Bill Barr on modern society

This Bill Barr interview is amazing. An excerpt:

https://www.commonsense.news/p/bill-barr-calls-bullsht?triedSigningIn=true

BW: You gave a speech in 2019 at Notre Dame that I read at the time and have since reread. It’s a very powerful talk about religious liberty and freedom. In the speech, you argue that not only is religious liberty an imperative to free government, but that religion itself is what protects us from the dangers of freedom. You say that religion promotes moral discipline and a virtue that’s  needed to support a free government and free institutions. You quote our founders like John Adams: “We have no government,” he said, “armed with the power which is capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” What do we do when we have such a constitution, but a growing number of Americans aren’t religious? 

AG BARR: The framers would have said that if that persists for a long time and people aren’t able to control themselves and govern themselves and sink into licentiousness and so forth that we’re not going to have a free society. The government will adopt rules, and all our decisions will be made for us by the government. The whole idea of limited government was predicated on religion, that religion would allow people to govern themselves. As long as people could govern themselves then you could have limited government. At the end of the day, you will have government, and if it’s not self-government, it’ll be the coercive power of the state.

I think one of the problems we have today is that we’re a more pluralistic, more religiously fractured society. People’s values vary widely. In 1960, 95% of the country self-identified as believing Christians, and that’s no longer the case. I think we have to understand that in a pluralistic society, we have to live and let live. This means we have to, for example, stop trying to run schools like monolithic state institutions that are neutral as to values and morality but allow people to choose through vouchers where they want their children educated. If they want their kids brought up in a religious tradition, allow them to have their school. This is what they do in England. This is what they do in Europe. Here we are, where we supposedly fled from Europe to have religious freedom, but if you want to raise your kid within a religious tradition, you have to pay through the nose for private school. Otherwise, you’re sending your kid to a public school. And the problem today is that a lot of what's being taught in public schools is antithetical to traditional religious belief.

The left talks about diversity, but I’m for real diversity. I think that will enrich education. I think it will not hurt the melting pot that we have. You look at parochial schools today and religious schools, they raise patriotic citizens who function in a pluralistic society very well. So, I think the answer is let people make the choice and let's see what happens. 

BW: Do you think that Americans are increasingly trying to get out of politics what they may have gotten once out of religion and religious identity? 

AG BARR: I think there’s no question about it. I think that secular progressivism—what I refer to as the radical progressive view—it’s like a religion and it has that intensity. This is what has made our politics so venomous. The opponents of the progressive forces aren’t just wrong, they’re evil because they’re standing in the way of the salvation of the human race. This contributes to the dehumanization of one's political adversaries and so forth. Talking about religious wars, these are like religious wars, the hatred that’s involved in it.