Again this summer, David Barton is separating students from their money. Last summer via Glenn Beck’s Mercury One charity, the historical document collector started a summer internship program designed to prepare students ages 18-25 to educate their professors in history. Round two is this summer and Barton carries on his war with professors via his students.
Barton: Racists? What Racists?
I feel sorry for the students but it is too late for those who have already gone through it. Last summer, some came away with some problems they had to unlearn. In this post, I want to focus on something Barton said in the OneNewsNow interview.
And contrary to reports from liberal media outlets and academics, the country was not founded by a bunch of slave-owning racists, he [Barton] argued. “Once we separated from Great Britain, then you find that three out of four Founding Fathers released slaves, freed slaves, started abolitionist societies, went on to crusade against slavery,” he offered as examples.
While I don’t trust his math, I don’t need to have an exact percentage to assess what happened at the founding of the United States. Whether most founders owned slaves or not (I believe they did), what matters is what they did when it counted. In Christian America, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention decided that preserving the union was more important that ending slavery. We all know the history. Slavery didn’t end because noble founders “released slaves, freed slaves, started abolitionist societies, went on to crusade against slavery” or any such thing.
Some founders never owned slaves and were always opposed to slavery and in good conscience refused to support the union. Others condemned slavery, but owned slaves and held racist attitudes. Still others believed Africans were destined by God to serve whites. The situation is far more complex than Barton portrays it to be. No rationalization or math trick can change what happened or make it all better. It is only in the current white evangelical Republican echo chamber that such a whitewashing can be considered informed and wise commentary.
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I think the bigger question is why those founding fathers who created the Constitution used numbers like 3/5ths to count their slaves or in Barton terminology “non-paid employee without benefits”.
Are signers of the Declaration of Independence counted as “founding fathers”? If so, according to http://www.mrheintz.com
(I searched for “How many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves?”)
41 of the 56 men who signed owned slaves. A few of them may have come to oppose slavery, but I can find only 3 (from the website above) who freed their slaves during their own lifetimes: Stephen Hopkins, Oliver Wolcott, and George Wythe. Several of the non-slaveholding signers were active in attempting to emancipate slaves, but nothing like the numbers Barton uses.
I do hope there is a heaven and hell just for the likes of Barton.
I do hope there is a heaven and hell just for the likes of Barton.
I don’t. Never been a fan of justice untempered by mercy. The idea of rejoicing at the eternal torture of wrongdoers, no matter how bad or how much they may ‘deserve’ it, well, it sickens me.
And yet Barton’s made his millions by ripping off hard working people looking for some kind of salvation and lying to them in the process. He deserves no salvation.
Compared to Adolf Hitler or Josef Mengele, his sins are mere pecadillos.
When I said “wrongdoers, no matter how bad” I really did mean Pol Pot, Charles Manson, Josef Stalin etc. I’d like to think that I’m not as bad as any of those, but no matter. I wouldn’t condemn any of them to eternal torment.
My own situation is that there are a sizeable number of people who want to see me dead. Not just dead, tortured to death in the most painful way possible.
Now I’m no pacifist, I’ll do whatever it takes consistent with my personal ethics to frustrate them. If it came to a shootout, I wouldn’t aim to kill, I’d aim to maximise probability of neutralising the threat. That unfortunately would probably result in their deaths. What I wouldn’t do is hold their children hostage, or similar immorality. Even if it meant my own demise.
It’s easy to love ones friends. Loving one’s enemies, much harder. I don’t think I’ve managed it. But having simple human compassion for them, while fighting to the maximum of my ability to ensure they do no more harm, that I can manage.
I’m atheist, don’t believe gods exist. But Good, that exists. Love, mercy, compassion, reason, humility, not being a complete arsehole – those exist. Faith not required.
Hmm I thought Barton and Beck weren’t working together anymore for some reason? I hate when Barton does this stuff.
When does he not?
David Barton displays the unearned privilege of White Evangelicals: he expects the privilege of spreading his lies and deception without consequences, all in the name of his self-serving self-worship.
“No rationalization or math trick can change what happened or make it all better.”
I suspect it is more than just a “math trick” I image Barton is also playing games with the definition of a “founding father” to get 3/4 number.
Warren, you should enroll in one of Barton’s classes (I’d even be willing to kick in some $ towards the “tuition”).
To Barton’s mind, the path toward truth is to indoctrinate our youth with lies.
Too many do not fully appreciate the damage he does with his lies. Barton’s is perhaps the most pernicious influence, more so than a Mark Driscoll or the like. There is no doubt that these cause damage and should be exposed for who they are, but Barton helps to weave the sort of false historical narrative that indoctrinates future generations with a fundamentally warped view of reality.
He does so in a way which tickles the ears of those who wish to believe it. The real casualty is the truth and an accurate sense of who we are as a people, and where we have been as a nation. That is real damage.
True. And David Barton has countless White Evangelicals who support him in his counterfit gospel of bearing false witeness.
I have to think that they have an agenda, a lust for power, that drives them. I find it difficult to believe that so many people could be so monumentally ignorant.
I’ve been appreciating the damage he does for about 15 years.
I appreciate your appreciation 😉 I wasn’t even aware of his existence 15 years ago. I heard of him a few years later but only seriously realized the problem after Warren began to call attention to him. This is why people like Warren are so important.
I learned about him when I ‘met’ Chris Rodda on AOL before she published her book, and became fascinated. Everyone should know who he is, especially “mainstream Christians,” many of whom have never even heard of him. He’s a dangerous man. Most people who Lie For Jesus, are. I agree with you about Professor Throckmorton.
Sometimes, I really wish I could live for another 50-60 years so I could see the effects of people like barton and other theocratic types.
David Barton and his White Evangelical followers don’t think about the fruit of their dishonesty and deception, and they certainly aren’t thinking about life 50-60 years in the future. The history books will not be kind to these Evangelical liars, and their offspring will be tasked with cleaning up their messes.
Always assuming that in 50-60 years there will be enough humans left alive, and with enough food and water, to even be able to think about cleaning up.
David Barton and his White Evangelical followers don’t think about the fruit of their dishonesty and deception, and they certainly aren’t thinking about life 50-60 years in the future. The history books will not be kind to these Evangelical liars, and their offspring will be tasked with cleaning up their messes.
David Barton and his White Evangelical followers don’t think about the fruit of their dishonesty and deception, and they certainly aren’t thinking about life 50-60 years in the future. The history books will not be kind to these Evangelical liars, and their offspring will be tasked with cleaning up their messes.
Some of them released a few slaves, but not all of their slaves. (And what is the difference between releasing slaves and freeing them?)
Even those who wanted to free the slaves were mostly racist. They wanted to send the freed slaves back to Africa, not let them live here as equals.
Also, the “not-freed” slaves had it pretty good: complimentary room and board. 😉
It is unfortunate that this part of the Remonstrance against the crimes of the King was removed from the final version of the Declaration of Independence.
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobium of INFIDEL Powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain.”
https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/transcript-declaration-independence-rough-draft
This went down like the proverbial lead balloon in the South, so had to be excised with aclaricity. Were the Founding Fathers all slave-holding racists? No, but enough were to ensure there’d be no Declaration of Independence containing these words.
Back to Barton, life is good again. Yippee
Back to Barton, life is good again. Yippee
Revisionist history is so easy, I want to try. Contrary to what “Liberals” would have you believe, the Nazis were not anti-Jewish. When Hitler came to power, 3 out of 4 Nazi’s were nice to Jews, started Jewish legal defense funds, and spoke out against antisemitism. Yup, just don’t look up anything that may or may not have happened historically after that 100% accurate gut feeling. Great, and now I can attend that Nazi rally without feeling so bad.
You left out the part where a good number of original Nazis were the first homosexual activists, which is why Germany eventually lost the war. 😉
Considering the source (“I Lie For Jesus” Barton), I’d have to ask the question, “Exactly who are you claiming were founders?” Does he ever answer that question?