#David Barton

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Whitehouse at MMFA:

On July 9, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters announced that a number of people — many of them key figures in right-wing media — would be rewriting the social studies curriculum in the state.

The list includes right-wing hosts with ties to Walters like Steve Deace, Dennis Prager, and Stacy Washington. Also included is Kevin Roberts, the head of The Heritage Foundation, which has organized Project 2025.

Walters announced an “executive review committee” to revise Oklahoma’s social studies curriculum. Members include Dennis Prager, Robert Pondiscio, David Barton, Kevin Roberts, Everett Piper, John Dwyer, David Goodwin, Mark Bauerlein, Steve Deace, and Stacy Washington. [Oklahoma State Department of Education, 7/9/24]

After implementing a mandate that the state’s public schools teach the Bible, Walters claimed that right-wing commentator and pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, who has promised to “embrace Christian nationalism” and previously ran for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma, encouraged him to implement such a policy last year. [Media Matters, 7/8/24]

Walters has approved PragerU Kids — which is widely criticized for pushing right-wing propaganda, such as including distorted histories about slavery in its history lessons — as curriculum for Oklahoma public schools. In one supposedly educational video, for instance, a cartoon version of Fredrick Douglass describes slavery as a “compromise to achieve something great.” [MSNBC, 9/7/23; Media Matters, 9/8/23; NBC, 8/10/23]

Dennis Prager is an anti-LGBTQ pundit who has hosted The Dennis Prager Show since 1999. In 2009, he founded the conservative nonprofit organization PragerU, which publishes short videos on political and international issues.

David Barton is a pseudo-historian and Christian nationalist well-known for spreading the idea that the country was supposed to be a Christian nation. Barton is the founder of WallBuilders.

Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank leading Project 2025.

Steve Deace is a host for BlazeTV who has made many anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ remarks.

Stacy Washington is a commentator, radio host, and Air Force veteran who has appeared in many right-wing outlets. She was formerly a host of a program aired on American Family Radio, the radio arm of extreme anti-LGBTQ group American Family Association, before the network culled much of its programming and its dedicated Urban Family Communications network.

Right-wing indoctrination artist Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Schools Ryan Walters announced that he is having a team rewrite the state’s social studies curriculum, with many of its names right-wing media figures such as Everett Piper, serial history revisionist David Barton, indoctrination mill head Dennis Prager, and pundit Steve Deace.

See Also:

LGBTQ Nation: Oklahoma’s head of education hires Christian Nationalists to revise social studies currciculum

[contemplatingoutlander]

David Barton has built an entire career out of misusing, misrepresenting, and outright falsifying history, the Bible, and current events and doing so to promote his Christian nationalist political agenda. He has been highly influential not only within Republican politics, where he has many fans among current and former GOP legislators, but also internationally. On top of that, Barton’s Christian nationalist pseudo-history is shaping both Christian and secular educational institutions across the country. Barton, who has repeatedly misrepresented his academic credentials and personal history, had his book on Thomas Jefferson pulled by his own publisher in 2012 after it concluded that “basic truths just were not there.” Undaunted, Barton has soldiered on, repeatedly declaring that Christians who share his far-right worldview are supposed to be choosing our elected leaders and ruling the world because everything must operate according to biblical principles. Barton falsely insists that our Constitution and entire system of government are based on the Bible and thus asserts that everything from the minimum wage to the income tax to the teaching of evolution are unconstitutional because they supposedly violate Biblical teachings. Barton also believes that there should be literally no limits on the Second Amendment, meaning that average citizens are entitled to own tanks, fighter jets, and even nuclear weapons. Predictably, Barton takes a far-right position on issues like abortion—going so far as to proclaim that life actually begins 'before' conception—and on LGBTQ issues, asserting repeatedly that AIDS is God’s punishment for sin and therefore a cure will never be found. [color emphasis added]

David Barton is a dangerous man. See the video below about the instructional tools he has packaged to help indoctrinate American children into false beliefs about what our founders intended regarding the role of religion (especially Christianity) in American government.

Having a Speaker of the House who believes David Barton's "Christian" nationalist lies about American history is frightening.

The Democrats should make a motion to vacate Speaker Mike Johnson as soon as possible.

When Rep. Mike Johnson was elected Speaker of the House earlier this week, Christian nationalist religious-right activist Rick Green was “literally in tears” because, he said, Johnson “is one of our guys.”

Johnson himself confirmed as much back in 2021 when he spoke at a WallBuilders Pro-Family Legislators conference where he heaped praise on Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, saying that Barton’s work “has had such a profound influence on me and my work and my life.”

Green and Barton produce a daily “WallBuilders Live” radio program together, and on Thursday, they were downright giddy about Johnson’s elevation to the speakership, declaring that Johnson “sounds like a WallBuilders speaker” and proclaiming that “this is literally the kind of guy that we have been praying for.”

Johnson certainly does “sound like a WallBuilders speaker” and given that Right Wing Watch has covered Barton and WallBuilders for decades, it is worth taking a look at just what that means.

[qupritsuvwix]

God wrote the Constitution?

[sspacegodd]

LET'S TAKE A TRIP BACK TO BIBLICAL DAYS

Remember David Barton, the fake historian that the conservative Christian coalition lauded as their go-to guy for history, the guy Mike Huckabee said all American children should be forced to listen to at gunpoint? He's finally been spanked:

The Thomas Nelson publishing company has decided to cease publication and distribution of David Barton’s book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson, saying it has “lost confidence in the book’s details.”

[avengerscompound]

Tony Stark & Clint Barton Hawkeye (2012) #6

[wh2m]

→ “It still doesn’t quite compute how many people have seen it and how many people love it”: Jenny Walser on Heartstopper season three

“Whilst it’s Charlie who’s really struggling with his mental health, Nick is also struggling with knowing how to care for and talk to this person that he absolutely adores and loves. He knows himself he doesn’t have that support from his brother that Charlie does in Tori, which I think is quite a sad element to the story. But it’s quite nice that the relationship between Tori and Nick this season deepens. There are some very lovely moments when they’re both supporting each other and helping each other in how to best support Charlie. He becomes sort of her surrogate brother at some points, and she becomes his surrogate sister. I find that element of what Tori’s able to give to Nick quite lovely because his brother just isn’t emotionally able to be that support for him.”

[hischiersjohnston]

HEARTSTOPPER S2 | 07. SORRY

Tori Spring + Being a Protective Sister

[theelastword]

something new about aziraphale that i’m getting emotional over on this fine night (no one is shocked): i cannot stop thinking about the first scene of season 2. specifically i cannot stop thinking about the fact that even then, in a moment where both he and crowley even looked younger due to their innocence / lack of doubt or questioning just yet, aziraphale is already doing somersaults to worry for those around him. he doesn’t even KNOW this angel, and the idea that crowley could get in trouble for asking questions shouldn’t occur to him yet, but he’s still so burdened by anxieties and doubts for other peoples’ well-being and conditioned to protect others at his own expense (not to mention eerily close to seeing through Heaven for what it is). aziraphale is so fundamentally good, worrying about other people and caring about them before the very idea that bad things could happen to a fellow angel SHOULD have ever crossed his mind in the first place. and to me that disproves all notions that aziraphale is naive, because he’s been tragically aware since before the Beginning— and before crowley. which makes moments like the post-Job “what does that make me” scene even sadder because by all accounts, if aziraphale was familiar with what it’s like to doubt and worry before the Fall even happened, before he ever should have known what those things were, then he should have been one of the angels to fall, right? Wondering and doubting and worrying about things leads to a Fall, right? Only he didn’t. In a world in which there’s a line dividing doubtless, brainwashed, “happy” angels from doubtful, too-curious-for-their-own-good demons, aziraphale might just be the loneliest being in existence. he’s quite literally the sole person (that we know of) who stayed an angel but is forced to carry a burden that never should have been his, that NOBODY around him in Heaven has to carry. and he can’t ask about it because now he knows for sure where asking questions leads you, but he probably doesn’t understand why he has to carry that burden in the first place. the one he’s been carrying it since before Earth was even created.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kiera Butler at Mother Jones:

Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump held his first campaign rally as a convicted felon at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, hosted by the arch-conservative student group Turning Point USA. This wasn’t Trump’s first appearance at Dream City Church; he also held a rally there with Turning Point USA in 2020. For events like this, it’s an ideal venue: A weekly attendance of around 21,000 believers makes this one of the largest churches not just in Arizona but in the nation.

Dream City, which didn’t respond to my questions for this story, is a mecca for special guests who blur the line between religion and politics. Its annual conference has featured notables like musician and pastor Sean Feucht, who participated in a White House prayer session for President Trump in 2019 and is currently leading a tour of prayer rallies at state capitol buildings across the country. The lineup for this year’s event also included David Barton, whose organization, WallBuilders, teaches K-12 students about the supposed Christian origins of America; Jürgen Mathesius, a pastor at San Diego’s far-right Awaken Church, which has become a stop on Mike Flynn’s ReAwaken America tour; and Jentezen Franklin, a televangelist who also spoke at the 2022 Pray Vote Stand Summit, which mobilizes conservative Christian voters to engage in political activism.

In addition to its thrumming weekly worship sessions and its blockbuster events, the church has another project: Dream City Christian Academy. The K-12 private school, which serves nearly 800 students, is part of Turning Point USA’s Turning Point Academy program, a network of 41 schools that describes itself as “an educational movement that exists to glorify God and preserve the founding principles of the United States through influencing and inspiring the formation of the next generation.” Dream City Christian Academy promises to “Protect our campus from the infiltration of unethical agendas by rejecting all ‘woke’ and untruthful ideologies being pushed on students.” This politically charged approach to education likely isn’t for everyone—and because it’s a private school, it doesn’t have to be. Except for one thing: Dream City Christian Academy is one of a growing number of religious schools that are supported by public funds.

In 2022, Arizona became the first state in which all students are allowed to use state vouchers to cover a portion of tuition at any private school, secular or religious. Through Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, each participating family receives about 90 percent of the money the state would have spent on the child’s public school education—around $7,000 per student per year—for private school tuition. For the 2024-2025 school year, the Dream City Christian Academy annual tuition ranges from $10,450 in elementary school to $13,999 in high school—so families of the school’s nearly 800 students can use state funds to pay for between half and two-thirds of their tuition bill. Dream City Christian Academy received almost $1 million in tuition voucher money last year, the Arizona Republic recently reported.

Since Arizona passed its universal voucher law, 10 more states have followed suit. According to an analysis by Education Week, 29 states currently have programs that provide such assistance to a variety of different students many of whom attend local public schools that perform poorly. It also targets those with a disability that requires specialized education and those whose families earn significantly less than the federal poverty level. More programs are in the works: Lawmakers in both Louisiana and South Carolina recently advanced bills that would create programs like Arizona’s that are open to all students. When state funds are available for private school choice programs, a recent Washington Post analysis found that religious schools receive upwards of 90 percent of that money.

[...] A prerequisite for students and their families to attend some of the schools that currently receive voucher money is that they accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. In March, the education blog Notes from the Chalkboard highlighted one such school. Students attending North Carolina’s Daniel Christian Academy, are trained to “enter the Seven Mountains of Influence,” a main tenet of a Christian Nationalist movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. Its adherents believe that the faithful are called to seek Christian control of the “seven mountains” of society: family, education, media, government, business, arts & entertainment, and religion. Many New Apostolic Reformation followers believe that waging “spiritual warfare” is justified in achieving these goals, though Daniel Christian Academy specifies that its endorsement of the Seven Mountains Mandate “in no way includes violence or manipulation at any level.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Laser worries that the proliferation of private school voucher programs will open the door to even more permissive rules around the use of public education dollars to teach religion. She points to a suite of bills that would allow public schools to employ chaplains, and even more remarkably, to an Oklahoma Catholic school called St. Isidore of Seville, which is set to become the nation’s first Christian public charter school this fall. The overarching goal of these initiatives, she says, is to “bestow a power and privilege on Christians in our country, at the expense of all the other religions in America.” Meanwhile, public education is robbed  “of the funding that it’s entitled to.”

Mother Jones reports on the disturbing trend of Christian Nationalists opening taxpayer-funded private schools with the intention to indoctrinate students with right-wing politics and a Christian Nationalist worldview.

[sailor-iris]

Hawkeye (2012) #3

Art by: David Aja

[v4guelyv4mpiric]

i dont remember there being a Quicksilver cameo

(there isnt. im lying. i made this)

[contemplatingoutlander]

Parker echoed Barton’s views about America’s founding during his interview with Enlow, after Enlow asked the chief justice to comment on the growing use of the phrase “Christian nationalism” among those who support the separation of church and state. “This is an undefined term that’s being thrown around now to label people, and I have no idea what they mean by or what should be meant by it,” said Parker, who then defended his view that America’s “original form of government” was based on the Bible.   “It’s constitutional,” Parker said. “It’s our foundation.”

Any judge or justice who is this ignorant of American history as Parker is, and who misinterprets the First Amendment and the Establishment Clause the way Parker does should not be allowed to be a judge or justice. Period.

Barton and other Seven Mountains proponents argue that the idea of separation of church and state, regarded by many as a bedrock of American democracy, is a myth invented by progressives based on a misreading of Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists.

Nope. Separation of church and state was NOT "a myth invented by progressives based on a misreading of Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists."

The dishonesty of this position, can easily be seen if you do a quick google search of this topic.

Founders such as James Madison and John Adams (as well as Jefferson) were very clear that the separation of church and state was a foundational idea upon which our nation was built.

Source: Madison quote

Tom Parker, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, expressed his support for the Seven Mountains Mandate, a once-fringe philosophy that calls on evangelical Christians to reshape American law and society based on their beliefs.

[waitingforthet]

This comic is, as is usual for Wednesday’s comics, chosen by my Patrons. Speaking of…

Check my Patreon out if you’d like to support the comic, even a little bit helps. Or just to check out the reward tiers, there’s some neat bonus stuff and I tried to make them fun: https://www.patreon.com/waitingforthet

[joezy27]

HAWKEYE - "My Life As A Weapon" Sketches

Character designs & sketches by David Aja

[avengerscompound]

Clint Barton & Lucky the Pizza Dog Hawkeye (2012) #17