"So, Mike Huckabee, that's a 'yes' on the Christianist re-education camps, right?"

The "money quote":

HUCKABEE: I don’t know anyone in America who is a more effective communicator [than David Barton.] I just wish that every single young person in America would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we really are as a nation. I almost wish that there would be something like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced — at gun point no less — to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.

Now, I know Mike Huckabee has a certain sense of humor and that, feeling loose in front of a friendly audience, this might just be a kind of goofy hyperbole on his part. Only, I'm not laughing, because David Barton already has an awful lot of influence.  And his version of "American History" is a religious fable jam-packed with lies.

I don't find the "forced, forced--at gun point" necessarily as scary more scary than the following idea:  that a front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination might either a) Be ignorant enough to think David Barton is spot-on or b) Know Barton is presenting a fraudulent version of history....but just doesn't give a damn if it favors his ends.  And I'm always very leery of this kind of "stupid vs. evil" debate, because, having followed the Bush Administration, I have learned that many people have a great deal of capacity for both.

Also, yeah, the "forced at gunpoint" part is pretty troubling, as well. It smacks of going beyond the idea of a religious litmus test for office to a religious requirement for citizenship, and the image itself is violent. There is a lot to not like about that from a perspective of religious and intellectual freedom.