David Barton

The Religious Right’s favorite rabbi and Jack Abramoff partner Daniel Lapin railed against emerging “barbarism” and the “new secular liberal male” at David Barton’s Pro-Family Legislators Conference. Lapin, who propagates his own version of the Prosperity Gospel, said that those protesting Wall Street, not the Wall Street bankers who triggered the financial crisis, are “barbarians” who want to “obliterate” civilization. He bemoaned that “the spiritual heirs of Bach and Beethoven” at Harvard University “are now banging bongo drums” and claimed “degeneracy” dominates the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations:

Now please understand when I say barbarism, I’m not only talking about the wiles of Asia and Africa, I’m talking about Harvard. You’ve got to remember, please, for those of you who have visited Boston lately, you’ve got to remember, that the spiritual heirs of Bach and Beethoven are now banging bongo drums in Boston. Have you been to Harvard Square? That’s what’s going on. If you take a look at the cooks and cranks now occupying Wall Street parks, who are these people? Civilized or barbarians? Let’s be candid about it. if you doubt my words please just walk through one of these encampments and see the squalor and the filth and the degeneracy, that’s all you’ve got to see, and then just recognize that in the great struggle of our age all you have to do is ask yourself, are they on the side of civilization or are they on the side of barbarism? It’s as simple as that. Do they want to sustain civilization or obliterate it? That’s easy to see, they want to obliterate it.

Lapin later lashed out against the “new secular liberal male” whom he said is either a “thug” or a “hideous hermaphrodite.” According to Lapin, the proper role of men is only found in the Bible:

Take a look at what’s going on around us, basically what happens I believe is that if you strip away the biblical blueprint, then males fall into one of two categories: they either become thugs and treat women with brutal callousness, or they become hideous hermaphrodites lacking the charm of women and the masculinity of men. Welcome to the new secular liberal male in America. Those are the two kinds you get, thugs or wimps, because the gifts of masculinity with all its traditions of honor and respect, commitment and responsibility, and yes treatment of women, spring directly from the pages of the Bible.

David Barton has been actively promoting his soon-to-be-released book, The Jefferson Lies, and one of Barton’s central claims is that Jefferson actually wanted to use “The Jefferson Bible” to evangelize Native Americans. Craig Ferhman in the Los Angeles Times yesterday discussed the Jefferson Bible and dissected Barton’s erroneous assertions, writing that Barton “cherry-picked” and “distorted” Jefferson’s work in order to make it “fit the Religious Right’s agenda.” Barton has a long track record of misrepresenting history to make it seem that Jefferson was trying to proselytize the Native Americans, and Ferhman says that the right-wing pseudo-historian even used an “outrageous fabrication” while arguing that Jefferson gave “The Jefferson Bible” to missionaries.

Ferhman also details how many of Jefferson’s opponents tried to stoke fears that he was an enemy of Christianity and that “some families buried their Bibles in their gardens” following his election as President. Much like today when Republican and conservative leaders say Obama is leading a “war on religion” and is “hostile toward Christianity,” many of Jefferson’s adversaries warned that a vote for Jefferson was “no less than rebellion against God” and a “sin against God,” dubbing him an “an open enemy to their religion, their Redeemer.” Barton himself consistently stokes fears about Obama and his religious faith, telling voters that God will hold those accountable who don’t vote the way Barton would like them to.

Ferhman appropriately writes that “Barton loves to cherry-pick a phrase and manipulate it support his side in a partisan, present-day debate,” and notes that presidential candidates like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry continue to give Barton unmerited praise:

In a presidential campaign, and in the hands of Jefferson's enemies, this passage became proof of the candidate's radicalism. One popular pamphlet from a pro-Adams minister quoted "Notes," then countered it: "Let my neighbor once persuade himself that there is no God," the minister warned, "and he will soon pick my pocket, and break not only my leg but my neck."

Such attacks proved effective enough that, when Jefferson did win the election, some families buried their Bibles in their gardens, fearing the new president would burn them. So it made sense that Jefferson continued to keep his religious views private. Years later, after he and Adams had resumed a correspondence, Jefferson described Jesus' teachings as "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals." The problem, he wrote in another letter to Adams, came in the "artificial scaffolding" that surrounded those teachings — the Virgin Birth, the miracles and so on.

"The Jefferson Bible" is his attempt to tear down that scaffolding. Jefferson took his first stab at it while still president. In the White House, "after getting through the evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day," he used a razor to slice Jesus' teachings out of a couple of King James Bibles, then grouped them by subject (e.g., "false teachers") and pasted them into a scrapbook. Its title page included these words: "an abridgment ... for the use of the Indians." Scholars agree it was most likely a sly joke about the impossibility of circulating such a genuinely radical book, or perhaps a joke about Adams' political allies, whom Jefferson referred to as "Indians" in his second inaugural.

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Today, the facts about "The Jefferson Bible" might seem like an impossible obstacle to anyone who wants to fashion Jefferson as a hero for right-leaning Christians — and America as a "Christian nation." Instead, the book has been distorted to fit the religious right's agenda.

There's no better example of this than David Barton, an amateur historian who's become quite popular with Perry, Santorum and Michele Bachmann. Barton loves archival flourishes — his Texas offices include a concrete vault filled with 18th century arcana — but his true concerns lie in the present. Though Barton admits that "The Jefferson Bible" often comes up as proof that its namesake wasn't the evangelical Christian conservatives want him to be, he also says he can refute this. In a TV appearance in 2010, Barton fixated on Jefferson's "Indians" title page, mixed in some unrelated material about Jefferson's Indian policy, then pivoted to an outrageous fabrication: "He then gave it to a missionary," Barton said of Jefferson and his Bible, "and he said, 'Here, if you get this printed, and you use this as you evangelize the Indians.'"

There's absolutely no evidence of Jefferson giving either version of his Bible to anyone other than his bookbinder. Perhaps it's no surprise that last year, in Iowa, Newt Gingrich said, "I never listen to David Barton without learning a whole lot of new things." That's because Barton loves to cherry-pick a phrase and manipulate it support his side in a partisan, present-day debate.

But there's a bigger problem with Barton's method: He strips history of its complex human appeal. After all, "The Jefferson Bible" stands as one of the most interesting and iconoclastic moments in America's religious past — one man with a razor, a pot of paste and a unique and private set of ideas. They were intricate ideas: Jefferson was no more a Bible thumper than he was a Bible burner. And that's why he and his handmade book have enjoyed such an odd and exciting afterlife. After one politician got his 14 copies of the 1904 edition, he reported receiving more than 2,000 requests from his constituents.

In our coverage of David Barton, one of the things we have been highlighting in recent years is his insistence that all manner of governmental and social institutions came directly out of the Bible.

In Barton's view, if something has any sort of parallel to anything in the Bible, then the inspiration for that thing could only have come from the Bible, thus Barton routinely asserts that our three branches of government and separation of powers, our free market system, our due process clause, and all manner of other Constitutional provisions were explicitly based on Biblical models.

To this list we can now add the entire concept of elections, as Barton claims that the Founding Fathers specifically cited Exodus 18:21 as the basis for Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution which guarantees to every state a Republican form of government:

Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition has emerged as the Religious Right’s favorite rabbi whose rants against government and gays have kept his image among conservatives untarnished despite his close ties to the Jack Abramoff scandal involving Indian gambling companies. Today on WallBuilders Live, Lapin not only tried to say that gay rights derived from the collapse of morality but also argued that it was “insane” that gays weren’t quarantined during the AIDS pandemic the 1980s.

Lapin told co-hosts Rick Green and David Barton, who has previously called for the government regulation of homosexuality, that health institutions should have tried to “impose quarantine” against the “homosexual-related disease” but “nobody had the moral will to do it simply because it reeked of bigotry and selective oppression and so on.”

Listen:

Lapin: Look, you’ll remember when the AIDS epidemic began, if that was anything other than a homosexual-related disease, which it obviously was, particularly at the outset, any public health organization that did not impose quarantine would have literally been tried before a court, it’s insane.

Green: So they ignored from what a health perspective they should have done.

Lapin: Yes, yes of course. If it was an outbreak of cholera or if it was an outbreak of the same severity as the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s, yes, yes of course they should have been quarantining but nobody had the moral will to do it simply because it reeked of bigotry and selective oppression and so on.

Last week right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton of WallBuilders appeared on City On A Hill Radio, where he railed against a California law that ensures students learn about prominent LGBT figures and agreed with a host who compared the anti-bullying leader Kevin Jennings to Adolf Hitler. Jennings, the past leader of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network and current CEO of Be The Change, had worked in the Obama administration on ways to help schools prevent bullying. Barton, who has warned the public schools are trying to “force” students “to be homosexual” through “homosexual indoctrination,” concurred with host Diana Crews said that she sees “Hitler” in “the likes of Kevin Jennings,” whom she claimed is promoting a “very dangerous that the agenda is really leading kids away from God.” He went on to attack California’s SB 48 and claim that textbooks there will teach kids the debated claims that George Washington Carver and Abraham Lincoln were gay, contending that “public schools are more into indoctrination than they are into truth or knowledge.”

Crews: Mr. Barton, it’s also dangerous in that I see Hitler in that, in the mindset that’s going to be perpetrated from Washington on down with the likes of Kevin Jennings.

Barton: Yeah.

Crews: I think it’s very dangerous that the agenda—that is really leading kids away from God.

Barton: Yeah it is.

Crews: Those are little souls.

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Barton: I got a call recently from the standards people who are working this in California, and they are creating textbooks now to show kids all the contributions of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, and among other things in the textbook, they’re saying, ‘we need to point out that George Washington Carver was gay, we need to point out that Abraham Lincoln was gay.’ And then you get to George Washington Carver and the reason they say he’s gay, and they’ll point this out, but back when he was young he had a lung infection and a serious respiratory problem that kept him from working outside, he did everything inside. And working inside he actually learned to crochet and to sew, and they say, ‘that proves he’s a gay guy, because that’s so effeminate!’ That’s the basis of saying George Washington Carver is gay, is that he crocheted and sewed, and so that’s why I’m saying public schools are more into indoctrination than they are into truth or knowledge, they won’t tell you the story of these guys but suddenly we’re going to start telling all of our kids in California that Abraham Lincoln was gay, that George Washington Carver was gay, and none of it is true.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) appeared on WallBuilders Live today where he joined right-wing historian David Barton and his cohost Rick Green in attacking the judiciary, which Franks called “the biggest threat that we have.” The judiciary has always been a favorite target of conservatives, and recently Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have declared an all-out assault on the judicial branch. Franks, who is the Co-Chair of Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign, argued that the courts are trying “inch by inch” to “take away our religious freedom,” and even argued that “if Mr. Obama appoints additional people to the Supreme Court that the Constitution itself will be fundamentally abrogated”:

Franks: I think there is very few things that are a greater threat than the court systems because they are not accountable to any sort of response by the people. It really is the biggest threat that we have. Ultimately, as a people, we only have two opportunities, we have to defend ourselves in courts and the public square vociferously, we have to be strong and not let them inch by inch take away our religious freedom. And secondly, we have to understand that this Constitutional republic that we’ve been given affords us the opportunity to decide what people we put in the White House that chooses the courts, the people in the courts, the judges. Right now I don’t want to sound political but I don’t have any choice. I am convinced that if Mr. Obama appoints additional people to the Supreme Court that the Constitution itself will be fundamentally abrogated, I mean it is that clear to me.

The more we listen to David Barton and investigate the assertions that he makes individually and through his organization WallBuilders, the more obvious it becomes that he has absolutely no qualms about flagrantly misrepresenting issues in order to promote his Religious Right agenda.

Several months back, Barton and co-host Rick Green welcomed a former FBI agent onto their "WallBuilders Live" radio program under the guise that he had lost his job because he had discovered that the Muslim Brotherhood had been infiltrating the agency.  The truth, not surprisingly, was quite different.

Today, Barton and Green featured former Ohio science teacher John Freshwater on the program and portrayed him as a victim of religious intolerance who lost his job for questioning evolution and keeping a Bible on his desk:

Freshwater: When the 2007/2008 school year came along, there was a new principal, a new Superintendent, and three new school board members and what took place that year was they wanted me to removed my Bible from my desk. And I felt I have academic freedoms and I thought I had the right to have my Bible on my desk, so I left it on my desk in 2007/2008 school year and they told me to remove it and that was when they suspended me - April 16, 2008 - they suspended me without pay and I've been in litigation since then, the last four years.

Green: What's their complaint about having a Bible on your desk? I thought teachers were allowed to do that?

Freshwater: You know what? I thought so too, but they said I needed to remove it from my desk. Here is what it comes down to Rick, and it's this: there is a lot of fear in public school teachers, especially Christian public school teachers. They put fear into them and they keep them ignorant; they don't teach them, they don't train them on it, so what a teacher does is they take off their religious beliefs, they take their hat off before they walk into a public school building because they don't want to lose their job. They really don't have a good understanding of this whole thing called religious belief and separation of church and state, it has been convoluted, it has been putting fear in the people and it is sad, it's very sad for a public school teacher in a public school in America today.

Of course, a quick Google search reveals dozens of articles reporting that Freshwater was actually fired for allegedly burning a cross onto the arms of two of his students and using his classroom to teach creationism, attack gays, and promote his religion. And just last month, his firing was upheld in court.

But you would never have learned this from listening to "WallBuilders Live" where Freshwater was portrayed simply as a man who has been relentlessly persecuted because of his Christian faith. 

As we have said before, Barton's success is largely rooted in the fact that his intended audience generally doesn't question anything he says or bother to check to see if his claims are accurate or true, and this is just the latest example of how he uses that power to routinely mislead them in order to create false narratives that support his own political and religious agenda.

The more we listen to David Barton, the more clear it becomes that it is his goal to see the United States operate strictly in accordance with the Bible in literally every regard.  As Barton says, "anything the Bible talks about cannot be considered secular," which means that every aspect of public life ought operate in accordance with Biblical teachings, including education, immigration, health care, taxes and economic policy, employment regulations, the role of government, and even our building codes.

Every once in a while, Barton provides a glimpse of just what America would look like if it became the "Christian nation" he desires in which everything ran according to the Bible, such as when he says that it would mean our schools would open with prayer and our government would stop helping the poor.

And last week, he told Concerned Women for America that if the nation followed Biblical principles when it came to work regulations, there would be no limits on the length of work days and people would work six days a week because that is what God commands:

We used to have what was called the Puritan Hard Work Ethic, which - it's really not Puritan - it's a Biblical hard work ethic. The Bible doesn't tell us anything about working five days a week, eight hours a day or less - it says "six days shalt thou work." You rest on the seventh, but the command is you're going to work six days. And you'll find that hard working people that work those six days - rural people tend to work longer hours than bankers and lawyers and other and they tend to have less physical problems; they have less burn-out, less stress, less whatever, less high blood-pressure. Folks who work harder and longer tend to do better because God told us to do that; that's the way he kind of made our bodies.

A few weeks ago, an atheist group put up a billboard in California featuring a quote it attributed to  Thomas Jefferson saying "I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature. It is founded on fables and mythology."

It turned out that there was no evidence that Jefferson had ever said such a thing and when the head of the group was informed that the quote was unverified, he admitted that he was wrong and "should have done the research before I put my billboard up."

Now, David Barton, of all people, is using the incident to promote his own book on Jefferson to be released next year:

The need for this book was recently made evident by an atheist group’s California billboard allegedly quoting Jefferson condemning Christianity ... The only problem with this quote is that it doesn’t exist. It has never been found in any Jefferson writing; yet it remains one of the many lies about Jefferson told by the Secular and Academic Left over the past century.

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Strikingly, Jefferson’s position on religion is actually the opposite of what is often claimed today. To see the authoritative documentation of this fact, look for The Jefferson Lies (to be released in the Spring), and discover from Jefferson’s own writings not only the truth about this particular lie but also many other Jefferson myths and lies that we were steadily fed throughout the twentieth century.

This is the same David Barton who falsely claimed that Jefferson said the "wall of separation" was "one directional" and designed to keep "the government from running the church but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government."

This is the same David Barton who claimed that the famous "Jefferson Bible" was really designed as a tool to evangelize Native Americans. 

This is the same David Barton who claimed that the report that Jefferson had fathered children with his slave Sally Hemmings was part of a conspiracy designed to protect Bill Clinton.

This is the same David Barton who has posted on his website a list of "Unconfirmed Quotations" he has used in the past but admits cannot be verified.

And whereas the man behind the erroneous billboard took responsibility for his mistake, Barton falsely insists that he's never had to retract anything and that critics have never been able to find anything wrong with his work.

You really do have to admire the amount of utter shamelessness Barton must possess in order to try to use an incident like this to promote his own book called, ironically enough, "The Jefferson Lies."

Frankly, we couldn't have come up with a better name for Barton's book if he had asked us to do so ourselves.