I wrote last week about the pseudo historian David Barton who was called on for testimony during the Texas Board of Education hearings to discuss the writing of the textbooks that will not only be used in Texas but across the country.
Turns out that Barton’s got bigger ears to fill than just the Texas School Board’s. Glenn Beck who has been scheming up a conspiracy-laden next “great awakening,” called “The Plan,” set to be kicked off in DC on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, draws on Barton’s ahistorical accounts of the US founding. Here’s a segment from Keith Olberman’s show that account’s not only Barton’s rewriting of history but Beck’s plans for our nation’s next 100 years.
In tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine, Russell Shorto has a story that looks at the battle over the soul’s of the Founding Fathers and how the Texas School Board and affiliated organizations (the Legal Right) work to establish that not only was the country founded on Christian principles but that the US’ laws are Biblical in origin. Barton makes an appearance, below. In the article, Shorto writes that like last year’s battle over “intelligent design,” th