We’re used to David Barton lying about American history, but now he seems to have branched out into Bill O’Reilly-style self-aggrandizing lies. In a talk at Charles Bible College in Colorado, Barton claimed to have played on a college basketball team that set the NCAA record for scoring per game.
David Barton is such a brazen liar that one has to wonder if he ever tells the truth about anything. If he said the sky is blue, one would be justified in doubting him given his track record. Here’s yet another distortion, this time about Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer:
Warren Throckmorton, who really has become a very important critic of David Barton, notes that Barton is now lying about his previous lies having been shown to be true after all by two lawsuits. I’ve written before about the lawsuit that was settled over the claim that he is “known” for speaking at white supremacist rallies. The second was against a guy who said Barton is an “admitted liar.” Here’s what he has claimed about those two cases:
I’m sure many of you remember a blog post I wrote almost a year ago entitled Atheists, Please Stop Saying These Things. It was just a critique of what I think are some very common and very bad arguments made by atheists. Someone posted a link to it on Google+ a couple weeks ago and that prompted several hangouts and discussions of it, including two by a guy named Mike, who goes by the name Forbidden Fruit. I’ll post the Youtube video below the fold, then take a look at some of what he has to say.
The completely unhinged Janet Porter has produced a new documentary that features the usual lineup of wingnuts — David Barton, Mike Huckabee, Louis Gohmert, Steve King, etc. — claiming that we’re headed toward a totalitarian dystopia when gay rights activists outlaw Christianity. Because that’s totally realistic, right? We’re going to outlaw the religion held by 70% of the population. If you think that’s going to happen, please hold your breath until it does.
Rachel Tabachnick of Political Research Associates has an expose about David Lane, who has replaced Ralph Reed as the most important kingmaker on the Christian right. As I’ve documented many times, Lane has a truly warped version of American history and is a genuine theocrat. This is a telling passage from a Worldnetdaily article about him that was later removed from the site:
As the right wing continues to rail against same-sex marriage and the federal courts that have ruled in favor of it, David Barton says it’s trivially easy for Congress to put a stop to it. They can just strip their jurisdiction to hear such cases or disband the courts entirely.
It’s not unusual for people to take contradictory positions and not recognize the dissonance between them, but Glenn Beck seems to elevate this sort of thing to an art form. Take gay rights, for example. On the one hand, he doesn’t seem to be particularly anti-gay himself. On the other hand, he continually praises those who are. Here is perhaps his most pro-gay (or anti-anti-gay, at least) statement yet:
I reported recently that David Barton had won a settlement in a lawsuit he filed against two Texas Board of Education candidates who accused him of being “known for speaking at white supremacist rallies.” And he actually had a case there. But now he’s lying and claiming that this vindicates his dishonest and inaccurate historical claims.
We may be losing Michele Bachmann, but Congressman-elect Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, an acolyte of David Barton, promises to carry on her legacy of stupidity. In an interview with Josh Duggar, filling in for Tony Perkins on the FRC radio show, he staked his claim on the “war on Christmas.”
Dispatches From the Culture Wars
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