david Barton – Page 35 – Warren Throckmorton

World Net Daily to Publish New Edition of David Barton's The Jefferson Lies

First, he said Simon & Schuster was going to publish it. They declined.
Today, World Net Daily announced plans to publish a new edition in 2016.
I am looking forward to learning the identity of the “academic endorsements.” Why not just post them now on the WND page promoting the book?
Michael and I are up for another round. We have a few academic endorsements of our own.

Setting the Record Straight

on Thomas Jefferson

Historian David Barton responds to his critics head-on
in this new edition of The Jefferson Lies

WASHINGTON — America, in so many ways, has forgotten its past. Its roots, its purpose, its identity all have become shrouded behind a veil of political correctness bent on twisting the nation’s founding, and its Founders, to fit within a misshapen modern world.

The time has come to remember again.

In 2012 prominent historian David Barton set out to correct the distorted image of the once-beloved Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in the best-selling book The Jefferson Lies. Despite the wildly popular success of the original hardcover edition, a few dedicated liberal individuals and academics campaigned to discredit Barton’s scholarship and credibility, but to no avail.

Barton responds to his critics in a lengthy preface to this new paperback edition in which he takes to task his former publisher and directly answers with thorough documentation the main issues his detractors registered, while also providing numerous academic endorsements of his work. This paperback version, to be released by WND Books on January 12, 2016, certifies that Barton’s research is sound and his premises are true as he tackles seven myths about Thomas Jefferson head-on and answers pressing questions about this incredible statesman including:

• Did Thomas Jefferson really have a child by his young slave girl, Sally Hemings?

• Did he write his own Bible, excluding the parts of Christianity with which he disagreed?

• Was he a racist who opposed civil rights and equality for black Americans?

• Did he, in his pursuit of separation of church and state, advocate the secularizing of public life?

Through Jefferson’s own words and the eyewitness testimony of contemporaries, Barton repaints a portrait of the man from Monticello as a visionary, an innovator, a man who revered Jesus, a classical Renaissance man, and a man whose pioneering stand for liberty and God-given inalienable rights fostered a better world for this nation and its posterity. For America, the time to remember these truths again is now.

David Barton is the founder and president of WallBuilders, a national pro-family organization that presents America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious, and constitutional heritage. He is the author of many best-selling books, including Original Intent, The Bulletproof George Washington, American History in Black and White, and The Question of Freemasonry and the Founding Fathers. He addresses more than four hundred groups each year. Barton was named by Timemagazine as one of America’s twenty-five most influential evangelicals, and he has received numerous national and international awards, including Who’s Who in Education and Daughters of the American Revolution’s highest award, the Medal of Honor. David and his wife, Cheryl, have three grown children.

The Jefferson Lies will be in bookstores nationwide on January 12, 2016.

David Barton Takes His Christian Nation Show Back to Ukraine

In June 2014, the head of one of Ted Cruz’s Super PACs, David Barton visited Ukraine and, among other things, told a group of pastors that John Locke’s Two Treatises cited 1500 Bible verses of how government should operate (recently debunked with the help of Greg Forster). According to his Facebook page, Barton went back last week to spread the Christian nation gospel.

We’ve been in Eastern Europe this week. This country is wanting to move toward a new constitution that inculcates many of the principles of our American constitutional government, including its alliance with religion and morality. I spoke at what is considered their premier university and law school, and then met with some heads of their departments. We are also helping with the development of military personnel and programs here, including the addition of chaplains to the military (some of our best and most-Godly military leaders will be helping them over coming weeks). During the trip, we dined at a local restaurant, and we captured some of flavor of this wonderful country and its precious people in the video below. (They even played a western swing song — quite an interesting sound on Eastern European instruments!) The panoramic picture is of a law class where I spoke at the university, and the large red building is a university here. There is also a choir singing inside a government building (the yellow room in the picture) as part of our awards ceremony, and then the group of 55 special students from across the country we honored with awards last night for their contributions to the movement to create a new constitution here — one built on Godly values and the rule of law, modeling much of the original intent of the American constitution. I spent 2 hours after the law school yesterday speaking to these students, and then answering their questions. They were a remarkable and bright group — a great future for this nation!

Judging from one of the Facebook pics, Barton spoke at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

Hopefully, Ukraine will have some politicians and citizens who advocate for principles in our actual Constitution, not the make-believe one Barton claims quotes the Bible.
To those contemplating a Ted Cruz presidential run: Consider that Barton runs one of Cruz’s Super PACs and has been a long time Cruz supporter. How does a Secretary of Education David Barton sound? Ambassador to Ukraine?

David Barton: The Iran Treaty Requires the U.S. to Fight Those Who Attack Iran Even If Israel Attacks

David Barton, the leader of one of Ted Cruz’s Super PACs, said on his Wallbuilders Live show today that the Iran treaty requires the U.S. to fight anyone who attacks Iran. Barton is pretty sure Israel will do it so the Iran deal obligates the U.S. to fight with Israel. Say what?
Read and listen here.
Ok, readers who are up on the Iran treaty issue, what is this about? According to RWW, Trump first mentioned this and the State Dept denied it. However, we all know that some people won’t be satisfied by a simple denial.
Does anyone know what provision of the treaty Barton is talking about? Better yet, Mr. Barton, I know you read here, so tell us. Quote the provision. What is your source?
Here is the treaty. What page should I read to know what you know?

FEC Launches Inquiry Into Donation from Ted Cruz Super PAC to Carly Fiorina's PAC

For reasons not clear, one of Ted Cruz’s Super PAC gave $500,000 to Carly Fiorina’s Super PAC back in June. And because “other disbursement” is not particularly clear, the FEC has launched an inquiry:

FEC Fiorina Inquiry by The Conservative Treehouse

In the letter above, the FEC analyst referred to line 21b in Schedule B of the mid-year report. However, I learned today from the FEC that “21b” is a mistake and line 29 on Schedule B is the donation is question. See the image below:

Neither Keep the Promise nor Carly for America have responded to requests for comment.
Some tweeters and emailers have wondered if this somehow connects Glenn Beck, David Barton, and Ted Cruz with Carly Fiorina. First, I have no idea why a Cruz PAC would give money to Fiorina. Second, Barton was not a part of the Keep the Promise Super PAC family of PACs until very recently. This disbursement to Fiorina’s PAC was made in June.

Challenge to David Barton: Where Are the 1500 Bible Verses in Locke’s Two Treatises?

I think I know the answer but I doubt David Barton will respond.

First, some background is necessary. For quite some time, the head of Ted Cruz Super PAC David Barton has claimed that John Locke referred to over 1500 Bible verses in his Two Treatises of Government. In The Jefferson Lies, Barton wrote the following:

Furthermore, in his Two Treatises of Government (1689) — the work specifically relied on by Jefferson and the other Founders as they drafted the Declaration — Locke invoked the Bible over 1500 times (pp. 40-41).

The earliest instance of the claim I have been able to find is a 2006 article posted on Wallbuilders’ website about Independence Day.

Locke’s Treatise (actually two separate treatises combined into one book) is less than 400 pages long; but in the first treatise, Locke invoked the Bible in 1,349 references; in his second treatise, he cited it 157 times. Imagine! In the primary work influencing the Declaration of Independence, Locke referred to the Bible over 1,500 times to show the proper operation of civil government. No wonder the Declaration has been such a successful document!

Then, on the August 14 segment of Rick Wiles’ TruNews (ironic), Barton again claimed that Locke included over 1500 Bible verses on how civil government is supposed to operate.

In this clip, Wiles asks David Barton why pastors won’t preach about culture war topics. Barton answers by describing how he was asked to go to the Ukraine to speak to political and religious leaders there about the foundations of American government. Barton used the Locke story to support his contention that American civil government was derived from the Bible. At about 1:20 into the clip above, Barton says:

The Ukraine is very highly Christian and so I just asked these leading pastors, the heads of their denominations, I said, does the Bible say anything about government, can you give me any verses on that? And I got about seven verses and these are like the popes of their denomination. And so I pulled out a book from 1690, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, you know in America, this is what our founding fathers used to write the 1776 Declaration of Independence. This little book, you can see, translated into Ukrainian, less than 400 pages long, it’s less than an inch thick, it has more than 1500 Bible verses on how civil government should operate, so how come you as church leaders only know seven, when here’s a little book with 1500 in it?

Barton then goes on to castigate American missionaries for teaching the separation of church and state.

I wrote about Barton’s 1500 verse claim previously with Locke scholar Greg Forster providing expert commentary. Here is one key component of Forster’s response:

In his edition of the Two Treatises, editor Mark Goldie of Cambridge University lists only 121 Bible verses cited in the entire Two Treatises. And that’s including all the places where Locke didn’t cite the verse explicitly and Goldie “interpolated” the citation. In addition to those 121 Bible verses referenced, Goldie lists six places where Locke cited an entire chapter of the Bible, and one place where he cited an entire book (Proverbs). That’s it. But anyone who has read the Two Treatises will know Barton’s claim is false without having had to count.

In another post, I provided Thomas Jefferson’s description of how he wrote the Declaration of Independence. While Locke was an intellectual influence, Jefferson said he didn’t consult any work to write it as asserted by Barton.
In this post, I want to show how I think Barton could have come up with his inflated claim of 1500 Bible verses. While I get a different number than Barton, I have found a way one can misrepresent the number of verses Locke used in his arguments. Barton’s approach to history and truth is on full display with this claim.

As pointed out first by Greg Forster, Two Treatises editor Mark Goldie produced an index to Scriptures implied and directly cited by Locke. At the end of the post, I am linking to images of that index for readers to examine. In the index, Goldie refers to Locke’s citation of individual verses, several full chapters, and the entire book of Proverbs. To get to over 1500 Bible verses, one must count each time an individual verse is cited by Locke (he cites some verses multiple places in the Two Treatises), and then add the total verses in each full chapter cited by Locke and then add the entire book of Proverbs. If one does that, the total count I get is 1,512 verses. See the image below for a illustrative portion of the Goldie index with an entire chapter, multiple verses and the entire book of Proverbs.

Even if this method was defensible (it’s not), Barton’s claims are still wrong. He says in The Jefferson Lies that “Locke invoked the Bible 1500 times!” Even though Proverbs contains 915 verses, mentioning the Old Testament book once does not equate to invoking the Bible 915 times. Locke invokes Proverbs once, so one can subtract 914 times from the count if one is being honest.

Most recently, Barton claimed that the Two Treatises “has more than 1500 Bible verses on how civil government should operate.” As I have demonstrated, to get to over 1500 verses Barton has to count the entire book of Proverbs, entire chapters of the Bible, such as Genesis 36, as well as every time Locke refers to the same verse. I want Barton to explain to me how the Proverbs and some of the verses in the chapters mentioned by Locke tell us how “civil government should operate.” For instance, Gen. 36: 38 reads:

When Shaul died, Baal-Hanan son of Akbor succeeded him as king.

How about Exodus 21:7? Did the founders rely on this verse to help write the founding documents?

If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do.

How about Proverbs 12:25?

Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up.

Few of the verses Locke used fit the descriptions offered by Barton.
In my opinion, Barton inflated the number of verses in order to craft a fiction about the role of the Bible in the construction of the Declaration of Independence.

To close, it is worth re-reading what Forster said about Locke’s use of the Bible:

Moreover, a large number – possibly even the majority – of those 121 citations are not to passages “on how civil government is to operate.” The Bible references in the Two Treatises are heavily concentrated in the First Treatise. The overwhelming majority of the First Treatise, in turn, is devoted to an extended analysis of small number of selected verses from the first two chapters of Genesis, especially Genesis 1:28-30. That’s a lot of analysis devoted to understanding the biblical text, but it’s not a large number of verses cited. The remainder of the First Treatise, where other biblical verses are cited more frequently, looks to the Bible not primarily for instruction on civil government but almost entirely on the power of parents over their children, especially the inheritance of property from parents to children. Locke is interested in these verses because he wants to use them to refute Robert Filmer’s claim that today’s kings inherit their power from Adam, but these are clearly not “biblical references on how civil government is to operate.” They are biblical references on how families are to operate. In fact, the point that descriptions of the how the family should work are not descriptions of how civil government should work was Locke’s main point!

Goldie’s index: page 253, 254, 255.