David Barton’s dishonest and discredited pseudo-history hasn’t stopped him from becoming a star within the Republican Party. Despite the glaring flaws and political bias found in his work, not to mention the fact that actual conservative Christian scholars are among his most vocal critics, GOP candidates for office consistently seek Barton’s advice, counsel and endorsements.
Now, Barton’s WallBuilders deputy and radio show co-host Rick Green has launched a Facebook page to draft Barton run for U.S. Senate against the Republican incumbent John Cornyn.
On October 30, Green wrote that “if the draft page gets 5k likes in just a few days, then we’ll know people want him to run.” As of today, the page currently has fewer than half that number of “likes,” but Barton’s possible run has garnered publicity and made Glenn Beck giddy. Barton recently told Beck that “if the Lord tells me to do it, I’ll do it.”
In anticipation of Barton’s possible run for office, we decided to look through our voluminous Barton archive and pull out the highlights of his radical record.
1. God Is Rightfully Blocking A Cure For HIV/AIDS
Barton is delighted by the fact that God is preventing researchers from finding a cure or vaccine for HIV/AIDS. According to Barton, HIV/AIDS is a punishment for sin and therefore God will block a potential cure: “God says, ‘Hey you’re going to bear in your body the consequences of this homosexual behavior.’” He argues that HIV/AIDS is a divine “penalty” for gay people’s “shameful sexual acts.” On a similar note, Barton has called homosexuality “absolutely reprehensible and disgusting” and said that marriage equality means we “are going down as a nation.”
2. “We Had To Destroy Indian Tribes”
Barton justified the slaughter of Native Americans as a defensive war against tribes who “declared war on all the white guys.” “We had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over until they said ‘Oh, got the point,’” Barton said, claiming that the tactics were only necessary because Native Americans were resisting missionaries who were trying to “civilize” them.
3. Demons Control Parts Of The Capitol
If Barton runs for US Senate and is elected, he will have to be careful to avoid the demon-controlled parts of Capitol Hill. Barton told televangelist Kenneth Copeland that demonic principalities have control over different government bodies and that is why politicians “think really goofy.”
4. The Bible Opposes Net Neutrality
Did you know that the Founding Fathers, Pilgrims, Puritans and the Bible all opposed Net Neutrality? According to Barton they did. He also argues that Net Neutrality is a “wicked” policy.
5. Founding Fathers Refuted The Theory of Evolution
While the nation’s founders lived long before Charles Darwin published his seminal works, Barton contends that the founders “already had the entire debate on creation and evolution” and sided with Creationism.
6. Evolution Should Be Banned In School Due To Separation Of Church And State
Barton maintains that evolution, secular humanism and atheism are all religions that should be banned in public school because of the separation of church and state. “Darwinism and evolution is a religion. Why don’t we say, ‘Hey, we can’t teach Darwinism in school. That affects the way people behave. I demand separation of church and state. Get Darwinism out of the classroom.’”
7. Government Should Regulate Gay Sex
After comparing homosexuality to cigarette smoking and eating unhealthy foods, Barton proposed: “Why don’t we regulate homosexuality?” He warned that nations that “rejected sexual regulation like with homosexuality” collapse “past the third generation from the time that they embraced it.”
“Nearly one-half of practicing homosexuals admit to five hundred or more sex partners and nearly one-third admit to a thousand or more sex partners in a lifetime,” he added. Barton also claims that a nation will have a spiritual revival once it stops tolerating homosexuality and has “chased the sodomites” out.
8. Schools Turn Kids Gay
Barton “guaranteed ” listeners that if they have children going to public schools “they are getting homosexual indoctrination.” He even said that public schools will “ force them to be homosexual.” Barton’s gay rights conspiracy theories don’t end there: Before the passage of the 2009 Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Barton said the law was “designed to single out preachers in the pulpit” and would put pastors in prison if they condemn homosexuality. Of course, that never happened.
9. Country Needs More Hate
Barton considered writing a book entitled, “When tolerance is a sin and hate is a virtue,” telling listeners of his radio show that nowadays “tolerance is a bad thing and hate is a good thing.” “We’re tolerating a lot stuff that destroys our families, that destroys our own character and we can’t tolerate that stuff. We have to get back to the point where hate is a virtue, at least certain kinds of hate.”
10. Bible Opposes Minimum Wage
Many of Barton’s lectures rail against progressive economic policy as unbiblical, arguing that the Bible condemns the capital gains tax, estate tax, progressive income tax and the minimum wage. “Jesus did not like the minimum wage,” Barton contends.
11. Constitution Quotes The Bible ‘Verbatim’
Even though Barton can’t find a single actually verbatim quote from the Bible in the Constitution, he consistently claims that the Constitution quotes the Bible “verbatim.” It is no wonder that he also asserts that God established America’s system of elections. It is no surprise then that Barton advocates the theocratic Seven Mountains Dominionism.
12. Life Begins Before Conception
Barton has said that life doesn’t begin at conception, but actually “life begins before conception.” Not surprisingly, Barton believes that abortion rights will lead to socialism and that abortion is banned under the Seventh Amendment. The Seventh Amendment reads: “In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re–examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
13. No Limits On Second Amendment
According to Barton, under the Second Amendment there is no limit to what type of weapons people could possess, including tanks, bazookas and fighter jets.
14. Abortion Rights Leads To Divine Punishment
Barton recently claimed that inclement weather linked to climate change isn’t a result of climate change at all, but is actually God’s judgment on America for abortion rights.
15. Prayer Stopped BP Oil Spill, Drought
During a Religious Right conference call, Barton maintained that state declarations of prayer ended a drought in Georgia and also prevented damage on the Gulf Coast from the BP oil spill.
