Attorney General William Barr delivered what might very fairly be described as a wholly unnerving speech at Notre Dame’s law school on Friday.
The South Bend Tribune previewed the event earlier in the week, noting that it was “exclusively for law school students and faculty, and students associated with the university’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture”.
The talk wasn’t open to the public, so the university didn’t publicized it, Notre Dame spokesman Dennis Brown said, adding that Barr would speak on “religious freedom”. Here is a clip from Barr’s speech:
“Among the militant secularists are so-called progressives”, Barr said, on the way to asking what, if not Christianity, can “fill the void in the hearts of the individual person”.
Barr then said this:
This is not decay. This is organized destruction. Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.
That echoes comments Donald Trump made during his equally bizarre address at the UN General Assembly last month, when the president claimed “media and academic institutions” are “pushing flat-out assaults on our histories, traditions and values”.
Barr also blamed an acute lack of Jesus for drug use and rising violence, which is ironic considering some of the most heinous acts in human history have been perpetrated in the name of organized religion.
“Along with the wreckage of the family, we are seeing record levels of depression and mental illness, dispirited young people, soaring suicide rates, increasing numbers of angry and alienated young males, an increase in senseless violence and a deadly drug epidemic”, Barr said, painting a dire picture of American society on par with Trump’s “American chaos” inauguration speech which was described at the time by former president Bush as “some weird sh*t”.
Barr then suggested that schools are the problem. “Ground zero for these attacks on religion are the school”, he charged. “To me this is the most serious challenge to religious liberty today”.
Congressman Ted Lieu was not amused. “Dear Bill Barr: I’m just a simple Catholic, but even I know your job is to enforce the law, not the Bible”, he chided, in a tweet. “We are a Constitutional Republic, not a theocracy. Do your job instead of being a full on conspiracy theorist”.
Amen, Ted.
Barr is a poser. Fear not! This is just the Attorney General trying influence people who for the most part know he is full of shit.
Another worm that will crawl back in his hole once Trump is out of office.
What scares you the most Libs ? That sincerity , or common since ? Y’all havent a clue about anything
*sense
🙂
What was his involvement in Rupurt Murdoch’s Fox News and the recent resignation of Shepard Smith?
I’d say he was the goldarn messenger. “Now, look, Rupe, the president is not amused by your boy Shep. He wants you to do something about it. Prontow.” Twenty-four hours later, Shep is out the door.
“Pronto”
I was wondering what possible subject the Attorney General wd need to discuss with Rupert Murdock.
Unflattering polls.
Is this really that bizarre of a speech to give at Notre Dame? This is not a conspiracy topic. Nor is it even right wing. It’s not even new. Christians view the removal of God from (fill in the blank) as an assault on their beliefs, and it’s happening in just about every facet of modern life. Now where it can get controversial is statistically linking the various crimes and moral declines directly to secularization. Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s really a side point. He could stick to defending the faith without offering any other rationale.
The interesting thing about Lieu’s comments is that many of our laws are Biblically based. In fact, if you completely remove God from the picture, the whole concept of ‘law’ gets complicated quick. What is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’? By whose standards? I don’t want to derail this into a philosophical argument, because it’s very subjective. But this is really the tip of a much deeper discussion.
You know it is people who decide what “God” thinks is right or wrong, right? What Bill Barr’s God and Saudi Arabia’s God and your God think are very different things.
Constantly talk about Jesus
Follow the teachings of Jesus… NOT
God hates the people I hate
Kill or torture all people who might possibly be bad
Bad people are constantly trying to destroy America because we are free
Anyone different from me is bad
Obsess about embryos, but ignore the needs of women and children
Sex for pleasure is bad, except for me
Children are smart if they can pass multiple-choice tests
Blame gays, Negroes, Mexicans, Muslims, liberals, Jews, and immigrants, whenever possible
Act as though it is important to say “The pledge of allegiance”
It is not a problem until it happens to me, personally
To negotiate is to be weak
Never admit any doubts
The truth has nothing to do with evidence
What is our oil doing under their sand?
Suck up to banks, telecoms, and other big campaign contributors
Disparage all inconvenient science
Environmentalists are idiots, even when they are correct
Amen
with all due respect, I think there is a profound error in your comment about the law.
It’s actually the opposite:
You need to remove God from the picture in order to achieve a “law” that deserves its name.
This law is based on universal principles like all men are created equal, which results in equal rights for all, etc.
Basing a judicial code on scripture is the very definition of arbitrariness: Who gets to interpret what was “meant” by certain passages, priests?
Other ordained personnel? Self-proclaimed prophets?
And also, which god and which holy book should be the basis for the so-called law?
The Bible, the Thora, the Quran (Sharia law???)
Jesus, Allah, Shiva, Querzalcoatl, the flying spaghetti monster?
Never in the history of mankind has a theocracy yielded any desirable results (except for the ruling class of priests, mullahs, etc)
sorry, I meant to reply to Grumbles posting
It’s just a simple statement of fact, like it or not. US law is largely based on English common law. …which is rooted in Christian beliefs.
Yeah, you can tell by the wall of separation put between Church and State in the Constitution, what with the no establishment of religion, no religious tests, and no laws against violating the Sabbath, divorce, adultery, witchcraft, blasphemy, apostasy, idolatry, conversion, venal sins, wearing mixed cloths, homosexuality,pornography, cross-dressing, abortion, pre-maritial sex, sodomy…
I mean, if you want to think that secularists could not have figured out a civic code against rape, murder, incest, and bestiality, you have to pretty much hang your hat on that.
Not trying to stir up a debate on whether law should be based on Christian principles. All I’m saying is that a lot of it is. …which takes us full circle back to William Barr. Heis suggested that this was a bizarre speech. And my contention is that it isn’t at all. There is a clear movement in this country to get away from the Bible and Christian values. And Barr obviously wants to hold the line. Whether you agree with that is not really my point.
I’m just saying that laws can look very different, depending upon your background. A simple one that you brought up, murder, is an excellent example. It’s not nearly as straight-forward as some people might think. In fact, it divides a lot of people in this nation.
Standard reactionary Opus Dei claptrap.
https://opusdei.org/en-us/
Interesting – but hardly remarkable – that he seems to be equating religion with Christianity: There are millions of people living by a strict moral code that do not consider themselves followers of Jesus. At the same time, there are many who consider themselves to be Christian for whom it is their very Christianity that leads them to be (in Barr’s term) “progressive”.
Jeremiah 7:8–11
“‘Don’t be fooled into thinking that you will never suffer because the Temple is here. It’s a lie!
Do you really think you can steal, murder, commit adultery, lie, and burn incense to Baal and all those other new gods of yours,
and then come here and stand before me in my Temple and chant, “We are safe!”–only to go right back to all those evils again?
Don’t you yourselves admit that this Temple, which bears my name, has become a den of thieves? Surely I see all the evil going on there. I, the LORD, have spoken! New Living Translation
Maybe not knowing Jesus leads to serial lying.
“Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people’s business. I live by the golden rule: Treat others as you’d want them to treat you. The religious right wants to tell people how to live.” ~ Jesse Ventura
Before there were the more “organized” religions, people still had to get along. Humans (apparently) tended to gather into clans and tribes, entered into pair bonds, worked collectively to raise children, worked together to hunt and obtain food, etc… This required some level of morality and civil “laws”. Early human existence was difficult. I prefer to believe, and there is some evidence to suggest, that humans developed a certain level of “moral code” and it helped ensure our survival as a species, well before the invention of modern religious dogma.
Tradition, Christianity and Family are the Big 3! Think about it…Our traditional american family is a paternalistic structure with the male figure in authority. The female is the subordinate and subject to rule by the male. The founding of christianity did not invent morality. Believe it or not morality did exist before Christianity.
The Big 3 has produced misogyny, gender discrimination and laws protecting the power of men, (white men to be exact). If Trump’s power philosophy spreads we women will become just wives, Marthas, or OfDonalds.
Wake Up America!
Good comment.
He really didn’t say anything that comes close to the Headline for this article. So, arguing that we have lost our moral compass is now a bizarre thing? People can’t even decide what sex they are and how many genders there are, that’s bizarre!
Yes, he did say something that warrants this headline. He said, specifically, that progressives and academics are “militants”, and he reinforced the White House’s patently ridiculous claim that there is a conspiracy afoot to undermine “traditional values”. The fact is, American society is pluralistic melting pot of religions and cultures. And the US is most assuredly not a religious autocracy. Bill Barr’s job is not to fly around the country giving religious speeches, nor is it to fly around the globe seeking to dig up dirt on Donald Trump’s political opponents, which America now knows the attorney general has been in the process of doing for months on end.
Further, if Bill Barr is looking for a “moral compass”, he best not look in the mirror or at his boss in the Oval Office. Barr has defied Congress and, by Robert Mueller’s own account, distorted the Mueller report to the public in an effort to exonerate a president whose “values” are the exact opposite of anything the historical Jesus would espouse. Donald Trump has, among other things, been found by the courts to have defrauded would-be students in a fake “University” scheme (he was forced to pay millions to those who were duped), been forced to shutter his “charity” because it wasn’t a charity but rather – to quote the courts – “a personal checkbook”, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to silence a porn star who he allegedly had an affair with while his wife was pregnant, put in place a religious-based ban on immigrants and espoused some of the most vile, racist, bigoted rhetoric to ever emanate from an elected US official.
Those are the facts. And they are not amenable to counter-narrative or spin.
So please, spare us your editorial critiques.
It seems to be spreading across the highest echelons of the federal government. A natural outgrowth, one imagines, of having such a devout man at the helm as our current President.
https://twitter.com/abfrancois/status/1183774488820887552
Check out the State Department’s homepage:
https://www.state.gov/
The Founders would not approve.
Neither would God, if she existed.