Controversial Book About Thomas Jefferson Dropped By Publisher, Finds New Home With Glenn Beck
via The Guardian:
Evangelical author David Barton's book, The Jefferson Lies, sought to reveal the "truth" about the former US president.
Instead, it was deemed by the History News Network as the least credible history book in print (for reference, there are a lot of books in print). It was so riddled with inaccuracies that its publisher, Christian press Thomas Nelson, dropped it.
But things like "facts" and "accuracy" don't matter to people like conservative talking head Glenn Beck, who has offered to publish the book through his own Mercury Ink.
In real world America, the one that exists on the plane of facts, Jefferson was a Deist who championed the separation of church and state. Barton argues that Jefferson was actually an orthodox Christian who did not believe that church and state should be separated. Based on... something? Certainly not the reams of paperwork and evidence that says otherwise.
The book will not be rewritten for Mercury--a few things will be rephrased "to remove any potential confusion," said Barton. He also noted that he'll add in material cut by the original publisher. I imagine that material will reveal Jesus to be the true author of the US Constitution.
(By the way, lest you think History News Network is some left-wing think tank biased against authors like Barton, they said the second least credible history book was Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.)
News by Rob W. Hart
Rob W. Hart is the class director at LitReactor, as well as the associate publisher for MysteriousPress.com. He's the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, and his short stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, Crime Factory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir. He lives in New York City, and you can find his website at www.robwhart.com.
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I suppose he never fathered any children with his slaves, either? There goes Sally Hemings' paternity case.
One more in a series of attacks on our pantheon, all designed so that we may finally recognize the true American heroes: Citizens United.
Not a lot of people realize that Alexander Hamilton often referred to Thomas Jefferson as "The Glenn Beck of the American Revolution."
Please, this history teacher wants to hear more about what the History News Network said about Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States.
I guess the author of this sham history didn't make it to the Smithsonian to see the revision T. J. made of the Bible by snipping out all the miracles & similar flummery and only leaving in the rational parts. I guess he didn't bother to read the extensive correspondence between T. J. and scientist/co-founder of Unitarianism Joseph Priestley, in which he says that if not for Priestley's Deistic take on Christianity, he wouldn't have even called himself a Christian.
I wonder how many people are just going to buy what is said in this book thinking it true simply because it has been published by someone. People need to realize that it isn't the blood of Christ that created or saved our country, it was the blood that Jefferson spilled that did that.