PFAW

Yesterday WallBuilders' Rick Green, the poor man's David Barton, appeared as a guest on TBN's "Praise The Lord" program to promote and share the patented brand of Religious Right pseudo-history with which WallBuilders is synonymous.

And Green had some stiff competition in the regard as host Kirk Cameron - yes, that one - tried to stump the audience with a trick question by asking if they knew the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and which one contained the phrase "four score and seven years ago." 

The answer, of course, is that neither document contains that phrase, which Cameron admitted ... before mistakenly claiming that it appeared in the Emancipation Proclamation when, in actuality, is was the opening line of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:

A few weeks ago, vandals threw bricks through the windows of the site hosting an Americans For Truth About Homosexuality banquet demanding that the anti-gay event be shut down. Ever since, AFTAH's Peter LaBarbera and Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber have been running around screaming "hate crime" and telling the story to anyone who will listen. 

So it was no surprise to see that it was also the topic of discussion on Liberty Counsel's "Faith and Freedom" program today, though it was a surprise to see Barber start asserting that not only were windows broken at the event site, but that those responsible also broke into the building and destroyed plumbing and flooded floors.

But that was nothing to compare to where the discussion went after that, when Mat Staver declared that this sort of vandalism was totally predictable because as gays get more rights, they become more hostile and violent and then declaring that when the Southern Poverty Law Center labels anti-gay groups as "hate groups," they are doing just what the Nazis did to the Jews:

Staver: This aggressive homosexual agenda is not about tolerance, it's about dominance. And the more emboldened they get, the more laws that they get, the more vocal they become, the more hostile they become, the more aggressive they become, and the more violent, in this particular case, they become.

Barber: Americans for Truth, as well as Liberty Counsel for that matter, is one of those flashpoints, they have been unfairly labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hard left-wing extremist organization that uses smears in order to label Christian organizations that take a principled stand on the biblical model of sexual morality in love, speak God's truth in love, they label them hate groups. But really, they are fanning the flames of this kind of violence with their rhetoric, by labeling organizations a hate group. And they're partly responsible for this, indirectly, I'm not going to say they're directly responsible ...

Staver: Well, when you go out and label somebody a hate group you think of the KKK ...

Barber: It emboldens these people ...

Staver: It also, it begins, you know, it's the same thing that happened in the Nazi Holocaust where they start to just demonize and stigmatize and then at some point in time you don't even think that someone's human and then, you know, we look at it and our consciences are shocked but if you look at how it ultimately began where they began to just demonize and dehumanize them, that's what's happening with this labeling of hate groups.

• PFAW: Violence Never An Option Against Peaceful Protests.

 

• Adam Serwer @ Mother Jones: Top Romney Adviser Tied to Militia That Massacred.

 

• Lee Fang @ Think Progress: Herman Cain Campaign Policy For Staff: ‘Do Not Speak To Him Unless You Are Spoken To.’

 

• Pema Levy @ The American Prospect: Moment of Conception.

 

• Warren Throckmorton: The Jones and Yarhouse study: What does it mean?

On a Believers Voice of Victory episode that aired today, David Barton told televangelist Kenneth Copeland that women are most elevated in a society that has “conformed to the Scriptures.” Citing Religious Right activist Rabbie Daniel Lapin, Barton said that the Bible is actually the basis of women’s rights, while in “Islam” and secular societies like France and “the Norwegian countries,” women have fewer rights and less respect. Perhaps Barton should read The Handmaid’s Tale before arguing that women will prosper in a society run strictly according to biblical law:

Watch:

In our previous post we noted that the American Family Association spent two hours promoting the new WallBuilders "Building On The American Heritage Series" DVD program and that, during the program, David Barton took calls from listeners in the AFA audience.

During the Q&A, one of the listeners expressed hope that the next president would give Barton a Cabinet-level appointment, maybe as Attorney General, but that was a notion that Barton quickly shot down by admitting it would never happen because he is "radioactive."  

But Barton then went on to reveal that because he is so radioactive, he has been forced to help school boards draft state history and/or government curricula in secret so that people on the Left don't find out about it:

For me, I am radioactive in so many areas. I got a call from US News and World Report and they said "did you know the ACLU just spent a million dollars to discredit you?" There are four law schools I know that have entire websites dedicated just to me. Soros-type people get paid to find my name every time it pops up and they will start blogging about how stupid I am, how I don't know anything, how I make up my history. And so if you Google me, you're going to find a lot of negative stuff about me.

Now, having said that, I get appointed by a lot of states, by state boards of education to do the history and government standards in those states, public schools, etc ... Now, when these guys find out that I'm there, I become the target of their attempts. So in Texas, I was one of six guys appointed by the state Board of Education to do history and government there and suddenly I'm up on Wall Street Journal, MSNBC is doing specials on how terrible I am, all these things are going after me. And that's fine; I understand that I'm radioactive.

So, this is a lot of fun: I had a national textbook publisher come to me and said "hey, you helped write these standards, why don't you help us do textbooks to reflect those standards?" I said "sure, but just keep my name out of the textbook, don't put me down as one of the editors because if you put me down, they'll go all over the nation talking about how terrible this is." So they kept my name out. Guess what? That public school textbook is now the best-selling public school history textbook in America.

So this history is good. People want this history, they want to get this stuff but what happens is there's a political movement that will try to marginalize us by making us radioactive. I currently now am working with multiple states in doing their history and government standards - I'm not going to say what those states are because they've kept it silent, I'm going to keep it silent.

• FRC has released its Congressional scorecards.

 

• I look forward to watching the Religious Right turn this pastor who was arrested for protesting a high school's demon mascot into their newest cause célèbre.

 

• Is Charisma Magazine, which routinely features people like Lou Engle and Cindy Jacobs, really suggesting that people should be jailed for delivering false prophecies?

 

• Gary Cass bravely launched a new "anti-bullying campaign" yesterday - by which he means "an anti-Muslim campaign."

 

• Finally, Mat Staver says "I think what we see is militant atheism trying to use the courts to literally crush Christianity, silence anyone who believes in God, and to make those who do a target of punishment."  I think Staver doesn't understand what the word "literally" means.

Less than a month after his speech to the Values Voter Summit, in which he claimed that marriage equality was an “assault” by the left to destroy America’s foundations, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) equated legalizing marriage for same-sex couples to desecrating the Eucharist. Speaking with Bishop William Lori at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on “The State of Religious Liberty in the United States,” King said that marriage equality, like the desecration of the Eucharist, was a “direct affront to the Church” and “an active effort to desecrate a sacrament of the church.”

Watch:

Today on Believers Voice of Victory, David Barton told televangelist Kenneth Copeland that the only way to rejuvenate America’s education system is to instill in kids the “fear of the Lord.” Barton launched his career as a Religious Right activist with the 1989 booklet What Happened in Education?, in which he concluded that a decline in SAT scores was a result of the end of school prayer, and that only Christian teachings in schools could bring SAT scores back up. Barton explained to Copeland, a Prosperity Gospel preacher, what that instilling the “fear of the Lord” in children would require establishing the Bible as the basis of all school curricula:

Barton: This shows you what public education is supposed to look like, the educational system was supposed to come—and it did, these guys started the first public schools in 1642 and cited Bible verses on why they were doing it, they also cited Bible verses on the courses they taught and the way they taught the courses. Now most Christians today, ‘Well we got government schools that’s the way it was supposed to be.’ Really? Show me in the Bible where government’s supposed to do the education, show me how that works, show me what courses government’s supposed to be teaching. See we can’t do that anymore, we don’t use the—we’ve been conformed to the culture, we’ve had public schools for so long that we think that’s the way it is.

Copeland: So now we’ve done then, we’ve gone, into our own—

Barton: Dark ages.

…

Barton: This book right here, every Bible says, in Proverbs 1:7, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.’ Now I don’t know why today we think, ‘oh I’m going to know more about the Lord if I fear God,’ we’ve made the fear of the Lord the beginning of spiritual knowledge. He didn’t say that, He said the fear of the Lord’s the beginning of knowledge. If you want education you better include the fear of God, if you want to be a good scientist you better include the fear of God, if you want to be a good musician—1962, ’63, the U.S. Supreme Court in three decisions said no more fear of God in education, we want education to be secular. All right, that’s a theological issue. How’s that working out? In 1962, ’63, America was number one in the world in literacy, we are now number sixty-five in the world in literacy. We don’t have the fear of the Lord, because guess what, we don’t have knowledge, it goes down.

Bill Bennett appeared on The 700 Club today to promote his new book The Book of Man. He and Pat Robertson used the time to lament the rise of women in American society and the supposed decimation of manhood. Bennett claimed that “feminism” and “gay culture” confused and blurred gender lines, and seemed to mourn the fact that women are now taking positions of authority in society once reserved only for men. Robertson cited the promotion of Virginia Rometty, who is succeeding Sam Palmisano to be CEO of IBM, and warned of a pending “matriarchy.”

Watch:

Bennett: What feminism did I think, Pat, was confuse the debate to some extent by saying those expectations we have of boys, the kinds of responsibilities that they will need to take up as men, we’re not sure we need them anymore because we’re not sure we need men any more, well we do need men.

Robertson: Well you know it’s interesting in the news today was the changing of the guard at IBM where Palmisano is changing off and a woman’s taking his position as head of this great corporation, IBM.

Bennett: That’s right and there’s just a ton of that…fine all power to the women and the girls, as long as we don’t confuse roles and the differences in genders. Boys have to wake up! We got to wake them up!

Robertson: What’s this going to do to society, if men don’t take their places as men and suddenly there’s a gap and women and we have a matriarchy. What will this do ultimately to society?

Bennett: I think it can hurt society, maybe grievously. Interestingly the feminists are not celebrating this Pat, they want men too. They might want to rail against this and they may want to talk about stereotypes of man and male domination and so on, but women want men. They want men for that strong arm, they want men for that protection, they want men for a partner in marriage and so it’s something that has got very blurred and what I try to do in this book is remind people of things that are true. And to the boys, as you very well said, the array of things offered on TV and elsewhere is very confusing, from macho stuff to gay culture to all sorts of things. What I got here is a point of view that is time tested, based in tradition that will get boys to manhood.