David Barton

Today on "WallBuilders Live," David Barton was discussing just war theory which, in his unique interpretation, essentially boiled down to the view that whatever you need to do to end a conflict and protect the lives of your citizens and soldiers is justified.

To demonstrate his point, Barton said that Native Americans declared war on "all the white guys" because missionaries tried to convince them to stop torturing their enemies but they resisted these efforts to civilize them and "so we had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over until" they got the message.

Barton followed that up by defending the practice of wiping out the buffalo on the western plains because it decimated the livelihoods of Native Americans and thereby brought an end to their resistance to the US government:

A lot of it is based on what you have to do to secure justice and to secure the protection of life and liberties for your citizens and you do what you have to do at times, but you play on the rules sometimes that the other guys have set up. And if they're not going to negotiate with things like the Geneva treaty or other rules of civilization, you still have to secure the life and the property and the protection of your citizens.

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You have to deal, a lot of it, with how the enemy responds. It's got to be based on what the enemy responds [to,] you cannot reason with certain types of terrorists; and see that's why we could not get the Indians to the table to negotiate with us on treaties until after we had thoroughly whipped so many tribes ... What happened was the Indian leaders said "they're trying to change our culture" and so they declared war on all the white guys and went after the white guys and that was King Philip's War.  It was really trying to be civilized on one side and end torture and the Indians were threatened by the ending of torture and so we had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over until they said "oh, got the point, you're doing to us what we're doing to them, okay, we'll sign a treaty."

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Take, for example, what happened in the western plains wars in the late 1800s when we were taking on the plains Indians.  I'm not talking about treaties, I'm not talking about behavior of Americans toward Indians or vice versa, there were violations on both sides of nearly every treaty.  I'm talking about what happened in ending those wars after Custer and everything that went on.

People complain about the fact that the American military and buffalo hunters went out and wiped out all the buffalo in the western plains.  Doing that was what brought the Indians to their knees because the Indians lived on those wide western plains where there were very few towns; Indians didn't go into town to buy supplies, they went to the buffalo herds, that's where they got their meat, that's where they got their coats, the hides provided coats, they provided covering for their teepees. 

If you don't have the buffalos, those Indians cannot live on the open western plains without those buffalo and so what happened was the military wiped out the supply line by wiping out the buffalo.  That's what brought those wars to an end, that's what brought the Indians to their knees and ended all the western conflict.

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• Both Franklin Graham and Richard Land support universal background checks for all gun purchases.
• Finally, someone should really ask David Barton to explain how he supposedly "gives about 440 speeches a year" because that comes out to 1.2 speeches every single day, including holidays and weekends.

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We already know that Cindy Jacobs' prayers have stopped terrorism and saved the global economy, but on the latest episode of "God Knows" she revealed how her prayers may have saved David Barton's life.

Apparently, several years ago Barton and his family were driving to Florida when Jacobs received a dream from God ordering her to start praying that the wheels on the Barton's van would not fall off.  She immediately did so and when the Bartons arrived at their destination, she told them of her dream and David and Cindy's husband Mike took the van to a local mechanic who told them that the bearings were completely worn away and "there is absolutely no reason why your wheel should not have come off the axle."

As Cindy explained, "God had given a word for David" that he was going to use him to rewrite school curriculum standards throughout the nation, but "Satan was trying to resist him," but her intercessory prayers prevented that from happening:

• Paul Gordon @ PFAW Blog: Scalia Completely Rewrites … Everything. 

• Dana Liebelson @ Mother Jones: Ding Dong (Some) Anti-Evolution Bills Are Dead. 

• Ilya Gerner @ Indecision Forever: Oklahoma Wants Women to Stop Using “Poison” Birth Control. 

• Alex Pareene @ Salon: Bob Woodward demands law-ignoring, mind-controlling presidential leadership.

• Conor Friedersdorf @ The Atlantic: Behold Movement Conservatism’s Information Disadvantage: Chuck Hagel Edition.

• Sarah Posner @ Religion Dispatches: Propriety Gospel and Foreclosure. 

• Rob Boston @ Wall of Separation: Anti-Catholic Canard: Catholic League Accuses Church Critics Of Bias And Bigotry. 

• Carlos Maza @ Equality Matters: NOM’s Morse Uses Tyler Clementi’s Suicide To Discuss Exploitation Of “Confused” Adolescents By Gay Activists. 

• John Fea @ The Way of Improvement Leads Home: David Barton, Louis L’Amour, and The Use of Historical Evidence. 

• Dan Quinn @ Texas Freedom Network: Texas SBOE Chair Praises ‘Leading Historian’ David Barton, Who Gets His History from Louis L’Amour.

As we have said time and time again, David Barton's books, DVDs, radio programs, and presentations are so riddled with misrepresentations that just about any factual claim he makes needs to be checked for accuracy.

And Barton once again demonstrated the need for such fact-checking when he recently delivered a presentation at Glen Medows Baptist Church in San Angelo, Texas where he made an utterly laughable claim about the Supreme Court's ruling in the case of Abington Township v. Schempp which declared that school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional.

In Barton's telling, the Court struck down the practice because reading the Bible was going to give students brain damage:

The Supreme Court, when it took the Bible out of public schools, said that this is without precedent; there is no precedent in our history for taking the Bible out of schools but this is the time to do it.

Now, if there is no historical precedent, why would they say the Bible has to go out of schools?  I mean, everything we have in history says just the opposite, so why?  They quoted Dr. Solomon Grayzel on the reason that we need to get the Bible out of schools ... In the Supreme Court decision, this is what the Court said why the Bible has to come out of schools; the Court says this:

If portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be, and had been, psychologically harmful to the child.

Time out.  Let me see if I get this: if we keep reading the Bible in schools, our kids are going to suffer from brain damage? Yeah, that was the reason given by the Court for the removal of the Bible out of the classroom back in 62-63.

Of course, if you actually read the ruling in the case, you will find that this citation of Dr. Grayzel appeared at the beginning of the decision when the Supreme Court was merely describing the road the case had taken through the court system, noting that Grayzel's testimony had been heard during the initial trial. 

On top of that, Barton also utterly misrepresented the point of Grayzel's testimony, which was to note that forced Bible reading from a Christian perspective in public schools was potentially damaging to Jewish students:

Expert testimony was introduced by both appellants and appellees at the first trial, which testimony was summarized by the trial court as follows:

Dr. Solomon Grayzel testified that there were marked differences between the Jewish Holy Scriptures and the Christian Holy Bible, the most obvious of which was the absence of the New Testament in the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Dr. Grayzel testified that portions of the New Testament were offensive to Jewish tradition, and that, from the standpoint of Jewish faith, the concept of Jesus Christ as the Son of God was "practically blasphemous." He cited instances in the New Testament which, assertedly, were not only sectarian in nature but tended to bring the Jews into ridicule or scorn. Dr. Grayzel gave as his expert opinion that such material from the New Testament could be explained to Jewish children in such a way as to do no harm to them. But if portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be, and, in his specific experience with children, Dr. Grayzel observed, had been, psychologically harmful to the child, and had caused a divisive force within the social media of the school.

Just about everything in Barton's description of this court decision is fundamentally misleading and demonstrably false ... and yet it will continue to make no difference to those on the Right who regularly cite him as an expert historian.

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• Robert Knight says public schools teach students "just enough English and math to pass standardized tests, while force-feeding them a secular, progressive mindset that views American capitalism as a world problem and more government as the solution."
• Finally, yet another historian demonstrates that David Barton work is riddled with misrepresentations.

• Peter Montgomery @ PFAW Blog: The Challenge of “Both-And” Policymaking.
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• Jeremy Hooper: Video: IL's leading marriage activist says gays can and should 'change'; claims 'Satan wants to destroy God's creation.'
• John Fea: More Barton Debunking.
• Chris Rodda: Is David Barton Now Getting his ‘History’ from Louis L’Amour Novels?

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• Chris Rodda: A Debunking of Pseudo-Historian David Barton’s Book on the Second Amendment.