#607: Dave Daubenmire

A.k.a. Coach Daubenmire

A.k.a. Your Friendly Neighbourhood Demagogue

Coach Daubenmire is a former high school football coach who ran into some career trouble in the late 1990s for coercing his students to pray. He was sued by ACLU, though according to himself “the ACLU relented and offered Coach an out of court settlement. God honored his stand and the ACLU backed off,” which sort of fails to mention the fact that the court ordered Daubenmire to stop leading religious activities at school and that the school board paid an $ 18,000 settlement. But Daubenmire is a traditional Liar-for-Jesus, so you wouldn’t expect much honesty from that source. “As a result of the experience, Coach heard the call to move out of coaching a high school team, to the job of coaching God’s team,” is not entirely accurate either.

Well, Daubenmire has built his entire post-coaching career on telling people how his first amendment rights were violated by the Constitution, and on running the ministry he founded, Pass the Salt Ministries (no kidding). Pass the Salt is perhaps most famous for hosting the right wing conference “A gathering of Eagles”, promoted as a “NON-POLITICAL event […] designed to educate Christians about the great moral issues facing this country [,…] such as The Gay Agenda, Abortion, Individual Liberty, Hate Crime Legislation, and the religion of Secular Humanism,” which does not sound distinctly non-political but there you go. Guests included several famous non-partisan Christians such as Flip Benham, Rick Scarborough, and Peter Labarbera.

Daubenmire also runs something called “Minutemen united”, a group of people who disrupts church services to proclaim their anti-gay stance. Those activities have landed him several high-profile television appearances, where he has attempted to (chime in on the Freshwater case and) portray himself as your humble, friendly servant of God – he doesn’t hate his opponents, you see, it is just that they are “enemies of God”. He also advocates revolution to obliterate the distinction between church and state, and is apparently a big fan of David Barton’s dominionist mangling of history.

Now, Daubenmire asserts that he is “not homo-phobic. I'm not homo-hateful. I'm not homo-latent. I'm homo-nauseous. I really couldn’t care less where a man desires to put his appendage. But I’m sick of hearing about it. I’m sick of talking about it. I’m sick of it being force fed to me on TV,” which would at least made slightly more sense if Daubenmire hadn’t so tirelessly talked about it and weren’t so all-consumingly obsessed with it. One wonders how he squares being tired of the debate with his repeated calls on Obama to come clean and admit that he is gay (as well as admit that he is a socialist who is trying to destroy the economy and that he is not really a Christian; Obama is apparently also a sociopath). Then he complains that people say that he says stupid shit.

He didn’t quite get through the Jason Collins affair with his dignity intact either. Daubenmire was predictably outraged that Obama supported him. He also boldly declared that he hates homosexuality, which apparently must be consistent with being “not homo-hateful”, primarily one supposes in virtue of the lying-for-Jesus discourse mandate he seems to possess. He furthermore claimed that homosexuality only exists “because men like you and men like me are letting it go on and won’t stand up and push back and say anything about it.” Because there is surely a shortage of rabid bigots fuming about homosexuality at the moment.

Diagnosis: Homo-hateful, abysmally ignorant theocrat. He’s pretty loud, so he has apparently made some impact.

#238: Rush Limbaugh

A short entry like this can obviously not do full justice to the epicenter of lunatic wingnuttery that is Rush “not a martyr” Limbaugh, so we’ll confine ourselves to a short list of randomly selected highlights.

One of the claims that best characterizes Rush “big, fat idiot” Limbaugh, is the reason he gives for not accepting man-made global warming – this is in response to a caller asking “Your belief in God, how does that tell you that global warming is a hoax?”: “I just intellectually cannot accept the fact that a loving God which has created all this beauty and has blessed this country – I cannot believe that a God like that – would punish the human being he created for progress, for improving the quality of his life.” This is an interesting take on the problem of evil. God punishing Haitians with an earthquake killing half a million people – not a counterexample to God’s love; punishing Western countries’ progress with no concern for the environment – inconsistent with God’s goodness. I think, however, that this belief excellently illustrates Limbaugh’s general pathologically narcissistic way of thinking. (Concerning climate change, he also said that the “alleged” scientific consensus “is just a bunch of scientists organized around a political proposition. You can't have consensus in science”. Anyone who fails to recognize the idiocy of that statement should at least read this). He has blamed Al Gore and environmentalists for the BP oil spill as well. The logic is unidentifiable.

Since he rejects manmade global warming, he also attempted to cover his back by claiming that the July 2011 heatwave itself was a government conspiracy to justify global warming.

By spring 2009, Limbaugh seemed to have become de facto leader of the GOP. Following Limbaugh’s claim that he was “wanting Obama to fail”, Limbaugh demanded apologies from Eric Cantor and Michael Steele for saying Limbaugh's comments were unacceptable. Both apologized.

Limbaugh is generally more well-known for his rank dishonesty and ignorance than for his lunacy, though there are good examples of the latter. Examples of the former are his commitment to family values while being caught returning from the Dominican Republic with a mislabeled bottle of Viagra, his calling – as a chickenhawk – soldiers who spoke out against the Iraq War "phony soldiers” while himself avoiding the draft in 1969 due to an “anal cyst” (lasting for years and years, apparently), and his promise to to leave the country if the Obama-driven health care bill passed: “I'll go to Costa Rica for healthcare.” (Costa Rica has universal health care). More on Rush and health care here, and this one is to the point as well. His claim that Obama created the recession as a payback for racism is a clear example of lunacy however, as is his denial of global warming mentioned above. And of course there is his claim that the Obama administration, always busy trying to undermine the country, was emphasizing the Aug. 2 date for raising the debt limit because Ramadan begins on Aug. 1.

Limbaugh is critical of feminism, maintaining that “[F]eminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society”. He also popularized the term "feminazi", referring to feminists "to whom the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur”; more here. And according to Limbaugh “the only thing cruel about the death penalty is last-minute stays.” On the Abu Ghraib scandal, he said that “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation ... And we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release?”. And he has asserted that African-Americans are “left behind” socially because they have been systematically trained from childhood to hate America by figures such as Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and the Obamas. To top it off, he recently argued against paying repairs to American natives by claiming that the natives were the real killers and real beneficiaries of the settlement of North America. His brand of Barton-style revisionism is insane in its combination of ignorance and bigotry.

More here. Some of the falsehoods peddled in his book “The Way Things Ought to Be” are listed here (and a good, but too polite discussion, can be found here). Pat Boone has compared Rush Limbaugh to Thomas Paine, but Boone is not generally recognized for his mental abilities. His take on the Holocaust is also worth a read. Limbaugh is also sympathetic to creationism, by the way.

For an extraordinary display of delusional projection, see him accuse Shephard Smith of cowardice and everyone for tribalism and attempting to divide the country. This degree of serious lack of self-awareness verges on (ok, crosses the border to) clinical mental illness.

Rush’s slightly dumber younger brother David is a columnist for WorldNetDaily, and shares his brother’s views, though lacks Rush’s affability and diplomatic skills. He is also more oriented towards standard religious fundamentalist themes.

Diagnosis: His martyr and persecution complex is intense, and Limbaugh lives it out through an unsophisticated combination of bigotry and ignorance. The very epitome of a delusional wingnut, this crank has, of course, far, far too much influence. He is a really contemptible being.

#234: Terri Leo

A.k.a. “Sultana of the Texas Taliban, Scourge of Scholars, Despoiler of Textbooks”

In a way the Texas Board of Education is the very symbol of American lunacy. We have already covered people such as Barbara Cargill and – the epitome of deranged bigoted bias – Cynthia Dunbar, and it doesn’t exactly help education in Texas that they’ve had the pathologically truth-challenged Terri Leo there either. This is the kind of work they do (and have done for a long time) – like her colleagues, Leo is adamant that the Bible and Barton-style historical revisionism, purged of “liberal bias” should be the foundation for education in Texas.

Leo is perhaps particularly famous for getting the children’s book “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” by Bill Martin expunged from the elementary school curriculum (the motion was filed by the equally moronic Pat Hardy) because a Google search revealed that Bill Martin had also written a book on Marxism – never mind that this was a completely different Bill Martin. It is rather illustrative of how the wingnuts on the Texas Board of Education do their background search (and of how lunatically deranged they are). Leo lacks the self-awareness to realize that making this claim afterwards don’t reflect well on her mental abilities. More here.

Diagnosis: This “ghastly dim harridan” (Myers) is a zealous enemy of fact, truth, reason and knowledge. Leo would be a hilarious clown if she weren’t so dangerous.

#225: Tim LaHaye

Timothy LaHaye is an evangelical Christian minister, author, speaker, a primal force at the most insane fringes of American fundamentalism, and one of the more dangerous loons on our list. He has written more than 50 books, both fiction and non-fiction. He is best known for the apocalyptic series of novels titled “Left Behind”, written with former sportswriter Jerry B. Jenkins (Jenkins seems to have actually written the books, though the story and ideas are LaHaye’s).

The Left Behind series depict the Earth after the pretribulation rapture (LaHaye seems to think of the books as something more than fiction – apparently Obama is about to bring on the Rapture). The series includes 12 titles in the adult series, but also juvenile novels, audio books, devotionals, graphic novels, and even video games. It has been uncannily popular, with total sales surpassing 65 million copies and seven titles in the adult series reaching #1 on the Times bestseller lists (Jerry Falwell said, concerning the first book, something to the effect that it was the most important book for Christianity since the Bible). There are also three movies, promoted by Grace Hill Media starring Kirk Cameron (who else). Also look out for a brief guest appearance by John Hagee.

LaHaye has, apart from his literary antics, promoted (or founded) numerous groups to promote his insanity, such as the Council for National Policy, back when he was the head of Falwell’s Moral Majority. In 1979, he helped to establish the Institute for Creation Research, along with Henry Morris. In the 1980s, LaHaye founded the (radically insane) American Coalition for Traditional Values (Andrea Lafferty’s organization) and the Coalition for Religious Freedom, currently run by James Lafferty, the husband of yesterday’s Andrea Lafferty), and the Pre-Tribulation Research Center along with Thomas Ice (covered earlier) in 1998, dedicated to producing material that supports a dispensationalist, pre-tribulation interpretation of the Bible. Tim is also connected to the John Birch Society, and played a significant role in getting the religious right to support George W. Bush for the presidency in 2000 (he has later cast his vote for Huckabee, an outspoken fan of LaHaye’s Left Behind series). He also co-hosted (with Dave Breese) in the prophecy television program The King Is Coming (partially the foundation of his delightfully paranoid mixture of conspiracy theories and batshit crazy Rapture-porn in his book “The Rapture”). LaHaye has furthermore contributed millions of dollars Liberty University, earmarked for its student center and “LaHaye’s School of Prophecy”, which opened in January 2002. He is, finally and unsurprisingly a historical revisionist of the David Barton school, though more extreme.

Oh, there’s more. LaHaye believes in the Illuminati, a “satanically-inspired, centuries-old conspiracy to use government, education, and media to destroy every vestige of Christianity within our society and establish a new world order”. The Illuminati is, in fact, just one of many groups he believes are working to "turn America into an amoral, humanist country, ripe for merger into a one-world socialist state”, together with secretive, cabalistic, satanic groups such as the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, Harvard and Yale universitites, and the Democratic Party. LaHaye described his views in the book “Mind Siege”, written with David Noebel. In fact, according to LaHaye, if you are not a biblical literalist, you are a tool of the antichrist.

In 1978 LaHaye published “The Unhappy Gays” (a.k.a. “What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality”), describing homosexuals as "militant, organized" and "vile”, and arguing that gays share 16 pernicious traits, including "incredible promiscuity," "deceit," "selfishness," "vulnerability to sadism-masochism" and "poor health and an early death." LaHaye suggested that Old Testament death penalty for homosexuality would in fact be acts of mercy towards gays, and did as such call his own book “a model of compassion.”

Tim’s wife, Beverly LaHaye, is famous for following up his views on homosexuality. Beverly is the founder of Concerned Women for America, which is devoted to fighting the militant gay agenda and the gays’ attempts to recruit our children. The group has also stated their opposition to publicly funded HIV screening and publicly funded STD treatment (after all, these are effective weapons against homosexuality).

Diagnosis: Absolutely insane, and extremely influential. A real threat to civilization.

#206: Alan Keyes

Alan Keyes is a conservative speaker and activist who has run for President and the Senate numerous times (always losing, thankfully – in 2008 he ran with Wiley Drake). He is most famous for being clinically insane, completely ignorant and pathologically intellectually dishonest. More about his career can be found here and here. He used to try to run on a Republican ticket, but after 2008 ran with the Constitution part - but since they supported Chuck Baldwin he started his own party, the Independence Party.

He is insanely anti-gay, actually arguing that gay people cannot have sex (they are rather “mutual pursuit of pleasure through the stimulation of the organs intended for procreation, but it has nothing to do with sexuality because they are of the same sex. And with respect to them, the sexual difference does not exist. They are therefore not having sexual relations”). When Keyes’s own daughter came out as homosexual, she was promptly disowned.

He is a strong champion of gun rights, coming up with reassuring claims such as “gun owners are pro life and their guns are to defend the lives of the unborn” (see also this). He has also claimed that downturns in the economy prove that God is angry with legalized abortion.

Keyes is also a staunch supporter of teaching Biblical creationism in public schools, and he supports mandatory prayer and faith initiatives – as long as they are not Jewish, since Jewish (as opposed to Christian) initiatives promote enmity and hatred (see also this). He is also a firm believer in theocracy and the religious foundation of the U.S. - in the sense of Gary Bauer, Gary DeMar, Gary North and David Barton (who should apparently change his name to “Gary” as well). See also this.

In November 2008 Keyes (and Markham Robinson) filed a lawsuit against the California Secretary of State, then-President-elect Barack Obama, then-Vice President-elect Joe Biden, and California's 55 Democratic electors, seeking to challenge Obama's eligibility for the US Presidency (though Keyes didn’t like McCain either). The suit requests that Obama provide documentation that he is a natural born citizen of the United States. Following Obama's inauguration, Keyes denied he had been constitutionally inaugurated, refused to call him President, and called him a "usurper" and a "radical communist". He has even resorted to civil disobedience over the matter (though refusing to call it “civil disobedience, since he doesn’t believe in that). Keyes is thus one of the most central idiots of the birther movement. He has also been affiliated with the Christian Exodus independence movement.

Keyes also made a rather unflattering appearance in Borat.

Diagnosis: Blatheringly moronic fundamentalist and rabid clown. He has some die-hard followers, but even the more extreme Republican wingnuts often find that they have to distance themselves from him.

#158: George Grant

Keeping in line with last days’ religious kooks, George Grant is another Christian reconstructionist in the same league as deluded, fanatic, dishonest cranks like Gary DeMar, Gary North and David Barton. Grant is a result of the despicable late D. James Kennedy’s televangelism, and a blatant theocrat: “Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice […] It is dominion we are after. World conquest” ().

Not much fluffy feel-good woo there. Grant admires the tactics of the Taliban, thinks homosexuality should be punishable by death and claims that humanism is destroying the world.

He is also a climate change denialist, but that will surprise nobody, I suppose; crank magnetism is a well-known phenomenon.

He has written a huge number of books (see here for a comprehensive list), including one coauthored with Mike Huckabee. You can see Grant respond to a question of whether society should recognize pluralism and democratic values here.

Diagnosis: The reasonable reaction would be to laugh and point at these loons. But we don’t. Rather, we give them airtime and treat them with respect. Thus they also get a degree of legitimacy. That is scary.

#125: Jerry Falwell Jr. and Jonathan Falwell

The incomparable, irreplaceable Jerry Falwell may finally have decided to sod off for good, but his more than mildly deranged offspring has decided to continue to run shop for their father.

Jerry Jr. is chancellor of his dad's Liberty University, and has a long reputation for questionable behavior – I guess you can do whatever you want if you think about Jerusalem while doing it. He has, following the sterling example set by his father, continued to run the university in the spirit of liberty.

You can read more about him and his university, including a summary of a mind-numbing interview with Glenn Beck, here.

He has some interesting views on climate change, for instance, for instance inviting Monckton to speak at Liberty as a way to expose students to both sides of the climate-change debate:
“A lot of our students come from public schools where the truth of global warming and the science of global warming is not always known […] Christians have a calling by God to protect the environment”, so they should therefore should have a complete view of the global-warming debate: “Many Christian young people are susceptible to the claims of the vast majority of environmentalists today who use pseudo-science to promote political agendas in the name of protecting the environment when their real goals are destroying freedom and destroying the economies of the western world.”

You nailed it there, Jerry.

His brother Jonathan, on the other hand, is the senior pastor at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia (and vice-chancellor of the Liberty University). He inherited his father’s column at the Worldnetdaily (Listen America) and hosts the weekly television show Main Street Today. He is a severely truth-challenged Christian reconstructionist. He seems to be getting (recurringly) into trouble for his claims that pastors should preach and support political movements without giving up their tax exemptions.

His website is here. You can learn more about him here.

Diagnosis: There is no better description for these Liars for Jesus than to point out that they are rather “Falwell-like”. They inherited a lot of influence and power, obviously, but it remains to be seen whether they have the ability and charisma to retain it.

#119: Michael Egnor

Egnor is a neurosurgeon and creationist, and one of the more recent additions to the Discovery Institute’s rooster of loons. He is also an idiot. His main anti-science strategy is attacking materialistic neuroscience and an attempted revival of dualism (taken up also by e.g. O’Leary), completely oblivious to any of the literature on the subject (and to fallacies such as the fallacy of division and denying the antecedent).

One of his primary arguments against materialism, for instance, concerns altruism, and the argument is that since altruism does not have the properties of matter it cannot derive from matter (no, the fact that this is a silly, often-refuted idea has passed him by completely). More specifically, matter has certain properties like location, temperature, and divisibility while ideas and concepts do not have these properties, therefore ideas and concepts cannot derive from matter (wonder whether he would see the category mistake if he tried “democracy” or “computing 2 + 2” vs. computer programs). He also claims that if altruism derived from the brain than when someone walked around in a room, or changed one’s bodily position, it should “change” your altruism. It also follows, according to Egnor, that if you take a chunk of random brain that chunk should have a proportional amount of altruism inside it. Yes, it is that silly (in fact, it is pure choprawoo. More here.

He doesn’t like evolution (the old canards, see here and here. He doesn’t understand “information” either (nor information theory): here and here and here. The examples are really plentiful. For some horrid quote-mining (-mangling), this one is good. And, of course, Darwinism has nothing to contribute to medicine: here, here, here, here, here, and also here.

As liars for Jeebus are wont to do, he also brazenly attempts to reconstruct history.

The term “egnorance” has been proposed to be defined as “willful ignorance”. Egnor is also a prime example of the notion of “crank magnetism”.

Ok – lets just cut straight to it. Michael Egnor hates science; Darwinism, medicine, climate science, physics, you name it. And as all good kooks, he is convinced that he is being persecuted for it (distinguishing criticism and persecution is obviously tough).

Diagnosis: Blissfully ignorant, total moron and dependable fallacy generator. He is relatively prominent among the Discovery Institute Crackpots, and might actually prove to be dangerous; see more here.

#117: Cynthia Dunbar

Perhaps the most influential loon in our Encyclopedia, at least in 2009-10 – her antics caused severe, maybe irreparable damage. Hopefully, her power to do harm may have abated, but I’ll be reluctant to write her off.

Dunbar is a lawyer and author in Richmond, Texas and currently a Republican representative on the Texas State Board of Education. She is a graduate of Regent University School of Law (Pat Robertson's university) and teacher of law Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. In other words, she has a fake education, and her lack of real knowledge or understanding is displayed by her utter stupidity, lack of knowledge and understanding, her anti-science anti-intellectualism, ignorance, dishonesty, zealous conspiracy theories and general wingnuttery.

In 2006 she won the Republican nomination for the Texas State Board of Education for District 10, claiming that people voted for her because she supports teaching intelligent design in science classes. So what else does she stand for?

Her book “One Nation Under God” argues (asserts) that the Christian religion should be more prominent in the public square and championed by the government. She is herself a homeschooler, and also claims that public education is a "subtly deceptive tool of perversion" and that "the establishment of public schools is unconstitutional and even 'tyrannical'." (here
- because, of course, they disagree with respect to whether schools should actively promote Christian reconstructionism of Barton’s or DeMar’s styles, or creationism).

What has she achieved? As a member of the Texas State Board of Education, in March of 2010, she proposed and won ratification of a number of modifications to Texas K-12 social studies curriculum, including the removal of Thomas Jefferson and mention of the Age of Enlightenment (i.e. any implication that reason should be the foundation for authority; more here). More precisely, the previous formulation:

- “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.”

was changed to

- “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” (important enlightenment thinkers such as Aquinas and Calvin were added, in other words)

So Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, had to go. On the other hand, a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war was added. Furthermore, the study of Sir Isaac Newton was dropped in favor of examining scientific advances through military technology; and she suggested an amendment to the effect that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.

Another curriculum amendment describes the civil rights movement as creating "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" among minorities, and at the same time drops references to the slave trade in favor of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade".

Dunbar says these are important steps to overturning what she believes is the myth of a separation between church and state in the US (she is, with DeMar and Barton, explicitly endorsing the view that the United States was ultimately governed by the scriptures.) In fact, she thinks government should be guided by a “biblical litmus test.” She endorses a system that requires “any person desiring to govern have a sincere knowledge and appreciation for the Word of God in order to rightly govern.” (in other words theocracy, Taliban style). Here is her prayer before the board voted to distort history for Texas’s kids. And here is an intelligent discussion of the system that allows such loons through to positions of influence. Another of her public prayers is discussed here.

If you have children in Texas, you should move.

She is, of course, a pathological liar, but I suspect it is unintentional – this nitwit wouldn’t be able to distinguish truth from falsity if it hit her with a shovel.

She has also written (for the Christian Worldview Network website) that a terrorist attack on America during the first six months of an Obama administration would more likely "be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny." As if ayatollah-sycophant Taliban theocrats such as Dunbar would be able to distinguish tyranny from freedom.

She is also a birfer who thinks Obama is, secretly, a muslim.

Diagnosis: Total moron, and probably one of the loons that has caused the most harm of all the loons covered thus far. She is off the board now (she didn’t run for reelection), but much damage has been done, and it doesn’t mean she won’t reappear elsewhere.

Also indicted is fellow board member, Democrat Rick Agosto, who aligned himself with the Taliban on most issues concerning education. Do not forget him. The abominable Ken Mercer will get his own entry (Barbara Cargill has already got hers). As mentioned, Dunbar was not herself running for reelection in 2010, and her handpicked successor Brian Russell (equally lunatic) lost the runoffs. At least a glimmer of hope for the future of sanity in Texas.

#102: Gary DeMar

One of the movers and shakers of the Christian Reconstructionist movement and an open theocrat, DeMar is an author, lecturer and also the president of the cult American Vision, an American Christian organization. The vision of this think-tank is "an America that recognizes the sovereignty of God over all of life and where Christians are engaged in every facet of society." In his own words “[a]ll government requires a reference point. If God is to be pleased by men, the Bible must become the foundation of all their governments, including civil government. This means that Biblical law must be made the foundation of all righteous judgment in every government: personal (self government), ecclesiastical, familial, and civil.” In other words, there is a war going on, a culture war or war between civilizations, and DeMar is firmly on the side of God and the family. And it is “Darwinism [which] secularized everything in America, including our understanding of the Constitution."

As the notable David Barton, DeMar attempts to connect the writings and thoughts of the founding fathers with his organization’s vision, and is not afraid of lying or quote-mining to a ridiculous degree in the process (this is a war, remember); he claims that the sole and clear purpose of the founding fathers was to establish the Kingdom of God in the New World.

Among his more scary-sounding books titles are “Surviving College Successfully” (given his background, you can probably figure out what he means), “Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World”, “America’s Christian History: The Untold Story” and “America's 200-Year War with Islamic Terrorism”; he has worked with such luminaries as John W. Whitehead, Gary North and Peter J. Leithart, who must be considered just as crazy as DeMar himself.

He has also said that he would execute homosexuals, but since he is such a liberal, the death penalty will only be awarded if they were actually caught engaging in sodomy.

A few, random examples of strategic moves in DeMar’s war.

In fact, there seems to exist a certain tension among the reconstructionists regarding the Constitution - and here is a truly lunatic discussion of the debates within the movement.
Diagnosis: Utter madman. He and his associates have a profound influence on the more religious parts of the Republican Party (for example), however, and must be considered extremely dangerous.

#63: Kristia Cavere

Kristia Cavere was the Tea Party and a Republican candidate for New York's 19th Congressional District seat held by John Hall (currently withdrawn). She firmly believes that the Democrats have co-opted Republican values and claims, and might in the end compete with Michele Bachmann for unadulterated lunacy. Among her claims you find this one:

"The Republicans are the ones who liberated Europe in World War II."

Apparently, she is convinced that the Republicans are the initiators of "every" advancement of freedom in our history, although:

"Unfortunately, today there are many Republicans in office who are cowards and who are bad communicators. […] We have the right ideas, the right principles, the right philosophy and history on our side. […]. We have to unify and become Americans together and not just identify with a political party. America and principles must come before our party. There is common ground that can be found."

She might be young, but her grasp of reality is apparently already missing beyond recall. Discussed here and here. Fortunately she quickly played herself out of the electorial campaign, citing “family reasons” for her withdrawal, although this suggests otherwise. She’s also a religious fundamentalist.

Diagnosis: Moron; presumably neutralized for now, but she was found sufficiently appealing to the Sarah Palin crowd that the danger of reemergence somewhere else is rather large.

#56: Barbara Cargill

Another stock conservative creationist, the (well-documented) threat posed by Barbara Cargill lies in the fact that she’s on the Texas Board of Education – another David Barton acolyte, and a Cynthia Dunbar sycophant, in other words. A fine example of the acumen represented by this group of clowns, with emphasis on Cargill, can be found here.

As expected, Cargill is a happy peruser of scientific articles she hasn’t read and wouldn’t understand if she did, twisting any new modification of any biological theory to support creationism – especially newspaper articles reporting (”reporting”) scientific findings. For example, the famous New Scientist article ”Darwin was wrong” (on the exact taxonomy of the Tree of Life, hardly surprising), was interpreted as a ”significant challenge” to the theory of Evolution.

She also decided, in her role as a Board of Education representative, that the age of the universe and whether it's expanding was up for a vote by the board members. As you would expect from the Texas Board of Education, the proposed amendment passed.

Diagnosis: Utterly moronic, dishonest wingnut – and severely dangerous given her position (yes, to an unitiated being a member of the TBoE might sound unassuming – it isn’t).

#35: William G. Boykin

a.k.a Lieutenant General “My God is bigger than your God” Boykin

Purveyor of possibly the most staggeringly bizarre argument ever made, concerning G. Bush after his reelection: “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this”.

Boykin (now retired) was the United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, and has played a role in almost every recent major American military operation. He is also a born-again Christian, author of "Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom". Boykin has cast the "War on Terror" in Biblical terms, seeing the war on terror as a battle between good and evil, or more precisely, between the soldiers of Jesus and the heretics (a Pentagon investigation concluded in 2004 that he had violated regulations by failing to explain these remarks were not made in an official capacity). As an example, listen to Boykin giving a speech about hunting down Osman Atto in Mogadishu: "He went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, 'They'll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.' Well, you know what? I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Hence his nickname. Believes that terrorists are after America not primarily because terrorists hate freedom but because Muslims hate Christians and the U.S. is a firmly Christian Nation (see the entry for David Barton).

Boykin’s relative loudness and official position eventually lead even to George Bush officially emphasizing that Boykin’s statements in no way reflected the point of view of the president or the administration (Rumsfeld took Boykin’s side, however). Pat Buchanan is also a fan of Boykin, apparently subscribing to the view taken by several WorldNetDaily columnists that the criticism of Boykin is an attack on Christian values in America by the Democratic Party.

Some quotes here.

A (relatively) sympathetic interview here.

Diagnosis: Batshit insane. Has probably contributed significantly to making the world a worse place to be.

#33: Alan Bonsell

Young earth creationist and former Dover School Board President. Bonsell was, together with the more famous Bill Buckingham, the strategist behind the Dover curriculum - which was later judged to violate the Establishment clause in the famous Dover trial. Bonsell was apparently the one who had read up on the subject before the curriculum was passed and wished evolution and creation to be taught “fifty-fifty” (initiating campaigns to convince concerned teachers). Bonsell is also a known fan of the reconstructivist work of David Barton (see the entry for David Barton in the Encyclopedia), having distributed Barton’s book “The Myth of Separation” to several board members.

One of the notable events during the Dover trial was when Bonsell initially testified that he did not know where the money had been raised to donate sixty copies of “Of Pandas and People” to the school's library. He admitted later that the money had been raised in William Buckingham's church, and directed through Bonsell's father so that it might be donated anonymously.

Diagnosis: Liar for Jesus; crackpot who is unable to recognize the difference between fact and opinion; despite his previous anti-scientific campaigns, he seems to be relatively neutralized by now.

#14: David Barton

We have mentioned the historical revisionists/reconstructionists before, but Barton is perhaps the most prominent advocate for religiously zealous, Orwellian reconstruction of American history to fit Christian fundamentalist ideals. Barton is a crank historian and Christian Nation apologist (and activist) and founder of Wallbuilders; has written extensively on the alleged religious fundamentalism of the founding fathers and the “true intent” of the constitution as a foundation for a theocracy. Has been caught lying, cherry-picking and fabricating material many, many times, as discussed here (in particular fabricating quotes he attribute to the founding fathers). Many of the alleged quotes have achieved lives of their own, even though Barton has admitted to lying.

More here and here.

The problem is that his writing has exerted profound influence over the Texas Board of Education and other radically religious curriculum builders. And of course, his ideological commitments ensure that he can say virtually whatever he wants without being called out by his allies.

Diagnosis: Liar and fraud, dishonest quack and zealot, and also a victim of severe confirmation bias. He has had a lot of influence however (Texas Board of Education, for instance) and must be ranked among the most dangerous, destructively influential forces of lunacy out there.

#12: Chuck Baldwin

It's our 12th loon, Chuck Baldwin! Baldwin was a 2008 U.S. presidential candidate for the openly theocratic Constitution Party.
Baldwin is a strong advocate for a Christian Nation and a historical revisionist with a persecution complex, arguing tirelessly that the American Constitution is based entirely off of the Bible. At the same time he promotes religious liberty, but Baldwin is one of those who aren’t affected by cognitive dissonance. Baldwin also holds that the Founding fathers were religious fundamentalists – he is known for publicly attributing quotes to them that he has made up himself (but the contents of which, according to him, the founding fathers would have agreed with). For a discussion of his views and arguments, see here:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/12/chuck_baldwins_christian_natio.php

Diagnosis: Bigoted, vile, zealous and crazy theocrat, liar for Jesus, paranoid and harebrained (but the martyr tactic is the lifeblood of these dingbats, so a persecution complex is unavoidable). Impact is probably relatively limited (the Constitution party isn’t exactly in the running for many seats), but the Orwellian historical revisionism he stands for is a cause for concern.