David Barton is Caught Lying Again.

David Barton
Pseudo-historian and professional liar
Are his lips moving?

David Barton Needs to Hire a Fact-Checker | Right Wing Watch

Q. How can you tell when David Barton is lying?

A. Watch his mouth. If his lips are moving, he's lying.

Here, for example, the pseudo-historian and professional liar for Jesus, is lying to a Talibangelical church group, eager for a fundamentalist Christian theocracy to be running the USA, safe in the knowledge that, so long as they hear things they want to be true, none of them is ever going to risk fact-checking his claims, and most of them will be ignorant of most of the real American history. A blank sheet on which liars such as Barton are free to draw whatever designs they want, and be paid handsomely for it.

Barton's subtext, as always, is that the American 'Founding Fathers' were intentionally creating a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, but somehow the liberals stole it, so this is the form of government that should be imposed on Americans today to create the nation the Founding Fathers intended. In his lecture, he makes specific claims about the contents of a letter from John Adams to a man named Hezekiah Niles in 1818. Niles had asked Adams which people were most responsible for the founding idea and principles of the nation that Adams had helped to create.

True to form, Barton casts aside any constraints on bearing false witness, considering it more important to fool his credulous audience than to tell the truth, so he makes claims, including naming specific individuals as 'right up front', which are not born out by the facts. He claims Adams stated that it was preachers like Samuel Cooper, Jonathan Mayhew, George Whitefield, and Charles Chauncy who must be placed at the top of any such list.

In fact, what Adams actually wrote, on Feb 13, 1818, was:

There might be, and there were, others who thought less about religion and conscience, but had certain habitual sentiments of allegiance and loyalty derived from their education; but believing allegiance and protection to be reciprocal, when protection was withdrawn, they thought allegiance was dissolved.

[…]

Those principles and feelings ought to be traced back for 200 years and sought in the history of the country from the first plantations in America. Nor should the principles and feelings of the English and Scots toward the colonies through that whole period ever be forgotten. The perpetual discordance between British principles and feelings and those of America, the next year after the suppression of the French power in America, came to a crisis and produced an explosion.

It was not until after the annihilation of the French dominion in America that any British ministry had dared to gratify their own wishes, and the desire of the nation, by projecting a formal plan for raising a national revenue from America by parliamentary taxation. The first great manifestation of this design was by the order to carry into strict execution those acts of Parliament which were well-known by the appellation of the Acts of Trade, which had lain a dead letter, unexecuted for half a century–and some of them, I believe, for nearly a whole one.

This produced, in 1760 and 1761, an awakening and a revival of American principles and feelings, with an enthusiasm which went on increasing till in 1775 it burst out in open violence, hostility, and fury. The characters the most conspicuous, the most ardent and influential in this revival, from 1760 to 1766, were first and foremost, before all and above all, James Otis; next to him was Oxenbridge Thatcher; next to him Samuel Adams; next to him John Hancock; then Dr. Mayhew; then Dr. Cooper and his brother.

John Adams, Letter to Hezekiah Niles on the American Revolution, Feb 13, 1818. [My emphasis]

The treaty of Tripoli, Nov 4, 1796.
Presented to Congress by John Adams on May 26, 1797.
Ratified without dissent on June 7, 1797.

Not only were those Barton claimed, not 'right up front' but the ones he mentioned who were in the list, were some way down it, a Whitefield and Chauncy are never mentioned anywhere in Adams' long letter. Barton made those up to make his claim sound more believable. Nor is there any suggestion that the ideas and principles of those who inspired the revolution, were those of fundamentalist Christians.

Astonishingly too, for someone who hopes to have some credibility as a genuine historian, Barton appears to either be unaware of, or to have forgotten entirely, the single most embarrassing document for those who try to claim, as he does, that the USA was founded as a Christian nation, the Treaty of Tripoli, and particularly Article 11 of that treaty:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Islamic] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Article 11, Treaty of Tripoli, Nov 4, 1796.
Presented to Congress by John Adams, May 26, 1797.
Ratified without dissent or debate, June 7, 1797

It is perfectly clear then that John Adams did not express the views Barton tried to fool his audience into believing he had, as anyone with the slightest interest in the truth could have found out in a few minutes searching through readily available documentation, including the letter to Hezekia Niles that Barton cited.

But then, David Barton could have been the inspiration for:

When you show you need to lie for your faith, you show you know your faith is a lie that needs fools to believe falsehoods.

Tweet

---

Thank you for sharing!

Tweet Link