Attorney General Barr Wants The USA To Be A Religious Republic, According To His October 11, 2019 Speech At Notre Dame.
On Friday, October 11, 2019 Attorney General William Barr delivered an outrageous, even subversive, speech at Notre Dame Law School and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture in South Bend, Indiana, which should lead to his impeachment and removal due to his clearly expressed animosity towards the fundamental principles and values of the nation’s Constitution and its Declaration of Independence.
In his speech, available online, Barr is essentially against the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment which prohibits any governmental involvement in religion, and firmly against secularism, the very hallmark of our nation from its inception. He asserts that religious morality, especially Christian/Catholic morality, is far superior to secular morality, which he denigrates. He would want the United States to be a Christian Republic, better still a Catholic Republic. That fact disqualifies him from being attorney general all by itself, since it shows he does not believe in a fundamental clause of the Constitution nor in the historically secular nature of the United States of America, which has underpinned our democracy and is the basis of human rights.
Historically, it was essential for a nation to escape from the clutches of religion in order to have democracy and human rights. That’s exactly what the United States did from its founding. It was particularly essential to escape from the domination of the Catholic Church, which egregiously violated both democracy and human rights with exceptional cruelty and violence throughout its existence as a political force. Barr ignores the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church’s burning of heretics at the stake, the imprisonment of Galileo for insisting that the Earth revolved around the Sun, its censorship, its patriarchy which denied women equal rights, its discrimination against other religions and atheists, its severe condemnation of non-virgin unmarried women, and its demonization of homosexuality. Barr also skirts the Catholic Church’s monstrous cover-up of its own priests sexually abusing children. So much for nations run by Catholics.
Barr, for all his intellect, fails to understand that the Declaration of Independence never refers to the god of the Bible or to a religion, only to vague deism. That was intentional, and confirmed by the First Amendment’s “establishment clause” which specifies that the government shall not be involved with any religion, having in mind the dreadful abuses perpetrated by religions throughout history. Also that, historically, religions were symbiotically linked to kings and all other forms of despots, not to democracies.
Barr also shows that he is very superficial, not at all an intellectual, as he obviously ignores the fact that the three monotheistic religions, including Christianity, are discriminatory at their very core. The god of the Old Testament only loves the Jews; the god of the New Testament only loves those who believe in Jesus Christ; the god of the Koran only loves Muslims. The god of those three holy books is one and the same god, who evolves in his predilections. To be a true monotheistic believer, one must believe in one of those holy books, and they all violate democratic values and human rights. They are absolutely incompatible with democracy and human rights, which is why the founders of the United States were so mindful to avoid giving religions any political weight.
Barr is so superficial, brainwashed and besotted by his religious beliefs, that he fails to note that slavery was institutionalized by the Bible in the Old Testament (see Moses’ laws), endorsed by Jesus Christ in the New Testament, and fully embraced by Christians for centuries! Even specifically by Catholics and the Catholic Church which never opposed slavery. It never occurs to Barr how it is possible that our Declaration of Independence affirms that “all men are created equal and endowed with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, and yet we had slavery until the Civil War ended it seventy years after Declaration was written. The explanation for such a contradiction, such an inconsistency? Americans were good Christians! If slavery was good for the god of the Bible, good for Moses, and good for Jesus Christ, then slavery must be good for American Christians! The strange paradox is that American slaves became devoted Christians, explained only by the promise of eternal life in Heaven.
So much for Christian morality, without even mentioning rampant anti-Semitism and the Holocaust perpetrated by Christians in the name of Jesus Christ and with no opposition from the Vatican. It is precisely secular morality, humanism, which has gotten rid of Christianity’s many egregious violations of human rights and of democracy. History has proven that secularism’s morality is infinitely superior to religious morality, contrary to Barr’s conviction.
Is Barr an ignoramus, an idiot, a hypocrite? Is he evil? Is he a con man? Since he openly lies (v. claiming Geoffrey Berman resigned) and distorts (v. the Mueller Report), and protects con man Donald Trump (an inveterate liar in his own right), one might conclude he is a very immoral, dishonest person and a hypocrite. We have many politicians who are immoral, dishonest, hypocritical, and ignorant, but Barr distinguishes himself by being against our Constitution and fundamental values as revealed by his speech at Notre Dame. Being a lawyer, one would expect that he’d back up his claims that religious morality is superior to secular morality with some evidence. But he gives none. So what type of lawyer is he? A devious con man lawyer? He took charge of clearing Lafayette Park, then denied responsibility for the excessive use of force by the paramilitaries he commandeered. He took charge of the jailing of Jeffrey Epstein, who knew too much regarding many people in high places, then denied any responsibility for the coincidental nonfunctioning of surveillance cameras and the guards being AWOL the night Epstein supposedly was not murdered in his cell but committed suicide. With Barr, there is a disconcerting pattern. Just the other day, Barr echoed Trump’s assertions that mail-in votes will result in massive fraud. Barr’s twist is that the fraud will come from foreign power mail-in votes. This is a perfect parallel to Trump’s signal “Russia, if you’re listening…”. If Russian mail-in vote interference happens, clearly due to his transparent signal, Barr will say that he warned us! Perfidious?
Barr also insists on applying the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel rule against indicting sitting presidents, in order to protect Trump who, if not for that OLC rule, would clearly be indicted and most probably convicted for various serious crimes. (That’s why Trump is desperate to remain president and probably will stop at nothing.) But Barr knows that the OLC rule is corrupt, fraudulent, and unconstitutional, having been ordered by President Nixon in 1973 as Watergate was unfolding in order to protect himself, knowing full well that it was indeed constitutional to indict sitting presidents. Nixon was only afraid of being indicted, not of being impeached and removed from office since the Senate was controlled by his own party, a perfect parallel with Trump. So, Barr is illegally enforcing an invalid OLC rule to protect atheist Trump, who is his tool for his unconstitutional religious agenda, and he is therefore obstructing justice. For that he should be indicted and also impeached and removed from office.
How to explain the legal profession’s silence? How is it possible that so many fall for the OLC nonsense? Not one peep about the OLC being Nixon’s fraudulent rule, with no legal value! There are times when every profession in the world has made a major mistake. Not just lawyers, but doctors (e.g., taking months to understand that mandatory masks in public was the key to stopping the coronavirus, that even homemade masks of cloth worked), even scientists (e.g., for millennia scientists thought the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the Earth, and today they are convinced that manmade pollution is the main cause of global warming, without explaining the causes of the five great ice ages and five intervening major warmings, clearly not due to humans who didn’t yet exist, and without considering the probability that the current warming is simply the continuation of the latest warming due to natural forces. Increased pollution could simply be coincidental with the current warming, not the cause of it.)
Barr’s Catholic agenda is to ban abortion (even though he knows that would only lead to illegal abortions), instead of proposing policies to prevent unwanted pregnancies, the truly moral goal. He is even mindlessly against contraception. Neither Moses nor Jesus Christ were against contraception. Only the Catholic Church is, following a typically primitive, tribal desire to have a flock with large numbers for security. His agenda is also to have government funding for religious schools, in violation of the First Amendment. The religious schools would teach Christian morality as opposed to secular morality, which he blames for addiction and broken families. How ironic that many Americans were worried that Jack Kennedy, an atheist, non-practicing Catholic, would be beholden to the Vatican, and no one is worried about Barr!
One overlooked point is that Barr should recuse himself from all matters where he has a conflict of interest. He obviously should recuse himself in all matters concerning Trump who appointed him. As well as all matters concerning Trump’s family, friends, and associates. As well as in all matters concerning himself! Any Justice Department prosecutor should be free to indict Attorney General Barr when there is substantial evidence of criminal misconduct. The Constitution, a highly moral document, cannot possibly be interpreted as shielding an attorney general from investigation and indictment. Barr, contrary to his attitude and beliefs, cannot possibly be entitled to block legitimate investigations into his own activities, due to the conflict of interest principle. The same principle means that a president cannot pardon himself, his family members, friends, or associates. Any presidential pardon infected by conflict of interest is invalid, null and void. Somehow, the legal profession has been silent on this crucially important matter.
It is true that our secular nation has been incapable of coming up with solutions to poverty, addiction, violence and discriminations of all sorts, broken families, fatherless children, but that is not due to immorality or lack of religion, as Barr would have it. It is due to incompetence. The solution waiting to be discovered is simple: we need a very well educated citizenry, that’s what we’ve been sorely missing! That’s a national imperative, the foremost national interest. Therefore we need federally funded public schools nationwide. They must be uniformly excellent. With strict discipline and lots of homework, and with individual assistance for students having academic difficulty and for students with psychological problems. Of crucial importance is an enlightened high school curriculum including 1) a four-year course on psychology accompanied by “group therapy” and “good parenting” workshops; 2) a course on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the history of human rights violations; 3) a course on logic and critical thinking; 4) a course on ethics and empathy; 5) a course on detailed 20th Century history; 6) a course on history of art, architecture, and design; 7) a course on history of music; 8) a course on economics and investing (explaining why QE-financed tax rebates should be the standard stimulus tool, not ultra-low interest rates); 9) a course on comparative religion; 10) an introductory course on law including Constitutional law; 11) a course explaining all the major mistakes in economic, social, and foreign policy over the past 100 years, and which would have been the correct policies. All that along with universal preschool and well-organized after-school activities in the arts, sports, and vocational training, during weekends, holidays, and the entire summer break. Beyond excellent public schools we also need a prestigious National Police Academy with very high standards, to train and certify all our police officers and directors. It is essential to have a uniformly excellent police force all over the country.
There’s no money for all that because of our big budget deficits without raising taxes? Nonsense! We have discovered QE financing by the Federal Reserve which avoids raising taxes. Use it for the best of all investments, a uniformly excellent public school education, with an enlightened national core curriculum and a demanding national high school graduation test. Then, poverty will disappear, crime will disappear, addiction will disappear, violence of all sorts will disappear, racism will disappear, police brutality will disappear, abuse will disappear, high school dropouts will disappear, unwanted pregnancies will disappear, illegal discriminations will disappear, budget deficits will disappear, tax rates will be slashed, we’ll have social and economic prosperity, we’ll have only honest and competent politicians deeply dedicated to democracy and human rights, everybody happy! Not convinced? All we need to do is implement this simple plan. Guaranteed to work.
© Edward Sonnino 2020
June 24, 2020
