Lawrence O'Donnell - Pastor To The Tea Party David Barton Is A Dangerous Quack

[Shallah Kali]

Run time: 07:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgDZiDNo_AU   Posted on YouTube: April 19, 2011 By YouTube Member: SuchIsLifeVideos Views on YouTube: 2260   Posted on DU: April 22, 2011 By DU Member: Shallah Kali Views on DU: 2877

 

O'Donnell talks with Peter Montgomery (Religion Dispatches) about Pastor David Barton who puts out false quotations from our country's founders and twists Bible scriptures to fit the far right agenda.

Barton’s Bunk: Religious Right ‘Historian’ Hits the Big Time in Tea Party America - from People for the American Way
http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/barton-s-bunk-religious-right-historian-hits-the-big-time-tea-party-america

Why Barton Matters

Barton’s growing visibility and influence with m embers of Congress and other Republican Party officials is troubling for many reasons: he distorts history and the Constitution for political purposes; he encourages religious divisiveness and unequal treatment for religious minorities; and he feeds a toxic political climate in which one’s political opponents are not just wrong, but evil and anti-God.

Scholars have criticized Barton for presenting facts out of context or in misleading ways, but that hasn’t stopped him from promoting his theories through books, television, and, yes, the textbooks that will teach the next generation of Americans. He promotes conspiracy theories about elites hiding the truth from average Americans in order to undermine the nation from within. Last summer, he declared that liberal and media attacks on the Tea Party were just like attacks on Jesus. In February, Barton spoke at the Connect 2011 Pastors Conference, where he said that Christians needed to control the culture and media so that “guys that have a secular viewpoint cannot survive.” Said Barton, “If the press lacks moral discrimination, it’s because we haven’t been pushing our people to chop that kind of news off.”

Barton’s work is not just an academic exercise. It is meant to have a political impact. For Barton, “documenting” the divine origins of his interpretations of the Constitution gives him and his political allies a potent weapon. Barton promotes a false reality in which anyone who opposes any element of his political agenda stands in opposition to both the Founding Fathers and to God. He believes that everything in our society – government, the judiciary, the economy, the family – should be governed according to the Bible, and he promotes a view of the Bible and Jesus that many Christians would not recognize. Opponents, even Christians, who disagree with Barton about tax policy or the powers of Congress are not only wrong, they are un-American and anti-religious, enemies of America and of God.

President Obama is a particularly frequent target of Barton’s. In January, one of his WallBuilders Live radio shows was titled “Why is Obama Trying to Remove God from the United States?” In March, right-wing “news” service WND quoted Barton accusing Obama (falsely of course) of being “engaged in a pattern of ‘willfully, deliberately’ repudiating America's Christian heritage.”

MUCH MUCH More @ the link: http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/barton-s-bunk-religious-right-historian-hits-the-big-time-tea-party-america


RightWingWatch's collection of posts on Barton http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/individuals/david-barton

Tea Party Jesus: Koch's Americans For Prosperity Sidles Up to Religious Right for 2012 Campaign
David Koch's key operative, Tim Phillips, is moving to merge the religious right with the Tea Party movement -- just in time for the presidential race.
http://www.alternet.org/story/150622/tea_party_jesus%3A_koch%27s_ame?page=entire

David Barton on Thomas Jefferson – United Brethren and the Christian Indians by Warren Throckmorton
http://wthrockmorton.com/2011/04/21/david-barton-on-thomas-jefferson-united-brethren-and-the-christian-indians/

[exboyfil]

1. Wow it looks like we are going to be doing

his American Heritage series in Bible study (following the Truth Project in which I had some interesting discussions). I guess I am going to be in more battles. I actually had someone in class tell me that it is nitpicking to determine whether quotes are actually sourced correctly. These inaccurate quotes get out and are reused, and it becomes nearly impossible to find the original source document (a Dewey quote in particular comes to mind).

I have heard some very bad things about The American Heritage Series. I guess I am going to find out how bad.

[Zoeisright]

2. ANY teabagger can be identified as a "dangerous quack".

Assholes, all of them.