Fake Historian David Barton Has Some Really Bad Advice for Evangelicals

Fake historian David Barton was a huge Cruz guy. He even ran a Cruz super-PAC. So he knows about loss. He also knows about making sh*t up. So he is here to put his snake-oil salesman skills to work making a video to help Evangelicals cope with the failure of self-proclaimed messiah Ted Cruz to actually do what God created him to do.

Barton says that the election results showed that a lot of people didn’t want to follow the “timeless principles that have guided us,” but never fear, he has a solution: three “life lessons” he has learned and will now share with you:

1. Nothing catches God by surprise;
2. God is not nearly so concerned with what happens to you as with how you respond to what happens to you;
3. All things will work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

Watch courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

This isn’t the time to go into detail about how, if you look at the historical arc of Judaism and then Christianity, you don’t really see a plan in action. You see God act upon history, and then see things happen, forcing God to act upon history again – and again.

I mean, if there is a plan, it’s not a good one, and God certainly seems caught by surprise, otherwise, being a perfect being, his first plan would have gone off without a hitch and he’d never had needed to eventually send Jesus to fix things up which didn’t really fix things up because they’re still a mess, as proven by the existence of David Barton.

We’ll just set that over here for now.

According to Barton,

“The timeless principles given us by God have not changed, and they will work every time they are applied. Some have chosen to ignore these timeless principles, but we don’t abandon or walk away from all that we’ve fought for, rather, we become more engaged.”

And then he provided some “Action Steps” for Evangelicals to follow – you know, the same Action Steps the Religious Right has followed since its inception in the 1960s when a different bunch of fascists ran the show:

Action Steps: Vote Locally

1. City Elections
2. County Elections
3. State Elections
4. Federal Elections

“We become more engaged and we get our neighbors engaged. We need to make sure that our neighbors are registered to vote and that they choose God-fearing leaders and that, above all, we teach ourselves and others to think and act biblically.”

In other words, doing the same thing over and over again and failing is not, as Albert Einstein said, madness, but the recipe for success.

In fact, the Religious Right does very well locally. Then can win cities, counties, and even states, particularly in the South where the old hate runs deep. But nationally is another matter. There is a reason they don’t win presidential elections. They’ve been warned time and again by their failures and chosen to ignore those lessons. Apparently because they conflict with what they think God wants them to do – which is fail miserably.

As a character building exercise perhaps Barton’s plan has some merit. But doubling down on your hate doesn’t impress millennials and it sure doesn’t impress the people you’re hating. And that’s what the GOP platform is: hate. Throw a little religious tyranny in there and you’ve pretty much shot yourselves in the foot.

But hey, tell yourself whatever you need to tell yourself, Religious Right. You have a 2,000 year history of driving the wrong direction in the face of progress. Why stop now?

So I have a Napoleonic principle in answer to Barton’s biblical principles: “When the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him.”

Please proceed, Mr. Barton.