Right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton appeared on "The Patriot and The Preacher" radio program over the weekend, where he declared that historians who criticize his work do so because they hate America.
After spending several minutes blasting President Obama for supposedly apologizing to Japan for our use of atomic weapons during World War II (Obama did nothing of the sort), Barton said that it is all part of an effort to "tear America down."
"The academic community and the political elites, they are determined to tear America down so that they can remake it as part of a global thing ... that we can be like the rest of the world," Barton said. "That's been their objective is we should not have an independent, distinct identity, we should be part of what they call the community of nations. And so that's part of the deconstruction that's happening in America right now."
"I'll tell you, [in] academics, this is such a big issue," he continued. "Two years ago when I wrote a book, I made a comment about American exceptionalism, which is something we've believed since Alexis de Tocqueville gave us that term in 1831. I can't tell you how many academics came out of the woodwork and just attacked me viciously, 'How dare you say that America is a special nation, how dare you say that America has done anything right.' The academic community is phobic over this thing and Obama, of course, was a law professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. And so that academic community, they hate America with a virility that is hard for the rest of us to understand."
