http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39507/ben-carson-pyramid-history/
Ben Carson, Glenn Beck, and the Constant Effort to Rewrite History
People like Cleon Skousen will always be able to make a buck in America, because people like Carson and Beck will believe him. They just need to be kept away from real power.
Before we leave Doctor Ben Carson in the sands of Giza, looking for the Pancake Mix of the Gods, we should venture a bit of an explanation for a phenomenon pointed out by Steve M at No More Mr. Nice Blog. While some on the loud and crazy right are having their fun with Carson's foray into Egyptology, Glenn Beck's devotees seem more inclined to give Carson the benefit of the doubt in his battle with historical reality.
The vector here is Cleon Skousen, the lunatic historian who scared the Goldwater people so badly that they banned him from the campaign plane in 1964, and who ended up with a fat FBI file for his trouble, and this was back in the day when right-wingers had to howl at the moon naked to draw J. Edgar Hoover's attention. Skousen is the closest thing the modern conspiratorial Right has to Erich von Daniken. Back when Beck's popularity first exploded, journalist Alexander Zaitchik wrote extensively for Salon, introducing Skousen's…ahem…interesting theories to a new audience because Beck so readily claimed Skousen as a source.
"Leap," first published in 1981, is a heavily illustrated and factually challenged attempt to explain American history through an unspoken lens of Mormon theology. As such, it is an early entry in the ongoing attempt by the religious right to rewrite history. Fundamentalists want to define the United States as a Christian nation rather than a secular republic, and recast the Founding Fathers as devout Christians guided by the Bible rather than deists inspired by French and English philosophers. "Leap" argues that the U.S. Constitution is a godly document above all else, based on natural law, and owes more to the Old and New Testaments than to the secular and radical spirit of the Enlightenment. It lists 28 fundamental beliefs—based on the sayings and writings of Moses, Jesus, Cicero, John Locke, Montesquieu and Adam Smith—that Skousen says have resulted in more God-directed progress than was achieved in the previous 5,000 years of every other civilization combined.
Recently, we have learned that Carson also is a devotee of Skousen's unique view of human history. Because America is the greatest country ever invented to be completely out of your mind, we have to expect that people like Skousen will be able to make a buck and that people like Beck and Carson will be willing to believe him. The problem comes when you start letting those people anywhere near the smidgen of a notion of actual power. Swear to god, somebody should write a book.
No comments:
Post a Comment