Having his distorted book on Thomas Jefferson pulled off the shelves by a prominent evangelical publisher doesn’t seem to be slowing down David Barton’s efforts to rewrite history. Now he’s promoting an essay in which he calls the idea that the Bill of Rights was intended to protect the rights of the minority “ridiculous”:

Sadly, in recent years some federal courts have also declared that “The purpose of the Bill of Rights is to protect the minority from the majority,” yet this is ridiculous. No individual is to lose his or her right to free speech, self-defense, the rights of religious conscience, or any other right simply because he or she happens to be in the majority rather than a minority. To the contrary, the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were all based on the philosophy that government is to protect the God-given rights of every individual, whether they are in the majority or the minority, from the encroachments of government.

Ironically, in writing about issues like gay rights and abortion in the same essay, Barton offers a pretty good example of “encroachments of government.” He criticizes “morally aberrant groups proclaiming… Read More