I was going to pint this out as well. Clearly these influences fall outside the Judeo-Christian canon and I suspect many Christians would like to distance themselves from them for other reasons as well.
But why is it so important for some people to emphasize a continuity in our laws with those of ages past? We often speak of our “experiment” in democracy, and this implies we are trying something new and are still in the process of perfecting it. Our laws change a little every year, which seems to acknowledge that they were previously in error. The Founding Fathers were revolutionaries who explicitly breaking with the past and applying reason to the problem of governance. They had the foresight to understand that the law would continue to change and created a structure to allow for that.
The idea of laws being “written in stone” is not what America is about.
Not true. First of all, he IS a respected authority, as detailed in the introductory section of that article which I cited. He is a consultant to national history textbook publishers, and was appointed by multiple State Boards of Education to help in developing their educational standards, and is a consultant for governors and other state education boards. As Barton pointed out, he is also a consultant to standards for students in those States. He is also regularly called to testify to state legislatures on matters of American history. The fact that his focus is on Wallbuilders does not make him any less of a historian.
Again, not true. These organizations include such groups as Who’s Who in America (1997, 1999); Who’s Who in the World (1996, 1999); Who’s Who in American Education (1996, 1997) and International Who’s Who of Professionals (1996). These are hardly Christian organizations, much less fundamentalist ones.
Again, not true. He was deploring the use of poorly substantiated quotes regarding the Founding Fathers. Far from fabricating these quotes, he was in fact cautioning against their use.
The article which led to these allegations can be found here, and a rebuttal to these allegations is found here. Barton called for extra caution in citing these quotes, but his opponents magically transformed this into the claim that he himself concocted them. It boggles the mind.
Are you freakin kidding me? Are you claiming that being called to testify on textbooks makes you a respected colonial scholar? Do you have ANY idea what that process is like?
When people are told someone is a respected scholar, they assume that what is meant is that the person is an academic who publishes, researches, and likely teaches at a university or college: someone respected by their peers in their field of study (in this case, colonial history). They don’t generally think of a gadfly who lobbies Texas school boards to get more Jesus into elementary school textbooks.
What articles in reffereed journals has the man published? How is he REALLY regarded among other colonial historians?
Mussolini is in “Who’s Who in History,” that doesn’t make him a historian. Citing those was too thin to even deserve mention.
The quotes appear nowhere I can find before they appear in Barton’s book. Some of the cites in his book refer to passages which DO NOT contain the quotations (I guess not reading your own primary cites is “standard academic practice” which he now goes the extra mile for). The most bogus of them were featured prominently the promotional videos that Barton produces and sells. Then he got called on them, after someone consulted real scholars who searched through the material for any evidence of these quotes. Caught in the act, Barton has changed his tune, and is this explanation laughably portrays him as “raising the bar” and implies that citing old textbooks and random sources without checking the primary material is the standard academic practice which he, purely out of the good of his own heart (not being accused of useing false quotes) has decided to raise the bar on.
Even more laughably, his characterization of the affair ends by blustering about how he’s totally ready to sue for libel… but decided not to proceed as of yet. He’s tried to recuperate his image by speaking out against the quotes, but that hardly erases the fact that they magically appeared in his book. If he can supply us with the original sources which tricked him, he’s more than welcome.
But if he really did gets these quotes from some other source (which he’s yet to point to or indentify in specific so that it can be confirmed that he was misled) then he might be innocent of fraud, but guilty of gross incompetance. Some of them are so ridiculously silly that any real historian would recognize their phoniness in a second: Memorial and Remonstrance is an extremely famous Madison document, and it should be immediately apparent to any scholar of Madison that it never says anything like 'Religion is the foundation of government." In no “standard academic practice” would that even pass the laugh test.
I just realized that you, too, didn’t read your own cite. The article you link too was written AFTER the whole fracas over the quotes. The quotes appeared in a book he wrote called “The Myth of Separation” and it is that that critics attacked, not this article.
So you just attempted to accuse his critics of being extremely dishonest in claiming he had used false quotes by citing an article in which he in fact was quoting them only to caution against their usage. But this isn’t what happened at all. This accusation is one of YOUR fabrications, as even your OWN CITE reveals.
You keep on jumping between “impact that they had” and “form a basis for the law” as if they were the same. “Impact” is not the same as “basis”, and past tense is not the same as present tense. The Ten Commandments are not the moral basis for our current law, and you have yet to present a single piece of evidence to the contrary.
I see. And displaying a swastika at a courthouse: that would not be advocating racism, simply recognizing a significant historical contribution made to America that also happened to include racism? There is a difference between recognition and honoring, and these displays quite clearly are honoring.
You must think we’re idiots. Yes, the Ten Commandments have historical value. Yes, it’s conceivable that someone might want to display them for historical reasons. But just because we can conceive of someone displaying them for historical reasons, that does not obviate the blatantly obvious fact that they are being displayed for religious reasons. We’re talking about a courthouse here, not a museum. Moore’s own statements make it abundantly clear that he is displaying them for religious reasons. These situations show just how shamelessly Christians can push their religion. Would Christians be in such self-righteous furor over having to take down a historical display? Since when did the Jesus whores start caring about history? It takes quite a bit of chutzpah to claim on one hand that one refuses to take down the display because to do so would be an affront against God, and on the other that it is not a violation of the First Amendment.
Incidentaly I saw last night a report on a non US TV station about this whole affair.
They filmed also inside that courthouse and I witnessed how people “in defense” of their Ten Commandments surround that rock (it looks like a rock to me, that is) waving their hands in the air while outloud praying. Others kneeled down before the rock bowing their head while praying… Exactly the way you can see Muslims do when we pray… Only we bow for God, not for a piece of stone.
In short: this was a very ridiculous and weird spectacle to watch, which raised questions about the normal functions of those people’s minds.
No need to tell you what impression such scenes make on non Americans. I’m sorry, but those people bowing and praying to a piece of stone made Americans look like mentally disturbed fools. And once again it made America look like a country where the most extreme is the most normal.
Well… Now that I write this, I find it a good question to ask to the Americans posting here: Is this normal in the USA or do you find this an extremely weird thing to look at as well?
(Is this a hijack or not… I’m not sure… And as always completely innocent if it is)
Well, praying to a rock is not considered normal around here, but demagogues who are able and willing stir up the masses into a froth for their own political advancement are easy to come by.
Aldebaran, the people you saw bowing down to that rock are considered to be fringe lunatics by mainstream Americans, even religious Christians. They are filmed because they are crazy not because they are representative. They are mostly regarded with ridicule and scorn by the rest of us.
That’s because I honestly though this was the article to which you were referring, as it was itself a subject of contested debate. As its own preface states, “This article has created controversy in some quarters.” Additionally, I was going completely by memory, and so I misstated the specifics. This was carelessness on my part, to which I’ll freely admit, but the point remains that Barton did NOT merely concoct those contested quotes.
As the appended notes to the article state,
This is common practice, even among historians. History is not an exact science, after all. While some of those quotes turned out to be contestable, Barton can scarcely be faulted for citing quotes which were already widely accepted by respected authorities.
Moreover, after acknowledging this error and urging against the use of these quotes, Barton released another text, Original Intent) which argued for the same conclusion without using the contested quotations. Interestingly enough, as one of my aforementioned links said,
You’re asserting that this was a deliberate fabrication on my part, which it was NOT. I will admit to having falsely concluded that you were referring to the article which I cited, but that was merely my error, as I was going completely by memory.
Moreover, contrary to what you claim, Barton was NOT “caught fabricating quotes from the Founding Fathers to support his views.” He was using commonly accepted quotes — quotes which were even cited by textbooks and history professors – that turned out to have contestable origins. While this is cause for greater caution, it is still common practice in the academe. (Moreover, as I said earlier, Barton’s case is not dependent on the quotes in question.)
As the appended notes said,
Barton admitted that some of those quotes were of contestable origins, but this does not mean that he fabricated them. Additionally, the origins of some of those quotes were subsequently located by Wallbuilders. As they stated,
No it isn’t. What serious historian looks to textbooks for information when they can have access to the entire, complete works: the primary sources?
Barton claims this is common practice. The claim is entirely self serving so he can claim to be “raising the bar” as if he were going the extra mile unlike all those meager history buffs in acredited universities, when all he’s doing is barely catching up.
The fact that you are treating this two-bit phampleteer as some sort of respected authority on colonial history is getting more and more absurd. There are hundreds of actually acredited, actually published, actually respected colonial historians out there. And Barton is the only one you feel like bothering to dig up? There are surely real historians that share some of his views (the spectrum is quite broad on this issue): why not quote them instead another clown in the circus of civil hearings on elementary school textbooks? Then we wouldn’t be wasting any time on this increasingly off-topic fracas.
He has not produced any of these “respected authorities” he claims were the source of the quotes that I have seen. They appear nowhere I can find prior to their appearance in his book.
In any case, it is NOT standard practice in the study of history to quote farm from secondary or third party sources and simply leave it at that. That’s something most of us do here on these boards because we’re lazy and busy, but no serious historian ever stops just by pulling out quotes they like from Tommy’s Big Book of the Ten Commandments are Awesome, circa 1957. They go to the source documents and read them in their original context, usually in their entiriety.
As I pointed out, the Madison quote is so outrageously bogus that to mistake it for something that appears in M&R is, at the very least, a demonstration of gross, gross incompetance from a man claiming to be a respected scholar on this very issue (M&R is like one of THE key founder documents on religious/legal philosophy).
Relevance? Or is the mere fact that a man can argue for a position supposed to be the end of the argument? He came to a conclusion. First he tried MoS, and got called on his usage of fake quotes. So he tried again. His self-righteous rant makes it sound like that the mere fact that he wrote another book that came to the same conclusion without the use of bogus quotations demonstrates that he’s correct and vindicated. I heard Texx Marrs wrote another book about how Hillary and her lesbian coven sacrifice goats to Baal, this time without the use of a bogus internet rumor. Whooooooo!
So… where are the cites for these textbooks and history professors that so egregiously misled him? He cites the primary source texts (which don’t contain the claimed quotes), not where he claims he quote farmed from. How are we supposed to check up on these claims and find the true culprits?
Dude, the case for the Moon Hoax is not dependant on the flag waving thing either. That doesn’t automatically make the entire case any more credible. The fact that he put out another book was as inevitable as the sun rising. That’s his primary occupation: selling videos, phamplets, and books to promote his little corner of of the Christian Nation movement.
DtC: I realize that the Muslims don’t pray to the Kaaba. I was just trying to draw Aldebaran’s attention (like that’ll do any good) to the simple fact that it’s not the stone monument (a la the Kaaba) that those protestors are bowing down for.
Czarcasm: I’m sure they realize they’re not praying to it. Realizing how foolish they are is a different question altogether!
I’m not really arguing with you but I’d just like to point out that from a Muslim perspective the simple act of kneeling in front of an object implies a worship of that object. It doesn’t mean that to us but to Aldebaran it would look like they were praying to the monument. A Muslim would not kneel in front of the kaaba. Obviously, Christians will often kneel in front of an object in contemplation or reverence but only pray to God. This is a cultural difference in how worship and prayer are expressed and perceived which may not be obvious to those observing from afar.
Of course, I suspect that Aldebaran knows this. He does not strike me as being naive or uneducated about western culture. I think he may have been mocking those people just a little.
I think we can agree that those people would not have described themselves of worshipping or praying to the monument. We can also agree that they are grandstanding idiots who don’t represent most Americans or Christians.
Very many Muslims do kneel in front of the Kaaba, DtC. Have you ever seen pictures of the faithful at that particular mosque, especially during the Pilgrammage? It is towards it that the Muslims are facing when they pray.
Aldebaran does strike me as uneducated, as I have stated in other threads regarding him/his outlook.
You got that right about those protestors in Alabama!