William Barr
speaking for the NRB audience
Comments by
Phil Beaver. Barr’s text in none or green highlights. Phil’s comments in
brackets with yellow highlights.
Attorney
General William P. Barr Delivers Remarks at the 2020 National Religious
Broadcasters Convention
Nashville, TN
~
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Remarks as Prepared for
Delivery
Craig,
I appreciate the kind introduction. You have dedicated your career to
advancing law and faith in an era when so many of our country’s influential
institutions seek to undermine both, particularly religion. I thank you
for your tireless work to counter this trend. I know that those here, and
millions of the faithful across America and around the world, appreciate it
too.
Good
afternoon, everyone. It is wonderful to be in Nashville, and I am deeply
honored to be with you at such an important gathering.
We live at a time when religion – long an
essential pillar of our society – is being driven from the public square. [Admit it: many people want
religion and it cannot be driven from their hopes and comforts. Therefore, you
expressed a false belief. Also, integrity more than religion is essential.]
Thank God we have the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) to counter that
effort. Since its creation in 1944, it has reached, and continues to
reach, people from all backgrounds on a variety of platforms. [It seems prudent for humans to
thank whatever-God-is so as to not be arrogant when they could accept human
humility.]
Your
members courageously affirm that entertainment and moral education are not mutually
exclusive. [Equating
religion to “moral education” denies integrity, the pursuit of
the-literal-truth.] You have boldly shown that media can serve higher
ends: the safeguarding of faith as well as the cultivation of the classical
virtues of the mind and heart that maintain our republican experiment in self-governance. [“Republican experiment” lessens
the importance of the U.S. Constitution. Its preamble, hereafter “the U.S.
Preamble," is a proposal to develop statutory justice, the perfection of
representative rule of law.] As such, NRB’s members offer an alternative
and essential platform for believers and non-believers alike.
Now, I
trust that everyone has noticed the current intensity and pervasiveness of
politics in our lives. It has infiltrated and overtaken nearly every
aspect of life: sports, entertainment, apparel, technology – of course,
religion too – even our eating habits. [It might be useful here to define “politics” as legal
power or better in your view.]
Politics
is everywhere. It is omnipresent. Why is that?
It
seems to me that the passionate political divisions of today result from a conflict
between two fundamentally different visions of the individual and his
relationship to the state. One vision undergirds the political system we
call liberal democracy, which limits government and gives priority to
preserving personal liberty.
[We recently discovered
and published our opinion that “liberty” as practiced during the century of
Western revolutions seems more bloody license than opportunity to develop
integrity. To explain, in 1689, England had its Glorious Revolution, producing
a zealous Bill of Rights. In 1774, the colonists in the 13 British-American
territories dubbed themselves states and in 1776 admitted they were at war with
England. France agreed to extend their ongoing war with England to North
America and supplied the military might and strategy for the final victory at Yorktown,
VA in 1781. The 1783 Treaty of Paris admits to 13 free and independent global
states, naming them. The 1774 Confederation of States tried to survive, but 39
of 55 delegates to the U.S. Constitutional convention signed the proposal for a
union of states with six domestic disciplines of by and for the citizens.
Unfortunately, “to secure the [advantages; see records of
May 29, 1787, Randolph’s introduction to the business at hand] of Liberty” is
prominent in place of “independence to develop integrity.” In 1789, Congress
usurped the U.S. Preamble’s civic, civil, and legal powers by re-instituting
colonial-British traditions, most egregiously claiming traditional piety on par with the
Church of England’s constitutional partnership with Parliament. In 1789,
France’s reign of terror for liberty was influenced by the American Revolution
of 1776 more than domestice discipline of by and for U.S. citiens. Personal liberty
is anarchy. Personal independence empowers integrity.] The other
vision propels a form of totalitarian
democracy, [this is
a wonderful juxtaposition for “social democracy” or chaos] which seeks
to submerge the individual in a collectivist agenda. It subverts individual freedom [Why change from “personal
liberty” to “individual freedom”? I use hyphens to delineate. For example,
freedom-from oppression empowers opportunity for independent-development-of
integrity, which the U.S. citizen may take the liberty-to neglect and perhaps
beg woe.] in favor of elite
conceptions about what best serves the collective. [I prefer “alien” to “elite” where the civic
citizen is defined by the U.S. Preamble’s proposition in the individual
citizen’s interpretation.]
In my
view, liberal democracy has
reached its fullest expression in the Anglo-American political system.
This system is responsible for unprecedented human freedom and progress. [Shockingly, that is a false
premise. Preserving colonial-English tradition represses We the People of the
United States as defined in the U.S. Preamble. It is time for the U.S. to admit
to 1789 Congressional tyranny and correct it.] We providentially enjoy
its blessings today. [The
“we” represents an elite group who choose to take advantage of the Holy Bible’s
integrity and ignore its tyranny. Its much like ignoring the pleas of a civic
citizen who (erroneously in my view) believes Allah more than either The Trinity or Nature's God measures whatever-God-is.]
The
wellsprings of this system are found in Augustinian Christianity.
According to St. Augustine, man lives simultaneously in two realms. Each
individual is a unique creation of God with a transcendent end and eternal life
in the City of God. We are created to love our Creator in this world and
become united with him in eternity. As Augustine writes in his Confessions,
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our
heart is restless until it rests in you.”
At the
same time, while we work toward our eternal destiny, we live in the temporal
world – the City of Man. But this world is a fallen one. Man is
stubbornly imperfect and prone to prey upon his fellow man. Unless there
is a temporal authority capable of restraining the wicked – an authority with
power here on earth – the wicked men would overwhelm the good ones and there
could be no peace.
In the
ancient Greek tradition, the state was a positive moral agency whose purpose
was to define for men what was good and make them so. [Here are some Greek principles in
U.S.-Preamble-terms I develop under the objective “a civic glossary.” Civic
citizens behave to practice and develop statutory justice. Civic citizens
neither initiate nor tolerate harm to or from a fellow citizen or their humanly
responsible associations. Since no one has discovered the standards for human
excellence, whatever-God-is is not debated in civic forums; in other words, in
humility, no person claims his impression of whatever-God-is conforms to
whatever-God-is. Fellow citizens who defy statutory law invite law enforcement,
even when statutory justice has not been discovered; the rule of law prevails.]
Augustinian Christianity sharply departed from that conception. It saw the state as a necessary
evil, with the limited function of keeping the peace here on earth. [The transition seems abrupt and
arbitrary to the mystery that whatever-God-is controls everything---is
omniscient and omnipotent.]
These
foundational ideas gradually evolved into our current conceptions of individual
dignity, personal liberty, limited government, and the separation of church and
state. This process took hundreds of years and involved the amalgamation
of many different influences, including those associated with Anglo-Saxon
folkways, the common law, the experiences of the English Civil War, the
political thought of the English Whigs, the moderate Enlightenment, the
American Revolution, and the foundation of the American Republic in 1789. [Intentionally or not, and I
speculate not, this list skipped the American reform from a Confederation of
States to a Union for individual and collective human disciplines of by and
for the citizens.]
What
has resulted from these centuries of experience is a system that takes man and
society as they actually exist. Precisely because it recognizes that man
is imperfect, it does not try to use the coercive power of the state to
recreate man or society wholesale. It tends to trust, not in
revolutionary designs, but in common virtues, customs, and institutions that
were refined over long periods of time. It puts its faith in the
accumulated wisdom of the ages over the revolutionary innovations of those who
aspire to be, what Edmund Burke called, “the physician of the state.” [Quoting Burke to oppose the
U.S. Preamble’s proposition---that a disciplined citizenship holds the state
accountable---is a failing.]
Liberal
democracy recognizes that preserving broad personal freedom, including the
freedom to pursue one’s own spiritual life and destiny, best comports with the
true nature and dignity of man. [This Western idea makes the assumption that the newborn human does not
have the individual power, energy, and authority, HIPEA, to develop either
integrity to the-literal-truth or infidelity. We assert that the culture that
coaches and encourages its youth to accept HIPEA and use it to develop
integrity will flourish rather than regress as America has since 1789. Congress
erroneously assumed that whatever-God-is conforms to Congress’s God and imposed
Congressional divinity on the people. When it comes to specifying
whatever-God-is, the individual and Congress can only say: Despite hopes and
comforts against the unknown, we do not know how to specify whatever-God-is.]
It also recognizes that man is happiest in his voluntary associations,
not coerced ones, and must be left free to participate in civil society, by
which I mean the range of collective endeavors outside the sphere of politics. [The fellow citizen who does not
accept and practice the U.S. Preamble’s proposition is not a member of We the
People of the United States as defined therein. The fellow citizen who does not
express an opportunity to advance statutory justice invites the woe of written,
unjust law-enforcement.]
The
state is not the same as the voluntary associations that make up civil
society. To the contrary, it is the apparatus of coercive power.
Under our system of liberal democracy, the role of government is not to
forcibly remake man and society. The government has the far more modest
purpose of preserving the proper balance of personal freedom and order
necessary for a healthy civil society to develop and individual humans to
flourish. [Government’s
challenge is to accept the standards of responsible human independence. Herein,
you assert that Christianity provides the standard: I assert that the standard is physics and
its progeny, such as mathematics, chemistry, biology, and psychology by which
imagination is measured.]
But
just as our robust vision of liberal democracy came to fruition in 1789 [the year Congressional tyranny
repressed the U.S. Preamble’s proposition in order to re-instate colonial
British so Congress would feel competitive with the constitutional Church of England's role
in Parliament], another conflicting vision was taking shape. This
has been referred to as “totalitarian democracy.” Its prophet was
Rousseau, and its first fruit was the French Revolution. In the two
centuries since, totalitarian democratic movements of both the right and the
left have appeared.
Totalitarian
democracy is based on the idea that man is naturally good, but has been
corrupted by existing societal customs, conventions, and institutions.
The path to perfection is to tear down these artifices and restore human
society to its natural condition.
This
form of democracy is messianic in that it postulates a preordained, perfect
scheme of things to which men will be inexorably led. Its goals are
earthly and they are urgent. Although totalitarian democracy is
democratic in form, it requires an all-knowing elite to guide the masses toward
their determined end, and that elite relies on whipping up mass enthusiasm to
preserve its power and achieve its goals.
Totalitarian
democracy is almost always secular and materialistic, and its adherents tend to
treat politics as a substitute for religion. Their sacred mission is to use the coercive power of
the state to remake man and society according to an abstract ideal of
perfection. [The
U.S. Preamble does not pretend to know the ultimate human development, whether
that is perfection or not.] The virtue of any individual is defined by
whether they are aligned with the program. [Do you include whether or not they do “the Christian
thing to do”?] Whatever means used are justified because, by
definition, they will quicken the pace of mankind’s progress toward perfection.
As one
political scientist has noted, while liberal democracy conceives of people
relating on many different planes of existence, “totalitarian democracy
recognizes only one plane of existence, the political.” All is subsumed
within a single project to use the power of the state to perfect mankind rather
than limit the state to protecting our freedom to find our own ends. It
is increasingly, as Mussolini memorably said, “All within the state, nothing
outside the state, nothing against the state.”
While
many factors have contributed to the polarized politics of today, I think one
significant reason our politics has become so intense and so ill-tempered is
that some in the so-called “progressive” movement have broken away from the
fold of liberal democracy to pursue a society more in line with the thinking of
Rousseau than that of our nation’s Founders. That has played a major role
in our politics becoming less like a disagreement within a family, and more
like a blood feud between two
different clans. [Throughout
history, “liberty” has been a repeated license for blood while responsible
human independence often made a better future possible.]
Over
the past few decades, those further to the left have increasingly identified
themselves as “progressives” rather than “liberals.” And some of these
self-proclaimed “progressives” have become increasingly militant and
totalitarian in their style. While they seek power through the democratic
process, their policy agenda has become more aggressively collectivist,
socialist, and explicitly revolutionary. [Let me add exclusive. For example, among the
Christianities the one that most excludes me is African-American Christianity.
Others are as bad on a psychological basis; for example, Mormonism.]
The
crux of the progressive program is to use the public purse to provide
ever-increasing benefits to the public and to, thereby, build a permanent
constituency of supporters who are also dependents. They want able-bodied
citizens to become more dependent, subject to greater control, and increasingly
supportive of dependency. The tacit goal of this project is to convert
all of us into 25 year-olds living in the government’s basement, focusing our
energies on obtaining a larger allowance rather than getting a job and moving
out. [Promoting the U.S.
Preamble, this paragraph appropriately castigates dependency.]
Political
philosophers since Aristotle have worried that democracies are vulnerable to
just this form of corruption. Probably the greatest chronicler of
American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, foresaw that American democracy
would be susceptible to this evolution. As he described it, our society
was vulnerable to a soft despotism wherein the majority would gradually let
itself be taken care of by the state – much like dependent children. [Ironically, after the political
brilliance of the framers, the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional
Convention, the First Congress was like adolescent parents divided over the
four grandparent’s ideas. Instead of grasping the brilliance of the U.S.
Preamble, they debated restoration of colonial-American psychology, not
recognizing that it as another branch of English servitude. It’s been that way
since then, so we---ourselves and our posterity---have the chance to reform to
the U.S. Preamble’s proposition.]
Yet
this process would be slow and imperceptible. The tyranny that results,
Tocqueville wrote, “does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and
directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting;
it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it
represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupifies, and finally it reduces
[the people] to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious
animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” [Christianity offers a similar dependency.
Believers wait for the Lord to establish peace, which whatever-God-is assigned
to humankind. This waiting has gone on for 4,000 years as Judeo-Christianity,
2,000 years with Jesus as some people’s Lord, 1700 years under the Catholic
Holy Bible, 331 years since the English Glorious Revolution, and 231 years since
the First Congress repressed the U.S. Preamble.]
It
would be totalitarianism beneath a veneer of democratic choice. As
Tocqueville summed it up: “By this system the people shake off their
state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse
into it again.”
Historically,
our country has relied on a number of bulwarks against this slide toward despotism, each of which has
been essential in preserving
the liberty that has defined our democracy [Why would this seem to make sense to anyone? It seems
contradictory: is this a republic under the rule of law or a democracy of
liberties? What is a democracy of liberties?]. Today, I would like to discuss three institutions
that have served this vital purpose: religion, the decentralization of government power, and the free press.
The sad
fact is that all three have eroded in recent decades. At the end of the
day, if we are to preserve our liberal democracy from the meretricious appeal
of socialism and the strain of progressivism I have described, we must turn our
attention to revivifying these vital institutions. [It is egregious to ignore fellow citizens who
read the same Holy Bible, find grave error therein, and place their faith in
the-literal-truth, unknown as most of it may be. It is also egregious to ignore
fellow citizens who none the less observe and help improve our representative
republic. It neither impresses nor offends me that this imposition of religious doctrine comes from
you: I do not know the ineluctable evidences against the Holy Bible you have
encountered and rejected.]
Let me
first address religion.
As I
discussed in a speech I gave last fall at Notre Dame, while the Framers
believed that religion and government should be separate spheres, they also
firmly believed that religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system
of government. As John Adams put it: “We have no government 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.”
Tocqueville
was especially emphatic on this score. He believed that religion was
democracy’s most powerful antidote to any tendency toward a tyrannical majority
hijacking the system for despotic ends.
How
does religion protect against majoritarian tyranny? In the first place,
it allows us to limit the role of government by cultivating internal moral
values in the people that are powerful enough to restrain individual rapacity
without resort to the state’s coercive power. [What about Chapter XI Machiavellianism? I am the
dreamer (no fool here) who would end it by promoting the U.S. Preamble’s proposition for
pursuit of the-literal-truth.]
Experience
teaches that, to be strong enough to control willful human beings, moral values
must be based on authority independent of man’s will. In other words,
they must flow from a transcendent Supreme Being. Men are far likelier to
obey rules that come from God than to abide by the abstract outcome of an ad
hoc utilitarian calculus. [The
fatal error herein (as demonstrated by the USA since 1789, is that the Supreme
Being is Christian, whereas whatever-God-is probably does not conform to a
human construct, human reason, or a doctrine. The entire Western scholarship of
the 17th-18th century refutes the ineluctable evidence
that humankind must conform to physic and its progeny, as mentioned above.
Discovery of the laws of physics followed by discover of how best to benefit
from the laws is humankind’s responsibility.]
These
fixed moral limits did not just apply to individuals, but to political
majorities as well. According to Tocqueville, in America, religion has
instilled a deep sense that there are immovable moral limits on what a majority
can impose on the minority. It was due to the influence of religion in
America, he explained, that no one “dared to advance the maxim that everything
is permitted in the interest of society.”
Thus,
as one scholar observes, Tocqueville concluded that “democracy requires
citizens who believe that the rules of morality – and hence the rights of their
fellow citizens – are not merely convenient fictions,” wholly dependent on the
will of men, but are instead rooted in the immutable transcendent truth. [The “immutable transcendent
truth” is measured by the-literal-truth. Mankind uses ineluctable evidence to
discover the-objective-truth and through invention of better instruments
improves perceptions so as to approach if not discover the-literal-truth.]
Thus,
it is safe to give the people power to rule, but only if they believe there are
moral limits on their power. Tocqueville’s call to preserve this moral
system is not, as scholars have explained, “a rejection of pluralism; it is an
effort to preserve the moral and religious foundation on which a successful
pluralism can exist.” [Tocqueville
was only a writer, and many of his ideas were wrong, as we observe in 2020.]
There
is another way in which religion tends to temper the passion and intensity of
political disputes. Messianic secular movements have a natural tendency
to hubris. Their goal is to achieve paradise in the here and now.
Those who participate in these movements believe their goals are so
noble, they tend to see their opponents as evil and believe that any means
necessary to achieve their objectives are justified. That is why the most
militant agents for change are entirely comfortable demonizing their opponents
and are all too ready to destroy those opponents in any way they can. [I feel that my life has been
lessened by my exposure to many if not most Christians. Consider, for example,
John the Apostle’s writing to disciples in John 15:18-23. John claims that
since I do not listen to him, I hate God. I reject John’s claim, but his
followers stop talking to me the moment they learn I oppose John’s opinions.
Christians reject non-Christians out of hand---without considering that we are
nonetheless civic citizens. Some of us are members of We the People of the
United States as defined in the U.S. Preamble, and some Christians are aliens
to We the People of the United States.]
This is
not to deny that religion can also lead to self-righteousness. Of course
it can. But religion usually has a built-in antidote to hubris in the
form of sharp warnings against presumption. In the case of Christianity,
Christ repeatedly warned against self-righteousness:
- “First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
- “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
- “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” And so on.
Indeed,
the very essence of Christ’s message counsels for modesty and restraint in
secular politics. The mission is not to make new men or transform the
world through the coercive power of the state. On the contrary, the
central idea is that the right way to transform the world is for each of us to
focus on morally transforming ourselves.
Thus,
unlike those who see the line between good and evil as running between them and
their opponents, the Christian outlook is expressed by Solzhenitsyn’s observation
that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human
being.” [It seems better
to quote the U.S. Preamble rather than Christian doctrine as dividing human good and evil.]
Religion
also tempers the acrimony of our politics by making clear that what happens
here on earth is only transient – not eternal. “Remember, Man, that thou
art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.” [This is a false doctrine: whether a human uses his or
her HIPEA to develop integrity or infidelity becomes eternal when body, mind,
and person stop functioning. The adult who does not encourage a child to accept
HIPEA and use it to develop integrity may answer to whatever-God-is. We don’t
know.]
Unfortunately,
this vital moderating force in our society has declined over the past several
decades. In recent years, we have seen the steady erosion of religion and
its benevolent influence. [The free exchange of ideas made possible by the Internet has increased
humankind’s awareness of both whatever-God-is and evolution from nothing to
actual reality according to the laws of physics including its unknowns.]
Some of
this has been caused by the misinterpretation of the Establishment and Free
Exercise Clauses of our Constitution by our courts. Instead of
recognizing the benefits of religion to a healthy society and seeking to
accommodate religion, we seem to have adopted the posture of official hostility
to religion. That is directly contrary to the Framers’ views. As Dr. Benjamin Rush
wrote in 1798: “The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to
be laid in religion. Without it there can be no virtue, and without
virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all
republican governments.” [I do not agree with Rush. Liberty can mean license to draw blood.
Human integrity is developed in independence to discover and benefit from the
laws of physics and its progeny. Also, framers were attending delegates to the
1787 Constitutional Convention, and Rush was not there.]
While
most everyone agrees that we must have separation of Church and State, this
does not require that we drive religion from the public square and
affirmatively use government power to promote a culture of disbelief. [What it does imply is that
fellow citizens, in humility to whatever-God-is, do not present their personal
Gods for civic, civil, or legal evaluation.] As Tocqueville would
have predicted, this weakening of religion is contributing to ill-temper in our
political life. [I don’t
let Tocqueville’s errors influence me. General recognition of whatever-God-is
is necessary for an achievable better future.]
The
next essential check on despotism I would like to discuss is decentralization
of government power.
Both
Tocqueville and James Madison believed that the first step toward tyranny in a
democracy was the formation of a consolidated and galvanized national majority,
sufficiently roused by a common idea to ride roughshod over an opposing
minority. Both men thought that decentralization of power – reflected in
the American system of federalism – would help prevent the coalescence of such
an energized national majority. [The adversarial concept is not necessary among civic citizens. Most fellow citizens want comprehensive safety and security, and civic citizens
behave for mutual comprehensive safety and security. This includes wages for
needed work that support human living including wealth-building for retirement. The U.S. Preamble’s proposition can
empower an achievable better future.]
As we
all know, under our federal system, individuals are subject to two sovereigns:
the national government, and their state government. [The individual human is sovereign respecting his or her human
independence and consequential choice to develop either integrity or infidelity.]
[According to the U.S. Preamble, the entity We the People of the United States,
the fellow citizens who accept its proposition, maintain the constitution, and
may amend its articles. The entity is sovereign within the local, state, and
national governments.]
The
Framers believed in the principle of subsidiarity – that is, that matters ought
to be handled by the smallest, lowest competent authority that was closest to
the people. That is the level of government at which the individual was
most empowered. It is where he or she could play the largest role and have
the most direct involvement. The Framers conceived that the vast majority
of collective decision-making by the people about their affairs would be done
at the state and local level. [This does not hold for promoting acceptance of the U.S. Preamble’s proposition
as I have done it. The problem is that local politicians are not willing to take on a national issue. In other words, they do not support Barr's claim.]
The
federal government was supposed to be a government of limited powers. It
was primarily supposed to handle two things that had to be achieved at the
national level: first, conducting foreign relations and providing for the national
defense and, second, integrating economic affairs across the states so we could
have a single national economy. [The U.S. Preamble states that the federal government was created for Unity, Justice,
Tranquilty, defence, Welfare, and Liberty (to ourselves and our Posterity).]
The
Framers included the Commerce Clause for this second purpose, but that
provision has since ballooned far beyond its original understanding.
Nowadays, it is hard to tell whether a particular measure is regulating
commerce to promote integration of the nation’s commerce, or whether it is
simply an effort by the national government to regulate a domestic matter
within a state.
Sadly,
most restrictions on federal power under the Commerce Clause have broken down.
Virtually any federal measure can be justified no matter how much it
invades the prerogatives of the states. As a result, the federal
government is now directly governing the country as one monolithic entity with
over 300 million people. [This is not wholly true in my state, Louisiana. I sometimes wish it
were true.]
I
believe that the destruction of federalism is another source of the extreme
discontent in our contemporary political life. We have come to believe
that we should have one national solution for every problem in society.
You have a problem? Let us fix it in Washington, DC. One size fits
all.
The
Framers would have seen a one-size-fits-all government for hundreds of millions
of diverse citizens as being utterly unworkable and a straight road to
tyranny. That is because they recognized that not every community is
exactly the same. What works in Brooklyn might not be a good fit for
Birmingham. The federal system allows for this diversity. It also
enables people who do not like a certain system to move to a different
one. It is easier to run away from a local tyranny than a national one.
If people do not like the rule in a state, they can vote with their feet
and move.
But if
it is one size fits all – if every congressional enactment or Supreme Court
decision establishes a single rule for every American – then the stakes are
very high as to what that rule is. When you take a controversial issue
about which there are passionate views on both sides, such as abortion, and say
we are going to have one rule nationwide, it is a recipe for bitter conflict
over that rule. And when that rule must govern widely-divergent
communities, the conflict is between combatants who often do not even
comprehend their opponents’ perspective. [People who think they are antinomian because Jesus is
their Lord have no concern for the civic citizen who rejects antinomianism. In
my comfortable view, I accept that I am not elected to trust Jesus as my
personal savior yet am prepared for unexpected judgement upon entering my
afterdeath era.]
The
result is our current acrimonious politics. And because the rules that
result from these struggles are then imposed from outside by a remote central
government, they further undercut a sense of community and give rise to
alienation. [The
government bargain “separation of church and state” under the theism our
tradition holds does not work for individual pursuit of integrity, and that is
the cause of domestic alienation. According to the U.S. Preamble, Christians
who nevertheless pursue statutory justice under the-literal-truth are of We the
People of the United States while Christians who attempt to impose Christianity
on the nation of people are dissidents and if there is no chance for personal reform,
they are aliens to the civic, civil, and legal people’s proposition.]
In short,
we have lost the idea of diversity in this country – real diversity, where
communities can coexist and adopt different approaches to things. That,
too, erodes an important check on despotism. [This claim is a non-sequitur: the imposition of theism,
much more Christianity, does not foster humanly diverse spirituality or none.]
Now,
finally, let me turn to freedom of the press.
In
addition to religion and the decentralization of government power, the free
press was an institution that Tocqueville believed would serve as a check on
the despotic tendency of democracy.
This
was not because Tocqueville believed that the American press did a particularly
good job elevating the public’s understanding and discourse. On the
contrary, he generally took a dimmer view. As Tocqueville put it: “The
characteristics of the American journalist consist in an open and coarse appeal
to the passions of the populace; and he habitually abandons the principles of political science to assail
the characters of individuals, to track them into private life, and disclose
all their weaknesses and errors.”
Tocqueville’s view was that a free press
did not so much perform a positive good, as prevent an evil.
It achieved this precisely because it was highly fragmented and reflected a
wide diversity of voices. In that sense, a free and diverse press
provided another form of decentralization of power that, as long as it remained
diverse, made it difficult to
galvanize a consolidated national majority. [Nevertheless, the press is responsible for 1)
encouraging mutual, comprehensive safety and security among fellow citizens and
2) nourishing the progress of the people’s achievements under U.S. Preamble’s
proposition to approach the-literal-truth about responsible human independence.]
In 19th-century
America, the press was so fragmented that the power of any one organ was
small. The multiplicity of newspapers, even in one city, cultivated a
wide variety of views and localized opinion. Tocqueville contrasted this
to the situation he saw in Europe, where news outlets were consolidated in
major urban centers, such that a few voices were capable of influencing the
opinions of the entire country.
When
the diverse organs of the press begin to “advance along the same track,” wrote
Tocqueville, “their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and
public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their
blows.”
Today
in the United States, the corporate – or “mainstream” – press is massively
consolidated. And it has become remarkably monolithic in viewpoint, at
the same time that an
increasing number of journalists see themselves less as objective reporters of
the facts, and more as agents of change. These developments have
given the press an unprecedented ability to mobilize a broad segment of the
public on a national scale and direct that opinion in a particular direction. [Don’t overlook the
social-democrat social scientist’s role in this tyranny.]
When
the entire press “advances along the same track,” as Tocqueville put it, the
relationship between the press and the energized majority becomes mutually
reinforcing. Not only does it become easier for the press to mobilize a
majority, but the mobilized majority becomes more powerful and overweening with
the press as its ally.
This is
not a positive cycle, and I think it is fair to say that it puts the press’
role as a breakwater for the
tyranny of the majority in jeopardy. [It seems to me the press is accelerating a totalitarian
democratic coalition as the majority.] The key to restoring the press in
that vital role is to cultivate a greater diversity of voices in the
media. [I think the
key is to promote the U.S. Preamble’s proposition. For example, penalize the
media who prove they oppose the proposition. Require voters to show evidence
that they are of We the People of the United States rather than free-riders who
help create disturbance for an Alinsky-Marxist organization (AMO), for example.]
That is
where you come in. You are one of the last holdouts in the consolidation of
organs and viewpoints of the press. It is, therefore, essential that you
continue your work and continue to supply the people with diverse, divergent
perspectives on the news of the day. And in this secular age, it is
especially vital that your religious perspective is voiced. [This is so, in the context of
hope and comfort for the uncertainty of personal death, but not as leverage to
impose theism or other spirituality on the public debate. As I have shown, this
tack directly opposes the U.S. Preamble. No citizen should be challenged to
measure another citizen’s God’s conformance to whatever-God-is.]
So
where does that leave us? It might not seem like it, but I am actually an
optimist, and I believe that identifying the problem is the first step in correcting
it. Our nation’s greatest days lie ahead, but only if we can alter our
course and pay heed to the lessons of the past. [I write to suggest that attempting to preserve
past traditions is the problem, and an achievable better future is being enriched
as we consider each other’s quest for statutory justice as responsible human
independence. Quoting someone, I view you and me as followers of nearly
parallel paths to the same consequence: individual happiness with civic
integrity to living citizens.]
This
means fostering a culture that is truly pluralistic. It means all
viewpoints must be treated fairly – not simply the viewpoints favored by our
cultural elites. And it especially means giving our respect to religion
as a vital pillar of our society. Religion is something we should
celebrate, not disparage. [This
is true for citizens who want religion and false for citizens who prefer to
place their faith in the-literal-truth, unknown as it may be.]
This
also means working to devolve [displace responsibility for] democratic choice to the lowest
possible level. While the wizards in Washington might think they know
best, the reality is that there is no unified “best” for every community and
every person in our vast country. The solution to social ills is not to
exhaust ourselves devising the perfect rule for everyone; it is to let our
villages, cities, and states set the rules for their communities. That
allows people with principled disagreements to peaceably coexist, and prevents
politics from becoming zero-sum nationwide. [There are two exceptions to this thinking, in my view.
First, local, state, and national government personnel must first dedicate
themselves as members of We the People of the United States as proposed in the
U.S. Preamble and 2) fellow citizens should encourage each other to pursue
mutual, comprehensive safety and security.]
And
finally, this means encouraging diverse voices to speak out – whether on
television, over the radio, or in print. When Tocqueville visited
America, there was “scarcely a hamlet which has not its own newspaper.”
We need to get back to that. We need to support local journalism and
local voices, and each of you needs to continue the great work you are
doing. [So far, my
first line representative could not care less for my voice. I’m talking about
the last 3 district representatives for Baton Rouge, my Louisiana Senator and
Representative, my U.S. Congressman, and my U.S. Senators. I have no idea what
happened to the many messages I have entered by WH email to President Trump.]
In sum,
your voices and your perspectives are essential to reversing the different
trends I have discussed today. I look forward to working together to
restore the separate spheres that have long sustained our society. It is
not too late to stem the tide, but we need to get to work. [It is not too late to establish
the civic, civil, and legal power of the U.S. Preamble---to Make America Great
At Last. However, the window of opportunity is closing and may be closed if the
nation turns socialist in 2020.]
Thank
you all for the opportunity to talk with you today. [If your confidence in your
hopes and comforts today is like mine at age 50, what I have written to you is
shockingly outrageous. My Baptist pastor said I could not quit, because I had
been a mind-opener for the church for two decades. I did not realize it then: 7
years later I accepted that I had withdrawn from Christianity as well as from theism
beyond whatever-God-is. I was wonderful to admit that I was not among the
elect, and that my serenely confident wife had helped me accept Phil
Beaver: Her religion meant more to me
for her than Mom and Dad’s internally and externally competitive religion meant
to me for me. I had always placed my faith in the-literal-truth, unknown as it
may be, and was therefore in conflict with myself in trying to adopt what Mom
and Dad wanted to me for them. Only through your maturity and broad knowledge
of our topic might you grasp the opportunity for U.S. reform that is now
available to our president. I am also writing to President Trump, but not about
my response to your speech. If he approached you about this, I’d want
disclosure of my contact to be up to you.]
Copyright©2020 by Phillip R. Beaver regarding my comments only. All rights
reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions
of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included. Updated 6/6/20.
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