David Barton hasn’t gone anywhere but D’Souza is currently associated with the claim that progressive historians have kept the racist past of the Democratic party out of our education system. In 2004, Barton publihed a book called Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White in which he emphasized the Democratic failings and the Republican history of civil rights advocacy. However, he fails to account for the shift in the Democratic party during the last 50+ years. Typical of Barton, the book is missing important events such as Barry Goldwater’s failure to support the Civil Rights Act. I critiqued the book in a 2012 post.
Currently, Princeton historian Kevin Kruse is documenting on Twitter the many historians who have found D’Souza’s work to be lacking (over 100 at this writing). I was reminded that D’Souza’s spin on the Democratic party isn’t new with him by this tweet from Bruce Wilson:
As a minor point of interest, I believe the pseudo-historian David Barton was pushing the democratic-party-as-the-true-racist-party thing before D'Souza picked it up.
— There are thousands of Bruce Wilsons (@brucewilson) February 26, 2019
I don’t know how long D’Souza has been promoting the Democratic party is still the racist party line but he sounds a lot like Barton when he does it. Is it possible that D’Souza lifted it from Barton?
D’Souza claims history teachers obscure the fact that Democrats favored slavery and Jim Crow laws. That certainly isn’t true in our local school system and as Kevin Kruse regularly points out, historians teach the facts — all of them. It is D’Souza and Barton who leave out the facts they don’t like.
Kruse’s thread with the line up of historians is here:
A few days ago, someone in my mentions suggested I put together a thread of all the *other* historians who've debunked @DineshDSouza on Twitter.
In September of 2016, Barton asserted that he possessed an earned doctorate that he had chosen not to talk about. Watch Barton make that claim:
Transcript:
Something I’ve noticed about progressives and liberals is how careless they are in throwing false claims around. For instance, I was recently on a national television network where I was introduced as having a doctorate, and progressives instantly ran stories claiming that I don’t have a doctorate. That false claim is amusing on so many levels. First, things like health information and tax information and college educational information are fully protected by privacy laws. So they don’t know whether I have a doctorate or not! And I’ve always chosen not to talk about it.
Second, just for the record, I do have an earned doctorate. There it is.
And third, not only do I have an earned doctorate, I also have two honorary doctors of letters from other colleges. And according to West Virginia University, the doctor of letters degree is reserved only for individuals who have the highest level of knowledge in their chosen subject matter. Hmmm.
So for all of you critics, sorry to pop your balloon, but I do have an earned doctorate.
The day after Barton posted this video, I discovered that the degree (partially hidden in the video) was issued by unaccredited Life Christian University, a church which passes itself off as a school. Despite those privacy laws, the president of the entity Douglas Wingate confirmed that Barton was given a doctorate in “Christian history” from the school even though he didn’t attend classes. Wingate calls these degrees earned because Wingate uses published books as a basis for giving a degree. No classes are attended, the degree recipient never enrolls. The federal government considers such practices to be signs of a diploma mill and the state of Missouri will not allow LCU degree recipients to advertise the degrees as earned.
New Book Does Not Mention This Doctorate
Recently, Barton is co-author with James Garlow of a book titled This Precarious Moment. In it, Garlow wrote a chapter where he commented on his and Barton’s education. He makes it clear that he has the earned doctorate and Barton does not.
Those Careless Progressives and Their Claims
In their new book, Garlow and Barton take on progressives and liberals and offer Christianity as the solution to social problems. However, it is Barton who threw out a false claim about himself and withdrew it the next day without any comment, explanation or apology. Simply put, it was hypocritical for Barton to blast progressives for false claims at same time he was making one.
Just today, conservatives on social media are reveling in the discovery that a Der Spiegel reporter and award winning journalist, Claas Relotius, was fired for writing fake stories. Popular right wing pundit Pamela Geller used the news to attack all “left-wing journalists.”
Star reporter touted by CNN as ‘Journalist of the Year’ forced to resign for writing fake news stories, falsified stories ‘on a grand scale’: Fake news. Making up news stories and narratives is what left-wing journalists do. https://t.co/hdRRSRmbClpic.twitter.com/hZdCx09APB
What those crowing about Relotius’ demise aren’t pointing out is that he was fired and his awards taken from him by the same mainstream journalists they criticize. In mainstream journalism, there are consequences for falsifying your public claims and published work. His superiors at Der Spiegel took swift action when it was discovered and CNN removed his awards.
What has happened with Mr. Barton after his false credential claim? Nothing. Crickets. Bloggers have written about it but the story didn’t even make Christian news.
Of course, Barton had to pay a price for false narratives in the past when his book The Jefferson Lies was removed from publication by Thomas Nelson. However, he has made a comeback among those who should know better, one even telling me that the number of Barton’s followers mattered more than the accuracy of his work.
The false education claims (and the NCAA basketball claim, and the Olympic interpreter claim) have come after The Jefferson Lies debacle. One might sense a pattern.
Periodically, David Barton and his Wallbuilders organization bring together state and federal legislators for briefings and pep talks about how to promote the Christian nationalist legislative agenda. This is of course is how grassroots politics works and he has every right to do it. He can tell them aliens founded the nation if he wants to.
Although I have never heard him say anything about aliens, he does teach things which are troubling. For instance, he teaches that American judges should rule according to God’s law. You hear echos of this in Trump’s recent appointment to the post of Acting Attorney General. When running for Senate, then candidate Mathew Whitaker said he believed judges needed to have a biblical view of justice (no, a Constitutional view is the standard). Did he take a class with Barton? I don’t know. But I do know that Barton’s teachings have influenced Christian nationalism for decades. Despite a disgraced book pulled by his Christian publisher, a fake PhD claim, and multiple debunkings, he continues to have tremendous influence among those who are now in positions of great power.
Although I don’t know what he said to the legislators about immigration and the states, he has talked about this before on his Wallbuilders Live show (which is taped). This claim is a doozy because he has to butcher Thomas Jefferson’s words to make both healthcare and immigration state functions. I have an entire post on this which you can read here.
Did your legislator attend this meeting? If so, did your tax dollars pay for it? Might be worth checking into.
I am slipping. I missed the second year anniversary of David Barton announcing to the world he had an earned doctorate and the second year anniversary of the day he removed any evidence from the Internet that he ever claimed he had an earned doctorate.
On September 7 2016, I viewed a video (posted on both his Facebook and You Tube accounts) of Barton claiming he had an earned doctorate he chose not to talk about. Then after I figured out that the degree was from a school that meets the federal definition of a diploma mill and published those findings the next day, he removed the video from his accounts.
The following comes from a post marking the one year anniversary of the announcement.
In the video, Barton chastises progressives for questioning his claim to have an earned doctorate. He said he has an earned doctorate but that he has chosen not to talk about it. However, the next day Barton chose to take the video off of both websites and chose not to talk about the reasons why.
Barton’s haughty claim to have an earned doctorate gave way to silence after it was revealed that the degree came from Life Christian University, a
Life Christian University diploma reflection
diploma mill. According to the president of Life Christian University, Douglas Wingate, Barton didn’t attend the school but was given credit for his historical writings. Even though one cannot meaningfully call a degree earned when you don’t take any classes, that is exactly what LCU does with famous preachers and religious leaders.
The state of Missouri advised fellow LCU degree recipient Joyce Meyer that her claim of an earned PhD from the school was against state law. Meyer’s lawyer responded that Meyer had already decided that describing the LCU PhD as earned was false. Meyer now describes her LCU degree as honorary. Although that description is legal in Missouri, LCU is not accredited by a Department of Education recognized accrediting body and the status as a university is unusual since the school is registered with the IRS as a church.
Barton called his degree earned but sarcastically dismissed the honest reporting of what he called progressives. Barton has never explained or apologized for his demeaning and misleading statements. Yet, he still claims to be “America’s premier historian.” Would “America’s premier historian” try to pass off what can only be called an honorary degree as an earned one?
As of now, America’s premier historian has chosen not to talk about it.
Trump supporter Candace Owens has started something she calls Blexit which stands for Black exit from the Democrat party. It is a movement and a website.
African-Americans haven’t voted in great numbers for a Republican presidential candidate since 1960 but Owens hopes to change that with her movement of Black conservatives. However, she will need to clean up her historical act if she is going to succeed. As Princeton historian Kevin Kruse pointed out today on Twitter, the first three historical claims on her website aren’t accurate.
If you click the tweet, you will get to a thread which debunks the claims made by Owens. A little later in the thread actress Stacey Dash challenges Kruse with a altered photo of Margaret Sanger at a KKK rally.
On the Blexit website, I did not see any citations or sources for information. Some of claims appear to have originated with David Barton and/or Dinesh D’Souza. Some appear to be deliberate misinformation. It is an insult to the intelligence of the audience OWens and others are trying to reach to put up so much faulty material.
I am thankful that Kevin Kruse is so “informative” to quote Ms. Dash. If only she and others would go a little further and question the rest of the material.
