Christian nationalists like David Barton have to lie a lot in order to make Thomas Jefferson sound like one of them. They have to ignore a mountain of statements in his private letters that make absolutely clear that he rejected almost everything about the Christian mythology. So Barton says things like this:
Well-respected evangelical Christian historian John Fea has another esay, this time in Christianity Today, looking at the theology of Ted Cruz. Specifically, about how he mixes, even entirely conflates, theology with American history. Given that David Barton runs his Super PAC, this is hardly surprising.
David Barton, who has made it quite clear that he is a theocrat, admitted on his radio program that the new David Barton School of Government at a Christian college in Arkansas is a tool to help Christians conquer the “mountain” of government, drawing on the teachings of Seven Mountains Dominionism.
Okay folks, I think David Barton has hit peak stupid. As part of his Foundations of Freedom series, he sits down with Glenn Beck and says that if you tithe 10% like you’re supposed to, your cars will run for over 200,000 miles and your shoes will never wear out. Seriously.
Professional liar David Barton doesn’t just lie, he lies with total shamelessness and he’ll repeat those lies over and over again, no matter how many times they’ve been debunked. One lie he loves to repeat is the claim that those on welfare programs are given an average of $61,000 a year.
Warren Throckmorton has been tracking down data on David Barton’s recent lie that “the violent crime rate has gone down 75 percent in Las Vegas by the reintroduction of biblical teachings back in the city through the police department and the churches.” It could hardly be any more false, of course.
David Barton, as is well established, has a connection to reality that is not merely tenuous, it’s non-existent. The world he lives in bears no resemblance at all to the one the rest of us live in. He lies as casually as the rest of us breathe and invents statistics out of thin air. Like this one:
David Barton was getting nervous. He’d gone almost 24 hours without telling a lie and the DTs were starting to set in. So while appearing at a Christian men’s conference, he told another whopper in what was, I’m sure, the nick of time. This time he claimed that the FBI has him listed as a hate group on their website.
David Barton may run a Super PAC supporting Ted Cruz and therefore at least pretends to be in favor of democracy, he’s really a Christian theocrat who thinks the Bible should be the law of the land. He makes that clear yet again when he declares that judges in this country must “render judgment for God.”
David Barton is not just a professional liar, he’s also a slavery apologist. In an interview with Glenn Beck this week, he actually said that race relations were better when whites owned black slaves because the whites treated them like members of the family. And whites don’t get enough credit for ending slavery!
Remember Susan DeLumus, the New Hampshire state legislator who pretended to be a political neophyte while saying all kinds of dumb things in support of Donald Trump on a Fox News focus group? Well she’s really mad that Pope Francis criticized her true savior and has declared him to be the Antichrist.
Dispatches From the Culture Wars
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