David Barton Is Insane Update

It was the end of summer 2011.  Birds that hadn't been roasted alive by Texas wildfires were singing, cows that hadn't died of thirst were mooing, the leaves on many of our maple trees were already brown (having skipped the yellow, orange, and red stage because of a state-wide, prayer-resistant drought), and fake historian David Barton announced his intention to sue the pants off three people who reported on his scurrilous activities and disreputable associations. 

Two targets of this frivolous lawsuit are school board candidates whose offense was producing an amusing video critical of the Bible thumper; the third is a pundit from The Examiner who penned a scathing article titled Exposing David Barton.  HuffPo's Chris Rodda asks:  "What nobody can figure out is why Barton is suing these particular people, who haven't said anything that hasn't been said many times before over the years by other, much more well known Barton critics."

I can answer that question.  It's because David Barton is nuts.  To call him psychotic or bipolar would be an insult to those with legitimate mental illnesses.  I suspect Barton embraces his delusions.  His worldview is deliberately anchored in the early 20th century where his racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, American exceptionalism aka "The White Man's Burden," and other archaic notions were the norm.  Consider his recent ramblings to the ultraconservative Concerned Women For America in which Barton insists that God wants every person to work at their jobs for six days a week:

David Barton, founder of the dominionist group WallBuilders, lectures his worshipful listeners about "some tough lessons" regarding "God's economy."  (Nurse Ratched, are you taking notes?)  "We used to have what was called the Puritan Hard Work Ethic, which - it's really not Puritan - it's a Biblical hard work ethic. The Bible doesn't tell us anything about working five days a week, eight hours a day or less - it says "six days shalt thou work." You rest on the seventh, but the command is you're going to work six days. And you'll find that hard working people that work those six days - rural people tend to work longer hours than bankers and lawyers and other and they tend to have less physical problems; they have less burn-out, less stress, less whatever, less high blood-pressure. Folks who work harder and longer tend to do better because God told us to do that; that's the way he kind of made our bodies."

Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch responds:  The more we listen to David Barton, the more clear it becomes that it is his goal to see the United States operate strictly in accordance with the Bible in literally every regard.  As Barton says, "anything the Bible talks about cannot be considered secular," which means that every aspect of public life ought operate in accordance with Biblical teachings, including education, immigration, health care, taxes and economic policy, employment regulations, the role of government, and even our building codes.  Every once in a while, Barton provides a glimpse of just what America would look like if it became the "Christian nation" he desires in which everything ran according to the Bible, such as when he says that it would mean our schools would open with prayer and our government would stop helping the poor.

Right-wing Christian extremists like Barton have been twisting scripture to fit their personal biases and "Bless Our Greed" ideals for so long they're now creating dogma from whole cloth.  If these religious zealots ever gain control of America's secular government you will see a totalitarian nanny state that would make Kim Jong-Il blush.

Below is the video that Barton and his political minions found so insulting.  (The unvarnished truth often is.) 

If you can stand watching Barton's ideological garbage straight from the horses ass (so to speak) jump over to the website Godless Liberals for Jon Stewart's extended 3-part interview with this "prophet" of the Texas Taliban.