In 2014, 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of David Barton, one of the co-authors of the 2012 and 2016 GOP Platforms, and a conservative historian/exposed fraud. That’s right, an Evangelical Republican who teaches history from an alternative timeline that never existed was allowed to lead a group prayer at the 2012 Republican National Convention, and then go in and be one of the bigger influences upon writing the party platform. This, in spite of the fact that he wrote “The Jefferson Lies”, a book that falsely claimed Thomas Jefferson intended America to be a Christian nation and was opposed to gay rights. for example. It was such a load of bunk that less than three months after it was released, his publisher had it yanked from bookstores around the country. But none of this has stopped the GOP Fundamentalists from continuing to disseminate whatever falsehoods Barton writes amongst their members, when they should have lanced him like a boil from their ranks before he did further damage to their reputation the past few years of, y'know, rejecting facts. The conservative media has folks like Glenn Beck and the Family Research Council still proudly welcome David Barton as a guest, not just swallowing the tripe he serves up, but lying on his behalf and claiming he has scholarly credentials he doesn’t actually have. I mean, it might seem plausible to hear our Founding Fathers were opposed to the theory of evolution, because it was a radical concept when Charles Darwin presented it to folks… but the Founding Fathers were sort of dead by the time Darwin was writing about evolution. (If you believe Barton, though, the theory has been around since 500 B.C.)
We noted, though, that David Barton doesn’t just present an alternate history of America… he’s apparently living in an alternate reality of the present, where military chaplains are forced to perform gay marriages against their will, that gays are being allowed to “evangelize” to children in schools, that the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling also legalized pedophilia and would outlaw the Bible, that the average American household on welfare gets $61,000 a year (far, far less, actually), that the Bible forbids all government debt and says we will never be able to make an AIDS vaccine (missed that passage, myself), that President Obama aids the Muslim Brotherhood, that Ruth Bader Ginsberg can be impeached for falling asleep during the State of the Union Address (Gee, if Rep. Joe Wilson didn’t get anything more than admonished for the crap he pulled…), that the concept of retirement from employment is a “Pagan Concept”… the nuclear treaty between the United States on Iran, claiming that it would force the United States to fight Israel, and bring about “God’s Wrath”. In February 2016 Barton went on Glenn Beck’s show (again) to talk about Black History Month, and asks why whites don’t get more recognition for their part in it, because “Blacks were not able to free themselves, whites did” or that “being a True Christian” is a surefire way to avoid getting AIDS, which you get if you “violate God’s standards of sexuality”. (Tell that to Ryan White’s mother, you ***hole.)
Nothing is beyond this man’s notice to be manipulated for ideological purposes… in April 2016, after the release of Disney’s Zootopia, he suggested Disney movies feature anthropomorphized animal characters is an attempt to bring back pagan Gods, because:
If you look back at the time of the Bible, a lot of the idols back then were actually animal. Dagon was the fish God…I love Disney, I’ve got all of the collections of Disney, but Disney’s the first one to make animals seem human, and that’s what animation does. Bambi seems human, “Lady and the Tramp,” a nice romantic dinner for dogs over at an Italian restaurant—I don’t think so—"Beauty and the Beast.“ And I love these stories but what they do is they elevate animals to mankind’s status … The Bible tells us that you are to be kind to your animals but you don’t worship your animals, you don’t make a Dagon god out of them and that’s what we’ve now done.
In our 2017 review of Barton’s activities, we noted that he started claiming that the Founding Fathers put two clauses in the Declaration of Independence that condemned slavery (which is amazing considering all of the Southern delegates OWNED SLAVES), that during World War II, the United States warned Japan which cities we were going to drop atomic bombs on (which of course, is not actually what happened because that bomb was, y’know, TOP SECRET until it was dropped), that “Dixiecrat” Strom Thurmond switched parties because he “had a change of heart on race issues” (Thurmond was opposed to integration, and Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s opposition to segregation was the reason Thurmond left the Democratic Party), and in April 2017, talked about visiting historical sites of the Holocaust, and how those same evils are manifesting today to assist the “homosexual lifestyle”, before claiming that the Nazis were also pagans (Hint: They were mostly Protestant, some Catholic). As if David Barton being a passionate Donald Trump supporter in spite of him boasting about sexual assault wasn’t enough to make him full of s*** on his supposed Christian morality, he yet again breaks the fifth Commandment to defend a sexual predator, falsely claiming that Bill O’Reilly was fired from Fox News for “complimenting a woman’s hair”, which really undersells the long, sordid history of reports from multiple accusers of O’Reilly making unwanted advances towards them, making grotesque sexual comments at them, and even calling some employees while apparently masturbating.
What we’re getting at is David Barton needs to be put in a goddamned rubber room and the worst part is his brand of insanity is contagious, as he actively promotes it as reality to Evangelicals in and around government. If you’re still not convinced he’s nuttier than a jar of Planters (How could you not be, at this point already?), we have another year of David Barton baying at the moon to present, and would like to
thank the website Right Wing Watch for keeping a close eye on him
. We’ll spare you all his lunacy, and just give you his six dumbest moments from the past 12 months:
- July 27th, 2017: Barton blames rising health care costs on homosexuals.
- September 8th, 2017: In an interview with CSGOPOTD alumni E.W. Jackson, Barton whines about how in his mind, “white people don’t get enough credit for ending slavery”.
- February 8th, 2018: Barton was on his “WallBuilders Live” show, and claimed that he was “designated an Enemy of the State” by the Obama administration. That… isn’t at all true.
- March 9th, 2018: Days after the Parkland shooting, Barton made the bizarre claim that if you did a Google search for “A.R. 15”, nothing would come up.
- March 30th, 2018: Barton comes up with a very creative interpretation of the 1st Amendment, asking why the separation of church and state doesn’t exempt anyone who goes to church from having to pay taxes.
- May 22nd, 2018: David Barton claims he has seen nothing that would “indicate a lack of good morals” from anyone in the Trump administration. Even Stevie Wonder can see a lack of morals in the Trump administration, David.
And we again, remind our readers that David Barton, in spite of being factually wrong more often than correct on the topic he claims to be an expert on, history, is widely respected by Republican leaders, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and that he is still not just allowed to help write the Republican Party Platform every four years, but can boast that his influence in the room can make it what he considers “the most biblically-friendly GOP Platform he’s ever seen”.