Every year, Republican activist and Religious Right pseudo-historian David Barton gathers conservative state legislators at a “ProFamily Legislator’s Conference” to learn about model legislation along with “current public policy issues in a manner that honors our Judeo-Christian heritage and the vision of our Founding Fathers.”
At last year’s conference in November, one of the speakers at Barton’s conference was Cynthia Dunbar, a former member of the Texas State Board of Education who has admitted that her goal on the board was to correct a “biblically illiterate society.” Dunbar, who now works at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, was named a Virginia state co-chair of Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign last month, aligning her further with Barton, who chairs a pro-Cruz super PAC.
In her speech at Barton’s conference, which Barton broadcast on his “Wallbuilders Live” program last week, Dunbar urged legislators to get involved in education in order to stop the “deception of the seed” by “our socialized education system.”
“I believe it’s a crucial issue for several reasons,” she said. “One, it’s what I call the seed policy, if you think about it, every major social issue you’re encountering as legislators actually directs back to what it talks about it in Genesis, ‘if I would put enmity between you and the seed of the woman.’ Because what happens, what is abortion? Abortion is the destruction of the seed. What is homosexuality? It is the prevention of the seed. And what is education? It is potential deception of the seed.”
“And so when we have 88 to 90 percent, which is approximately the number of the students that are being educated within our socialized education system, effectively indoctrinating our children with our own tax dollars, guess what?” she asked. “We lose every other issue. We lose life, we lose marriage, we lose all of it. So I think this is the linchpin issue.”
Dunbar also put in a plug for teaching public school kids Barton’s signature spin on American history, saying that the “brilliant” Barton had discovered that “94 percent of the quotes of the founding fathers” were “either directly or indirectly” related to the Bible.
“One of my favorite historians, brilliant, brilliant man, says that 94 percent of the quotes of the founding fathers contemporaneous to our nation’s founding were either directly or indirectly from holy scripture,” she declared. “We know what that means when we say ‘directly,’ they’re quoting scripture. What does it mean when we say ‘indirectly’? They were quoting men who were quoting scripture.”
Unsurprisingly, this Barton “fact” — which also turns up in a book written by Dunbar — is the product of some of Barton’s trademark misinterpretation topped off by some fuzzy math .
