Despite the fact that he has no academic training in
history or related fields at all, Barton has become the go-to man for much of
the religious far right.
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| David Barton |
David Barton, a
self-styled Christian historian who claims to debunk left-wing myths about
America, is sure of it: If you studied the Founding Fathers like he has, you
would know that "as far as they were concerned, they had already had the
entire debate on creationism and evolution."
And the creationists,
Barton says, won.
Just one little
problem: Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species, the
founding text of the theory of evolution, wasn't published until 1859. That's,
oh, about three-quarters of a century after the founders were active.
The very same day
that Barton offered up his unique view of creationism — a term that was first
applied to American fundamentalist beliefs only in 1929 — he told his
interviewer that most of the founders were abolitionists, even if George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many others were slaveholders. "That's
why we said we want to separate from Britain, so we can end slavery," he
said.
Hmmm. That was awfully
noble of them. Except for one thing: The British were way out front of the
Americans on this. In 1807, Parliament outlawed the slave trade in the British
Empire. In subsequent years, it pressured other European nations to end or
curtail the trade. In 1833, Britain abolished slavery completely.
We Americans
finally did so in 1865. That was 32 years after the British, which is kind of
strange if you believe David Barton's fairy tales.
Why does any of
this matter? It matters because, sad to say, Barton matters — or at least he
did, until the conservative Thomas Nelson Publishers yanked his tendentious but best-selling
book, The Jefferson Lies, earlier this month.
Despite the fact that he has no academic training in history or related fields at all, Barton has become the go-to man for much of the religious far right — an ideologue who claims that the separation of church and state is a "myth" and that the Founding Fathers actually were building an explicitly Christian nation.
Prominent politicians like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann think he's brilliant.
Despite the fact that he has no academic training in history or related fields at all, Barton has become the go-to man for much of the religious far right — an ideologue who claims that the separation of church and state is a "myth" and that the Founding Fathers actually were building an explicitly Christian nation.
Prominent politicians like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann think he's brilliant.
He' not
brilliant. He's not a historian. But he is a right-wing bigot.
That became
indisputable in the last month, a very bad period for the man described by
conspiracy-monger Glenn Beck as "the most important man in America."
Viewers of the History Channel voted The Jefferson Lies, which
depicts the man who actually endorsed a wall between church and state as an
enthusiast of America as a "Christian nation," "the least
credible history book in print."
Ten conservative Christian professors denounced its totally unsupported claims. An NPR story obliterated his assertion that the Constitution quoted the Bible. Then his Christian publishing house said it had "lost confidencein the book's details."
Ten conservative Christian professors denounced its totally unsupported claims. An NPR story obliterated his assertion that the Constitution quoted the Bible. Then his Christian publishing house said it had "lost confidencein the book's details."
There's more.
Barton believes that gay people should be sent to prison. He claims that the
Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the government at all levels. He insists,
based on nothing but his own highly unusual reading of the Bible, that
environmentalism, the graduated income tax, the minimum wage, deficit spending,
unions, and measures to battle global warming are all opposed by God. In Texas,
he worked to strip Martin Luther King Jr. from high school history textbooks.
No one is saying
David Barton can't make whatever reckless and false claims he wants. He's as
protected by the First Amendment as any of us. But that doesn't mean that he
has to be taken seriously, given a podium, or boosted as a must-read
"historian," as Huckabee called him. Let's finally consign Barton's
propaganda to the slag heap of baseless and obnoxious ideas where it belongs,
and get on with a serious debate about the future of our troubled country.
Mark Potok edits the investigative magazine Intelligence Report and is a
senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups,
anti-government militias, and other extremist organizations. www.splcenter.org
Distributed via OtherWords (OtherWords.org)
Distributed via OtherWords (OtherWords.org)