the jefferson lies – Page 4 – Warren Throckmorton

David Barton and World Net Daily Begin the Spin Recycle

Yesterday, World Net Daily posted David Barton’s defense of his discredited book The Jefferson Lies. This is in preparation for a January release of the WND edition. The WND posting appears to be the same 40 page response he wrote in early 2013 in reaction to publisher Thomas Nelson’s decision to pull the book from publication due to historical errors.
The promotional material for the book promises a rebuttal to critics. If this 2013 document is that answer, WND might want to correct the errors in it. A good place to start would be with the story that Simon & Schuster plans to publish the book. In 2013, Barton claimed that Simon & Schuster planned to publish The Jefferson Lies. Yesterday, Barton and WND claimed the same thing:

I asked Simon & Schuster earlier this year if there was any truth to this claim and the publisher’s representatives said the book would not be published by them.
I wonder if WND will correct this error.
The recycled spin continues on the WND book description. The original promotional material referred to Barton’s critics as “ a few dedicated liberal individuals and academics.” Now the WND book description calls us “bloggers and a handful of non-historian academics.”
This effort to obscure the response of historians, Christian and otherwise, to Barton’s work is a farce. The Jefferson Lies was voted “least credible history book in print’ by readers of the History News Network. Dozens of Christian historians wrote both Family Research Council and Focus on the Family in 2013 urging them to remove Barton’s work from their web pages. If WND editors cared about accuracy, they could just read their own website. In the article WND published yesterday, there is a reference by Barton to his Christian historian critics.

Only four of the ten scholars contacted by Richards actually provided any critiques of my work: Glenn Moots, Glenn Sunshine, Greg Forester (sic), and Gregg Frazer. Of these four, only Frazer specializes in religion and the American founding, but his critique did not even address The Jefferson Lies, and it is not clear that he even bothered to read it. Instead, he watched and criticized a twenty year old video entitled America’s Godly Heritage.

Moots, Sunshine, Forster and Frazer are all historians and they are all Christian (Frazer’s critique of America’s Godly Heritage — which is still commercially available — can be read in an earlier blog post). As I have demonstrated previously, there are more than a handful. Obviously, WND is hoping to cover up the facts.
A large part of Barton’s response in his WND article is to bash me, as if what team he thinks I am on matters. It is a sign of a weak argument when you spend little time on the facts and a lot of time on the personality of the person bringing the facts. The effort also appears to be designed to distract readers from the fact that I have a co-author — political science scholar Michael Coulter — and have published the work of numerous Christian historians on this blog (e.g., here).
The new narrative being promoted by WND is that Thomas Nelson pulled Barton’s book because of “political correctness.”

Yes, it was shocking that Thomas Nelson did the right thing. And it is shocking that some Christians try to create an alternative reality in order to sell books and gain political power.

World Net Daily to Publish New Edition of David Barton's The Jefferson Lies

First, he said Simon & Schuster was going to publish it. They declined.
Today, World Net Daily announced plans to publish a new edition in 2016.
I am looking forward to learning the identity of the “academic endorsements.” Why not just post them now on the WND page promoting the book?
Michael and I are up for another round. We have a few academic endorsements of our own.

Setting the Record Straight

on Thomas Jefferson

Historian David Barton responds to his critics head-on
in this new edition of The Jefferson Lies

WASHINGTON — America, in so many ways, has forgotten its past. Its roots, its purpose, its identity all have become shrouded behind a veil of political correctness bent on twisting the nation’s founding, and its Founders, to fit within a misshapen modern world.

The time has come to remember again.

In 2012 prominent historian David Barton set out to correct the distorted image of the once-beloved Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in the best-selling book The Jefferson Lies. Despite the wildly popular success of the original hardcover edition, a few dedicated liberal individuals and academics campaigned to discredit Barton’s scholarship and credibility, but to no avail.

Barton responds to his critics in a lengthy preface to this new paperback edition in which he takes to task his former publisher and directly answers with thorough documentation the main issues his detractors registered, while also providing numerous academic endorsements of his work. This paperback version, to be released by WND Books on January 12, 2016, certifies that Barton’s research is sound and his premises are true as he tackles seven myths about Thomas Jefferson head-on and answers pressing questions about this incredible statesman including:

• Did Thomas Jefferson really have a child by his young slave girl, Sally Hemings?

• Did he write his own Bible, excluding the parts of Christianity with which he disagreed?

• Was he a racist who opposed civil rights and equality for black Americans?

• Did he, in his pursuit of separation of church and state, advocate the secularizing of public life?

Through Jefferson’s own words and the eyewitness testimony of contemporaries, Barton repaints a portrait of the man from Monticello as a visionary, an innovator, a man who revered Jesus, a classical Renaissance man, and a man whose pioneering stand for liberty and God-given inalienable rights fostered a better world for this nation and its posterity. For America, the time to remember these truths again is now.

David Barton is the founder and president of WallBuilders, a national pro-family organization that presents America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious, and constitutional heritage. He is the author of many best-selling books, including Original Intent, The Bulletproof George Washington, American History in Black and White, and The Question of Freemasonry and the Founding Fathers. He addresses more than four hundred groups each year. Barton was named by Timemagazine as one of America’s twenty-five most influential evangelicals, and he has received numerous national and international awards, including Who’s Who in Education and Daughters of the American Revolution’s highest award, the Medal of Honor. David and his wife, Cheryl, have three grown children.

The Jefferson Lies will be in bookstores nationwide on January 12, 2016.

Simon & Schuster Has No Plans to Publish David Barton's The Jefferson Lies

Yesterday, I wrote about how Thomas Nelson removed David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies from publication in late July, 2012. According to philosopher Jay Richards, Barton’s book was investigated by Thomas Nelson and then removed from their catalog several days before anyone reported it publicly. Richards led an effort to gather information to inform Glenn Beck about the historical problems in Barton’s work. Beck, along with other religious conservatives, eventually chose to ignore the evaluations of academic historians in order to preserve Barton’s reputation and influence.
For his part, Barton minimized the devastating critique from various historians. He also said publisher Simon and Schuster was prepared to publish The Jefferson Lies.

After Thomas Nelson dropped the book, The Jefferson Lies was subsequently reviewed and then picked up by Simon & Schuster.
Clearly, Thomas Nelson’s public statements about the reason for pulling the book are incongruous with the above facts, so was there perhaps some other reason behind their announcement? Quite possibly, for only two weeks prior to suddenly dropping The Jefferson Lies, Thomas Nelson had been taken over in an acquisition by Rupert Murdoch and HarperCollins Publishers.6
Thanks to Throckmorton and other critics, The Jefferson Lies will reach a far larger audience through Simon & Schuster than it would have with the Christian publisher Thomas Nelson.

To my knowledge, this claim has never been withdrawn. The rumor that Simon and Schuster was about to publish Barton’s book has been going around since The Jefferson Lies was pulled. Today, I can announce that Simon and Schuster has no plans to publish the book. According to Jennifer Robinson, Vice President and Director of Publicity with Threshold Editions at Simon and Schuster:

There are no plans for Threshold to publish The Jefferson Lies.

Threshold is an imprint of Simon and Schuster which has published books jointly with Mercury Ink, Glenn Beck’s publishing imprint. I wrote Ms. Robinson again to ask if Mercury Ink was going to publish the book and she referred me to Kevin Balfe at Mercury Ink. Balfe has not responded as yet. According to Mercury Ink’s website, Simon and Schuster is a partner in some manner (probably distribution) which led me to ask Ms. Robinson if publication by Mercury Ink could be construed as publication by Simon and Schuster. In her reply, Robinson said I needed to hear from Mercury Ink and added:

S&S is not publishing the book.

If Mercury Ink provides an update, I will add it to this post. For now, according to Simon and Schuster’s representative, there are no plans for them to publish The Jefferson Lies.

More of the Story Behind the Demise of David Barton's The Jefferson Lies

On his Wallbuilders show last Friday, David Barton belittled the number of Facebook followers Getting Jefferson Right has. I replied:

At the end of the broadcast, the gang makes light of the number of Facebook likes the Getting Jefferson Right page has. How about another comparison with the now pulled from print The Jefferson Lies? How about comparing the number of favorable reviews from actual historians each book has?

I know our book has several quality reviews posted on our book website, but I am not aware of any for The Jefferson Lies. Looking for one, I went to Barton’s book website for The Jefferson Lies. On the front page, there is a link that appears to be a review page but it goes nowhere but back to the home page. I know of several critical reviews for The Jefferson Lies but no positive ones from historians.
In my search, I clicked through to Barton’s effort to answer his critics. The following paragraph caught my eye:

In August 2012, several media outlets reported that Jay Richards, a philosopher and theologian with the Discovery Institute who was also a public endorser of Throckmorton’s book, had asked “10 conservative Christian professors to assess my work.” It was reported that their responses were “negative.” However, some of the ten listed by him had flatly refused to participate in his quest but yet were still listed as providing “negative” responses against me. And in direct conversations I had with Richards after he coordinated these attacks, he openly confessed to me that he knew very little about history. Only four of the ten scholars contacted by Richards actually provided any critiques of my work: Glenn Moots, Glenn Sunshine, Greg Forester, and Gregg Frazer. Of these four, only Frazer specializes in religion and the American founding, but his critique did not even address The Jefferson Lies, and it is not clear that he even bothered to read it. Instead, he watched and criticized a twenty year old video entitled America’s Godly Heritage.

I asked Jay Richards if the claims in this paragraph are accurate. Richards said that he recalled about six written responses from historians with others saying they didn’t have time to do a written review. In other words, they provided reactions but not all were written. None were favorable to The Jefferson Lies. Some who lacked time later commented publicly about Barton’s vision of Jefferson. In an August 2012 World article by Thomas Kidd, Daniel Dreisbach, Kevin Gutzman and James Stoner all disputed Barton’s characterization of Jefferson as being orthodox before 1813. In the paragraph above, Barton minimized the critical reaction to The Jefferson Lies.
Richards agreed that Gregg Frazer’s written submission was about America’s Godly Heritage (I published Frazer’s devastating critique here) but reminded me that Frazer also critiqued an aspect of The Jefferson Lies in World. It also should be noted that America’s Godly Heritage is still for sale on Wallbuilders’ website so Barton’s qualification that the DVD is twenty years old is irrelevant.
Then Richards added something that I don’t think has been reported before. He said:

The entire context is missing from the statement: I contacted a diverse group of scholars with related expertise and clear conservative credentials to ask them their opinion of Barton’s work and The Jefferson Lies in particular. I also asked for written evaluations if possible. The purpose was to compile these and give them to Glenn Beck so he could evaluate them for himself. In the meantime, Thomas Nelson got word of genuine controversy over the book, conducted their own evaluation and pulled the book. This happened before the World article ever came out, and so was not in response to negative media criticism.

Fewer than ten written evaluations from the scholars does not mean the other scholars refused to critique Barton. They did offer Richards feedback and, as noted above, some of them were interviewed by Thomas Kidd for World. Barton’s answer to critics omits this context. Furthermore, Glenn Beck had this feedback and chose to disregard it. He continues to do so, as do other religious right leaders who know about the false historical claims but continue to tout Barton as a respected historian.
Another little known detail about the incident is that Thomas Nelson had pulled the book from publication before World reported on the story. I have learned that the book had been pulled from the publisher’s website at least several days before it was reported in World.
Barton also claims in his response to critics that Simon & Schuster picked up The Jefferson Lies. To date, that publisher has not issued another edition.
From the vantage point of the present, it seems more remarkable than ever that Thomas Nelson pulled The Jefferson Lies from print. Over the last year and a half, we have witnessed publishers stick with authors who have plagiarized material and books with dubious content. For instance, Tyndale House stuck with Kevin Malarkey’s The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven long after the publisher was aware that there were credibility problems with the story. The publisher only pulled the book when the boy who was the subject of the book publicly recanted his story. The Jefferson Lies publisher, Thomas Nelson (now part of HarperCollins Christian), is sticking with similar book Heaven Is for Real and quietly fixed multiple plagiarism problems in Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage. Even in this publishing environment, Thomas Nelson pulled a best selling book because of their investigation of the facts.
Barton appears to want to change the subject in his reaction to critics by invoking the sale of Thomas Nelson to Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins publishing company:

Clearly, Thomas Nelson’s public statements about the reason for pulling the book are incongruous with the above facts, so was there perhaps some other reason behind their announcement? Quite possibly, for only two weeks prior to suddenly dropping The Jefferson Lies, Thomas Nelson had been taken over in an acquisition by Rupert Murdoch and HarperCollins Publishers.

It is hard to know what Barton is implying here. Murdoch is a conservative who founded Fox News, a network which has been generally friendly to Barton’s brand. Given other books HarperCollins Christian offers and has preserved (e.g., Driscoll’s book), it is hard to make a case that the change of ownership had an any effect on the decision to pull the book.

The Great Confrontation of 2012: David Barton and the Evangelical Historians

In August 2012, Thomas Nelson (now part of Harper Collins Christian) pulled David Barton‘s book The Jefferson Lies from publication. This rare move by Thomas Nelson took place in the midst of efforts by several people to confront Barton with his errors. While I cannot tell the whole story (in part because I don’t know it and in part because the main players are not willing to discuss it completely), I can provide a little more insight into the situation. The door was opened to this by a footnote on David Barton’s website and other vague references to a series of meetings that took place in 2012. The footnote is on the page where Barton claims to explain false quotes from his first book. Barton says this:

Although many people, including several respected academics, have told David that they admire his honesty and transparency, others have attempted to use this practice against him. For instance, in a recent critique of David’s work, Professor Gregg Frazer of The Master’s College writes:

“Having been confronted over the use of false quotes, Barton was forced to acknowledge their illegitimacy in some way on his website. There, he describes them as “unconfirmed” – as if there is some doubt about their legitimacy. In a computer age with search capabilities, we know that these quotes are false – the fact that they are listed as “unconfirmed” reflects a stubborn attempt to hold onto them and to suggest to followers that they might be true. That is made worse by the fact that under these “unconfirmed” quotes are paragraphs maintaining that the bogus quote is something that the person might have said.” ²

What an interesting reward for trying to be honest and transparent.

Barton’s claim to be “honest and transparent” requires much more attention, but for the purpose of this post, let me move on to Barton’s description of the source of Gregg Frazer’s words. In the footnote, Barton explains the source of Frazer’s quote:

From a hostile written review of David Barton and WallBuilders written by Gregg Frazer at the request of Jay Richards. That written critique was subsequently passed on to David Barton on August 13, 2012, by the Rev. James Robison, to whom Jay Richards had distributed it.

After Jay Richards read my book with Michael Coulter, Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President, he asked ten Christian historians to read both The Jefferson Lies, and then our book. Richards wanted to get expert opinions on the facts in each book. He also asked Gregg Frazer to review Barton’s DVD, America’s Godly Heritage (which is still for sale on Barton’s website).

With Frazer’s permission, the complete review of America’s Godly Heritage is now available here.

As is clear from an examination of the paper, Frazer did not look at each one of the quotes in Barton’s first book. He specifically examined the DVD series America’s Godly Heritage. Even though the DVD is still for sale, Frazer found faulty quotes in it.

As Barton says in his footnote, this paper was presented to Barton by James Robison surrounding the time when his book was pulled by Thomas Nelson (August 2012). Robison is an apostolic elder at Gateway Church and host of the television show Life Today. As this footnote reveals, Robison was in on the confrontation as was Richards and the Christian historians. While I don’t know specifics, some met with Barton at his ranch where he rejected their advice and counsel. Furthermore, Barton met with at least one leader at the Family Research Council in August 2o12. In that meeting, Barton’s errors were confronted with promises from Barton to provide corrected material. However, nothing happened on Barton’s end until the Family Research Council was confronted by numerous Christian historians in the Spring of 2013.

Despite numerous clear factual errors, FRC continues to have Barton involved in their presentations to pastors. As Politico documented in 2013 (Sen. Ted Cruz defends Barton in this article), Barton has been accepted back into the good graces of the political arm of the Christian right (e.g., this apologetics conference).

The awareness of Barton’s systematic distortion of the nation’s founding is well known at the highest levels of the Christian political right and yet many such groups continue to promote Barton as an exemplary historian. Because the Christian right is aware of the problems but continues to feature Barton as an historian, the “great confrontation of 2012” has turned into the “great cover-up of the present.”

Gregg Frazer’s review of America’s Godly Heritage is a devastating critique of this popular DVD program. It has been read by high level decision makers on the Christian right and ignored. I urge readers to read it and pass it around. I intend to give it more attention by focusing on various highlights in upcoming posts. Here is a follow up post on Frazer’s review.