I’ve noticed in recent months that the religious right seems to be getting more and more extreme by the moment–to the point they aren’t even trying to hide their lunacy anymore. Well, a lulu of an example came from the religious right’s favorite pseudo-historian, David Barton. He thinks moving a woman’s picture to our currency could have a catastrophic effect on our economy.
In case you missed it, last month the Treasury Department announced that it would be moving Alexander Hamilton from his longtime place on the front of the $10 bill. While he will still be on the bill, an as-yet-unnamed woman will take the featured spot. Well, Barton isn’t at all happy with this decision. On yesterday’s edition of “Wallbuilders LIVE!,” Barton said that Hamilton was on the $10 bill to honor his role as the first Secretary of the Treasury. Putting a woman there, Barton said, wasn’t “part of the way history went.”
Barton’s next musing is so breathtaking that it has to be reproduced in full to be believed. He claimed that the unnamed woman’s picture would take the place of the picture of the Treasury Building on the back of the $10 bill. To Barton, there’s a reason that picture is larger than the picture of Hamilton on the front.
“The Department of the Treasury–that’s one of the first five Cabinet-level departments established under the Constitution. And now we’re trying to denigrate it, remove it? That’s nonsense.”
There’s just one problem with Barton’s argument. As is the case with practically everything that comes out of Barton’s mouth, it’s completely groundless.
For starters, there is no evidence whatsoever that the picture of the Treasury Building will be removed. But even if it was, the $10 bill has had a lot of people moving there over the years. According to Wikipedia, Abraham Lincoln, Salmon P. Chase, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hendricks, Lewis and Clark, and Andrew Jackson all graced the $10 bill before Hamilton appeared on it in 1914. To suggest that the $10 bill was specifically intended to honor Hamilton is patently ahistorical.
You probably remember that Barton had his book, “The Jefferson Lies,” yanked from the shelves after it emerged that it was, for the most part, bollocks. In a sane world, that alone would have ended any right he has to speak out on anything. But you have to remember that in the Christianist community, Barton more or less walks on water.
So it’s a safe bet that students in Christian schools and Christianist-inspired homeschooling programs are being told that those evil libruls are denigrating the Treasury Department by moving a woman to the $10 bill–even though there’s no historical evidence to support this faux outrage. The fact that this guy has so much influence with our kids is, to put it mildly, a disgrace to the nation.
