Who’s putting those crazy thoughts in Ben Carson’s head?
by digby
I wrote about Ben Carson’s muse today for Salon:
It’s been quite a dramatic few days in the Ben Carson campaign, what with him comparing women who have abortions to slave owners and suggesting that the government monitor the speech of college professors among about a dozen other inflammatory comments, all delivered in his trademark somnambulant style. People seem to be surprised that someone so pious and so intelligent could be so misinformed, if not outright ignorant of basic concepts of our democratic system. But they really shouldn’t be. This sort of misunderstanding is common among the evangelical set Carson travels in. And there is one particular “mentor” among them who bears much of the responsibility.
David Barton is a self-styled historical revisionist who has made it his life’s work to instill in doctrinaire conservative Evangelicals and fundamentalists that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation — that, in fact, it was designed to be a theocracy. (The formal term for his belief system is Christian reconstructionist.) He has written books, given speeches, traveled around the world giving advice on history and government, and he is close to many prominent conservative politicians, preachers, pundits and thought leaders. He runs an organization called Wallbuilders which is “dedicated to presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built.” He is one of the most influential “thinkers” in the conservative movement.
Julie Ingersol wrote a full exposé of Barton here at Salon recently, which shows exactly how widely his very strange belief system is shared among right wingers in both religious and political circles. I first became of aware of Barton during the weird Tea Party moment back in 2010 when Glenn Beck was holding rallies on the Washington Mall and talking to puppets on his TV show every night. Beck styles himself as something of a history buff and was very taken with Barton’s revisionist Christian nationalism. He particularly enjoyed the tale Barton tells about the “black-robed regiment” of preachers who fought in the Revolutionary War. Barton described them this way on Becks show:
The Black Brigade or Black Regiment were the preachers, because they wore black robes. Black preachers, white preachers — they all wore black robes. And the British specifically blamed the preachers for the American Revolution. That’s where the title “Black Regiment” came from. One of the British officials talked about that.It’s interesting that the British so hated what the preachers — they claim if it hadn’t been for the preachers, America would still be a happy British colony. So they blamed it on the preachers.When they come to America, they start to decimating churches. They went to New York City. Nineteen churches — they burned 10 to the ground. They went across Virginia burning churches. They went across New Jersey burning churches. Because they blamed these preachers.
Actually, the British did not blame preachers for the American revolution. They did hold the preachers in contempt for preaching revolution from the pulpit and they did call them the “black robed regiment” as an epithet along the lines of “5th column.” The idea that the revolution was a religious war is daft. But it serves as the foundation for Barton’s ahistorical view that the country was founded as an explicitly Christian nation.
There are no lengths to which Barton will not go to “prove” that the founders were divinely inspired Christians:
“Did you know the Founding Fathers had extensive writings on the problems with evolution and why creationism was right?” Barton asked. “You think evolution came in with Darwin? No, no, no. Everything Darwin argued had been established 500 years B.C. All Darwin did was take all the evolutionary thought that was out there and put it in one book to make it really easy to read. That wasn’t original thinking by Darwin. It was there by 500 B.C. That’s why the Founding Fathers had huge writings on evolution and creation”
The man who said that is considered to be among the most influential Evangelical teachers and writers in America. Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said about him: