Examining the Tea Party’s divine claim to nation’s founding

One of the key characteristics of Tea Party leaders and candidates is their almost divine claim to the symbolism of our nation’s founding fathers. Politicians have always reshaped the past to meet their own goals. But, with the Tea Party, the message seems more fervent. Fox News host Glenn Beck, for example, has told his viewers on Fox News that “progressives have built up this wall of separation between Church and State and it’s nonsense.”

It’s not what we were founded on,” Beck said back in November 2009. “We were founded on ten little safety tips that no one can put into any public building or dare we utter them.”

We talk with Harvard historian Jill Lepore who says Tea Party members embrace a narrative about America’s founding that is not only a fiction, but also a variety of religious fundamentalism.

Lepore is author of “The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History,” an examination of the far right’s battle to ?take back America.?