UPDATE: Ron Paul Caught in the Fake History Goo 2!
Chris Rodda just put up a new (dKos) post on Ron Paul's endorsement of H. Res. 888 that seems to stem from his rather peculiar reading of the Constitution which might suggest, to some, that Ron Paul thinks common articles of the English language such as "and", "or" or "but" are obvious references to God.
Ron Paul's embrace of fake history should clue in secular libertarians who support him for his principled anti-war stance; Ron Paul is close to, if not over the edge into, full blown Christian Reconstructionism. Many Christian Reconstructionists, you see, do actually oppose the US occupation of Iraq. They also (some of them at least) want to abolish the IRS and most non-miltary/police/legal functions of government and impose stoning as a punishment for blasphemy and various (allegedly un-Biblical) sexual infractions. Call them "antiwar stoners" of another stripe.
[ NOTE: For actions you can take to help push back the seeping goo of revisionist, Christian nationalist fake history and fight the looming, possible national embarrassment of a House majority vote endorsing H. Res. 888, please scroll down to box titled "action items" ]
"Sabotaged By Leftists !"
This post concerns a) a victory dance, on how the dKos community played a key role in exposing the history lies of a Christian-right revisionist American history book that seemed, last summer, to be on the verge of breaking through to mainstream recognition b) crucial work that still needs to be done (and, there's a lot of it) : especially stopping H. Res. 888.
Here's an example of what two people, with no budget, can do with the help of an engaged online political community : stop the Stalin-esque effort to rewrite American history and, through that, turn the US into a "Christian nation".
Last summer, Chris Rodda and I teamed up to oppose the mainstreaming of the Christian Right's falsified, revisionist version of American history and the Daily Kos community rallied to vote up Chris Rodda's Amazon.com review of Stephen Mansfield's book "Ten Tortured Words..." that attacked church/state separation. Now, the book is a fire sale item thanks - in large part - to the efforts of this community.
Some supporters of the book, last summer, spun wild conspiratorial tales : it was a huge "campaign" by George Soros ! The Democratic Party was involved too ! Not. The "campaign" was Chris Rodda and I, unpaid, writing on blogs, chiefly Talk To Action and here, to expose the foetid mass of revisionism and falsification of Mansfield's book.
But first, a bit of news from the Lone-Star State...
Paleocon Mired in Fake History Tar Pits: Ron Paul
[from Chris Rodda's new Ron Paul Co-Sponsors H. Res. 888]
image, right: Ron Paul - Anti-war TX Republican for Christian-nationalist historical revisionism
"Joining the ranks of historically challenged members of Congress to sign onto Randy Forbes's litany of Christian nationalist lies about American history is none other than presidential candidate Ron Paul, who, in an article on his campaign website about the courts and the "elitist, secular Left" driving religion from the public square, shows off his own ignorance of our Constitution.
"The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government's hostility to religion." "
Truth-Obsessed Leftists Brutally Ravage Falsified History Book Minding its Own Business !
I was just talking with Chris Rodda, MRFF researcher and author of Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version Of American History, and Chris mentioned to me that as a result of the work the two of us did, last summer, in exposing and publicizing the history lies of Stephen Mansfield, sales of Mansfield's latest book have plummeted to the point that hard cover copies of Ten Tortured Words: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America... and What's Happened Since are being sold at an 80% discount.
"Ten Tortured Words..." is so full of inaccuracies, misrepresentations and falsifications that the book is best not understood as history as such but, rather, as Christian nationalist political propaganda.
The book only came out last summer, and it got considerable notice at the time including a favorable review in USA Today. "Ten Tortured Words.." was packed with the Christian right's falsified version of American history that gets used to buttress the claim that America was founded as a "Christian nation" and, from that claim, its a short hop to Christian reconstructionism and the drive, by former US Justice Roy Moore and others, to slap up the Ten Commandments in US courthouses and also the demand that US law be rectified with Biblical law (stoning, anyone ?) .
In short, history matters. For more on that, see my piece How Fake American History Feeds Christian Nationalism and also Frederick Clarkson's History is Powerful: Why the Christian Right Distorts History and Why it Matters
If you haven't looked at Chris Rodda's review of Stephen Mansfield's book at Amazon.com, I'd encourage you to read it and, if you think it merits that, give it a vote of approval. As Rodda notes in her Amazon review, in a deliciously droll and sarcastic turn of phrase, "Stephen Mansfield tortures a lot more than ten words" (!)
You'll also note that the first review currently in the review list for Mansfield's book complains that the Daily Kos community has "trashed" Stephen Mansfield's book.
As the writer who asserted that puts it:
I wanted to warn buyers on Amazon back in August of the deception, and orchestrated effort of these Leftists websites to deceive them by posting negative bogus reviews to sway the rating system and by doing that to discourage Amazon buyers from purchasing the book. But I waited, thinking that Amazon or someone surely would notify the buying public on Amazon of this despicable and deceitful effort by Daily Kos Leftists, as well as other Leftist websites to deliberately deceive the buyers on Amazon who wish only to read honest, truthful reviews without some sort of orchestrated agenda of deception.
Any book should stand on it's on without being the subject of any groups efforts at tying to suppress the readership of a book by using orchestrated, bogus and deceitful tactics to corrupt the rating system. Using honest reviews is one thing, but encouraging reviews by those who have not read the book is another.
Actually, I happen to know, for a FACT, that Chris Rodda, who wrote a scathing review of Stephen Mansfield's "Ten Tortured Lies..." on Amazon.com, DID in fact read Mansfield's book.
How do I know ? Well, I picked up a copy for her and hand delivered it, quite literally, when I was passing by her house while traveling up the East Coast. So, I know she possesses a copy. But, I also know Chris has gone over the book with a fine-tooth comb because she's written about it, quite extensively in fact, at Talk To Action.
The "review" which claims that the Daily Kos community "trashed" Stephen Mansield's book "Ten Tortured Words..." does not, in fact, even offer up a rudimentary rebuttal of Chris Rodda's Amazon.com review. It's an effort to cloud the issue by claiming (boo hoo !) "persecution".
H. RES 888: FAKE HISTORY SLOUCHES ONWARD
Here's Chris Rodda's latest update in the status of H. Res. 888, 35% of House Republicans Support Christian Nationalist History Revisionism. The GOP's endorsement of fake history can be used to powerful effect- that's an endorsement of lies (violating one of the Ten Commandments by the way) but, first, Democrats have to get off the fake history wagon.
ACTION ITEMS
Stopping House Resolution 888 is paramount. Writing to our calling our Congressional Representatives is important so they'll know there's popular opposition to H. Res. 888 and also to assure them, that there will be future publicity about those House Representatives who vote to endorse what has been demonstrated to be fake US history. From both most religious and most secular viewpoints, lying is bad. If you do contact your rep, you might suggest to them that you're confident he/she will vote to support accurate American history and so maintain the integrity of the American historical record. Here's a post I did with some further suggestions, STOP H. RES 888! and, for the case exposing 888's myriad history fabrications and distortions, here is Chris Rodda's 7-part series debunking the history lies in H. Res. 888.
If you're interested in helping combat falsified American history, here are a few minor steps you can take. Chris Rodda has written reviews, on Amazon.com, exposing history lies and other inaccuracies in books by David Barton, Stephen Beliles and David McDowell and Stephen Mansfield. Her reviews of the Barton and Beliles/McDowell books could use some help (votes) so they'd be more prominent on their respective Amazon review pages. That's one small step, and the reviews aren't fluff - they're academically rigorous.
House Resolution 888 has picked up over a dozen new GOP supporters, and 5 Democrats currently support the resolution too. If H. Res. 888 even passes in the house, activists on the Christian right will be able to use the purported credibility of that endorsement to help insinuate or force falsified Christian nationalist versions of American history into public schools (see concluding section of this post for details and what you can do) .
Chris Rodda was the first person (or entity nonprofit watchdog groups missed 888 too) to notice or, at least, understand House Resolution 888 for what it was, and Chris and I sparked, in early January 2007, what became a substantial Internet-driven advocacy campaign, opposition to 888, that resulted in at least hundreds (maybe even thousands) of call to US Congressional Representatives in opposition to the resolution.
Here's Chris's characterization of the resolution, from a January 2007 Talk To Action post, the first existing substantive analysis of the political and propagandistic import of H. Res. 888:
While the recent House of Representatives "Christmas resolution" was being covered and discussed ad nauseum on countless websites, blogs, and elsewhere, another far more heinous resolution was introduced, one which, unbelievably, does not appear to have been noticed by anyone.
On December 18, 2007, Congressman Randy Forbes (R-VA) introduced H. Res. 888, a resolution "Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as 'American Religious History Week' for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith."
This resolution, which purports to promote "education on America's history of religious faith," is packed with the same American history lies found on the Christian nationalist websites, and in the books of pseudo-historians like David Barton. It lists a total of seventy-five "Whereas's," leading up to four resolves, the third of which is particularly disturbing -- that the U.S. House of Representatives "rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or purposely omit such history from our Nation's public buildings and educational resources," a travesty of the highest magnitude, considering that most of the "history" this resolve aims to promote in our public buildings and schools IS NOT REAL!
Thirty-one representatives have already embarrassed themselves, demonstrating their lack of knowledge of our country's history by becoming co-sponsors of this resolution. Let your representative know that if they do not oppose this resolution, they will either be demonstrating their own lack of knowledge of our country's history, or, worse yet, will be admitting that they are willing to be complicit in the perpetuation of lies in order to further the Christian nationalist agenda.
House Resolution 888 has over a dozen new supporters since I last wrote here on the subject, and Chris Rodda calculates the resolution has the endorsement of 35% of House GOP members and also 5 House Democrats.
Chris Rodda has made stopping H. Res. 888 one of her central concerns and her ongoing series, of 7 articles so far, at Talk To Action has chronicled, in extreme and painstaking detail, the myriad history lies contained in H. Res. 888. Here's her latest installment.
Even if H. Res 888 only gets passed in the US House of Representatives that would serve the goal of American history falsificationists such as Wallbuilders head David Barton ; if the Resolution gets passed in the House-- rather than rightfully rejected as the foetid mass of history falsification that it is, that House endorsement of H. Res. 888 would be entered into the Congressional Record. In that way, the history lies in H. Res 888-- proven to be lies through the diligent, hard work of Chris Rodda --would become "Congressionally certified".
Why would that matter ? Well, then Christian nationalists will be able to point to that House endorsement as "evidence" that the dozens of false history claims made in H. Res 888 are true. Then, in turn, people trying to get such fake US history taught in American public schools can point to the Congressional Record and declare ; "Look at that! This history has Congressional endorsement !"
Busting the Lies, and The Lying Liars Who Lie Them
The content of House Resolution 888 is a seemingly endless procession of American history lies, all of which have been created to bolster the claim that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation". This is far from the first time that American history lies have been trotted out in the US Congress and Senate, and as I've recently written one of the most egregrous lies, "Washington's Prayer" has been showcased multiple times without, apparently, any challenge of dissent, in Congress and the Senate.
At Talk To Action, Chris Rodda - author of Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version Of American History has written a detailed rebuttal of ten or so of the lies in H. Res 888, and it takes a lot of work to do that. Basically, it's much quicker to generate a crafty lie than to rebut one, and the American Christian right has cooked up so many American history lies it's a major project beating them back.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: 'AMERICAN DOLCHSTOSS'
So why should you care or bother ? Well, those lies can have deadly effect , especially when they get taught, in the Army's JROTC curriculum, to an entire generation of America's future military leaders and when those lies assert, as did one in the curriculum I discovered last Spring, that the current understanding of church-state separation is exactly 180 degrees off what the founders of US government intended. That lie was paraphrased from text written by David Barton, one of the more egregious of the "Liars For Jesus" who has made a career of spinning lies about American history.
America's military are sworn to defend the US Constitution, but what happens if they develop a dramatically different understanding, of what the US Constitution means, than is held by US Courts and legal experts ?
What if an entire generation of America's military members grow up to hold the view that America's true and rightful "Godly" heritage has been subverted and stolen by malevolent "secularists" and that, as a result, the country has fallen into a decades long spiral of decline and growing immorality ?
Well, that's increasingly the case. The war in Iraq has steadily driven US military members who come to view that war as wrong, unjust, pointless or ill managed out of military careers. Military recruiters are rushing to pick up the slack and, reportedly, anyone who even breathes can get bumped up eventually to the rank of Lt. Colonel. New recruits, and US military members who opt to stay in their military service careers, tend to hold views that favor the US military involvement in Iraq and a good deal of that support is based in Christian religious views that the war in Iraq is a necessary precursor to the End-Times or that Christians must Christianize the world, by the sword if necessary. And, people who hold such views also tend to have been steeped in, and raised with, the sort of falsification of American history that David Barton and others pseudo-historians specialize in.
The "narrative of cultural complaint" that's becoming increasingly common in the US military is the core narrative of cultural complaint of the American Christian right and, compressed down, it amounts to this:
- America is going to hell, caught in a disastrous moral and national decline.
- That decline happened because we kicked God out of America's schools and American public life.
That narrative-- promoted endlessly over the past several decades by leaders and activists of the American Christian right --is very similar to the narrative promoted within German society prior to World War Two and the Holocaust, and that is not merely my own opinion - a similar view was aired, prominently, in a series of talks given by the conservative Baptist scholar David P. Gushee in 2006. [link to PDF file of an Address Gushee gave at the Andover-Newton Theological Seminary]:
It was this cultural despair--a toxic brew of reaction against secularism, anger related to the loss of World War I, distress over cultural disorientation and confusion, fears about the future of Germany, hatred of the victorious powers and of those who supposedly stabbed Germany in the back, and of course the search for scapegoats (mainly the Jews)--that motivated many Germans to adopt a reactionary, authoritarian, and nationalistic ethic that fueled their support for Hitler's rise to power. A broadly appealing narrative of national decline (or conspiratorial betrayal) was met by Hitler's narrative of national revenge leading to utopian unity in the Fuhrer-State.
Conservative American evangelicals in recent decades have been deeply attracted to a parallel narrative of cultural despair. Normally the story begins with the rise of secularism in the 1960s, the abandonment of prayer in schools, and the Roe decision, all leading to an apocalyptic decline of American culture that must be arrested soon, before it is too late and "God withdraws his blessing" from America. While very few conservative evangelicals come into the vicinity of Hitler in hatefulness, elements similar to that kind of conservative-reactionary-nationalist narrative can be found in some Christian right-rhetoric: anger at those who are causing American moral decline, fear about the future, hatred of the "secularists" now preeminent in American life, and the search for scapegoats. The solution on offer--a return to a strong Christian America through determined political action--also has its parallels with the era under consideration.
We Have Our Republic - But, Can We Keep It ?
Talk To Action co-founder Frederick Clarkson wrote an excellent piece, last year, on why history, and fake history matter. One way of putting Clarkson's point would be to say that political observers who don't grasp the significance of the effort to falsify American history fail to grasp a crucial cultural element that has driven conflict and partisanship in America over the last two decades. In a Spring 2007 piece published in The Public Eye, entitled History is Powerful: Why the Christian Right Distorts History and Why it Matters, Frederick Clarkson elaborated on the political significance of history to contemporary American politics:
"The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element of the ideology of the Christian Right. It touches every aspect of life and culture in this, one of the most successful and powerful political movements in American history. The idea that America's supposed Christian identity has somehow been wrongly taken, and must somehow be restored, permeates the psychology and vision of the entire movement. No understanding of the Christian Right is remotely adequate without this foundational concept.
But the Christian nationalist narrative has a fatal flaw: it is based on revisionist history that does not stand up under scrutiny. The bad news is that to true believers, it does not have to stand up to the facts of history to be a powerful and animating part of the once and future Christian nation. Indeed, through a growing cottage industry of Christian revisionist books and lectures now dominating the curricula of home schools and many private Christian academies, Christian nationalism becomes a central feature of the political identity of children growing up in the movement. The contest for control of the narrative of American history is well underway...
History is powerful.
That's why it is important for the rest of society not only to recognize the role of creeping Christian historical revisionism, but our need to craft a compelling and shared story of American history, particularly as it relates to the role of religion and society. We need it in order to know not how the religious Right is wrong, but to know where we ourselves stand in the light of history, in relation to each other, and how we can better envision a future together free of religious prejudice, and ultimately, religious warfare.
We've seen how religious beliefs (and other ideologies) inspire people to view others as subhuman, deviant, and deserving of whatever happens to them, including death. It is the stuff of persecution, pogroms, and warfare. The framers of the U.S. Constitution struggled with how to inoculate the new nation against these ills, and in many respects, the struggle continues today. The story goes that when Benjamin Franklin, a hometown delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, emerged from the proceedings, people asked him what happened. His famous answer was "You have a republic, if you can keep it." To "keep it" in our time, we must appreciate the threat and dynamics of Christian nationalism, and the underlying historical revisionism that supports it. Then we can develop ways to counter it.