Texas Freedom Network

David Barton might be a popular speaker in conservative circles and considered a “historian” and “constitutional expert” by politico-entertainers like Glenn Beck and politicians like Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. But a scholar’s new review of Barton’s American history textbook (yes, he has one) exposes the Texan’s simplistic, selective and ideologically distorted accounts of the nation’s early history. The review by Prof. Steven K. Green for the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund is available here.

Unlike Barton, Prof. Green really is an expert in constitutional law and history. He currently is a constitutional scholar, historian and law professor at Willamette University in Oregon. He also serves as director of the Willamette Center for Religion, Law and Democracy.

Prof. Green explains how Barton’s Drive Thru History America is peppered with factual inaccuracies, offers a simplistic and glorified view of the nation’s early history and promotes a sectarian perspective clearly intended to proselytize students. Prof. Green writes:

“[The textbook] displays a clear devotional tone and contains a number of religious truth-claims that cross the line into promotion of a particular religion. Beyond this, the curriculum presents a problematic historical account of the founding period that falls well outside mainstream scholarly understanding, providing inaccurate, incomplete and biased profiles of various leading figures from that era.”

Barton and co-author Nita Thomason developed the textbook and accompanying materials for students in Grades 6-12. A promotional website markets the textbook for use in both private and public schools. Those materials focus on the nation’s founding period and on selected historical figures, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Abigail Adams. And their profound disrespect for the religious freedom of parents is as objectionable as their distortions of history. Prof. Green writes:

“Inculcating a ‘Christian worldview’ or persuading students to ‘repent’ and ‘listen to God’ is a responsibility that belongs solely with a parent or religious congregation. For a public school to utilize curricular materials toward this end is not only a clear Constitutional violation, it is a betrayal of the trust parents place in public schools.”

The Texas Freedom Network has posted Prof. Green’s review and other information about Barton and his political work in a new David Barton Watch section of our website.

That’s one of the questions at issue in Barton’s lawsuit. Barton is charging W.S. Smith, a writer for the Fort Worth Atheism Examiner, with defamation for labeling Barton a “liar” in a story published on the Examiner website last year.

But part of establishing a legitimate libel claim is, of course, demonstrating that the claim made about you is not true. Truth, as the saying goes, is an absolute defense against defamation.

In what is — to my mind — the most insightful profile of Barton yet written, Nate Blakeslee of Texas Monthly tells about a first-hand experience with Barton’s dishonesty. You be the judge of whether the label “liar” fits.

“WHAT SEEMS TO HAVE OFFENDED Barton most about his critics is their questioning not his competence but his honesty. (‘I mean, this is what we do,’ Cheryl [Barton's wife] said, pointing to the stacks of material in the vault. ‘We’re not trying to fool anybody.’) But honesty has been a problem for Barton over the years and still is…

Perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe Barton has been accused of is an egregious mischaracterization of Jefferson’s famous letter to the Danbury Baptists. Barton allegedly said that Jefferson referred to the wall of separation between church and state as ‘one-directional’ — that is, it was meant to restrain government from infringing on the church’s domain but not the other way around. There is no such language in the letter. This mistaken quote does not appear on Barton’s list of retractions, however, and when I asked Barton about it, he denied ever having misquoted Jefferson’s letter in any of his publications. He claimed instead that unspecified critics had merely heard him mention the ‘one-directional wall’ in a speech and that he had in fact been summarizing Jefferson’s general views on the First Amendment, not purporting to paraphrase or quote from the Danbury Letter. In other words, his critics had dishonestly taken his words out of context to make him look bad.

For whatever reason, Barton is not telling the truth. The mistake in question comes from a 1990 version of Barton’s video America’s Godly Heritage. Here are Barton’s exact words from the tape:

‘On January 1, 1802, Jefferson wrote to that group of Danbury Baptists, and in this letter, he assured them — he said the First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between church and state, he said, but that wall is a one-directional wall. It keeps the government from running the church, but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government.’

In a later version of the video, Barton carefully fixed this mistake, so it’s not something he could have forgotten.”

Since David Barton probably won’t take correction from TFN’s press release, perhaps he’ll listen to celebrated Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In his oft-cited concurrence in the Whitney v. California  decision, Brandeis points out what the Founding Fathers — whom Barton loves so much — thought about trying to “enforce silence” on speech you don’t like:

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, selfreliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. (Emphasis added)

– Brandeis concurrence in Whitney v. California, 47 S. Ct. 641, 648-49 (1927)

So this happened to David Barton yesterday.

Our friends at Right Wing Watch report that  the daily radio show of the religious right’s favorite amateur historian was yanked, mid-show, from a Christian radio station in East Texas. The reason given: Barton’s ongoing defense of new Texas resident and former Fox News commentator Glenn Beck.

Here’s the story, via Warren Throckmorton:

An affiliate radio station of the Moody Network in East Texas, KBJS-FM, canceled David Barton’s Wallbuilders Live radio program during the show yesterday while Barton was discussing Glenn Beck’s religious beliefs. Randy Featherstone, KBJS manager, said the show was dropped due to Barton’s failure to distinguish between Mormon theology and Christianity.

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