Talk to Action has a lengthy review of a treaty that is meant to help debunk Christian revisionists who claim the US was founded on a single faith:

One of the most often used arguments that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation is Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary. This is a pretty good argument, considering that the first sentence of that article begins with the words, “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…” Because the authors of the religious right version of American history can’t deny that these words are there, they attempt to dismiss them, usually using one, or a combination of, several popular arguments.

The first argument is really just a diversion, created by pointing out a mistake sometimes made by those who bring up this treaty.

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The second is an out of context sentence from a letter written by John Adams. Religious right authors who claim that there are many such secularist misquotes need to use both of these because they just can’t find any other examples, although David Barton implies that he has found a third.

The really sad part, of course, is that by ignoring the truth of history the revisionists are far more likely to repeat the nasty and obvious mistakes again and again.

I occasionally run into something similar when executives or even mangers tell me that they have no security incidents in their company. The funny thing is that if they had no incidents, they actually would say “although we have had some incidents, none turned out to be security related”. A simple review or sample of their incident notes would confirm this. However, if they say they have had no incidents at all, then it is very likely they have in fact had many and are completely unaware of how many are security related. Easy to repeat mistakes if you have no idea when they are being made. Even easier to repeat mistakes when written proof, or evidence, is dismissed with diversions and false context.