What Would Our Framers Say Now?

What Would Our Framers Say Now?

June 19, 2025

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: David New

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 6/19/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand In A Gap Today, and it’s also our bimonthly focus on the Constitution and American history. Now before I bring in constitutional attorney, David New, let me say that with all of the globally attention getting events occurring around the world with Israel and Iran in the Middle East, French as a major focus, while all of that is going on, other things are also happening. For instance, Russia is continuing to close its grip. In Ukraine though essentially that movement there is mostly unreported of late equally ignored and unreported is another significant area such as the deteriorating domestic economic condition here in the United States and globally. For instance, as the United States in the last week, last several days, first time ever was not able to find buyers of our bonds, which is required to finance our unrestrained national debt and burgeoning national interest payments that happened for the first time.

That is putting into effect major changes financially. Now I say this for this, I’m not going to address these issues further in today’s program, but I just wanted to keep these and things like that on the table as a reminder that in our continued controlled media days in which we live don’t be consumed just with the orchestrated or unplanned distractions that are coming at us fast and furious. That’s what the planned media does. We get the same diet almost worldwide. We must observe what is we’re being told obviously, but always kind of look behind the curtain for what’s really happening. And this requires wisdom, requires a knowledge of God’s word and a commitment to fearing God more than any man. And so I’m just going to let that there. As a reminder, we are in days of deception, be aware, but be aware of a lot of what we are seeing is not really what is and what really is we’re not being told.

Now that being said, let’s shift to today’s constitution and American history focus with constitutional attorney. David knew. Lemme ask you a question. If you’re listening here, ever wonder what our framers would say about the way our nation is being run today? Perhaps what kind of grade would they give Congress or would they give the President or they would give the courts or how they would grade our culture? And of course, how would they grade the attitude of our people? And while we won’t have the exact opportunity to do that, our founders and framers of our constitution and declaration, they were very profuse in their writings and thankfully Walt wasn’t digital, otherwise it’d be lost, but they actually wrote it down so it’s not impossible to accurately surmise what they would think about prevailing statements and policies and attitudes that come to dominate the attitude of today’s Americans. The title I’ve therefore chosen to frame our discussion today is this, what would our framers say? And with that, I welcome David to the program. Dave, thanks for welcome back. You sound a little different today because you’ve been sick, but really forcing yourself to be here today. Thanks for being here.

David New:

Oh, I’m so glad to be with you and blessings to everyone with us today.

Sam Rohrer:

David, before we jump into our focus on the framers and what they would think and what they said, you have some thoughts regarding some current news and attitudes that you’d like to mention. I mentioned a couple of the big macro global things earlier, but can you share some of the concerns that you have and your thoughts about them?

David New:

Well, I want to give some good news first, and that is yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the state of Tennessee and about 20 other states and transgenderism from the public schools that the state legislature has the authority to prevent public schools from issuing puberty blockers and other things to students. And of course the vote was 63. I don’t think it takes too much imagination who the six were and who the three were, but that’s a wonderful thing for kids to get this garbage out of the public school as quickly as possible. The other thing I wanted to mention, there are about 2000 communities that protested against Donald Trump last week. These people are being told some very bad things about President Trump. They’re being told that President Trump plans to cancel the 2026 elections. And this is being, I listened to liberal media a lot and see what they’re thinking and they’re saying this kind of thing and they’re really getting people quite upset on the other side and they’re lying through their teeth and things like that. The election will go forward just like always. And that’s why they’re holding these campaigns. We have no king because Trump is trying to become America’s first dictator. We’re in trouble because the people believe this kind of stuff. That’s not good news at all for the rest of us.

Sam Rohrer:

No, it’s not David. And that is the reason why even I said at the beginning when I started the program m be aware of what is being said on the news. Be aware yes indeed, of what is the source of the news because that makes a difference. And as we’ve talked about David under the programs is that with the infusion of this technology called artificial intelligence, particularly on means of communication that are digital, meaning there’s a video of some type along with it, I’ve been running across more and more evidences of interviews what would appear to be news presentations from here or somewhere in the world, even with people that are recognizable, making statements to someone in a setting that looks very official and the entire thing is all made up. It’s all made up deep fake. So yeah, your comment about people be careful what you are listening to and what you talked about there as in liberal media, that is a real issue and the consequences are extraordinary, aren’t they?

David New:

Yes they are. And then of course there’s this other business about the senator from California, Alex Elia, and this guy was way out of line. He was behaving badly and I can understand why the police did what they did, but what Senator Alex Elia did that was bad, especially bad is he started to wrestle with the police. If somebody wants, if the police tell you to leave the assembly, leave the room, then you get up and you go out quietly. That’s the way a senator should behave like a gentleman. This guy started pushing back and I’m glad to see the public is not taking his side too much on this issue

Sam Rohrer:

And I agree with that as well. So ladies and gentlemen, point being a lot going on, just always be aware and as we say here, when we filter things through the filter and the grid of truth in a biblical worldview, it’ll help us to sort out that which is true in that which is not. Now when we come back, we’re going to go into this conversation of what would our framers say and we’re going to say, what would they say about, well, just broadly speaking, God and government. Well if you’re just joining us, thanks for being on board today. This is our bimonthly emphasis on the Constitution and American history and it is always with constitutional attorney, author and speaker David New. Now David, we’ve talked a lot about many things obviously regarding our constitution and past programs and I think we’ve been doing this now for, I don’t know, five or six years, a long time, but this focus today, some of this we’ve said before, some a little bit different, but it it’ll be probably news to many people.

It’s the idea our theme was this is what would our framers say now? And I think that’s a great question because if there was a foundational question that we could ask the framers of our constitution, and I include with that the signers of the Declaration of Independence, some of the same people, different people, but they had the same mentality and it’s clear by why they wrote. One of the questions fundamental question would ask would be this, to what degree, for instance, did their understanding and view of God and truth and the Bible influence their decision to sign our core national documents of law? That’d be a fair question that then I think there are other related and probably even deeper questions that we could ask such as this one. I thought of that I would ask him, to what degree did your view of God and the Bible shape your convictions of which they had clear convictions, your convictions about the purpose for government, the frame of government that you agreed upon, the concept of rights, the understanding of right and wrong justice sin, God’s requirements for national blessing and warnings about national divine judgment.

That would be another question and I would ask that because they wrote about all these things. Now David, one of the key phrases in the Constitution that most people would recognize is we the people, we the people. So it’s amazing how different people with different worldviews will define this phrase because not everybody would agree upon what it’s meant by we the people. Here’s my question, what do the secularists say this means? And then according to the framers, what does it mean?

David New:

Yes, the statement we the people means something very different to secularists than to Americans of a traditional understanding. Secularism is the gateway to Marxism. For example, the Soviet Union was a secular state. Red China is a secular state. Transgenderism, you couldn’t get that in except in a secular state. Pornography secularism is a gateway to pornography, to homosexuality, to the drug culture. All of this is possible when you have a secular state and moral corruption in government. There’s a very fascinating quote in a book called The Godless Constitution written by two historians at Cornell CRE and Moore, and this is what they said about our US constitution. They said, while many at the birth of America advocated a Christian politics, the principle architects of our national government envisioned a godless constitution and a godless politics.

Now, when they say the word goddess constitution and goddess politics, they don’t mean that the sense of evil, they just mean that whether God exists or not doesn’t matter in terms of the constitution. When we use the word godless, we mean evil wickedness. They don’t. Now let’s take a look at this phrase. We, the people I have been hearing lately secularists define what that means to them. It means a rejection of God. We the people to many secularists means a rejection of God. What are they saying? They’re saying that when they wrote the US Constitution and put we the people, they are cutting God out as the source of authority for the Constitution. The authority for the Constitution comes from the people. God has been cut out.

Now that’s crazy and that it did not mean that to the framers. Why do seculars say that? Why are they saying we the people means a rejection of God? Because they believe that the Declaration of Independence has been overturned by the framers of the Constitution in 1787 in Philadelphia when they wrote a constitution without the word God in it. Now that’s the only evidence they offer and it’s nothing. It’s zero. It’s ridiculous. In other words, when they interpret the Constitution, they don’t interpret it with the Declaration of Independence, they divorce the two. Now the Declaration of Independence says, God creator gave us the authority and the right to create government. And when that government becomes abusive and corrupt, the people have the right to abolish that government and institute new government. So when they’re talking about we, the people, they are including what the Declaration of Independence said about creating government. But you see, our secular friends believe that the Declaration of Independence, this is something the public doesn’t know about these people.

One of the very first time I spoke up at law school in Georgetown and Washington, DC was in the property class, proper property law, and the professor got up and said something about the declaration independence, it says is no longer irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the Constitution. That was the sub and substance of what he said. And I raised my hand and I said, look, it’s very difficult for a new government to have a constitution without having a revolution first. In other words, the way the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution relate to each other is the Declaration of Independence is the promise and the Constitution is the fulfillment. So when it says we the people, it is not a rejection of God.

Sam Rohrer:

David, that is very, very clear and from a, let’s put it this way, from an honest objective evaluation perspective, no one could come to a conclusion that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are not in full agreement, only someone who refuses to consider the most basic of realities. And that is an interesting thing. But yet that is what we have been told for a long time. Now let me go here in the last couple of minutes and tie some of this together because in addition to we the people, and you’ve laid it out UX that ties into this. So the broader question would be the framer’s attitude toward God, the Bible, absolute moral truth and Christianity, because it was all a matter of discussion and part of their thinking. Today’s prevailing secular culture insists that God has no role. Our framers were either neutral or on matters of a Christian religion or they actually, as you said, took pains to cut God out of government, which is why they say God is not mentioned in the Constitution, so therefore they say God has been cut out. How would our framers answer the question of God and the recommended relationship? Because they had a recommended relationship between government, God and those in government.

David New:

The framers would look upon the Declaration of Independence as the foundation for the Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United States in 1897, somewhere around there made the best comment about how the two documents relate to each other. They basically said, you should read the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, read the Constitution in the Spirit of the Declaration of Independence. What that means is that all those references to God in the Declaration of Independence should be transformed, translated, or carried over into the US Constitution. It is not a goddess document and we know that the framers wanted that to occur because in Article seven they dated the Constitution using the Declaration of Independence. If the framers overturned the Declaration of Independence, the last thing they would do would be to date the Constitution using the Declaration of Independence.

Sam Rohrer:

David, you’re thinking logically and it hurts.

It really does hurt the humanist mind and the thinking process that is there because logic does not fit, because logic itself is anchored in truth and therefore we see a lot of the things we have today and it brings us right up to our break, ladies and gentlemen. So yeah, okay, what we’re framers say about this first consideration, a godless government, hardly anything but that and it’s in their writings and it’s in clearly what they believed is in our Declaration of Independence and it’s also reflected throughout our constitution and we come back, we’re going to look at this, what do our framers think about, well, the law and the prevailing law. In other words, how would you define that? What is the law? What is the highest law? How would you answer it? We’ll find out what the framers thought about that. If you’re just joining us, we’re considering the theme today on our constitution and American history focus constitution.

Attorney David New and I are going over this issue today and this is the theme. What would our framers say now? And there are so many applications to that, and I started at the beginning saying, what would they say about how we’re running as a country? How would they say Congress is fulfilling what they, well, what they said Congress ought to do according to the Constitution and to what degree is our government and our people living and abiding by the heart of the truth of the Declaration of Independence as an example. There are so many questions, but one of the areas of dispute, and I would ask them, and I know what they’re going to say, we’ll tell you because they were very, very clear. Unlike most, and I can say this, I was in office for nearly 20 years, but it’s hard to get a straight answer out of anybody who’s in office, right?

Why? Because they want to tell you what they think you want to hear because they’re not anchored in truth. That’s why they don’t know what they believe because it depends when you ask them. But that’s not the way our framers were. They weren’t knew what they believed and as the designer’s declaration did, they were willing to die for it because they really believed what they believed strongly enough to live for it. Right Now, one of the areas of dispute in modern Americans, the definition of the word law. Law, how would you answer that? What is the law? When I was at home growing up, my father would sometimes lay down the law. That’s what we would say.

George Bush senior in a political sense, governmental sense. He as an example, emphasized the phrase, the rule of law. Remember that? And he used the rule of law to support his globalist pursuit of what the new world order for him, a new world order, a global government was the rule of law. That’s what he said. And frankly, that phrase in its interpretation has been pursued based on whoever it is that’s in Congress and the courts and whichever president has been in office since then, they have all used the word law and they have all interfaced it with some type of new world order. Alright? Now, the people though tend to interpret what those in office say and they interpret the way they want to make themselves feel good about it. But frankly, court decision after court decision, congressional law after congressional law, presidential executive order after presidential executive order, we’ve bit by bit dethroned God’s law and thrown in practice, we’ve thrown the Constitution constitutional law into the waste bin.

So we’ve redefined law into legal, right? We hear that legal, legal unlawful is not the same thing and redefined highest law to the law as you want it to be. And prevailing law is no longer bound by God’s moral law or the Constitution, it’s become weaponized. We’ve heard that term right? And law has been turned into, well, the power to make someone else do whatever you can do when you’re in power to do it, that’s what it’s come to. But wow, I know what our founders would say. David, let’s find out from you, from the mouths of our framers, can you provide some evidence of what they believe? The prevailing understanding at that point was toward the matter of law of God, the hierarchy of law because it’s not just one type of law, but the hierarchy of law as reflected in the Constitution and the Declaration.

David New:

Yes, there are two names. There are 39 signers of the Constitution, and I did a meticulous study, a detailed study of their religious views. I was overwhelmed with joy to see what they had to say. Now, one of the people, these two people, James Wilson and Rufus King James Wilson was of Pennsylvania and Rufus King was of Massachusetts. They are on record stating that the law of God is supreme over man’s law. The law of God is supreme over man’s law. They are on record stating that. That’s James Wilson and Rufus King. Now James Wilson is extremely important. This man had a stellar reputation as an attorney and having a legal mind and he spoke at the Constitutional convention more than anybody else except for the possibility of Governor Morris. So he has a lot to say and people want to hear it.

He was also appointed by George Washington to be on the US Supreme Court and he gave lectures in 17 90 17 91 on the law, and here’s where he says the law of God is supreme over MAD’s law. That doesn’t sound very secular to me. The other gentleman, Rufus King of Massachusetts, a wonderful person. This guy wrote two real important laws. He had a big role in the final of the Northwest Ordinance. He is the author of Article three of the Northwest Ordinance that David Barton has done a wonderful job of bringing it to the attention of the American public religion, morality and knowledge being essential to good government. Schools on the means of education shall wherever being encouraged. Rufus King of Massachusetts, a signer of the Constitution wrote that law. It was the very first school prayer law for the nation.

He also wrote the first Emancipation Law for the United States because the Northwest ordinance banned slavery from the Northwest Territory and the Northwest Territory made up about 30% of the landmass of the United States, which means right then and there, the framers of the Constitution and the generation that wrote the Constitution knew slavery was wrong. And they said, you’re not going to have it with a few exceptions, you’re not going to have it in 30% of the United States. That is a dead giveaway that they were moving against slavery as fast as they possibly could. So here you’ve got two men, James Wilson, ladies and gentlemen, pay very close attention to anything anybody says about him and Rufus King writing the first school prayer law, writing the first Emancipation Law, a signer of the Constitution is writing a law to keep slavery out of 30% of the United States. People who say the US Constitution is pro-slavery are absolutely nuts.

Sam Rohrer:

They are indeed David, and it’s very, very, very, very clear. I’m looking at our time here. I’m going to, you have some other information you can share, but I’m going to reference something ladies and gentlemen, as another evidence. I’m going to lay it on the table as evidence that our framers on a broad scale understood that God’s law was supreme and man’s law was inferior. If you go to YouTube, you can bring it up and I forget the title of it. Look up this Violet Oakley murals, violet Oakley murals. Okay, now what? It’ll take you on a little tour of the Pennsylvania Capitol, and I’m looking right now at Mural on the wall in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. And in that room it gives the history of law. One of the murals, and I always took my constituents in when they came to visit.

I would take it and I would show them this and they could see this. You can’t see it, but I’m going to describe it to you. It says, it’s called the scale of the law and its harmonies scale of the law in its harmonies and it’s written in a musical format in the form of an octave. So it has a scale there. It starts on a bottom G, and it goes up the scale to a G. So they have it written as going from the bottom up. But the top law, the bottom law is divine law, God’s law. And the top of the octave is obviously if you know music is the same note, just an octave higher. So it’s divine law. So divine law, the bottom divine law at the top and sandwiched between it in the harmonies because it’s a musical scale. It starts law of nations.

Broad law revealed law is next going up the scale, law of reason, common law, law of nations, and then national law, and it completes it by divine law. The point of that is our founders knew that without starting with God’s law and ending with God’s law, there was no harmony. There could be no justice, there could be no proper administration of government. Man’s law could never and can never sit outside. God’s law must be restrained by God’s law. That’s what our founders believed. That’s what William Penn believed in the frame of government. That’s what David you’re talking about. Wonderful, wonderful picture. I hope that helps put it in mind. So when anyone says they are the law, if they’re say the law, they’re of the devil, I’ll put it that way. They’re evil because anything outside God’s law is of the devil. So it’s very, very clear.

It’s not complicated, but our founders believed it and what a difference it made. Now we’ll come back. We’re going to conclude with the fact of what did our framers think about the concept of sin, David, as we’ve talked here about what our framers would think, we talked about, well, the element of what is meant by we the people, which is what humanists used to say, that it’s all about us has nothing to do with God. And then they will say, well, because God is not named, his name is not appearing, does not appear in the Constitution. It means that he was cut out because he was not necessary. And then it goes all that range to say that nobody who should serve in government can talk about God and Jesus Christ and all of those things that we know as the humanist line that we hear and unfortunately has become dominant.

We’ve tried to answer some of that and you’ve cited some extraordinarily good evidence of signers of the Constitution and there are many, many more that can be done if we bring in all of the signers of the declaration as well. But their view of God was very, very clear and you’ve made that clear. So the people does not stand independent of God. You made that clear. We talked about law that our founders absolutely believed that there was no legitimate man’s law if it did not comport with God’s law. And I shared that scale of the law in its harmonies is what it’s called a mural hanging on the supreme court walls of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and that it depicts the how our founders viewed all of law, international law revealed law, law of reason, law of nations, that kind of thing. But it’s all sandwiched between God’s law, divine law, it’s termed top, end, bottom, and when they operate together, it makes perfect music.

That’s why they call it the harmony of nations. You throw any of those out, you take God from top and make man’s law on top of God’s law you have a tyranny, which is what Penn said. People will either submit to God or they’ll submit to tyrants and literally that’s it. Now, I have a whole lot of things I could lay out here. I may hold it, but in a book I put together based on William Penn’s frame of government, he was viewed by some of the founders as the father of the founder, but he laid out base some basic principles that had to be in place of a nation was ever going to come from nothing, which what it was at this country at the beginning to something that it became a great nation and the first one was people had to agree on the concept and necessity of personal integrity.

In other words, you had to keep your word and be honest, otherwise you’re going to come out wrong at the end. Then you had to understand and agree upon the definition and the role of God, creator, judge, and so forth. The next one was must understand the nature of man. And in that it’s taken, laid out very specifically, man, depraved, heart sinner, and they lay it out makes perfect sense and it goes all the way down through understand justice and understand the need for prayer and all of that. But that ladies and gentlemen, all of those things in form and very much a lot of other details available, you can just go to Amazon and look up America’s roadmap to renewal. You can purchase that book. It’s not much, but a lot of this information we’re talking about can be found there. Now that David, that being said, I need to come back to you on this matter of the recognition of sin. I would say it would be disputed by nearly everybody in government today. I mean, I would go so far and I can’t quantify this, but I would say that have not in their own head, certainly by practice, I would say 99% of those who are in office right now, even though they make references to God and can sound pious at times their actions confirm that they really don’t believe in sin and particularly and the idea of national sin. But our framers did, didn’t they share some evidence about that? Because it’s telling

David New:

The term national sin has completely disappeared from the American currency of language. It’s gone in 1787, it was very much alive. There are six signers of the Constitution who said America had a sin problem. They are John Langdon of New Hampshire, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, William Livingston of New Jersey, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, George Washington of Virginia, James Madison of Virginia. Let’s talk about each of these people briefly. John Langdon had a brother named Samuel Langdon and he gave a sermon just days before New Hampshire was to vote on ratification of the Constitution. He gave it on June 16th and New Hampshire ratified the Constitution on June 21st. On June 21. The title of his sermon was the Republic of the Israelites and Example to the American States. Now, why would he say something like that? Why would he give a sermon connecting the republic of the Israelites with the American states? Because at the time, the framers, the people, the founding fathers believed that America was a reenactment of Israel.

So the Pacific, the Atlantic Ocean was the Red Sea, the King of England was Pharaoh and so forth and so forth. And they printed this sermon, 200 copies and distributed, and it got New Hampshire over the edge to where they would ratify it. So a sermon made the difference in getting New Hampshire to ratify the Constitution of the United States. And that’s important because New Hampshire was the ninth state. It takes nine states to ratify the Constitution, and New Hampshire was that ninth state and New Hampshire had an official religion called the Congregational Church. Now, you try to explain to me how that state would ratify a godless secular constitution. Forget it. The other person is Roger Sherman of Connecticut.

Alexander James Madison wanted the bill of rights to be incorporated within the body of the Constitution in various places throughout the seven articles. This guy Roger sermon said, no, no, no, no, we’re not going to do that. They should be put at the end of the constitution after Article seven because if we try to add it to the body of the Constitution, people will suspect we’re writing a new constitution. So that’s why the Bill of Rights are at the end, not because of James Madison. He didn’t want to do it that way. It’s because of Roger Sherman, William Livingston of New Jersey. Very powerful man, very important man, and he does something shortly after the Constitution is ratified. He frees all of his slaves because of his Christian religion. Two big people you want to think about for getting rid of slavery because of Christianity. One of them is William Livingston, and the other one is Richard Bassett of Delaware, a super Methodist who hated slavery and said it’s inconsistent with Christianity. And he fought it. He also signed the Constitution, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania. After the convention, he became governor of Pennsylvania and he said, America needs to repent of her sins. George Washington of Virginia, the first proclamation George Washington said, we have a duty to obey God. In the first proclamation of October 3rd, 1789 and later on he talks about America’s problem with national transgressions or national sins. Then comes the granddaddy of them all. James Madison.

Sam Rohrer:

David, 10 seconds. That’s all we have.

David New:

July 23rd, 1813, James Madison says, we need pardon for our manifold transgressions

Sam Rohrer:

From

David New:

God,

Sam Rohrer:

Ladies and gentlemen. So what do you think about that? Wouldn’t that be a refreshing thing to have those in leadership and even from our pulpits talk about sin and national sin? You think we’re in the trouble we’re in because perhaps that has not happened. Or our framers, I know how they would think about where we are. May we think the way God thinks.