Principles Over Party: Washington’s Warning and the Pledge of Allegiance | 11-06-26

[00:00:04] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West, you are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. Are the Democrats going to impeach the Donald? Can Republicans bounce back like the Democrats did? How about dangers during the lame duck session?

[00:00:30] How about the DOJ civil rights chief bailing on the administration? How about observations on the midterms? What about the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag? Do you believe in it? How about parties? Do you like them? Happy to have you along, my fellow Americans. It is a freedom-loving, fantastic, faith-filled. We're taking America back one heart, one mind, one issue at a time, Friday. And that means a good Dr. Scott Bradley's with me, freedomsrisingsun.com.

[00:00:58] And I also have another guest with me as well, Jacob Oaks. He's the founder and director of a group called Liberty United. It's a Utah organization. Focus on strengthening families, educating citizens, uniting communities, and promoting constitutional principles. It's all about the principles when it comes to Liberty United, ladies and gentlemen. UnitingLiberty.com or Liberty-United.com. Your pick. Go there. Check it out. Learn about it. Get involved.

[00:01:28] Principles are what matter. Welcome, gentlemen. Well, thank you, Sam. It's good to be back. Jake? Sam Bushman. Thanks for having me. You're very welcome, sir. So I want to start out and talk about parties for a quick second. You know what's fascinating about parties, Dr. Bradley and Jacob Oaks, is George Washington, first off, in his farewell address, said, hey, parties are horrible. Don't do them.

[00:01:55] They create factions. They eventually destroy countries. I think he's absolutely spot on. And what's happened in America to make George Washington rather prophetic on the topic is we have created parties and we have then had parties turn into factions. You've got the MAGA faction of the Republican Party. You've got the, you know, old school George Bush kind of whatever faction. And you've got Democratic Party, same thing. You've got the Socialists of America. You've got the Blue Dog Democrats. You've got the old Southern Democrats.

[00:02:24] You've got the, and all these factions destroy the country, folks. They really do because there's just infighting everywhere. Now, the two parties have also, in my opinion, become criminal because what they've done is they basically pretended their government, even though they're private corporations, really. And they basically have primary elections. Wow, I thought elections were supposed to be controlled by Congress and by the states. No, they're controlled by the parties, folks. In fact, in Utah, for example, if you're part of the Democratic Party, it's an open election. Anybody can vote.

[00:02:55] If you're part of the Republican Party, then only the Republicans can vote. You have to declare yourself as a Republican or you can't even vote in their primaries. And if you're a third party or no party, so then you're disenfranchised from everything. And so I say the party's over. I say parties are flat out criminal enterprises. They have voted themselves largesque from the Treasury. Their candidates get money to run for office. Nobody else does. Their corporations somehow have special privilege at the trough of elections.

[00:03:24] My corporation or me as an individual, Sam Bushman, doesn't. And Mitt Romney said that corporations are people. So it's very strange indeed that these people, corporations called the Republican and Democratic parties, they have absolutely special privilege and they've built a moat around themselves. And the moat around themselves pretty much guarantees their forever protection. Their forever existence and their forever special privileges.

[00:03:51] Pulling the lever of government in their favor at the expense of the rest of us. That's flat out a criminal, hardcore criminal enterprise. Nothing these parties advocate for and or do makes sense. They literally gerrymander when it's the other team. They say the other guys are gerrymandering, but they never gerrymander. See what I mean? And both sides say the same thing about the other side. The Republicans tried to do this to make sure they wouldn't lose the election, but they lost so bad. It's not even funny. And we're talking about they've got.

[00:04:19] I don't know what 250 seats in the house almost now. It's probably going to be before it's over versus. Whoa. We've never had significant majorities like this in the last 15, 20 years or more. Anyway, the bottom line is I am absolutely against parties. I've given you my commentary on parties. Dr. Bradley, you next. Take a look at parties. Give me your assessment. Then we'll let Jake do the same. Well, I think I know where Jake's going to go with this. So I'm going to steer clear of that for a minute.

[00:04:48] So he gets all his. You can make all his points. I mean, I'm making a guess for sure. We didn't pre-discuss this. Well, here's I'm just why. Why my opinion doesn't matter really, but here's what I'm going to say is what George Washington said. And George Washington, I'm going to use a little different segment of his statements than we normally use when you do this, because I think it pertains to a lot of the things you said. Here's what Washington wrote in his farewell address.

[00:05:16] There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits probably true. And in governments of a minorical caste, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor upon the spirit of party.

[00:05:39] But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched.

[00:06:08] It demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into flame, lest instead of warming, it should consume. So basically saying parties are going to burn the country down. And I think we're kind of in the middle of that right now. Yes, we are indeed. And so it's very fascinating when you look at parties. And again, I don't have any problem with free association. If people want to create their own party and it's nothing more than to help people rally around ideas and give people,

[00:06:37] but they don't have special privileges. In other words, they're treated like my corporation, which is, hey, I can Sam Bushman, Inc. or Liberty Roundtable or whatever, you know, DBA, I can come up. Hey, we can rally around my cause and agenda and all that and have a good time. And that's all wonderful. I don't have any problem with that. But it's when they become subversive, giving special privilege, excluding the rest of us and ingratiating themselves as part of government with money,

[00:07:06] with special privilege, that's when we've crossed the line in a criminal activity in my mind. All right, Jacob, go, sir. Well, Sam, before Jake goes, well, go ahead, Jake. There's another founding father I would like to quote also. Sure, go ahead, Jake, then Bradley. Are you thinking John Adams? No, I'm going to go with Noah Webster and his secret combinations thing. And the parties fit that very nicely. Oh, so anyway, go go with what you got.

[00:07:36] Other than that, Jake. Other than that. Well, Mr. Bushman. Look. I revere George Washington and I think he was prophetic in his warning. You're not you're not honest with yourself if if you do not recognize that his warning is ringing true today.

[00:08:05] However, I think the bigger issue today. The centralization of power is to political parties. Uh, anytime you have an institution, no matter how decentralized, there's always the invitation for people to conspire to gain power.

[00:08:32] But you make it much harder for corruption when you decentralize. And so when you have several parties, I'm in the independent American party, Scott's in the Constitution Party.

[00:08:47] If we had more equal access, uh, then then the level of conspiring together in corruption is going to be harder than just two parties that really they're not to there. They're the unit party. All right, Dr. Bradley, there it is.

[00:09:11] Well, the the Washington addressed that in terms of the fact that, yeah, there's they're looking at, well, it'll help preserve liberty. And to the degree that Jacob is talking, you can see that point. But what has happened is, uh, in fact, I'll give you an example of what happened years ago. First of all, the Republicans booted me out of the party and I ended up getting back in it.

[00:09:35] And then I went to the Constitution Party and the very senior leadership of the Constitution Party ultimately asked me to re-register as an independent. And there's a long story behind that. So I am registered as an independent. But here's, here's the deal. Um, when I first got in the Constitution Party, I, there was a very good Republican that I knew that was a sound thinker and he loved liberty and everything like that.

[00:10:03] And I went to him and I says, come on over, let's, let's just, I mean, look at what the Republican Party is. It's corrupt to the core. I mean, these guys are, you know, basically a secret combination running things. And you look how elections are being run in Utah now. And I think we can make a pretty good case for that. But, uh, he, you know what he told me? He says, no, I'm not going to do that. He says, yeah, the Republicans are corrupt. He says, but the Constitution Party is going to become corrupt also because that's what parties do.

[00:10:33] And I think that we- Go ahead and skip the break, Liz. We have found that to be the case in every instance where there has been ascendancy of different parties to different organizations. Now, this statement, I mean, it's, I'm going to truncate it to half what I was going to read you because of time. I know we'll run out of time before we run out of topics. But Noah Webster is one of the American founding fathers, a brilliant Christian fellow.

[00:10:58] He did, uh, uh, United States history that was rather truncated in his day because it wasn't a long history. But he also wrote that wonderful, magnificent 1828 dictionary that was the first American dictionary. Anyway. Well, and it's still basically, in my opinion, the premier, uh, resource. It is absolutely. Particularly coming to understand what the verbiage meant during the founding era when the founding fathers wrote about republics.

[00:11:26] Uh, well, you can go see what a republic is when they wrote about constitutions. It hasn't been this, you know, spin that's been put on it with, uh, Fox News and everybody else. Okay. But here's, here's what he said in, in this, uh, little history that he wrote. Okay. He said, by the laws of creation, by our civil constitution, all men have equal rights to protection, to liberty, and to the free enjoyment of all the benefits and privileges of government.

[00:11:56] All secret attempts by associations or otherwise to give one set of men or one party advantages over another are mean, dishonorable, and immoral. All secret combinations of men to gain for themselves or their party advantages and preferment to office are trespasses upon the rights of others. Nothing can be honorable which is morally wrong. So, and that's why I call them criminal enterprises.

[00:12:24] They're literally like secret combinations, mafia gangs that literally, uh, abuse the citizenry. I mean, that's all they do. And the problem is I speak out against them and everybody thinks I'm the bad guy. It's interesting in modern times today, but the truth must be told anyway, enough on parties. I just wanted to get that kind of, uh, on the table, uh, because there's been a lot of discussions, uh, in the back rooms about a party. Uh, and you know, I know somebody says, well, this party is designed to take down other parties. Yeah. Until it gets big enough, then it becomes the problem party.

[00:12:54] And that's the problem with the parties. And again, free association is fine. If you want to have a, an organization of any kind, liberty round table live or, you know, whatever, by all means. But the second it starts to ingratiate itself and or get special privilege for itself or somehow change the affairs of the nation to where it's got special privilege at the expense of the rest. That is when it goes criminal, ladies and gentlemen. And it's got to stop.

[00:13:18] And the reason I bring this all up right now is because we're like, oh, the Democrats got, you know, rock star status now and the Republicans are on the ropes. And hey, can we turn it around and all these things? I don't want to turn it around. I want to shut them both down. I want to go back to the precincts in America, little neighborhoods, if you will. And I don't want partisan anywhere. I don't want primary elections. I just want to basically have, you know, little teeny precincts.

[00:13:43] I want to have caucusing where we can vet candidates and have delegates and, you know, keep that representative government rolling. And I don't want any party or any special privilege or any manipulation of my ability to stand and vote honorably. And the problem when they do that is they put insert themselves into the middle and it becomes dangerous. And until we get rid of that, we're never going to be able to take back our country, folks.

[00:14:06] It's that simple because they have absolutely through their secret combinations, change the affairs of the nation to where I have been disenfranchised completely. I don't even have any good person to vote for. In fact, I don't think there's any good person of moral character, at least on the national and or state level, that I could even consider voting for who has a real chance to win is the problem. And that's what we've done to America. America and the founders warned us and prophecy is being fulfilled.

[00:14:34] And we better realize that, get a handle on it, turn it around, expose these criminal secret combinations and reject parties. Moving to the Pledge of Allegiance, ladies and gentlemen, some people say the Pledge of Allegiance is horrible and we shouldn't pledge. We shouldn't have allegiance. The only allegiance we should have is to God or Christ. And, you know, I have a lot of allegiances, though, personally. This is just my take. I have allegiance to God, family and country. And when I say allegiance, that doesn't mean I have allegiance to the perverted parts of government.

[00:15:05] But when I personally pledge allegiance to the flag, it's just a symbol. The flag is just a visual symbol of what I'm pledging allegiance to. And I'm pledging allegiance to a constitutional republic. And it's really 50 republics on one hand. On the other hand, there's dual sovereignty with a general government. The problem is it says one nation under God. We're not really a nation. We're a country. There's a general government and there's 50 constitutional republics. I get that. But in the name of, you know, hey, one nation under God, I do believe we're under God.

[00:15:34] I hope that we're one nation or one group of 50 republics. And I pray that we can prepare people for the Savior Jesus Christ to return. And I believe that the creation of the United States was in preparation of that. And I believe right now this whole broadcast is designed to help create a Zion or a righteous people, a people who could be ready to receive the Savior when he returns. I'm not interested in talking to the millions. I'm not interested in being a popular talk show host.

[00:16:03] I'm not interested in priestcraft. I am interested in educating Americans to the principles they need to live free, to use their freedom wisely and have that freedom become liberty through wise agency choices. So I don't mind pledging allegiance to the flag because I believe it's to that those principles and that ideal rather than the perversion that America has turned into these days. That's just my take. Others feel differently, Scott Bradley. Do you want to stand off on this? Then we'll turn it over to Jake.

[00:16:33] Well, I think what I'll do is I'll give a little historical background to this pledge thing. There was a couple of brothers that were progressives, basically they're socialists in their day. Back in the day when this progressive movement first started in the United States, it was an international socialist movement. And like, for example, when Gerald Ford, you know, came back from World War II and decided to run for the House, he ran as a progressive.

[00:17:03] He got his butt kicked. And so he changed it to a Republican and he got elected. And he was for a long time until he got made president ultimately. Yeah, the party made it all happen. Yes, sir. Yeah, it did. But these progressives, these international one world government progressives put a pledge together. And the pledge was a pledge to that globalist government. And that was the original pledge of allegiance that was introduced in the United States. These guys were named Bellamy.

[00:17:32] They call them the Bellamy brothers. It wasn't the guys that sang. Sam, you probably remember the group. But the fact of the matter is that that was their intention to build allegiance to a globalist government. And it was interesting to me that the salute was not the hand over the heart. It was a Nazi type salute. So everybody can envision that outreached arm with the, you know, hand. You know, just think of Hitler, okay?

[00:18:01] So that was what was the original thing. It got modified in the 30s when the Nazi movement got traction in Germany. And we could see that that was kind of going south, all that kind of stuff. And so they modified the placement of the hand. And I think it was 1954, if I recall. And it's been a while, so I probably ought to be fact-checked. But I think it was 1954 where some of the pledge got modified to this one nation under God kind of thing.

[00:18:29] And to the flag of the United States of America. And I respect and I feel, you know, I'm not going to berate people for not wanting to pledge allegiance to the flag. It's a symbol and everything else like that. But here's the deal. Our educational level at this point in the nation right now, it's a knee-jerk reaction.

[00:18:58] If you don't put your hand over your heart or salute to your brow and say, I pledge allegiance to the flag. I always teach, well not always, but very often when I teach a large class of young people, in the beginning of that class, I read them a 20-minute story. I recommend this book. This book has haunted me since 1963 when it was published. And I ran across it. It's called A Children's Story. No, The Children's Story.

[00:19:28] It's by James Clavel. And Clavel, he had a little experience with his little daughter. Clavel was a Brit. He was a POW in World War II. He became a U.S. citizen. Very proud of that. But when his little girl came to him one day and she put a little hand over her heart, she said, Pledging to the flag, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, beautiful, public, which is said, one day is not a God, individual, liberty, and justice for all. And she held her hand out to get her nickel. He said, what's going on?

[00:19:56] She said, teacher said if I could say pledge, you'd give me a nickel. Well, he said, well, very good. He says, well, tell me what it means. And the little girl says, well, teacher didn't say you'd ask that. It was just I said it, didn't I? And it was a rattle off the top of her head. And the story goes on to tell how America is captain. You've got to speed this up, though. We've got to give Jake a chance. Come on. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. I get the book and read it. I used to send it out with my Christmas cards.

[00:20:26] And your point really is that we don't have the education behind it. We don't really know what it means. We become just kind of parents. And educationally, it's a problem in the history of the pledge is a serious issue. And I agree with that. I think you're remiss in your history, which I will explain in a minute. But I don't want to precursor Jay. But are you willing to say the Pledge of Allegiance, doctor? And are you willing to when you stand up, do you put your hand over your heart and do that? Or do you protest or what do you do? No, I say it. I salute Title IV of the U.S. title.

[00:20:55] It says those that have served in the military can give a military salute rather than a hand over a heart. But that's usually how I do it. But honestly, I understand the resistance, the concerns, the over... If we start, you know, our real allegiances sometimes become to the motions and everything like that. But we need, in my opinion, to do a lot more education as to what this is really all about.

[00:21:25] And right now, you're the Kaepernick guy that wouldn't pledge and all this kind of stuff. And suddenly you're a pariah. And you, in my opinion, you're pushing people away without understanding. And so there's got to be a kind of a gentleness of bringing people along and understanding. It's kind of how I am. All right. Jake?

[00:21:53] Well, Sam, I think you'd agree with me that politics is downstream of principle. So where does principle come from? Well, in the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God is the Word. Truth comes from God. I don't give my allegiance to anyone or anything except for God. Can I make some commitments? Yes. Can I have...

[00:22:21] Can I have association with people? Yes. And do I love my country? Absolutely. I put my hand on my heart out of a sign of respect for the United States of America, the Promise Lamps, the New Jerusalem. I love America. But I will not swear an allegiance to anyone or anything. Now, you say, one nation under God.

[00:22:48] Well, I understand that sentiment. I get that. But my position is that I reserve my allegiance for God. And I think that when we understand that we're swearing an allegiance to the Republic. Some people say the flag, but it says, and to the flag, and to the Republic for which it stands.

[00:23:17] Well, look at this. A Republic depends on the character of the people who sustain it. So, if we commit ourselves first to God, that the order matters. Because if I swear allegiance to God, God will not steer me wrong.

[00:23:38] So, if I give a blind support for my country, just an undeniable loyalty, then I have issues with that. All right. When we come back, we'll give Jake another stab at this. I don't want to give him less time than everybody else. I'll have a couple of wrap-up comments of what I believe the real history of Pledge is. Because I think we started at kind of the wrong place. We'll talk about that, too, coming up. Then we'll let Jake finish.

[00:24:07] Then we're going to get into the event that Dr. Bradley has every Thursday night. Q&A is on the Constitution and more. There's a lot there we want to talk about, too. Man, we don't have enough time, but let's crank on it. We'll do it. You're listening to the one and only Liberty RoundTable Podcast. Hard-hitting news that networks refuse to use. Real long conversations. Real topics. Real education. No doubt principle is the key. And all politics or anything else is downstream from godly principles. There's no doubt about that. Jacob Oaks with me. Liberty United.

[00:24:37] Liberty-United.com Dr. Scott Bradley with us. freedomsrisingsun.com I'm Sam Bushman. God save our constitutional republic.