This may come as a shock, so prepare yourselves. I listen to Tom Gresham's Gun Talk on KKFT FM 99.1 on Sundays. I watch Democracy NOW and the PBS Newshour. I listen to the Larry Elder Show on talk radio and programs on Capital Public Radio 90.5 FM. On Twitter, I follow people like Dr. Sarah Kendzior, whose research focuses on the authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union and how the internet affects political mobilization. I also keep an eye on what people like Charlie Kirk and Cassandra Fairbanks are tweeting. I go to lectures at UNR by people like Dr. Angela Davis, and watch lectures online, such as recent ones by Attorney General Bill Barr for Notre Dame and the Federalist Society.
I do this to keep myself from becoming a case study in epistemic closure. In “epistemic closure”, people in a closed environment get most of their new information only from one another. It’s like an “information bubble” filled with limited information and/or misinformation.
What I've noticed by using this method is that there's an alarming asymmetry of information. This lack of symmetry is part of what allowed some to cheer when Attorney General William Barr, a fervent defender of President Trump, delivered a speech at Notre Dame recently that laid out arguments in direct opposition to this country’s First Amendment.
The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Yet in his speech on October 11th, Barr declared, “we see the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism...The consequences of this moral upheaval have been grim.Virtually every measure of social pathology continues to gain ground…I will not dwell on all the bitter results of the new secular age. Suffice it to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has brought with it immense suffering, wreckage, and misery. And yet, the forces of secularism, ignoring these tragic results, press on with even greater militancy. Among these militant secularists are many so-called “progressives.” But where is the progress? We are told we are living in a post-Christian era. But what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? ...In the past, societies – like the human body – seem to have a self-healing mechanism – a self-correcting mechanism that gets things back on course if things go too far... The opinion of decent people rebels. They coalesce and rally against obvious excess. Periods of moral entrenchment follow periods of excess. This is the idea of the pendulum. We have all thought that after a while the ‘pendulum will swing back..’ But today we face something different that may mean that we cannot count on the pendulum swinging back...Secularists, and their allies among the ‘progressives,’ have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.”
If you do not know why this is an attack on the First Amendment, and if you do not see any irony in Trump’s right hand man delivering a speech rallying against “the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good,” you might be trapped in an information bubble.
*Postscript: Speeches like recent ones by AG Bill Barr serve a purpose, and it’s not a holy one. The New Zealand mosque shooter, who murdered 50 people and injured many more in 2019 while they were at their place of worship, left behind a manifesto. He wrote, “The change we need to enact only arises in the great crucible of crisis.” He hoped that his cowardly rampage would “add momentum to the pendulum swings of history, further destabilizing and polarizing Western society in order to eventually destroy the current nihilistic, hedonistic, individualistic insanity that has taken control of Western thought.” The New Zealand attack in March was followed by an attack targeting Latinx people in a Texas Walmart and an attack on on a Pennsylvania synagogue, both by shooters who named the New Zealand killer’s manifesto as inspiration. If you don't see how any of this is related to the worldview Bill Barr is pushing, you might be a case study in epistemic closure.
See also, this video of Patricia Hackett, an adjunct professor at Notre Dame Law School, delivering a theological and jurisprudential response to Attorney General William Barr's recent speech on religious freedom at Notre Dame Law School. Hackett confessed that after she read Barr's talk, she felt a persistent nudge, a personal responsibility to "correct the record." She titled her talk, "Contempt of Grace: The Theological and Legal Error of William Barr's Understanding of Religious Freedom." Patricia Hackett earned her B.A. in government and theology, and an M.A. in theology from the University of Notre Dame. She holds a J.D. from Notre Dame Law School. https://youtu.be/qQQ_WyGzYqs
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