As we noted in our earlier post about David Barton today, he has a rather serious problem with accurately presenting information, especially in situations where misrepresenting that information better suits his religious/political agenda.
Case in point, during last Friday’s program, Barton went off on his new favorite topic about the ways in which know-nothing government bureaucrats are interfering with the lives and work of average Americans in cumbersome and absurd ways. To prove his point, Barton cited a supposed situation in which the Department of Agriculture shut down shows featuring Tennessee Walking Horses solely because these government bureaucrats thought “it looks strange to us” and must be damaging the horses, even though they had no idea how to actually check a horse’s hoof in the first place:
That is Barton’s version of the story, which you can compare to the real version of the story involving undercover video filmed by the Humane Society showing trainers routinely beating and torturing horses in order train them to walk in this distinctive manner:
The Humane Society of the United States released undercover video Thursday of a Tennessee Walking Horse trainer abusing the animals in order to accentuate their well-known high leg kick.
The practice, known as “soring,” involves using chemicals on the horses ankles as a way to force them, because of pain, to lift their legs higher when they walk … Soring has been illegal under the federal Horse Protection Act since 1970. But Keith Dane, director of equine protection for the Humane Society, said it has “continued unabated for the past 42 years.”
The video, shot over seven weeks last year by an undercover humane society investigator, shows trainers at a Collierville, Tenn., farm applying the chemicals to the horses, whipping them, shocking them in the head and hitting their legs with wooden sticks. At points, horses in the video struggle to stand up.
The USDA responded by mandating that inspecting organizations levy fines on those who violate this law; a move that prompted a lawsuit from the industry.
So it was not just a bunch of DC bureaucrats shutting down a legitimate business operation because they just thought the whole thing was kind of weird but rather an order to impose fines in response to leading trainers being caught engaging in illegal practices that injured horses.
As we have said several times before, if Barton cannot be relied upon to accurately relate information pertaining to situations that anyone with access to Google can easily check and verify, how can anyone trust the arcane claims he makes about early American history?
