Of late, David Barton and his staffer Rick Green have savaged me due to their perception that his book, The Jefferson Lies, was pulled by Thomas Nelson publishers because of our book Getting Jefferson Right. Green linked the professors who reviewed his book with the tactics of Hitler and Alinsky and now Barton is attacking me over my academic position on reparative therapy. Roll the tape:
So let me get this right. Barton says I have no basis to critique his claims about Jefferson because I am not trained as a historian. However, he can make moral judgments about me because of my position on a psychology related matter.
I know some will be taken in by this. I expect that. Barton says he is going to release rebuttals to our work bit by bit. Well, believe it or not, I welcome that. He made light of our work on his claim that Jefferson chose to include “in the year of our Lord Christ” in presidential documents. While he acknowledged that the form was pre-printed, he did not deal with the fact that the language was not chosen by Jefferson. And because the language was required by the treaty with Holland (as well as other treaties), the Congress could not simply change it.
However, I will say what I have said all along: If Mr. Barton has evidence to counter any of my posts, or aspects of the book, we would like to see it. Contrary to the conspiracy theories which animated Barton and Fischer today, we wrote this book because the evidence we examined did not support the claims. If we are wrong, we will say so.