NPR exposes David Barton (America, myths, church, atheist)
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I actually caught Barton on The Daily Show months ago, and was pretty shocked at how--soft--Stewart was handling Barton. He made a statement about Jefferson being a devout Christian, and history tells the story of Jefferson being anything but--and Stewart just let it pass.
But I'm glad to see Barton being shredded. The man's a liar at best, and a conniving cretin at worst.
I actually caught Barton on The Daily Show months ago, and was pretty shocked at how--soft--Stewart was handling Barton. He made a statement about Jefferson being a devout Christian, and history tells the story of Jefferson being anything but--and Stewart just let it pass.
But I'm glad to see Barton being shredded. The man's a liar at best, and a conniving cretin at worst.
Stewart let it pass because it was a halve-truth. Religionists always being good at those. I'm sure early in his life (likely in his childhood before his enlightenment education) Jefferson was your typical Christian child. Afterward Jefferson became an ardent Deist borderline atheist. However, he still liked Jesus as a person and a model for societal/personal behavior... Barton tried to lie to the audience by preying on the fact that Jefferson was rather a Jesusite (a fan of Jesus' supposed model of personal behavior) and Stewart knew it. Sort of like Barton saying "*wink wink* Stewart, you know what I mean when I say Jefferson was a 'devout' Christian... you know, he liked living like Jesus commanded" I saw Barton's statement and thought it was indeed pretty underhanded, and Stewart should have called him out to clarify for the audience. Perhaps time was short.
Glad to see more people getting the word out on this quack and charlatan. Chris Rodda wrote a fantastic book called Liars For Jesus several years ago that specifically addressed and utterly shredded Mr. Barton and his revisionist history.
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It's always tricky trying to pigeon-hole the founding fathers. For one thing they can be made to look very Christian. In another selective approach they can be made to look implacably anti -Christian.
In social matters they can me made to look very forward -looking in rights of man, but in the mores of the time, they can fall severely short of what we would expect today.
Perhaps that is why argument from Jefferson was allowed to pass. Challenge it and you get bogged down in endless claims and the need to have a historical brief.
Ads aren't history documents. If they were then Thomas Jefferson would be deemed a "HOWLING ATHEIST" as one of his religionist opponents called him in a pamphlet. Romney got her husband fired through his outsourcing, so she lost her health care for sometime, then she got diagnosed with cancer when it was too late... Do YOU get it now? She might have been diagnosed early... that was one point of the add which her husband thoroughly felt was true. The other point of the ad is that Romney is heartless. Both points are true. CNN is often obtuse and strives way too hard to be "politically fair" with the massive evils from republicans and their ignorant blind followers. The ad never said "Romney got her killed" it said "Romney got her husband to loose her coverage and any chance she had of being diagnosed early." However the SuperPac does bear responsibility in that they should have had a sociologist on board who would have predicted that most people are too thick-headed to understand the cause-effect relationship they were trying to help this loving husband speak out about through this ad. The ads points are indeed all over though and its hard to see the points in it other than "Romney could have prevented her death had he not gotten her husband fired..." talk about Pro-Life. Yet indeed its not even mostly Romney's fault, its societies fault that she died of cancer.
Jesus also called himself the Lord of Demons. the Works of Christ was wearing a suit? No, I don't think so. Jesus WAS a LIBERAL, not a Republican. Liberals never try to re-write and lie about history like Republicans, but I have seen them trying to emphasize on Liberal topics like women, minorities, and social justice, progressive policies, etc.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrBlueSky_
Ehh, no
Indeed no. The linked article astonished me (though by now I ought to expect it) by referring to Barton's claims that chunks of the constitution were taken verbatim from the Bible. Not one of them checked out, apparently.
In fact I would imagine that some elements of the constitution do make points that address matters also found in the Bible (though far away from being direct quotes). Even Jefferson regarded it as the best source of a social law that he could think of. But the efforts of the fraternity who want to argue that the founding fathers intended the US to be ..well...a Christian nation to make them all believing Christians who did not intend that the Church should be connected with the political administration or the administration with the Church amount to misrepresenting the facts of history. It is the old story of an attempt to do a partisan -inspired rewrite of history to make it the way they would have preferred it to be (1).
Barton's arguments are in fact, not new, not by any means, but they seem to be more than usually easy to demolish.
(1) not unconnected with making plastic models of Myths such as the full -sized 'authentic' Ark, the Creation museum and the Nazareth Jesus-themed reconstruction which I fervently hope never got past the planning - stage.
I actually caught Barton on The Daily Show months ago, and was pretty shocked at how--soft--Stewart was handling Barton. He made a statement about Jefferson being a devout Christian, and history tells the story of Jefferson being anything but--and Stewart just let it pass.
But I'm glad to see Barton being shredded. The man's a liar at best, and a conniving cretin at worst.
All I can say is......People have always loved myths.
Last edited by baystater; 08-14-2012 at 01:52 PM..
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