Rick Green

After watching the Republican presidential candidates lose the last two elections, right-wing activist Ken Blackwell cooked up a scheme whereby states would move away from winner-take-all allocations of electors to a system in which Electoral College votes would be assigned according to congressional districts.

The result would be that a Republican presidential candidate who does not win the overall popular vote in the state could still end up receiving a majority of that state's electoral votes simply by virtue of winning the popular vote in more individual districts.

Today, Blackwell appeared on "WallBuilders Live" to promote this scheme, where it was met with enthusiastic support from Rick Green and David Barton. As Blackwell explained, if every state had implemented this plan for the 2012 election, Mitt Romney would have won despite the fact that he lost the overall popular vote by nearly 5 million votes.

That, of course, is ridiculous ... and the fact that people think it is outrageous is, according to Blackwell, a sign that it is a good idea:

Blackwell: There's an old farmer's tale that if you throw a brick at a pack of pigs, the one that squeals is the one you hit.  Well, when we put this out there, the Left started squealing, the New York Times started squealing, so we must be on to something.

Green: You must be on to something. No doubt about that.  I haven't had a chance to look, I don't if anyone has done a map, I'd be real curious to know if every state did this, how would the last few elections [have gone]? Have you had a chance to look?

Blackwell: I already know. If every state did it, Romney would have won the election.  And so that's another reason that the Left just instinctively dislikes it.

...

Barton: This actually is a way to give the people a greater voice rather than just having the majority slap it to the minority every time you turn around. And I really like what he's proposed here with reverting back out of the winner-take-all philosophy of the states, going back to congressional district take all, which is a good way to do it.

Only to David Barton could a scheme designed to ensure that a Republican candidate who loses the national popular vote would still win the election be a good idea because it supposedly give "the people a greater voice."

On yesterday's program, David Barton asserted that one way to win the fight against gay rights is to start talking about how "reprehensible" homosexuality is going into graphic details on the theory that it will gross people out and educate them about what is really going on.

On today's broadcast, dedicated to discussing the possibility that the Boy Scouts might lift the ban on gay scouts and/or scout leaders, Barton and co-host Rick Green again asserted that as part of this battle, anti-gay activists need to inform people about how "reprehensible and disgusting" homosexuality really is:

Green: Just yesterday on the program with Father Frank, you were describing at the end of the program just like what Representative [Bill] Dannemeyer had read on the House floor in describing just how graphically disgusting these activities are in the homosexuality community.  And I think a lot of folks who are kind of siding with them on this Scout fight again, do not realize what they're approving to go camping with their ten and eleven year old boys.

Barton: Yeah, people have an image of what they think sexuality is and, you know, that can come from movies or come from other sites as well, but when you get the specifics of what homosexuality activity is, even decent people find that absolutely reprehensible and disgusting.  And that's why when Representative Dannemeyer said "hey you Democrats are trying to promote this, let me read what you're promoting, even Democrats got grossed out and tried to censor the Congressional Record and get that stuff taken out because it was so disgusting.

That is probably a good point to make Rick. While we think of this as being tolerant and whatever, no, you do need some details to realize what we're facing here and it's not what you think it might be. Get some details on it.

• Jeffrey Kuhner says "leftists have perpetrated most terrorist atrocities in America."
• Rick Green echos that idea and wonders if Democrats should be banned from owning guns.
• Rep. Louie Gohmert is so in tune with the Religious Right that he is filling in for FRC's Tony Perkins on his radio broadcast today.
• Os Hillman says gay rights are not equal to civil rights because being black is not a sin.
• Finally, James Robison links the Boston bombing to legalized abortion: "While Americans and freedom loving people around the world openly express their horror at the heartless destruction of the innocent, should we not examine our own hearts as a people? Our great nation has silently allowed the termination of more than fifty million little innocent lives to be taken in the wombs of their mothers. Hitler murdered over eleven million people in the Holocaust, and Stalin almost twenty million. America has doubled that and the casualties are still mounting."

Rabbi Daniel Lapin was the guest on "WallBuilders Live" today where he discussed "the health benefits of attending synagogues and churches." During the conversation with co-host Rick Green, Lapin made the case that God designed people to interact and thus social connections were integral to good health, which is why people ought to regularly attend religious services.

That prompted Green to complain that under President Obama's "socialized medicine," states where people frequently attend church and are therefore healthier will end up having to "foot the bill" for all the states where people don't attend church. 

That observation struck Lapin as quite insightful, who then offered his own bizarre theory that people who don't have children are "anti-social" because they are forcing other people's children to take care of them:

Green: If you are in a society and culture that has that connection and that places a high value on religion and affiliation there and you get the better health that results, it looks like now, the way that America is going with socialized medicine, those states that are like that are going to end up footing the bill for the states that choose the other path, which is less connection and less affiliation with religion and those things because they are going to have a higher health bill.  But now, with socialized medicine, we'll pay for it.

Lapin: Oh, absolutely.  And by the way, that is also true of Social Security.  It's all very well people choose not to have children; not only do they pay a health penalty for that but the truth is that your children and mine are going to have to pay for them. People say "it's not true, I have my investments to take care of me, I don't need children." Well, that may be true, however your investments depend on a growing market of customers because your investments are in company and what characterizes a profitable company is that it has customers; it's customer are my children.

Green: Yeah, that's a good point, I hadn't even thought about that. If you don't have children, first of all, they are not contributing to the overall marketplace but also the tax base and everything else.

Lapin: That is exactly right.  So I really do think that a claim of anti-social behavior can be lodged at the door of people who choose not to have children.

• Sen. Jim DeMint is resigning from the Senate to become the next president of the Heritage Foundation and FRC's Tony Perkins is thrilled: "We are proud to partner with Heritage on numerous projects, including our annual Values Voter Summit and our recently completed national bus tour. With a good friend like Jim DeMint joining this great organization, I look forward to that partnership deepening even further."
• Speaking of the Values Voter Summit, regular VVS speaker Stephen Baldwin has been charged with tax evasion.
• We'll see how the Religious Right feels about Sheldon Adelson spending hundreds of millions of dollars on elections when they learn that he considers himself to be "basically a social liberal."
• The Barna Groups analyzes the role of faith in the 2012 election and finds that "Notional Christians — the large segment of voters who consider themselves to be Christian but are not born again — voted decisively in favor of Mr. Obama." Of course, this will not stop the Religious Right from insisting that all Christians share their views and must vote Republican.
• Rick Green is not happy with Bob Costas' commentary on gun violence, telling him to "study up on this issue, learn the facts, and apply some common sense."  If only he'd give the same advice to David Barton.
• Finally, FRC prays that the Supreme Court will protect "traditional marriage": "God, our nation is flooded with sin and debauchery. Move upon our Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution, the laws of Congress, the will of the people, and 'the laws of nature and of nature's God.' Cause us to return to you. Send revival to your Church and awakening to our nation and a turning of the cultural tide, including our laws, politics and policy. Make us, yet, a City on a Hill and a light for You to the nations. Help us fervently to pray until our courts preserve natural, historic, biblical marriage just as You intended it!"

William Owens of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, which is not so much a real coalition as it is a right-wing front group, appeared on WallBuilders Live today with David Barton and Rick Green to denounce President Obama for endorsing same-sex marriage. The virulently anti-gay pastor once again compared his political activism to that of Martin Luther King, Jr., agreeing with Green’s suggestion that he is “taking the same stance Martin Luther King, Jr. would.” Owens also reiterated his claim that he was a civil rights figure, despite little evidence of his role in the movement.

He claimed that Obama’s approach to the black community is “not acceptable” following his endorsement of marriage equality and decision to lead America “down a very immoral road,” and doubted that Obama “even believes it himself, but because of the money and catering to the homosexual community” he took the pro-equality stance anyway. To top it all off, Owens said that “my people in Africa killed each other by the thousands so we can’t give him a pass because he’s black.”

Green: So why is this an important enough issue for ya’ll to move forward like this?

Owens: I think it’s important because it’s changing our culture and we feel that the President, being the first black president number one, holding the most powerful position in the world was put their overwhelmingly by black people. I was in the civil rights movement and we marched for civil rights but it was not for a man to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman, and the President has not given us the courtesy of even answering our request. That is improper, it’s disrespect. You cannot ignore that many pastors and their members and cater to the homosexual community, he’s had Lady Gaga in the White House, he gave same-sex marriage a party in the White House, but to ignore thousands of pastors and their members is not acceptable and we will not give him a pass because he’s black.

Green: You know you said something I think is just absolutely correct; you said ‘by embracing same-sex marriage President Obama is leading this country down an immoral path’ and ‘some things are bigger than the next election’ and you also mentioned that the black church has always been the conscience of America, I think that’s absolutely true. To see this stance, being willing to say we may agree with the President on a ton of other issues but this one is just too big, we cannot stand by and allow him to lead us down this immoral path is a courageous stance. How are people responding to you?

Owens: We almost have that 100,000 signatures, believe it or not, and they are responding daily, sometimes three or four hits a minute, supporting our position. As you know, every state that the marriage amendment has been on the ballot, we have won in every state and the blacks have overwhelmingly voted against same-sex marriage in every state. So the President takes it on himself to put his ideas out there for political reasons, I don’t think he even believes it himself, but because of the money and catering to the homosexual community, well I guarantee you the homosexual community doesn’t have as many people as there are Christians, black and white and all colors. I think he’s put himself in a corner, I don’t think he expected us to come out against him so hard because he’s black, but we’re not giving him a pass because he’s black, he’s leading the country down a very immoral road that it will take years to know the ramifications.

Green: It sounds like you’re taking the same stance Martin Luther King, Jr. would, it’s not the color of his skin but the content of character and what are the actual positions.

Owens: That’s right. We can’t give him a pass because he’s black. My people in Africa killed each other by the thousands so we can’t give him a pass because he’s black. Being black does not make him any more honorable, in this case as far as I’m concerned it’s making him less honorable. He was the first black president and this is what he uses his power for.

BreakPoint ministry, founded by the late Chuck Colson and chaired by Timothy George, appears to be making a clean break with junk historian David Barton. While Barton and his deputy Rick Green continue to claim their only critics are left-wing, anti-Christian academic elitists, more and more conservatives are distancing themselves from Barton.

Just as Barton projects his own right-wing political views and fundamentalist version of Christianity onto the Founders, Tom Gilson writes for BreakPoint that many Christians readily accepted Barton’s version of history because it validated their own political and religious beliefs: “He gave us what we wanted.” Consequently, “Barton’s errors are not only his” as they “also belong to those of us who bought his message carelessly, unquestioningly, too eagerly, and too comfortably.”

Gilson points out that Barton’s work faced significant scrutiny long before evangelical historians began criticizing Barton’s “scholarship” as “serious questions that have surrounded Barton’s work for a long time” and the Christian publishing giant Thomas Nelson pulled “The Jefferson Lies” from publication, and yet many Barton fans agreed with his claim that any criticism is a result of the “liberal academy’s antipathy to Christianity.” “It’s not political opinion that’s stacking up against him now,” Gilson writes. “It’s well documented facts.”

David Barton was American evangelicals’ favorite historian. He taught us about the Founding Fathers’ almost uniform commitment to Christian principles, and secular historians’ attempts to bury our Christian heritage under reams of revisionist distortions. He gave us firepower in support of our mission to return America to its godly founding principles.

He gave us what we wanted. But now David Barton has been credibly charged with serious distortions of his own.

The story has been told in both the secular and the Christian press: Barton’s most recent book, The Jefferson Lies, was riddled with misinformation. Its publisher, Thomas Nelson, pulled it from distribution. Barton is standing firm in his position, but reliable historians—strongly conservative Christian scholars among them—continue to hold him in error, and not just because of this work but because of others as well.

I am no historian, so I am in no position to form an independent judgment of his veracity. Few of us are. But that doesn’t excuse our eager acceptance of his inaccuracies. With a bit of care, any of us could have known of the serious questions that have surrounded Barton’s work for a long time. These recent revelations are nothing new, except in the degree to which conservative Christian scholars are involved in calling him to account.

Nevertheless we became for him a devoted cadre of disciples. We knew our country’s founding principles were vitally important. However, so is historical accuracy. It looks as if Barton compromised one to make a case for the other.

If the signs have been there for some time, why then did we love Barton so? And is it possible that we share the blame? Barton fended off criticism by blaming it on the liberal academy’s antipathy to Christianity. That had more than a little believability to it. I am quite sure that liberal academics often hold to an ideological agenda that motivates them to discredit Christianity’s part in our nation’s history. Thus, it was easy (and it still is) to be suspicious of their criticisms in this case. But the ideology defense is no help when it’s conservative Christians making a case against Barton—especially when it’s a case as verifiable as this is proving to be. It’s not political opinion that’s stacking up against him now. It’s well documented facts.

…

To accept any human teacher without checking on his message with due diligence is to abandon our responsibility to the truth. David Barton’s errors are not only his. They also belong to those of us who bought his message carelessly, unquestioningly, too eagerly, and too comfortably.

David Barton and Rick Green continued their crusade to salvage Barton's tattered reputation by quickly putting together a two-part program on "WallBuilders Live" dedicated mostly to once again attacking Warren Throckmorton has unchristian and untrustworthy - which they know because, among other things, he uses information from Right Wing Watch.

But mostly they just wanted everyone to know that the mounting criticism of Barton's shoddy scholarship is really an effort to "disenfranchise Christians":

Barton: So this really is an attack, not at us per se; this is an attack on religious involvement in general from religious conservatives who have gotten into the process in the last twenty-five years.

Green: They recognize that you are kind of the voice of that for so long. I mean, you've been tireless over the last twenty-five years speaking across the nation and educating us on these things and putting those original documents on-line, putting out there in front of us. So, like you said, they know if they can go after you and somehow taint your image and create this image of you that isn't true that it helps to bring down the whole movement, it helps to kind of disenfranchise Christians, really, from being involved.

Once again, let us state unequivocally that people are not criticizing Barton's scholarship because he is a Christian; they are criticizing it because it is full of falsehoods; falsehoods that Barton's knowingly propagates in order to promote his political agenda.

When we point out that it is not true that "many of the clauses we find in the Constitution are literal, direct quotations out of the Bible," as Barton so regularly claims, it is not just a difference of opinion or a matter of interpretation, but rather undeniable proof that Barton has a documented history of intentionally making false claims.

So why wouldn't Throckmorton cite Right Wing Watch in making the case that Barton's history cannot be trusted?  Especially when one considers that we have dozens and dozens of documented examples of Barton saying false and absurd things? 

As Kyle pointed out, David Barton is trying to salvage his collapsing support by yet again attacking the religious and political views of his critics, joining American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer today in smearing Warren Throckmorton as a tool of the left. Unfortunately for Barton, more and more conservatives are denouncing his right-wing pseudo-history on the heels of a scathing NPR report and the news that Thomas Nelson has yanked his latest book, “The Jefferson Lies,” from publication.

Now, the former dean of Regent University’s Robertson School of Government—named after televangelist Pat Robertson—and a leading conservative writer is adding his voice to the growing chorus of historians criticizing Barton’s sloppy scholarship. Regent University professor Charles Dunn endorsed the book, “Getting Jefferson Right,” written by professors Throckmorton and Michael Coulter of Grove City College, which is also an evangelical school. “Getting Jefferson Right” debunked many of the claims found in Barton’s book on Jefferson, and Dunn said the book “stands up for truth in scholarship against the prevarications in David Barton’s The Jefferson’s Lies”:

Getting Jefferson Right by Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter stands up for truth in scholarship against the prevarications in David Barton’s The Jefferson’s Lies. Because of the courage of Throckmorton and Coulter, Barton has now fallen from his pedestal of preeminence as a scholar of the early American era. Throckmorton and Coulter deserve the “Medal of Honor” for courage and probity.

Meanwhile, Barton’s deputy at WallBuilders and radio talk show co-host Rick Green who last week likened Barton’s critics to Adolf Hitler, is now comparing reasoned criticism of Barton to the Holocaust in another post denying that any of Barton’s claims have been “proven faulty”:

Hitler loved to give “examples” of Jewish “offenses” to support his effort to annihilate the Jewish people. Not only were they most often false “offenses,” even if they had all been true it would not have supported the conclusion that the entire race should be wiped out. Any intelligent observer of today’s debate must challenge the premises presented and make sure that the “facts” of the critics support the conclusion they want you to believe. In every accusation I have seen so far in this debate, no premise or conclusion of David Barton has been proven faulty.