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US Attorney General Bill Barr says, "Secularism has become a religion based on freedom from personal responsibility, salvation attained by political activism and severe punishment of disobedience."
The law students at Notre Dame were attentive. Very attentive.
Hopefully, others will also pay attention, because he's absolutely right.
Be informed.
Inverting basic Christian morality
While the new secular religion has inverted basic Christian morality, it has adopted practices such as inquisitions and excommunication to enforce its doctrine.
Barr said:
"One of the ironies, as some have observed, is that the secular project has, itself, become a religion, pursed with religious fervor. It has taken on all the trappings of religion---including inquisitions and excommunication."
He said, "Those who defy the creed risk a figurative burning at the stake: social, educational and professional ostracism and exclusion waged through lawsuits and savage social media campaigns."
Barr told the soon to be lawyers,
"Today in the face of all increasing pathologies, instead of addressing the underlying cause, we have cast The State in the role of the Alleviator of Bad Consequences. We call on The State to mitigate the social costs of personal misconduct and irresponsibility."
He noted that the Secularist government attempts to alleviate bad consequences by advancing abortion, enabling drug use and assuming the roles of parent and spouse.
While promising unlimited freedom, the end result of the secularist religion is one of servitude.
He warned the law students:
“So, the reaction to growing illegitimacy is not sexual responsibility, but abortion."
“The reaction to drug addiction is safe injection sites."
“The solution to the breakdown of the family is for The State to set itself up as an ersatz husband for the single mother and an ersatz father for the children. The call comes for more and more social programs to deal with this wreckage."
“And, while we think we are solving problems, we are underwriting them."
“We start with an untrammeled freedom and we end up as dependents of a coercive state on whom we depend.”
“Interestingly, this idea of The State as the Alleviator of Bad Consequences has given rise to a new moral system that goes hand-in-hand with the secularization of society. It can be called the System of Macro-Morality. And, in some ways, it is an inversion of Christian morality."
“Christianity teaches a Micro-Morality: we transform the world by focusing on our own personal morality and transformation. The new secular religion teaches Macro-Morality. Once morality is not gauged by their private conduct, but rather their commitment to political causes and collective action to address various social problems."
“This system allows us not to worry so much about the strictures on our own private lives, because we can find salvation on the picket line. We can signal our finely-tuned moral sensibilities by participating in demonstrations on this cause or on that.”
Our Founders original intent
Attorney General Bill Barr said that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution believed that a “free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people.”
“In a free republic, those restraints could not be handed down from above by philosopher kings,” Barr said. “Instead, social order must flow up from the people themselves, freely obeying the dictates of inwardly possessed and commonly shared moral values.
“And to control willful human beings with an infinite capacity to rationalize, those moral values must rest on authority independent of men’s wills,” he said. “They must flow from the transcendent Supreme Being.
“In short,” he said, “in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people, a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and to manmade laws and had discipline to control themselves according to those controlling principles.”
Here is the transcript from the part of Barr’s speech where he said that the Framers believed that “free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people:”
“So, the founders decided to take a gamble, and they called it a great experiment. They would leave the people broad liberty, they would limit the coercive power of the government, and they would place their trust in self-discipline and virtue of the American people. In the words of Madison: ‘We have staked our future on the ability of each of us to govern ourselves.’
“And this is really what they meant by self-government. It did not mean primarily the mechanics by which we select a representative legislature. It referred to the capacity of each individual to restrain and govern themselves.
“But what was the source of this internal controlling power? In a free republic, those restraints could not be handed down from above by philosopher kings. Instead, social order must flow up from the people themselves, freely obeying the dictates of inwardly possessed and commonly shared moral values. And to control willful human beings with an infinite capacity to rationalize, those moral values must rest on authority independent of men’s wills. They must flow from the transcendent Supreme Being.
“In short, in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people, a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and to manmade laws and had discipline to control themselves according to those controlling principles
“As John Adams put it: ‘We have no government armed with a 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.’
The response from atheist secular progressives.
Atheist Patheos organization immediately responded to Barr's speech with this headline: "America's 'Top Cop' Peddles Christian Nation Trope at Notre Dame."
They said Barr's speech "should frighten and disturb everyone committed to separation of church and state."
The atheists said, "In his alleged war he sees being waged by secularism against the Judeo-Christian religious tradition is America's schools, where he laments state governments are working to keep out God and Jesus."
They railed on Barr for suggesting that "we are all rudderless without religion." They said his speech was "otherworldly superstition" because it's based on things that "have never been irrefutably confirmed to exist in reality."
They concluded that what does exist in reality...is that US Attorney General Bill Barr is "evolving into a kind of celestial tyranny."
God bless the AG. Pray that he will continue to give these kinds of speeches in colleges and universities across the nation.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Prayerful.