Barr: Blaming the secularists
Attorney General William Barr has given a speech that sounds like “a tacit endorsement of theocracy,” said Catherine Rampell in The Washington Post. At the University of Notre Dame, Barr—a Roman Catholic—accused “militant secularists” of seeking to destroy America’s “traditional moral order” by driving Judeo-Christian values from schools, government agencies, and “the public square.” In his “terrifying” diatribe, Barr, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, used apocalyptic, fire-and-brimstone language you’d expect from a fundamentalist preacher, demonizing everyone who doesn’t share his religious values. Progressive secularism, Barr said, has caused “record levels of depression,” “soaring suicide rates,” and the deadly epidemic of drug abuse. “This is not decay,” Barr said. “It is organized destruction.”
“Thank God” we have an attorney general who understands that religion is “a public good,” said Rod Dreher in TheAmericanConservative.com. In defending religious liberty, Barr pointed out that secularists are not content to live according to their own values but feel they must impose them on others through lawsuits, state laws, and curricula. Barr was simply echoing the Founding Fathers, said William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal.
No less a man than John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” George Washington described “religion and morality” as “indispensable supports” to democracy. What they and Barr are saying is that religion plays an “irreplaceable role” in “cultivating the morality citizens need to be capable of selfgovernment.” By condemning Barr, liberals only reveal their intolerance of “anyone who dares dissent from their own uncompromising orthodoxy.”
Barr can believe what he wants, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times, but the attorney general “has no business denouncing” the 26 percent of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated. Our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, which also includes the freedom to have no religion. Barr is “intellectually dishonest,” said Michael Sean Winters in National Catholic Reporter. Americans are still “the most churchy people of any industrialized nation,” yet we have far more gun violence and other social ills than highly secular nations like Denmark and Norway. Barr completely ignored the role rapacious capitalism in the U.S. has played in promoting drugs, sexual excess, and guns. The most appropriate response to Barr’s speech is “embarrassment.”