a while ago when I called were to ask you if I am thinking that if you could get in front of pastors in their staff meetings or get with them and their youth pastors, that we could get some stuff going with the kids at younger ages so that they could see. I was a patriot at heart at a young age in my adolescent years, but I had nobody to present the vision. I went through all the civics classes. I had civics twice in the ninth grade and then again in the 12th grade. I knew the stuff I wanted to do. Well, I was in the church every time the doors opened, but I had nobody guiding me on how to be a Christian citizen and how to lead out in a world that was going to be fighting against that, to be in the world but not of the world.
Rick Green: Yes.
Scott: I do not know today. I cannot tell you, our church has got a ton of people in the classrooms teaching. They are really married to the public schools, which I cannot even believe because they say the community there is different from all these others, which I do not believe. But you are not seeing anybody come out of that body of believers into government leadership or judgeships or school board. You would think that it would be a great church to have a lot of school board members come out of.
Scott: We need, if I were to bring up iVoterGuide.com tomorrow night at prayer meeting, they would laugh me out because they would think it needed to come from the pastor, not somebody that is just talking politics, and they do not want to hear it. So these guys have got to win those people over to a different way of thinking, even in our Bible-teaching congregations and fellowships. If they do that, I think we have got so much ground, like you say every time. The passion has got to be there, but we have got to let them know the culture is not going to change just with teaching the Bible. It is going to change with people learning how to behave differently and how to talk to them.
Rick Green: And how to apply the Bible, right? It is one thing that, and I think that is the disconnect we made in the church. We stopped saying, okay, here is how you live this out. This is how you actually go apply this in the neighborhood. How do you treat your neighbor? If you are supposed to treat your neighbor the way you want to be treated, okay, well, how do I live that out in a neighborhood where we live in a free society, and we are supposed to be making the rules for that society together?
Rick Green: It is almost like, like you mentioned, there are all these topics they cover, but they do not talk about government. They do not talk about leadership. They do not talk about how to get good people in office that will make good ordinances and rules for our community and our state and our nation. That is just, as you probably well know, that is because we bought the lie of separation of church and state. We bought this lie that somehow the state, government, society, decisions in that realm, for some crazy reason, we bought the idea that that was not supposed to be influenced by the pastor and the church, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Rick Green: It is supposed to be heavily influenced. It is why America became the greatest nation in the history of mankind. The pastors were in fact speaking to the culture every Sunday. They were in fact leading both from the pulpit and serving in the state legislature or in the military or whatever it might be. That lie, man, has neutered way too many of our churches. So we are great at part of the gospel. We are pretty good at learning how to be good husbands and fathers and mothers and wives.
Rick Green: I always joke with these pastors when I am doing these presentations at these pastors conferences. I always say, I doubt anybody drove away from your church last Sunday saying, what a great sermon on being a good husband and good father, good wife, good mother. I wish we could use that when we get home, but separation of home and church. Nobody does that. Nobody is driving away from church going, great sermon on how to be a good employer and creating an environment where people can thrive and it honors the Lord, or to be a good employee and have good work ethic and honor and serve
Rick Green: Welcome to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. Thanks for joining me today. The phone number is 888-589-8840. That's 888-589-8840. Kind of whatever you want to talk about today, comments, questions, insults, bring it on. Let's go. 888-589-8840.
Rick Green: Man, oh man, I had an amazing last few days with some incredible events across the country. I just want to tell you, pastors are starting to wake up. There is an increase in churches willing to engage in the culture more so than any time in my lifetime. Now, we have a long way to go, believe me. But there are a lot of pastors now that are coming to these events. I think I have had three in the last 30 days. One with Turning Point, had a big event out in California. About 500 pastors came out for that. Really, really encouraging. A lot of great iron sharpening where these pastors could share and engage and talk about what they do in their churches to address cultural issues and other ways to basically disciple.
Rick Green: That is all we are talking about here, discipling and not leaving anything off limits. That is the problem with the current view of the pastors who are not engaged. They think they are preaching the gospel, but they are only getting part of the gospel. They are doing the salvation part, but they are not doing the discipling part. Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything I commanded you. They treat it like it says, teach them to obey everything that is not politically controversial, but stay away from anything that is politically controversial, which is, of course, not what the Bible says.
Rick Green: So anyway, we had that great event out in California, then went all the way to the other end of the country in Florida and had a Citizens Defending Freedom Faith Initiative, and another, I think, maybe 100 pastors there for the weekend. Again, great speakers, great iron sharpening. Then turned right around and went to Phoenix, Arizona, actually Scottsdale, and did another one of these Liberty Pastors events, which that one is probably the longest of all of these groups, been in the trenches the longest. Paul Blair has been at this in Oklahoma for years. In fact, man, I remember going out and speaking for Paul. I think I am going to age myself here, but two decades ago, when he had this thing called Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ. That was a long time ago.
Rick Green: Anyway, then he started doing these Liberty Pastors events where he is helping to train the Black Robe Regiment of today. I think we do maybe four of those a year, sometimes five, and they are all over the nation in blue states, red states, you name it. This one was in Arizona, pastors from all over, and it was really encouraging. Again, just great speakers, incredible fellowship.
Rick Green: I did something a little different at that one, though. I had basically a stakeholder meeting, if you will, about Patriot Academy's Leadership Congress in Arizona because I was there, had an evening off from the conference, and so we just kind of contacted all the folks that have been involved with us in the past and said, let's talk about the new season in America and what are we going to do post-midterms, and what do we do after November? I know we are focused right now. Turnout is really important. Everybody needs to be making sure you get out and vote. But what do we do after that? What do we do to continue to raise up the farm team so that we have good biblical citizens that are leading in every area of the culture in the next generation?
Rick Green: So what do we do to train these young people? And of course, that is our bread and butter at Patriot Academy. We have been doing that for nearly 30 years and started just in Texas doing our Leadership Congress, which is the opportunity to take over the Capitol for a few days, take it over and put all these young people in the hot seat. When I say young people, I mean 16 to 25. Some of them are not so young. In fact, Walker, my co-host, came, I think he was 25 when he came. He was right on the tail end of the age group. That has been a while. Anyway, he came, and just a lot of great young leaders just like him from across the country. They come to this Leadership Congress and they live the life of a legislator, so they really learn in the process.
Rick Green: They are certainly learning biblical worldview and the philosophy of what makes a good government, a good society, but then they learn how to do that in our constitutional republic through the legislative process, and they learn the skills, public speaking and media and all those different things that it takes to be effective. Well, anyway, long story short, I had started that in Texas and did it only in Texas for the first 10 or 12 years. Then we expanded to Arizona and Idaho. I think the first time we did Arizona was 2012, 13, 14, somewhere around there.
Rick Green: Honestly, it was a little bit weird for me because I am a proud Texan. If you listen to this program much, you know that. I had the Texas Capitol wired, man. I knew where everything was, knew who everybody was, knew how to operate there. So we had to go into these new states, Idaho and Arizona, not knowing the Capitol, not knowing the logistics, not knowing the people. It was crazy. But we had some great people on the ground. One of those guys, Paul Parisi, he was actually at the stakeholder meeting the other day. He just set up meetings for our young man that had been our governor of Patriot Academy a few years before and wanted to lead the effort there in Arizona. Juan Ciscomani was his name, is his name. Juan and Laura, just a power couple, man, amazing couple. I think they have six kids now, just an awesome family.
Rick Green: Juan went to the Capitol, and Paul got him a meeting with Andy Biggs. Now, you probably know the name Andy Biggs now because he has been in Congress for a few years, and he is running for governor of Arizona, hopefully going to win that in a few weeks. At the time, he was the Senate president in Arizona. So Paul Parisi gets Juan a meeting with him, and he just opens the door and says, yes, I would love for you all to do Patriot Academy in Arizona. Then we had the treasurer at the time come over and speak and brought ice cream. The treasurer was Doug Ducey. So he became governor later. But anyway, that was kind of our first time to go outside of Texas and do Patriot Academy.
Rick Green: We did that for 12, 13 years, and then Juan got elected to Congress, and he and Laura, with obviously that many kids and him having to fly across the country to do his congressional duties and back and campaign all the time, it eats up a lot of bandwidth. They just could not do both, and we did not really have anybody to fill their role at the time. So the last couple of years, we have not done a Leadership Congress in Arizona, and yet the need is huge. Huge.
Rick Green: This last week, man, I was so excited. Fifty people showed up to this stakeholder meeting, and I am talking leaders of all the grassroots organizations in Arizona, some of our graduates that have been through, had a couple of our what I call student ambassadors speak on what Leadership Congress does for them. I explained why Leadership Congress is the Navy SEALs of civics, that just like with the Navy SEALs, which basically means you have a spec ops guy that can take you out on the sea, in the air, land, does not matter. You are done. If you are the bad guy, they are going to take you out. What we do with the Navy SEALs of civics is we retrain these young people how to take out bad ideas.
Rick Green: Wherever they crop their ugly head, it might be in the classroom, it might be the mechanic next to you at work one day, it might be somebody in your family, but learning how to do civil discourse and tear down bad ideas, which is a biblical concept, tear down bad arguments. Basically 1 Peter 3:15, be ready to answer for the hope that is within.
Rick Green: So anyway, this Arizona meeting, I am telling you all this here to a national audience. I know you are not all in Arizona, but I am telling you this because I think there is a really cool season coming for this next generation. I think a lot of things that have happened over the last few years, and obviously this week we are going to observe the horrific, tragic, terrible day last year on September 10 when my friend Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and we are going to talk about the effect that has had on this generation.
Rick Green: I am telling you, they are exactly as Dr. Joseph Warren said in that speech on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre when he gave that speech on March 6, 1775. The Boston Massacre was March 5, but on this particular year, the fifth fell on the Sabbath, so they observed Sabbath, as we should, and had the speech on the sixth. Anyway, when Warren gave that speech, he talked about being fired by your example and emulating your virtues. Great quote. I think it applies to Charlie, and I think this generation has been fired up by his example, and they are doing everything they can to emulate his virtues. So they are hungry to learn, they are hungry to be trained, and Patriot Academy has been doing it for almost three decades.
Rick Green: It is an interesting merger of different things happening in the culture, and I think Arizona is going to be ground zero for launching these Leadership Congresses into all 50 states, by the way. So if you are listening in a state, not Arizona, where we will be relaunching this year, I want you to know we are coming. We are coming to your state. You will get to have a Leadership Congress in your Capitol and help train up young people right there in your state to go work in government and media and entertainment and journalism and the arts, ministry, business, all of those things, but as good biblical citizens.
Rick Green: We are right now working on the strategic plan for a 50-state expansion of Leadership Congress in the next five years. This next summer we are going to reignite the two states that we did not do last year that we have done in the past, Arizona and Indiana, and of course going to do Florida again and Delaware and Colorado and Idaho and Texas and all the ones we normally do. Then we are going to add six or seven states next summer, and believe it or not, it is going to be California. Can you believe that? Yes, we are going into California. We are going to go into Arkansas, Tennessee, Wyoming, of all places. Get this, Alaska. Then we will just add from there.
Rick Green: If you are wondering, what about my state? Well, I will tell you right now, we need people that are willing to volunteer, we need donors that are willing to donate, we need a legislator that is willing to be a legislative champion, and then we need graduates of Patriot Academy's Leadership Congress to be able to go be student ambassadors in your state and go speak to groups, everything from a Republican women's group to a Lions Club to a tea party, you name it. Let one of my graduates come give a 10-minute presentation on what it did for them, and I promise you that group will turn around and sponsor a student to go to the next Leadership Congress and help find a student to nominate.
Rick Green: So that is a lot. I know. I just felt like this audience should know help is on the way. We are going to be bringing this Leadership Congress to every state. Again, this is not new. We have been doing this for nearly three decades. It is a proven system for training up the farm team, training up the leaders. Arizona, here we come, and we hit the ground running last week. Just super, super excited about that.
Rick Green: Just be ready. If I did not list your state, then the best thing you can do to bring it to your state, get signed up at patriotacademy.com as a coach, start hosting biblical citizenship classes, and send some kiddos. Send some young people, 16- to 25-year-olds, to one of the other Leadership Congresses, some state close to you or maybe here in Texas. Send them to the National Leadership Congress, and then you will have some graduates to help us get ready for launching the Leadership Congress in your state.
Rick Green: Once we do this, at the end of this five years, when we are in all 50 states and we have got local groups all over the country sponsoring a kid every single year, the system just is solid at that point. It perpetuates itself. Every year we are going to be raising up, instead of right now, I train about 400 or 500 students a summer at these Leadership Congresses, we will be training 3,000 or 4,000, and we will be getting them into all of these areas, in these positions of leadership to be able to serve and be the ones to bring about this rebuilding of liberty.
Rick Green: Anyway, all that to say, what a week, man. Arizona. Then I went to Las Vegas, had some great meetings there with some incredible supporters, and then Colorado. When I come back from the break, that is what we are going to talk about. Colorado and this split in the Republican Party that both Colorado and Texas are experiencing. If you are in Texas, you know what I am talking about. It is the Cornyn and Paxton knockdown drag-out back in the primary. We actually have Cornyn supporters saying that they will not support the Republican nominee. They would rather have Talarico as the U.S. senator from Texas. We have Republicans in Colorado not willing to support Victor Marks, and they would rather have a transgender, child-mutilating, baby-murdering up until five minutes before birth, stop ICE from being able to deport the rapists and murderers and gang members that have come across the border illegally. They would rather have a governor like that than a governor that is 100% pro-life, that wants to stop the mutilation of children and all of those things.
Rick Green: This is a real problem, and it is a divide and conquer tactic of the left, of the enemy that they have used. Well, frankly, the enemy that is Satan has used it from the very beginning, dividing even the angels. The dinner we had Saturday night, Bill Federer and I keynoted the dinner, and man, I am telling you, Bill put it on them. It was so good. Really laid out the dangers of this division and what we need to do to prevent that from happening. So we are going to talk a little bit more about that. We will come back from the break, and we will take your phone calls as well. 888-589-8840. That is 888-589-8840.
Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. Thanks for staying with us. By the way, I forgot to mention since it has been a week. I guess I did mention it briefly last week, but we did close on the cottages. Just wanted to celebrate again. If you missed any of those announcements last week, thank you to all of you that donated. This is great for us. Yes, that is worth cheering, man. I am telling you. It was a crazy six weeks. What a roller coaster ride. We were so close to basically an Islamic invasion into our 80% Republican county and the property right next door to the Patriot Academy campus. Man, people just came through. We were able to buy that, and now we are putting students in there. We are already working on getting that ready for the Patriot Institute this fall.
Rick Green: So praise God, man. It was just a faith-stretching experience for me, for sure. I can definitely say all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose. And without doubt, also over in James, count it all joy when you experience various trials. I have always quoted that, but man, it is getting to the end of that. You have got to go through the trial to get the patience, to get the perseverance, and then perfect and complete, lacking nothing. So thank you, Lord. Thank you that we are able to now use those cottages for His glory. Really, for generations, that will be the place that patriots stay and get trained.
Rick Green: Some people, for short term, will come in and do maybe a constitutional defense handgun course with us, which we are really, really good at and have trained thousands of people on that. You get the Constitution, intellectual ammunition, and the handgun training. But mostly it is going to be people coming in and doing the legislative experience, doing that Leadership Congress I was talking about in the first segment. It is adults that go through it, and they get a chance to be the legislator. That is what we do here at the campus. Folks come in for a few days at a time to do that.
Rick Green: Then these kids, these students that God is raising up, man, this remnant is incredible. These Leadership Congresses, like I said, we are going to be in 50 states, and we will be training up those young people. We only get somewhere between three and seven days, depending on which one it is, and a lot of them come, let's say more than half come back to a second or third or fourth year. But man, we dreamed about it for decades, being able to have them for a year, not just a week, even if it was a week three or four times. That was not enough. We said, man, if we had them for a year, what we could do to ground them, to equip them, to create an environment where they could discover their purpose and plan out what God really has for them.
Rick Green: Anyway, so we started that two years ago. That is the Patriot Institute. That is what we built the campus for, and these cottages will be perfect for that. We were going to build a different kind of student housing on the main campus, and as it turns out, again, all things work together for good. So we are moving kids into those cottages at the end of this month. What are we, on the first week of September? We are just going into the second week. So three weeks from now, roughly, we will be moving them in, and they will spend the whole year with us. They will get master's-level training in apologetics, in biblical worldview, in the Constitution, and leadership skills, speaking skills, communication. I mean all of that.
Rick Green: Now after we have done it two years in a row, we have seen the product of the product. We know what this does for these young people. It is incredible. So super excited about that. Anyway, celebrating. Thank you, Lord, for the cottages and the opportunity to use those for His glory and to train the next generation.
Rick Green: By the way, I do have, I know this would be very spontaneous, but if you have got a young person in your life, 16 to, or 17, sorry, for the one-year program, it is 17 to 25. I have got scholarships, and I would love to give some of those to some American Family Association folks, to some American Family Radio listeners specifically, some At the Core listeners. So if you have got a young person in your life, maybe they are going into their senior year, we do what we call the super senior year where they finish their last year of high school and get some college credit with us and get the incredible experience of the institute and the training. Or maybe they are just done with high school and not ready to go into their career or college or whatever. They are trying to figure out really what they want to do. This is a perfect opportunity for them, and I would love to scholarship them.
Rick Green: They have got to go through the application process and be approved, and that takes a little bit, so make sure that you get word to your friends and family that this is available, patriotacademy.com/institute. We are at the buzzer. That needs to be done really well this week if they want to have any time to plan their move down to Constitution City, Texas. But that is a big reason why getting the cottages was a big deal, that we could actually increase our student body and have the housing to be able to do that. That is part of why we can do the scholarships. So anyway, just a wonderful praise, Lord.
Rick Green: Okay, I said I was going to get to the phones. I need to do that. I also said I was going to talk a little bit more about Colorado and Texas and these unbelievably childish and immature Republicans that are saying they are not going to vote. Since when is burying the talent and not participating an option that you can actually defend?
Rick Green: Friends, I am telling you, if I had a terrible Democrat on the ballot and a terrible Republican on the ballot, and the Democrat is 80% bad, like only 10, 15, 20% of the time votes in any way good, and the Republican is 70% bad, only 30% of the time votes good, I still do not have an excuse to stay home. If I do not vote for that 70% Republican, number one, I am getting a worse person in my U.S. senator, governor's mansion, or whatever that race is, but I am also helping the Democrats, who have vowed at this point to completely bring communism into our country, get rid of the Senate, get rid of law enforcement, get rid of the military. I mean, these people are nuts. They are nuts. They have refused to save children from child mutilation. They are okay with killing a baby right up to birth. That is who you are helping when you stay home.
Rick Green: Even if you elect a lousy Republican, you are still helping to get a majority in Congress that can stop the bad stuff, or in your state legislature, or whatever it may be. That particular member from your district or your state may be lousy, but it is better. It is much better than having Chuck Schumer as the Senate president. It is much better than having a governor that is going to now populate all of the agencies underneath the governor with the same left-wing philosophy.
Rick Green: So I actually started this dinner the other night with this. It was Saturday night in Colorado, in the largest Republican county in the state, El Paso County, Colorado Springs. A buddy of mine actually chairs that county. He has been a Constitution Coach forever. In fact, he was a coach before we had coaches. He was teaching the Constitution with our videos before we even had a coach program. Anyway, he invited Bill Federer and myself in, and he had supported another candidate, not Victor Marks. He had supported a pastor in the local area there that a lot of people in that area supported, and I totally understood and respected their position to support somebody else in the primary.
Rick Green: I never thought that people coming out of a Republican primary in Colorado, where your Democrats are nuts, would refuse to support the Republican, no matter how bad you think the Republican is. I am telling you, it is in Texas too. Tons of Republicans, they are saying, I am not going to vote for Ken Paxton, which means they are going to help Talarico win. It boggles the mind.
Rick Green: So I got up at this dinner, and I do not think I have ever done this before. I have keynoted a lot of dinners, which was part of the problem. This dinner was going on and on and on. If you have ever been to one of those, you go to the dinner and it drags on for a while getting started, and then it finally gets started, and every candidate on the planet gets up and says something. Then they serve the meal, and then the first keynote goes. Then they do a live auction, and the live auction is dragging on and on and on, and it is not a good live auction. I have done a lot of events, folks. I have been the keynote for other people's events, and we put on a lot of events ourselves. You do not have an auctioneer that sucks the oxygen out of the room and puts everybody to sleep. You do not ever, I am just telling you this, everybody out there that is ever going to put on an event, do not have an auctioneer that spends five minutes trying to get another 10 bucks on an item or 50 bucks on an item. It is such a waste of time, and it just drains the whole room.
Rick Green: Okay, so this happens Saturday night, and I am the last one up for the night, and people are leaving. I mean, it is a packed house. It is, I do not know, 1,000 people in the room, 500, I do not know. It was big. It was a big, big ballroom. But people are starting to leave. It is getting late, and I am last one up. My mission in being there that night was to try to unify this party. So I am talking right now to anyone in the sound of my voice that is having trouble voting for the Republican nominee in your state for whatever it is, governor, state rep, whatever, because you either really dislike them, or they have a position you really disagree with, or whatever it is, but they won the primary. Your guy did not win. Your gal did not win, and they won the primary, and you are really struggling with whether or not to vote for them. Maybe you have made up your mind you are not going to vote for them. I am talking to you.
Rick Green: Anyway, here I am. This dinner is dragging on. I lean over to my wife, and I say, baby, you need to pray for me because I have got all these thoughts bouncing around in my head, and I just need God to bring them together. I need clarity, and I also need to figure out how to wake up everybody in the room. So my wife leans back over and whispers in my ear, and she says, honey, just keep it simple. Do not forget, keep it simple. So then I am sitting there for another 20 minutes, and I am thinking, okay, what is a simple way to point out if your candidate did not win the primary, it still makes sense to vote for the person that did win the primary and vote against these crazy radical leftist Democrats, Socialists of America people.
Rick Green: So it just hit me as I am walking up to the stage. Just lay it on the line. Just ask the question that you would have asked at the end of your speech, but start the speech with it so that you can wake everybody up, and in case anybody else leaves, you have made your main point, even if you could not build up to it. I mean, I had a great opening I was planning. I was going to do this whole thing on the UFC fights and the 250th and the red, white, and blue all year long and just engage you in that fight. Then saying, Joe Rogan saying you were a six-to-one underdog, and he says, man, America was a worse than six-to-one underdog 250 years ago. This is in our DNA. We are Americans, blah, blah, blah. I was going to do this great patriotic opening to the speech.
Rick Green: Instead, I get up there, and the first thing out of my mouth, I said, is anybody in this room supporting the mutilation of children? You could have heard a pin drop. Everybody is looking at me like, what is this guy doing? This is a Republican Lincoln-Reagan Day dinner. Nobody raised their hand. I said, okay, is anybody in this room, and then I described some of what they do to these kids. I am not going to say it on the air, but I did it at the dinner. Is anybody for that? Nobody raised their hand. I said, is there anybody in this room that supports the murder of a baby five minutes before it is going to be born? Nobody. They are just all staring at me.
Rick Green: Then the last one I did, I think, was, is anybody in this room support stopping ICE from being able to come in and deport a rapist, murderer, gang member, thug, whatever, that is terrorizing your community? ICE is going to get rid of them, get them out of the country. Do you support a governor that would stop that from happening in your state and prevent ICE from operating and instead protect the thug? Of course, nobody raised their hand.
Rick Green: Then I just let them have it, man. I laid into them, and I said, then why in the world would anybody in this room not vote for the Republican nominee for governor or Congress or any of the other several Republican candidates in the room? So I just kind of rattled them all off. Why in the world would you say, I am going to stay home and therefore help the Democrat that is for all of those things that I just mentioned and not help all of these Republicans who are against everything that I just mentioned? I mean, that was the simple heart of the matter.
Rick Green: That is for every one of you listening right now. If you are thinking, I will not vote for the lesser of two evils, you will never have an opportunity to vote in an election in a constitutional republic where you do not vote for the lesser of two evils. Unless Jesus Christ is on the ballot, which He is not, you will not ever get to vote for a perfect candidate. There is none righteous, no, not one. We are all flawed jars of clay. So to think that I am going to wait, I am going to stay home, I am not going to vote until there is a candidate that I agree with 100% of the time, I do not even agree with myself 100% of the time. It is the most childish, spiritually immature position that you can take. So I am sorry if I am stepping on your toes right now. My intent is to stomp on them, and I told them that at that dinner as well.
Rick Green: We cannot be so foolish as to think, I am not going to vote unless I have the perfect candidate, or because this guy lied to me, or this guy voted the wrong way on this, or that gal, she stabbed me in the back on this or whatever your excuse is. There are good reasons. I understand. We are passionate people. I have lost races where our family poured our hearts into the race, and we campaigned all over. I lost in the Republican primary, barely, one vote per precinct across the state, 10,000 votes in the whole state of Texas, and I turned around and supported the Republican. Why? Because the Democrat would have been 10,000 times worse. Even if they were only a little bit worse, you have got to be smart enough to calculate that and say, I am going to make the best decision. You have got to do as my mom always says, do the best you can with what you have got, where you are.
Rick Green: So if you are even considering the possibility of not voting in November because Donald Trump has done something to make you mad or whoever the Republican candidate is on your ballot has done something to make you mad, grow up. Grow up and stop being a child. Put away childish things. You are Caesar. You are we the people, and in America, that means you are Caesar. You are in charge. You are the only one that can cast your vote legally. You are the only one.
Rick Green: I actually told this candidate that had lost in the Republican primary, this pastor, I said the same thing to him. You are the only one that could bring all these people back to the table and support somebody instead of the child-mutilating, abortion-supporting Democrat. The guy hung up on me. Literally hung up on me. Can you believe that? I mean, what kind of spiritual delusion has to be entering you, and what kind of offense have you allowed to create a bitter root, a root of bitterness within you, that you would turn around and allow a baby-killing, child-mutilating, illegal-alien-protecting candidate win because you do not want to do your part? You do not want to support the person that offended you for some reason or did something that, and maybe did something really bad.
Rick Green: Look, I am voting for, and have in the past voted for and supported, candidates that did bad things, things that I certainly disagreed with. John Cornyn. I tried to beat John Cornyn in multiple primaries in the past and did not succeed. I did not turn around and vote for the Democrat in November. I voted for John Cornyn. I supported him. Well, now that we finally beat him, he has got supporters saying they are not going to support Paxton. It is unbelievable, folks. Come on.
Rick Green: Division leads to being conquered. The enemy is dividing so that they can conquer. Let's defeat their division so that we can win and prevent them from conquering. That is what it is going to take, and it is going to take some spiritual maturity and some courage. Anyway, I know I was supposed to get to the phones. We will do it when we get back.
Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core with Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach. Thanks for joining me. Phone number is 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840. Again, sorry if I stepped on your toes. I intended to stomp on them. I hope that I woke up something in you that realizes you need to be a good steward.
Rick Green: In fact, I will just leave you with a Bible verse, and we will change the subject and move on to something else. But I always think about when it comes to stewardship, when it comes to voting, it is just like the parable of the talents. The talent you have been given is your freedom, and it is a vote. It is like those talents. If God gives you the talent, if the Master gives you the talent of freedom and the ability to vote, and then you bury the talent and you do not vote for whatever reason, maybe you are the wicked and slothful servant. Maybe you are doing it because you are lazy. Maybe you are doing it because you are bitter. Whatever the reason, if you bury the talent, you are the wicked and slothful servant. But if you use the talent, if you use it to do the best you can with what you have got, where you are, you work hard to create more freedom for other people, multiply the talents, then you are the good and faithful servant. Well, which one do you want to be? I want to be the good and faithful servant. I am going to do the best I can with what I have got, where I am.
Rick Green: That is another reason, I will just nuance this real quick. Some people say, I will not vote for a candidate unless they are 100% pro-life. I am not going to vote for them no matter what, at all, ever. Well, you have got to realize that I totally support that in the primary. I am going to support the most pro-life candidate. Actually, I am going to go down the list of requirements, which is in Exodus 18: able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness. So they have got to have four things when we vote for them, or at least we have to rate them on those four things. Nobody is going to be perfect in all four because again, flawed jars of clay.
Rick Green: But they have got to be able. So they have got to be capable. My friends, if you are voting in November for a candidate who is polling at 0.005, or frankly, in a November election where you really have two choices, once in a while a third-party candidate can shoot up in the polls, and if they get up over 25, 30%, maybe it makes sense to vote for them. But if they are polling at less than even 20%, you are throwing your vote away if you vote for them. You have to vote for someone that is able. They are capable of winning, and then they are capable of governing. They are an able person, capable of governing, making good decisions, all that. So that is how you rate them. You have got to decide, are they able? Are they capable of winning? Are they capable of governing?
Rick Green: Then are they a person of truth? Will they tell me the truth even if it hurts? Again, no perfect candidate. You might catch a candidate in a lie. You might feel like they have been deceptive with you. I have rarely met a politician I did not feel like laid it on a little thick once in a while, right? So you have got to rate them on that. Again, nobody perfect, but you have got to rate them on that.
Rick Green: You have got to rate them on whether or not they love God. Do they believe in God? If they do not believe in God at all, then obviously they are going to get a zero on that one. Sometimes you only have candidates that are secular. Sometimes you do not have a good Christian candidate in the race, but one of the secular candidates is at least going to support some good policies, and at least more good policies than the other secular candidates. So again, you are making this, this is part of living in a free society.
Rick Green: Now, I understand it would be a lot better if I were the dictator. I get it. Look, I would be a benevolent dictator. I know. So listen, all of you should support me as the dictator, and then everyone will live happily ever after. I promise. It will be just perfect. We will be in nirvana for about a week, and then it will all go to my head, and I will start treating people different, and all that absolute power will probably corrupt me absolutely. So obviously we do not want a dictatorship. But in a constitutional republic where we choose leaders, when we have representative government, we have to recognize that there is, in fact, never going to be a perfect candidate, and therefore I have to make smart decisions and do the best I can with what I have got where I am.
Rick Green: Okay, I did not think I was going to go that long on that one again. All right, let's go to the phones. It looks like, if I can get my mouse to work here, James in Oklahoma up first. James, go ahead.
James: Sir, good to talk to you. I am the Messianic believer that talked to you earlier this year after you went to your Passover.
Rick Green: Yes, sir. Earlier this year. Yes. Are you planning on going to a Passover next year? I do plan on that. Yes, we are actually going to do one here at our campus again.
James: Can you hear me?
Rick Green: Got you, got you. Go for it.
James: Yes, okay. Well, I meant to mention, I go to a congregation called Bet Ami, and we record our service on YouTube if you are interested in seeing what we do anyway. Most congregations, some do Friday night. We do Saturday, the closing of the Sabbath. Also in the next week, Rosh Hashanah, which is the head of the new year. So anyhow.
Rick Green: Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate your call. I do plan on having another Passover here at the campus this next year and very much looking forward to that. Let's see, guys. Let's go to Rosa. My call screener is locked, but if you guys can pull up Rosa, we will take her call if she is still with us. Rosa? Rosa? No Rosa, we lost Rosa. Okay, I will just let you guys pick because I am unable to get back in the call screener. Mark from Texas, go ahead.
Mark: Yes, this is Mark. I am a veteran from the Navy nuclear power program, but I just love your program. I noticed how occasionally when you are passionate, you get to talking fast. Sometimes you will apologize for talking fast, and I just want to encourage you to say, I just love it. I get more passionate. Well, I have a short attention span. If people talk slow, my mind wanders between words. I just love it when you talk fast, and you are pumping it out like a fire hose, and it is all good stuff. I am just loving it.
Rick Green: I bet you probably like that old FedEx commercial too, the one where the guy is talking 100 miles an hour.
Mark: Yes, I just love it. It keeps my attention, and I get fired up too.
Rick Green: Believe it or not, when I listen to a book or a podcast, I listen at two times speed because I am the same way, man. I like it when everybody goes 100 miles an hour, and plus I get more information in a shorter period of time. That is good stuff. Hey, thank you, man. I appreciate it. I do try to slow down. People always tell me to slow down, though. So you are a rare breed that is asking me to stay fast because most people are like, slow down, slow down, I need to take notes, or whatever it might be, especially in presentations.
Rick Green: But the brain actually can operate about four times faster than you think and what somebody is speaking. So you can comprehend it if the person is enunciating. That is what I always tell the kids when I am training them on public speaking. I say, you can talk fast, but you have got to enunciate. Depending on how much coffee I have had, I speed up a lot and do not always enunciate. So all right, guys, who have we got next? Scott is calling in from Mississippi. Scott, go ahead.
Scott: Hey, Rick. You guys are all great that we are made different, but we are still headed in the same direction. I am one that requires the slower talking myself because I do not process audible communication nearly as well. Part of that is an 80-year background, and part of that is just, it is not my learning style. My learning style is more kinesthetic and visual.
Rick Green: Kinesthetic.
Scott: But I was talking to the screener during the call before last. I may have missed something related to what I was going to bring up about the pastors. But in our church, our pastor is a great Bible teacher and a great leader and has a lot of vision, but there is zero, that I can tell, zero cultural leadership toward the young people or all the adults in matters of government, politics, cultural relevance of today. Most people really do not know much about the culture. They are just spinning their plates during the day and during the week.
Scott: But I find when we get together on Wednesday nights and then when I interact with people on Sundays with shared groups and Sunday schools and lessons and stuff, people are pretty illiterate, our Christians. My suggestion or my thoughts a while ago when I called were to ask you if I am thinking that if you could get in front of pastors in their staff meetings or get with them and their youth pastors, that we could get some stuff going with the kids at younger ages so that they could see. I was a patriot at heart at a young age in my adolescent years, but I had nobody to present the vision. I went through all the civics classes. I had civics twice in the ninth grade and then again in the 12th grade. I knew the stuff I wanted to do. Well, I was in the church every time the doors opened, but I had nobody guiding me on how to be a Christian citizen and how to lead out in a world that was going to be fighting against that, to be in the world but not of the world.
Rick Green: Yes.
Scott: I do not know today. I cannot tell you, our church has got a ton of people in the classrooms teaching. They are really married to the public schools, which I cannot even believe because they say the community there is different from all these others, which I do not believe. But you are not seeing anybody come out of that body of believers into government leadership or judgeships or school board. You would think that it would be a great church to have a lot of school board members come out of.
Scott: We need, if I were to bring up iVoterGuide.com tomorrow night at prayer meeting, they would laugh me out because they would think it needed to come from the pastor, not somebody that is just talking politics, and they do not want to hear it. So these guys have got to win those people over to a different way of thinking, even in our Bible-teaching congregations and fellowships. If they do that, I think we have got so much ground, like you say every time. The passion has got to be there, but we have got to let them know the culture is not going to change just with teaching the Bible. It is going to change with people learning how to behave differently and how to talk to them.
Rick Green: And how to apply the Bible, right? It is one thing that, and I think that is the disconnect we made in the church. We stopped saying, okay, here is how you live this out. This is how you actually go apply this in the neighborhood. How do you treat your neighbor? If you are supposed to treat your neighbor the way you want to be treated, okay, well, how do I live that out in a neighborhood where we live in a free society, and we are supposed to be making the rules for that society together?
Rick Green: It is almost like, like you mentioned, there are all these topics they cover, but they do not talk about government. They do not talk about leadership. They do not talk about how to get good people in office that will make good ordinances and rules for our community and our state and our nation. That is just, as you probably well know, that is because we bought the lie of separation of church and state. We bought this lie that somehow the state, government, society, decisions in that realm, for some crazy reason, we bought the idea that that was not supposed to be influenced by the pastor and the church, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Rick Green: It is supposed to be heavily influenced. It is why America became the greatest nation in the history of mankind. The pastors were in fact speaking to the culture every Sunday. They were in fact leading both from the pulpit and serving in the state legislature or in the military or whatever it might be. That lie, man, has neutered way too many of our churches. So we are great at part of the gospel. We are pretty good at learning how to be good husbands and fathers and mothers and wives.
Rick Green: I always joke with these pastors when I am doing these presentations at these pastors conferences. I always say, I doubt anybody drove away from your church last Sunday saying, what a great sermon on being a good husband and good father, good wife, good mother. I wish we could use that when we get home, but separation of home and church. Nobody does that. Nobody is driving away from church going, great sermon on how to be a good employer and creating an environment where people can thrive and it honors the Lord, or to be a good employee and have good work ethic and honor and serve
Rick Green opens with updates from Patriot Academy events across the country, announcing a 50-state expansion of the Leadership Congress program to train young biblical citizens. He reflects on pastors waking up to cultural engagement and the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination as a motivating force for the next generation.
Green then turns to a sharp warning about Republican infighting in Colorado and Texas, where primary losers and their supporters are threatening to withhold votes from the nominee. He frames the split as a divide-and-conquer tactic and recounts keynoting a dinner in Colorado where he confronted the audience with hard questions about child mutilation, abortion, and law enforcement, then challenged them to support the Republican ticket. Drawing on the parable of the talents and Exodus 18, he argues that refusing to vote is spiritually immature and helps radical Democrats win.
The episode includes listener calls on Messianic Passover celebrations, public speaking, and how pastors can equip youth for civic leadership. Green closes with a call for churches to reject the separation of church and state lie and disciple believers for every arena of public life.
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