One of David Barton’s standard tricks is simply to assert things as if they are undeniable facts without ever providing any explanation whatsoever.
He does it when he claims that the Bible has teachings on everything from the Capital Gains tax to the minimum wage, just as he does when asserts that ideas central to our system of government were simply plucked wholesale directly out of the Bible.
Nowhere does Barton ever provide any documentation to support his claims; he simply asserts them as facts.
Case in point is the recent addition to his standard presentation that the Due Process Clause and the Fourth and Eighth Amendments all came out of the Bible.
How Barton arrived at this discovery is never explained, but it is not stopping him from spreading it relentlessly, as he did during his recent appearance on Daystar’s “Joni”:
Notice Barton’s repeated use of the vague phrase “they”: they were put on trial; they were not allowed a jury; they didn’t get an attorney; they wrote a book about trials.
Who are they? The Founding Fathers? Religious leaders? Some other group of people? Who knows, because Barton never bothers to say. Instead, he simply asserts that, based on the trial of Jesus and Paul, “they” decided to include the Due Process Clause.
Nor does Barton ever explain how these trials lead to the Constitutional prohibitions against double jeopardy, self-incrimination, excessive or cruel and unusual punishment or guarantees of a right to an attorney – he again just flatly asserts that it is so.
If Barton has actual evidence to support these claims, he apparently doesn’t see a need to share it. And why would he? It is not as if the Religious Right audiences to whom he peddles his pseudo-history is ever going to call him on it.
