Category: history

Price Reduced – Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President

   Until early next week, I am lowering the price of the Getting Jefferson Right in paperback to $9.95 (23% off) and the Kindle version to $3.99 (20% off).

It will take awhile for the Kindle price to change on Amazon but you can get the lower price on the paperback from our CreateSpace site now.  Just click the link for CreateSpace.

The book is a must for anyone on your gift list who knows about the David Barton controversy or who like Thomas Jefferson and/or American history.

To read reviews of the book, go on over to GettingJeffersonRight.com.

 

To like the book on Facebook, click here.

To get the paperback, go to the book’s CreateSpace page.

David Barton Self-Publishes The Jefferson Lies

After blasting us for self-publishing Getting Jefferson Right, David Barton is self-publishing The Jefferson Lies via Wallbuilders Press. Chris Rodda discovered and reported this last week.

Barton told the world after his book was pulled from publication that he had a publisher in the wings bigger than Thomas Nelson. Glenn Beck said he would publish the book but apparently this is on hold or off completely.

 

David Barton: Where is the evidence?

Soon after Thomas Nelson pulled David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies, Barton went on Bryan Fischer’s radio show to sling ad hominem attacks at me. On that show, he promised to release proof that he was right in his claims about Thomas Jefferson. He said at 2:34 into the clip below that he was “releasing pieces now one at a time” which would refute the work we did in Getting Jefferson Right. Again at about 6:50, Barton promised to release information showing how “silly” our claims are. Then at 9:18, he said he is going to “poke him (me) in the eye” with this proof. He followed that threat with a promise to bring out piece after piece refuting my claims, saying “after you get to error number 107 from Throckmorton, people are going to go, golly, I endorsed his book?”

Roll the tape…

Where is the evidence? What is the proof? So far, Barton has engaged in ad hominem attacks and gone on Glenn Beck’s show with straw man distortions of our claims. In the three months since the interview with Fischer, Barton has not released multiple pieces refuting our claims and no one has backed off from their endorsement of our book.

We are waiting.

 

 

Spiritual hunches vs. math: How not to predict the outcome of an election

According to Glenn Beck and David Barton, those who are “spiritually attuned” were calling the race for Romney. Something was obviously off there. This is a great example of how wishful thinking can bias one’s attributions.

 

In addition to the outcome of the election, this helpful Christianity Today summary of evangelical/born again voters demonstrates that the hunches were off. Evangelical vote for the GOP moved up slightly in some states and declined in others. On balance, it doesn’t appear that all the effort made much difference. In the past, I have questioned the politicization of local churches on theological grounds; now I think there is reason to question it on pragmatic grounds.

On another note, David Barton compares his partnership with Mormon Glenn Beck to the George Whitefield revivals before the Revolutionary War. Somehow I can’t see Whitefield partnering with the heterodox beliefs which characterize the LDS church.  While he was kind in his criticisms, Whitefield clearly and publicly confronted what  he considered to be error (e.g., this letter to John Wesley).

In my view, Barton confuses political movements with spiritual movements. He compares the GOP coalition working for Romney to the religious revivals of years gone by. Those were spiritual events which had as their aim personal salvation. Any political benefits were secondary. What Barton works for is the use of the church for political ends.

Barton was right about one thing – he said at 9:45 into the clip that the night was not going to go long before calling a winner. However, Beck and Barton called it at 320 or 330 electoral votes for Romney. My point is not to fault them for being wrong. A lot of smart people were wrong. However, it is the way one makes attributions that I am highlighting. I got a lot closer to the correct outcome by following the math (polling data). Many others discounted the clear polling evidence and were biased by what they wanted to happen. Going forward, I hope those leading the GOP will look at the numbers (e.g., exit polls, electoral math, erosion of support for divisiveness on social issues) instead of engaging in wishful thinking.

 

Texas does not use third grade reading levels to project future prison population

On his October 24 Wallbuilders Live program, David Barton made a claim (at about 24:00 into the program) that that Texas prison officials use third grade reading levels as the best indicator of the need for prison beds in the future. Barton told co-host Rick Green that the government officials in Texas came to some church people and asked them to mentor young kids in reading. The objective was to get kids reading on grade level by the third grade. Why is this important? Barton said that the Texas Department of Corrections asks school officials every year how many third grade kids are not reading at grade level. According to Barton’s source:

…based on the numbers we give them, that’s how many beds they get ready for the next 15 years for the future. Because kids that are not reading at grade level in the third grade, they’re the kids that end up in prison. That’s the best indicator they have found is where these kids are in third grade.

As Right Wing Watch reported, this claim has been debunked in other states. However, Texas is not mentioned in the article cited there. To check out how Barton’s home state projects the future prison population, I called the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. An official there directed me to the Texas Legislative Budget Board. On the LBB website, I clicked the Public Safety and Criminal Justice link to find numerous reports, one of which included yearly prison population projections (see projections from 2012-2017).

The title of the report is “Adult and Juvenile Correctional Population Projections Fiscal Years 2012—2017.” In it, the methods for projecting the future are spelled out on pages 12-28. You won’t find anything in these pages about reading levels at the third grade or at anytime. Instead, the reports says:

The adult incarceration population projection for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is based on a discrete-event simulation modeling approach resulting from the movement of individual offenders into, through, and out of TDCJ. Discrete-event simulation focuses on the modeling of a system as it evolves over time as a dynamic process. The model simulates offender movement based on offense type, sentence length, and time credited to current sentence.

The LBB considers convictions, revocations of the community placements (community placement does not always work), and a host of factors relating to parole practices. The crime rate and the unemployment rate in Texas are considered “if major shifts occur from the latest trends.” I looked at the most recent and the oldest reports and I saw nothing about reading levels.

This claim was made in the context of a program criticizing teachers’ unions and the perceived state of public education in Louisiana. The message is that parents need to have school choice to provide competition to motivate bad schools to be better. To ramp up the urgency, Barton comes along with this unsupported claim about the long term consequences of low reading levels.

Of course reading levels are important. However, one can be for better education and even favor some school choice programs without having to spread fictions. Whether it be current events or historical events, you just have to check everything out.