Article we will be discussing:: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/history-advisor-to-members-…
Liars website:: http://www.liarsforjesus.com/index.html
Chris on HuffPost:: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/chris-rodda
Chris on Talk2Action:: http://www.talk2action.org/user/Chris%20Rodda
On Twitter:: https://twitter.com/ChrisRodda1
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Pseudo-historian David Barton, best known for his misquoting of our country’s founders to promote the notion that America was founded as a Christian nation, also has a habit of telling some pretty tall tales about his own life. There was his claim of being a college basketball star, his claim of having been a translator for the Russian women’s national gymnastics team, and most recently his claim of having an earned doctorate. But while most of Barton’s bio-embellishing claims have either been proven to be false or are so far-fetched that they are just impossible to believe, there is one that is unfortunately all too true – that he advises many members of Congress on historical subjects. This isn’t just another bogus claim made up by Barton to exaggerate his achievements and impress his audience. It has been repeatedly confirmed by members of Congress who have praised Barton by proclaiming that he is their go-to guy when they need historical examples to use in their arguments on current issues and legislation.
So, who are these members of Congress who run to David Barton when they need historical “facts” to justify their political agenda and legislation? Well, they are almost exclusively members of something called the Congressional Prayer Caucus, a House caucus founded in 2005 by former congressman Randy Forbes, with the help of David Barton — a caucus whose numbers have ranged from ninety to well over a hundred members since its founding.
If y'all may remember I posted a piece concerning Rick Saccone back in 2013 dealing with the want to include "In God We Trust" as a motto in PA schools. At the time it was not to far removed from one of Forbes' faux paux from 2011,
[t]o understand the significance of undermining the motto, it is important to first understand our nation's rich spiritual history. The Founders acknowledged our nation's trust in God in our foundational document, the Declaration of Independence,,, [Emphasis mine]
Saccone seems to think that there is yet a crisis of national identity, confusion among Americans about their nation’s motto. I will wager that the ideology (Christian Revisionist history put forth by David Barton) that forced Forbes into his erroneous statement also rules the mind of Saccone. I will also wager that neither Forbes nor Saccone "know," or understand, the history behind the phrase beyond what fits into their personal or political agendas.
Q:: Can you touch on again, as I know in our previous talks we have hit this point, why the DOI is not a legal document in the manner the Reich so wants it to be? (We didn't hit on this point but still important!),,,a significant voting bloc that bases its positions and voting decisions on the Bible and the notion that America is a Christian nation, whether it’s on the obvious church/state separation issues or any of the other various issues, such as women’s reproductive rights, gay rights, climate change, etc., in which the personal religious beliefs of these lawmakers are the deciding factor in their opinions and how they vote.
The sole purpose of the Declaration of Independence was to dissolve the legal ties between the colonies and Great Britain; once that goal was achieved, the official role of the Declaration was finished. As I noted, Daulton Dickey in his piece sums it up quite well.
Q:: What exactly is the Congressional Prayer Caucus, what is their influence and how wide is this influence? I know they have been highlighted in many of your writings concerning the "National Day of Prayer".,,,But what people need to understand is that Barton and his disciples in Congress believe that the answer to any question or problem facing America today can be found in the Bible. For example, the description on Barton’s radio show website for one of Pence’s appearances in 2008 was: “Today, David Barton, Rick Green [Barton’s co-host], and Congressman Mike Pence discuss Biblical principles in regards to the energy debate.” Yeah, that’s right — even something as completely unrelated to religion as energy policy can somehow be based on “Biblical principles”!
Q:: Rhetorical, as I know the answer and I am sure others do as well. How dangerous is Mike Pence?
I think what is important to realize, and it is a point you make - the Reich distorts American history to make it fit their agenda. Agenda, being the key word. Q:: While their agenda is blatantly obvious to us, in a few words - I'm thinking just one - what is this agenda?On a recent episode of his radio show, titled “Immigration: What Founding Fathers Of America Thought About It,” Barton attempted to make the bizarre case that immigration was really a state, and not a federal, issue, actually saying that “the feds didn’t have all that much to do with immigration; the states did.” He also claimed that, while the founders “were absolutely okay with people immigrating from anywhere,” there were “certain requirements you had to meet when you got here.” And what were these requirements according to Barton’s convoluted arguments? That immigrants assimilate by learning to speak English and, of course, be Christian. To support his claim that immigration in the days of the founders was a state and not a federal issue, Barton used a so-called quote from Jefferson — a quote that he had previously used in an article on his website to argue that the federal government had no business being involved in healthcare, but is now using for immigration as well as healthcare.
Q:: Again, for the sake of redundancy, what is a theocracy or theocratic rule?
The meat of Chris' article (see attached article),,,The problem with Barton’s so-called Jefferson quote? Well, Jefferson wasn’t talking about immigrants. He wasn’t even talking about ships coming to America from other countries. He was talking about the exact opposite — ships that were sailing from America to Europe!
The quote that Barton butchers so completely to make it say the exact opposite of what Jefferson was actually talking about comes from Jefferson’s 1805 message to Congress (what we today call the State of the Union address).
The role of the yellow fever epidemicSo, you see what Barton did, with his typical complete audacity, to change the last sentence of the above quote to transform Jefferson’s words about ships sailing from America to Europe into a so-called Jefferson quote about immigrants coming to America?
Barton’s version:
“The federal government is to certify with the exact truth for every vessel sailing in from a foreign port the state of health on that vessel, which prevails from which country she sails …”
What Jefferson really said:
“I have strictly enjoined on the officers at the head of customs to certify with exact truth, for every vessel sailing for a foreign port the state of health respecting this fever which prevails at the place from which she sails.”
HealthcareAs you can see, Jefferson very clearly said that addressing the issue of yellow fever was both a state and a federal matter, most obviously because the federal government had authority under the Constitution over both interstate and international commerce, which the big healthcare crisis of that era was certainly affecting. But, more importantly, look at Jefferson’s words in the last sentence of the above quote — “Although the health laws of the States should be found to need no present revisal by Congress …” Clearly, by the words “revisal by Congress,” Jefferson was saying that the federal government did have the authority to overrule the health laws of the states if the state laws were inadequate to protect the national interests.
And Jefferson wasn’t the first president to be of this opinion. In his 1798 message to Congress, John Adams, who also made the issue of yellow fever epidemics his first order of business, called on Congress to establish regulations “in aid of” the health laws of the individual states, also citing the Constitution’s commerce clause as the authority to do so (emphasis added),,,
Why is this important?But David Barton, by his blatant butchering of Jefferson’s words to create a fake Jefferson quote about immigration, and further misquoting Jefferson by leaving out the part where Jefferson said that this health crisis was both a state and a federal issue, has, in his typical fashion, created just the kind of perfect (and perfectly bogus) founding fathers’ quote that his disciples, both in Congress and elsewhere, count on him to provide them with.
And, while the fact that we have many members of our Congress relying on David Barton for their historical information is frightening enough, there is something even more scary than that. As I wrote quite a bit about in my most recent book, Barton’s brand of Christian nationalist history has already made it into our public schools via the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS) curriculum, a curriculum chock full of Barton’s history lies (not surprising since Barton is on the NCBCPS’s advisory board), with this Barton-inspired curriculum already being taught in 2,900 public high schools in 39 states according to the NCBCPS website. But it gets worse than that. Barton has now come out with a new history curriculum, set to be released this August, which is also potentially destined to end up in our public schools.
To get more information concerning the issue in TX - remember how TX and CA swing with regards to education has significant impact nationwide
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