Turns out that former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee hasn’t been praising David Barton just on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Last month Huckabee also touted the master propaganda artist and play-pretend “historian” at the religious right’s Rediscover God in America confab in Iowa. In fact, he thinks Americans should be forced to listen to Barton’s revisionist history nonsense — “at gun point, no less.” Right Wing Watch from People for the American Way quotes from the Huckster’s speech:
“I don’t know anyone in America who is a more effective communicator [than David Barton.] I just wish that every single young person in America would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we really are as a nation. I almost wish that there would be something like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced — at gun point no less — to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.”
Of course, the Texas State Board of Education put Barton on a panel helping revise curriculum standards for millions of public school students. So Texas is already a step ahead in forcing Barton’s politicized versions of history on everybody else.
They know their grip on the reins of power are slipping and they have decreasing chances of grabbing total power, so they’re going for the whole enchilada in 2012.
What’s going on in Wisconsin is a foreshadowing of the national contest: yesterday I saw John fund come on Fox and start talking about apocryphal “possible voter fraud” violations in Milwaukee, etc., that were “at least worth a closer look”.
Then by evening we had the county clerk of Waukesha, who has a track record of unethical behavior, suddenly “found 7000 votes for Prosser.
They are going to try everything in the book, including the book, and the kitchen sink, to “take over” total power in this country.
Is Huckabee running on an Oliver Cromwell platform? Cromwell wss the guy who marched troops into the Parliament to arrest all those who opposed him, and ran a “Rump Parliament” until he disposed of the institution of Parliament altogether, and ruled as the “Lord Protector of England”.
After the English got tired of Puritan pruderty, they invited King Charles II who hanged all those still alive who had voted to have King Charles I beheaded. He then dug up Oliver Cromwell’s body and had it hung in chains and beheaded.
The English Constitution and ours include the lessons of the abuse of power by King and Parliament. One cannot interfere with a member of Congress going to the Congress. The provisions of impeachment and of treason of the President in our Cnstitution is based on the follies of the English Civil War. In order to understand why certain provisions are they way they are in the main body of the Constitution, google English Civil War, Olver Cromwell, Pride’s Purge and follow the links.
With each shift in the religious wars of Great Britain and of Europe brought waves of refugess on the wrong side of the arbument. From France we have the Protestant Hugenauts, the Catholics in Maryland came when Catholics were being burned, and the Puritans came because the Anglicans were celebrting that heathen practice called Christmas.
Huckabee’s devotion to David Barton should alone be enough to diaqualify him as a serious candidate for President.
On Jon Stewart the other night old Huckster used the “we report, you decide” argument, deferring a direct answer to challenging Stewart to evaluate Barton’s claims directly and make issue if not satisfied.
Spoken like the willfully ignorant, under-educated, dishonest anti-intellectual Huckabee is. Sure, teach the controversy, examine the strengths and weaknesses, let the children decide, all opinions are equally valid, oh, and facts are just fancy schmancy opinions.
Rather than science and easily researchable facts Huckabee is the kind of person who revels in conspiracy theories, Big Foot, Area 51, climate denialism, birtherism and the list goes on. This is not the mental midget I would follow as a leader.
That’s only half the story; it gets more Orwellian still. The group that organized the conference edited out that little faux pas when put the video up on their website.
(Spotted via Chris Rodda of the Huffington Post and Military Religious Freedom Foundation.)
If Huckabee got his wish and had a gun pointed at every single one of us, forcing us to listen to the David Barton, and we chose to close our eyes and sing a loud tune to drown out the cult initiating information, I wonder if his next wish would be to shoot us all. What an odd thing to say, by anybody.
I say we change his nickname from “Huckabee!” to “The Huckster”.
Yes, Ed, he is disqualified. He was probably disqualified for the GOP nominati0n before that.
However, his main goal is to milk his popularity and fleece the sheep. I don’t imagine he really wants to be President and have to deal with all those headaches.
TFN:
Thank you for reporting Governor Huckabee’s introduction of David Barton, two very misinformed history revisionists. If you are serious, I hope you will specifically report an accurate understanding of what the Constitution actually says and embarrass America’s undereducated “right wing” Republican revisionists, who claim to accept the words of the Constitution exactly as written, like their misinformed “strict constructionist” heroes on the U.S. Supreme Court.
It is the exact words of the Constitution which are the supreme law of the land. The word in Article 6., Sec. 3., is “no religious test,” not no “church” test. The word in the Establishment Clause is “religion,” not “church.” The word “thereof,” in the Free Exercise Clause gets its entire meaning from the word to which it refers, that is, “religion,” not church. If the establishment clause is referring to a “church,” then the free exercise word “thereof” has to refer to a “church.” Prohibiting the free exercise of a “church”? The establishment clause says “religion,” not church; therefore, the constitutional grammar is perfect and understood only by recognizing the First Amendment is specifically referring to an establishment of “religion,” itself, not of a church.
The authors of the Constitution and the First Amendment wrote “religion,” not church, and a strict constructionist accepts the words of the Constitution as written. It is a “religious” test and an establishment of “religion” itself which are prohibited by the Constitution.
In contrast to “religion” established by law or Congress, the “free exercise” clause guarantees the “free” exercise of what? Of that to which “thereof” grammatically and directly refers, i.e., “religion,” the whole subject “thereof.”
Under the United States, it is the all inclusive understanding of “religion” which is not to be established by law or Congress. Why? Because in the USA, “religion” is to be exercised freely, i.e., as in the “free exercise thereof,” in direct contrast to “religion” established by law or Congress. In the USA, “religion” is to be voluntary (freely exercised), not established by law or government at any level. Government and law are the essence of coercion and, therefore, “religion” is not to be established by law or government.
Does the word “religion” include “church”? Of course it does. The word “religion” includes everything related to “religion,” that is, churches, parochial aid, tax exemptions, chaplains, etc. In other words, “religion” by any name or understanding is not to be established as a part of government or law under the United States. For example, “no religious test shall be ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” Article 6., Section 3.
The 1787 Constitution is strictly worded to include every understanding of “religious,” (Art. 6.), as the word “religion” (First Amendment) includes every understanding of “religion,” because in the USA “religion” is to be voluntarily exercised without any coercion from government at any level.
Does that mean “religion” exercise is above the law? Absolutely not! The literal word controlling the free exercise clause is “prohibiting,” not “abridging,” as applies to speech, press, peaceable assembly, and petition. The word “abridging” means reducing. It is the “free,” that is the voluntary, not established by law, exercise of religion which shall not be prohibited. Understand, the word “prohibiting” has a different definition than does “abridging.” The word “prohibiting” applies to the free exercise of “religion” and means totally forbidding, not reducing (abridging), as applies to speech, press, peaceable assembly, and petition. Speech, press, peaceable assembly, and petition shall not be reduced (abridged). But, the exercise of religion shall not be totally forbidden, which means religion actions can be reduced to the laws of the land, just not TOTALLY forbidden, which is what “prohibiting” means.
The above understanding is why I recently wrote The Religion Commandments in the Constitution: A Primer!
Unfortunately, the 1801 “church and state” words of Jefferson, to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut, which state at that time still did have state laws for tax support of religion, and Jefferson’s letter keeps distracting from the correct understanding of what the U.S. Constitution said and meant, as it applied to the national Congress. The First Amendment was eventually applied to the states. Nonetheless, Jefferson had absolutely nothing to do with writing the Constitution or the First Amendment. Jefferson was not at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, i.e., not a Founding Father (with capitol Fs), see Webster’s, or a member of the First Congress. Jefferson was in France speaking French from 1784 to 1789 and did not report for duty in the Washington administration, as Secretary of State, until March 1790.
Regardless, Jefferson got the wording correct in Virginia, for example, when in the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty, which he wrote before going to England, outlawed the use of tax money for the support of religion: “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.” In 1786, Virginia prohibited the use of coerced tax money for the support of “any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.” In regard to the United States, the First Amendment commanded that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of “religion,” not even “respecting” an establishment of it.
Too many separationists are still, like the revisionists, using the words “church and state,” which are not in the Constitution, and too many separationists are not strict constructionists when they do not distinguish between “prohibiting” and “abridging.” Words mean things. The Founding Fathers and the First Congress wrote what they meant and meant what they wrote.
For example, “Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history,” James Madison, “Father of the Constitution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3:555., c. 1817. James Madison understood. It is way past time for “constitutionalists” to comprehend.
Right Wing Watch, this is your opportunity to stand up for what the Constitution actually says and to make revisionists out of Huckabee and Barton and Scalia and Thomas, etc.!
My book is available from Amazon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb7SbUWw9dM .
Well, I always think of him as Huckabee the FORMER Southern Baptist minister. I think that alone is instructive of something. You can fill in the blank.
As for pointing a gun at me and forcing me to sit through a David Barton presentation, I would hope that someone would show enough mercy to pull the trigger before Barton opens his mouth.
Oops! Mike Huckabee’s Inner Fascist is showing. Or, should I say, Inner Inquisitor. Jews used to be forced to listen to Christian sermons. They were rounded up and marched into the churches and cathedrals and forced to stand for hours to listen to this crap. No food, no water, no potty breaks. And if any member of the Jewish community was absent, all were put to death.
Huckabee is like these other Repugniks who say they want to “take America back.” Yeah, back to Medieval Times. The “Age of Faith” when scientists and Jews – and anyone else who didn’t go along with “the program” – were persecuted, driven out, or killed.
What’s even scarier to me are the similarities to 1930’s Germany.
David Barton gyms is a chain in Manhattan of exercise clubs that cater exclusively to homosexuals. Its known for its bathhouse antics in the showers and saunas.
Wednesday it was announced that Glenn Beck is leaving Fox. The end of the year is the advertised date but it sound like it may well be quite a bit sooner.
Beck’s legacy, aside from his daily hysterical lunatic ranting, will be that he introduced fellow evil-doer and enemy of Jeffersonian democracy David Barton to a whole new legion of rats looking for a pied piper. A Jim Jones to serve them up ice cold beverages. The last thing this country needed was that ass-clown Beck giving the fraud Barton national exposure.