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Conservative host Glenn Beck and "historian" David Barton on Tuesday debuted a new show called "Foundations of Freedom" and suggested that history proved that school shootings could be prevented if all elementary school children were armed.

After pointing out that some areas of the United States required every household to own a gun in the late 1800s, Beck told Barton that "everybody grew up with a gun" and it was "part of school."

Barton noted that guns were only fired in schools at the time to stop criminal activity.

"The great example, in the 1850s you have a school teacher who's teaching," the historian explained. "A guy, he's out in the West, this guy from New England wants to kill him and find him. So, he comes into the school with his gun to shoot the teacher, he decides not to shoot the teacher because all the kids pull their guns out and point it at him and say, 'You kill the teacher, you die.' He says, 'Okay.' The teacher lives. Real simple stuff."

Barton added: "There was no shooting because all the kids -- we're talking in elementary school -- all the kids pull their guns out and says, 'We like our teacher, you shoot our teacher, we'll kill you.'"

"Kids did not shoot each other," Beck insisted.

"No, no," Barton agreed. "Two accidents I have seen in 200 years of everybody having guns. It just didn't happen."

Barton's book, “The Jefferson Lies," was pulled from stores by his publisher last year after it was criticized for grossly misrepresenting President Thomas Jefferson.

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

I don't think HuckaJesus is actually going to run for president this time around because he's enjoying his good-paying gig over at Fox too much, but if he surprises me and does run, add this to the long list of items that should make him unelectable.

Mike Huckabee Says He Wants Americans To Be Indoctrinated At Gunpoint:

Did Mike Huckabee just flush his presidential aspirations down the proverbial toilet? Well, if American mainstream media has an ounce of journalistic gumption remaining the answer most certainly would be “yes”. Huckabee has just been caught on video, at a Christian supremacist conference, stating that Americans should be forcibly indoctrinated at gunpoint. The organization which hosted the “Rediscover God In America” conference, United in Purpose, has edited Huckabee’s comment from footage of his speech, but not before People For The American Way’s Kyle Mantyla captured the unedited footage, in which Mike Huckabee states, “I almost wish that there would be, like, a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced–forced at gunpoint no less–to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.”

David Barton is the leading promoter of a brand of falsified American history altered to support the claim that America was founded as a Christian, rather than a secular, nation. As Chris Rodda, who has authored an entire book debunking Barton’s brand of pseudo-history, writes,

I was quite surprised… to come across a video clip from this conference on the People for the American Way (PFAW) Right Wing Watch blog with the headline “Huckabee: Americans Should Be Forced, At Gunpoint, To Learn From David Barton.” I had watched Huckabee’s speech. How on earth could I have missed a statement like that? Well, I didn’t. It had been edited out of the webcast that I had watched.

Kyle Mantyla over at PFAW’s Right Wing Watch had recorded Huckabee’s speech when it was streamed live on Thursday, and posted the ‘forced at gunpoint’ clip on Friday. By Saturday, when I watched the webcast on the United in Purpose website, that part of Huckabee’s speech had been edited out.

More there so go read the rest. Our own Dave Neiwert has more on Barton and Glenn Beck and Huckabee's promotion of him on Fox here -- Beck's 'Plan' will feature fake history on church-state separation from David Barton

h/t Digby who wrote this about the AlterNet article:

Here's the latest on the GOP field:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee would go toe-to-toe with President Obama if he sought the presidency in 2012, according to a new Fairleigh Dickinson University survey. Among registered voters nationwide, 46 percent said they'd vote for Huckabee and the same number would re-elect the president.

That's good. I think Huckabee would be a terrific president. In hell. [...]

If you read this blog you are familiar with David Barton. So are all the Tea partiers who think of Barton as the Commander in chief of Glenn Beck's Black Robed regiment. He is not just a socially conservative preacher. He's a full blown propagandist who's created an alternative history of the United States. It's not a good one.

He's a very dangerous man. And so, apparently, is Mike Huckabee.