#2517: Tim Barton

Spawn of the fanatic creationist, pseudohistorian, conspiracy theorist and wingnut extremist David Barton, Tim Barton is happy to follow in his father’s footsteps. Barton jr. is the current president of WallBuilders and regular cohost of his father’s “WallBuilders Live” radio program; and like his father, Tim Barton doesn’t seem to know what the word ‘verbatim’ means. And though he ultimately seems to lack his father’s marketing skills, he doesn’t shy away from trying to outdo his father in stupid nuttery.

 

Here, for instance, is Barton on homosexuality. And here is Barton holding up a copy of the Origin of Species and asking if Darwin was a racist. After all, the full title of the book is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, and the phrase “favoured races”, Barton thinks, shows that Darwin was racist and that evolution shouldn’t be studied in school. Did he bother to think about what Darwin could have meant or whether it would be relevant to whether evolution is taught in schools? Not a chance. Instead, Barton invokes the Declaration of Independence to suggest that the Founding Fathers didn’t believe in “favoured races”: “The founding fathers even wrote in the Declaration, ‘All men are created equal.” There’s not favored races.” No prize for thinking about some relevant but inconvenient aspects of the Founding Fathers’ views that Barton didn’t mention.

 

Like with the Declaration of Independence, Barton has his own take on the Constitution, and has for instance asserted that the Second Amendment really entitles citizens to possess the same types of weapons as the government.

 

After the protests following George Floyd’s murder, and to forestall any irrelevant comparisons, Tim and his father David were quick to emphasize the lack of violence involved in the American fight for independence: The Boston Tea Party, for instance, was certainly not a “riot” – why else would they call it a “party”? Here is their prediction of the complete lack of rioting activities by Christians on the (then-upcoming) January 6. 2021 protests. And here is Tim Barton on Donald Trump’s Godlike character.

 

There’s a decent Tim Barton resource here.

 

Diagnosis: David Barton’s likely heir, and just as silly and crazy and dishonest as his father. Fortunately, he seems to lack his father’s appeal – at least it is very unlikely that anyone listens to him who haven’t already been convinced by his father – which makes him, overall, hopefully relatively toothless.