Pseudo-historian David Barton now wants to persuade Americans that things were pretty good in the United States during the Civil War — arguable our nation’s most traumatic, divisive and certainly bloodiest war. From our friends at Right Wing Watch:
When David Barton appeared on Glenn Beck’s program to discuss the important of prayer and fasting, he displayed various prayer proclamations issued by the Founding Fathers before highlighting one issued by Abraham Lincoln that Barton claimed Lincoln released because he felt that America had “become so prosperous, so bountiful” that it had forgotten God and needed to be reminded to humble itself and be thankful for all God had given this nation, declaring that it showed that “Lincoln had great spiritual insight at a time when the nation really was doing well.”
Right Wing Watch includes a video clip from the Beck program. They also include this from President Lincoln’s 1861 proclamation:
And whereas, when our own beloved Country, once, by the blessing of God, united, prosperous and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy, — to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved; that our arms may be blessed and made effectual for the re-establishment of law, order and peace, throughout the wide extent of our country; and that the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty, earned under His guidance and blessing, by the labors and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored in all its original excellence.
Barton must hope his audience was clueless. The State Board of Education members who appointed him as an “expert adviser” during the controversial and highly politicized revision of social studies curriculum standards in Texas three years ago clearly were.
Getting rid of James Madison in Texas classrooms was, in my mind, an act of treason. James Madison possessed the greatest political mind in the history of our country, bar none. Barton, Cynthia Dunbar, Don McLeroy – these people that voted that change – they are all traitors.
But alas Madison didn’t share their infantile and perverted belief in “cheap grace”, ie once a person has been born-again all past and future transgressions are forgiven. One truly muust have an inferior mind to believe such garbage.
Maybe Barton doesn’t know what words like “terrible visitation” and “punishment” mean.
Really, things were good during the Civil War??? I’ve heard some people claim that things weren’t so bad in the South BEFORE the war, but even NeoConfederates don’t say that conditions were good DURING the war.
It would be interesting to know exactly what drugs Barton is on when he makes his idiotic statements. Glenn Beck seems to be back on the drugs that got him into trouble in the first place. Look at his eyes. He is taking something other than alcohol.
What I cannot fathom is why anyone would take Barton so seriously as to post what he says. On the other hand, it is always amusing to get the opportunity to peek inside the absence of a mind. If ignorance is bliss, Barton and Beck have GOT to be two of the most deliriously out-of-their-minds happy!
PCP?
Self-correction: What I meant to say is that Barton and Beck have GOT to be two of the most deliriously out-of-their-minds happy people on the face of the earth.
You people are missing the point. What Lincoln was saying was that God had blessed the country, but that America had turned away from God. Obviously, the country was suffering and needed to turn back to God. David Barton uses primary resources for his historical references. Why others want to twist history into something else is beyond me.
David Barton does a pretty thorough job of twisting history himself, especially with the way he vandalizes the historical record found in those “primary sources.”