I have written a great many posts here about David Barton and his pseudo-history and how he uses it to advance his Religious Right agenda. Portraying himself as a historian of America's forgotten Christian heritage, Barton selectively edits the past until it reflects his preferred view and then presents that manipulated view as the "real" history of our nation.
I have tended to focus primarily on how Barton seeks to use his biased history to advance his Religious Right political agenda and less on his actual manipulation of history, which is why I want to highlight this absolutely amazing video by Chris Rodda, the Senior Research Director at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and author of "Liars For Jesus."
In this video, Rodda takes on the lies that Barton has been spreading via his regular appearances on Glenn Beck and Rodda's debunking of Barton's tricks and manipulations is absolutely devastating:
This post is about another mainstay of Barton's presentations: an 1809 letter from John Adams to Benjamin Rush that Barton butchers to make it appear that Adams thought that all governments, including, of course, the government of the United States, must be administered by the Holy Ghost in order to be legitimate.
On Beck's show, Barton also incorporated his other lie about this letter, claiming that this was the letter that magically reunited Jefferson and Adams, who had been on the outs since Jefferson got elected president in 1800. Why does Barton do this? Because it allows him to combine two completely unrelated parts of Adams's letter into a claim that it was really God, working through his "prophet" Benjamin Rush, who restored the friendship between Adams and Jefferson.
No, Mr. Beck, John Adams Did Not Think Governments Must be Administered by the Holy Ghost from Chris Rodda on Vimeo.
This video is actually a few weeks old, but somehow I missed it .. and though it is fifteen minutes long, I highly encourage you to watch the entire thing ... and then check out Rodda's other videos debunking some of the other lies that Barton and Beck have been spreading.
