I was absolutely delighted that Keith had Rodda on to discuss this topic.  When it comes to calling Barton out on his dreadful misrepresentations of American history, no one is better suited.

I had occasion to link to some of Rodda’s latest work in my July 8 Care2 post:

For much, much more regarding Barton’s crimes against history be sure to check out the extensive works ofTalk to Action blogger (and also at The Huffington Post) Chris Rodda, Senior Researcher for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and the author of Liars for Jesus:  The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History.  Rodda’s “No, Mr. Beck…” series is instructive for understanding Barton’s tactics; like misrepresenting the work of actual academics in order to suggest that the Constitution was based on the Book of Deuteronomy, or cropping a quote from John Adams in order to claim that the second American President thought “Governments must be administered by the holy ghost.”  (Sigh…)

Barton, clearly, has no shame.  And as you’ll see in the clip from the July 8 Countdown broadcast, he is in serious need of some fashion advice.  (I know… It’s a petty observation. But that  jacket is tragic.)

Feb. 21 clip from CBS’ Face the Nation, by way of MediaMatters:

Rush Limbaugh declaring Powell’s assessment to be racially motivated in 3…  2… Oh, wait.  It’s Sunday?  On Monday, then.

Digg the MMFA post –> HERE

Stephen sends up the Fox “News” Channel pundits for their idiotic equating of recent heavy snowfall with “proof” that climate change isn’t happening.

FNC really must hold their viewers in the lowest intellectual regard.

Say what you want about Glenn Beck, but do not dispute this: The man is enormously influential in the American political debate. Spend some time with any one of the new conserva-libertarians who’ve been getting so much face time since last spring — the Tea Party, the 9/12 Project, or more extreme groups that are out there like the Oath Keepers — and you’ll often find that their activism traces back to Beck, whether it’s something he said on his Fox News program or his radio show or the books that he’s touted into best-sellers like the “The 5000 Year Leap,” an obscure Christian-oriented take on the Constitution and the Founding Fathers by a deceased John Birch-era right-winger that has sold by the truckload since it was Beck-endorsed.

[snip]

The real reason that history “is no longer taught” is because…it’s bogus. Let’s look at Barton — who Texas Monthly called in a massive profile “The King of the Christocrats” – and his track record”

[snip]

Barton is the founder of a Texas-based group called the WallBuilders, a foundation devoted to proving that the roots of the United States and its Constitution are not based on the separation of church of state — as is widely believed and widely taught — but as country built upon a bedrock of Christianity. That is also the premise of a widely circulated book that Barton published in the 1990s called “The Myth of Separation” — a book that was eventually re-written and issued under a different name because it was larded with bad information, some of which nevertheless became gospel on conservative talk radio. As noted in the 2006 Texas Monthly article (via Nexis):

In 1995 the historian Robert Alley attempted to trace the provenance of a quote that Rush Limbaugh had mistakenly attributed to James Madison, in which Madison purportedly called the Ten Commandments the foundation of American civilization. All roads led to David Barton,whose The Myth of Separation attributed the following quote to Madison: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” Barton cited two sources for the quote: a 1939 book by Harold K. Lane called Liberty! Cry Liberty! and Frederick Nyneyer’s 1958 book First Principles in Morality and Economics: Neighborly Love and Ricardo’s Law of Association. Alley couldn’t find the quote anywhere in Nyneyer’s book, however, and eventually concluded that Barton had pulled it from an article in a journal with the unlikely title Progressive Calvinism, which, in turn, had attributed it to something called the “1958 calendar of Spiritual Mobilization.” In any case, Alley reported, the editors of Madison’s papers were unable to find anything in his writings that was even remotely similar. “In addition,” they added, “the idea is inconsistent with everything we know about Madison’s views on religion and government, which he expressed time and time again in public and in private.”

Read More–> Glenn Beck’s plan to save America…with Christian-right pseudohistory | Philly | 02/09/2010.