The revision of reality as a political strategy

I've written previously about the RNC hiring David Barton to spread his Christian Reconstructionist lies about US history and to encourage Christian nationalist "patriot" pastors to join the GOP fold.

Now, it appears that Barton's lies have made their way into JROTC curriculum. Ed Brayton blogs

Chris Rodda has an important post at Talk2Action showing that some of David Barton's lies about religion and the history of America's founding have found their way in to the Pentagon's JROTC curriculum, taught to about half a million kids in public schools every year. In particular, the lie that the Danbury Baptists wrote to Jefferson concerned that the Federal government "might someday attempt to regulate religious expression" and that Jefferson replied to assure them that the Federal government would not interfere. This is a baldfaced lie.

You can read the rest of Brayton's post to see where he explains the extent of the lie. What I'm concerned with is the implications of this sort of historical revisionism making its way into the public education system. It is deeply disturbing that we have a political party in the United States of America - a nation founded as the first secular liberal democracy - actively working with a Christian nationalist to revise US history to fit the worldview of Christian Reconstructionists and dominionists for the sake of garnering votes.

I'll be writing more about this in the future. But I can say that if you want to have an idea of where I'll be going with this subject, then you can go ahead and read a copy of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. You can click here for an interview with Chris Hedges (the book's author) and here for a review from Znet.