Actual historians will tell you that Barton distorts quotes, - TopicsExpress

Actual historians will tell you that Barton distorts quotes, cherry-picks information, cites fraudulent sources, and straight-up fictionalizes history to serve his political goals. This was never more evident than when he managed to publish his book The Jefferson Lies, which portrayed Thomas Jefferson as a Christian fighting for the rights of slaves, and which was immediately voted the least credible history book in print by historians, professors, and Christian scholars (the publisher quickly yanked it off the shelves in response).So not only does Barton have the support of precisely zero historians, but the bullshittedness of some of his claims is obvious to anyone with a lick of common sense and possibly a calculator. He claims that the American Revolutionary War was fought to end slavery, despite the easily verifiable facts that the majority of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, Britain abolished slavery decades before the United States did, and the United States took another century to add the abolishment of slavery to the Constitution. Barton also claims that the Founding Fathers settled the creationism debate long ago, despite the crippling handicap of not being scientists and having all died before Darwin published his theory of evolution.Despite having the distinction of literally writing the worst history book of the modern era, Barton was helping draft the Republican Partys 2012 platform a month after his fanciful storybook had been discontinued. That might not be terribly surprising, so heres something even worse -- Barton is an adviser to the Texas State Board of Education and was instrumental in convincing them to rewrite their history textbooks to make them more conservative and Christian-friendly. Thats right -- hes putting the bullshit that was too ridiculous to be sold in stores into textbooks to teach history to children.cracked/article_21450_5-successful-people-who-everyone-forgets-are-exposed-frauds_p1.html