My last opinion column for MVN and RGJ

If you cannot be brave, be kind

by Quest Lakes, May 29, 2020

When I was about ten years old, my dad gave me his copy of The Diary of Anne Frank and recommended that I read it. For decades after reading it, I wondered about the people who stayed quiet and were complicit in their silence as fascism took over.

Naomi Shulman wrote that “nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than ‘politics.’ They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”

My purpose in writing these weekly columns over the last few years has been, in part, a response to a question I posed to myself as a child. If something like that happened here, what would I choose to do?

My answer to myself? Exercise the freedom outlined in this nation’s First Amendment and write columns that remind people of the steps Hitler and Stalin took to consolidate power. Authoritarians often use similar strategies, a “playbook” if you will.

One of Hitler’s most quoted passages from Mein Kampf stated that “what we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood...” In a nod to those words, in 2017 white nationalists descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia where cell phone video captured them carrying torches and chanting things like “Jews will not replace us.” Several of my columns pointed out the rise and growing coordination of white nationalists groups calling for a white ethnostate, and detailed the violence that goal would entail in our pluralistic society.

Other of my columns noted that President Trump has labeled our free press “fake news” and journalists as “liars,” a tactic familiar in Germany when Hitler declared the free press Lügenpresse (lying press). I’ve written about Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and their push to create an entanglement of religion and government.

When I wrote about Gleichschaltung, the Nazi word for establishing a synchronized system of totalitarian control over all aspects of society, or the “Nazification of state and society,” I got in hot water with local Trump supporters. The goals of Gleichschaltung included paying homage to der Fuhrer (the Leader), removing all foreigners (which meant most everyone except those of the “Aryan” race), intimidating or murdering anyone who opposed Nazi ideas (such as communists and members of trade unions), and brainwashing the populace to believe that sacrifice for der Fuhrer and the state was both welcome and desirable. Under Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” gained complete control of communications - newspapers, radio, television, movies, books, as well as music, theater, and art. In this way, Germany became saturated with Nazi ideology and full coordination – or Gleichschaltung - was achieved. In addition, purging the civil service was central to Gleichschaltung.

My column on the Reichstag Fire Decree – similar to declaration of National Emergency – explained how the Decree was ultimately used to establish a one-party Nazi state in Germany, and hinted about the ways authoritarians use chaos to consolidate power. This week, in the midst of a pandemic, President Trump retweeted a video of a speech by Couy Griffin, head of Cowboys for Trump, that begins with Griffin declaring, “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”

One of my columns defined terms like stochastic terrorism, which is the “use of mass public communication to demonize a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism.”

The Sturmabteilung (SA) or Brownshirts, were the focus of one of my columns. The Brownshirts became the main paramilitary wing of the Nazi party and were essential to the rise of Nazi power. Hitler encouraged the Brownshirts to go after Germany’s leftist and Jewish populations for intimidation. They were also the bullies in brown uniforms posing as “security” at Nazi rallies and meetings. Far from being a small fringe group, the Brownshirts included millions of working class and middle class professionals and ex-military. As such, they successfully popularized the Nazi worldview of political violence, and the patriotic duty to fight “Judeo-Bolshevism.”

In one of my latest columns, I wrote about the infiltration of accelerationist and white supremacist paramilitary groups into the “ReOpen” protests across the country, including in Carson City and Las Vegas. Yale history professor Timothy Snyder has warned, “when the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come."

Referring to unrest in Minnesota, last night President Trump moved this country into a new stage when he tweeted, “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” His use of the phrase, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” was a purposeful reference to bigoted Miami, Florida police Chief Walter Headley, known in the 1960s for his mistreatment of the black community and his use of that exact phrase. Segregationist George Wallace also used the phrase during his 1968 presidential campaign.

This is my last column for the Mason Valley News. The country has moved to a new stage that requires more than columns. In November of 2016, Sarah Kendzior, an expert on authoritarian regimes, wrote something that is important to remember in the coming months: “My heart breaks for the United States of America. It breaks for those who think they are my enemies as much as it does for my friends. You still have your freedom, so use it. There are many groups organizing for both resistance and subsistence, but we are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave – and it is often hard to be brave – be kind.”

The Perfect Town for A Wedding

*Column by Quest Lakes first published in the Mason Valley News and Reno Gazette Journal in Oct. 2019.

Silver City, Nevada- Silver City has always attracted creative folks - sometimes only for one day. Back in 1939, world famous photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White and novelist Erskine Caldwell stopped in Silver City and were married in a church here (it later became the home of legendary newsman Travus T. Hipp).

The couple found a minister in Carson City, and took him with them in search of a place to be married “before sundown.” In her auto-biography Portrait of Myself, Bourke-White wrote that, “we rounded a curve and there was Silver City, hanging on a bluff above us, looking so charming that both of us knew that this was the perfect town.”

They found a church in town, but it was locked. Bourke-White recalls that their taxi driver searched the town for someone to open the church. He found a “nice, clean woman” named Bertha Peddlar running a local shop. She unlocked the doors for them and stayed to serve as one of the witnesses to the marriage. Bourke-White was “enchanted” with the church and the "glorious panorama of bluffs and mesas and desert patches stretching as far as the eye could reach."

Her husband, Erskine Caldwell, was at that time already well-known for his writing about poverty and racism in the U.S. in his novels such as Tobacco Road. By the end of his life he’d written 25 novels and 150 short stories.

Margaret Bourke-White was the first accredited woman war correspondent, taking combat zone pictures during World War II and some of the first horrifying photographs documenting Nazi concentration camps after the war.

She became on international “symbol of swashbuckling photography during her unique career.” In their book World War II, authors Carl J. Schneider and ‎Dorothy Schneider wrote that she was “torpedoed in the Mediterranean, strafed by the Luftwaffe, stranded on an Arctic island, bombarded in Moscow, and pulled out of the Chesapeake when her chopper crashed.” She interviewed and photographed Mohandas K. Gandhi a few hours before his assassination in India.

If you search “Margaret Bourke-White photographs”, you’ll recognize many of the famous images that earned her the reputation as one of the most important photographers of the 20th Century.

My son and his fiancee also think Silver City is the perfect town for a wedding. They’re getting married here next summer.

What We Can Learn from Philadelphia 1918

*First published as an opinion column by Quest Lakes in the RGJ and MVN Feb. 28, 2020.

As concerns grow about the new coronavirus, COVID-19, the public needs to trust that they’re getting accurate information about it in order to follow recommendations for slowing the spread. In his 2017 Smithsonian essay about the 1918 flu pandemic, historian John Barry wrote that when the world faces the next pandemic, “the effectiveness of interventions will depend on public compliance, and the public will have to trust what it is being told...The most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth. Though that idea is incorporated into every preparedness plan I know of, its actual implementation will depend on the character and leadership of the people in charge when a crisis erupts.”

The spread of COVID-19 motivated me to learn more about the 1918 flu pandemic that resulted in the deaths of millions of people around the world, possibly as many as 100 million. I read Barry’s article “How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America” and Allison Meier’s 2019 article “The 1918 Parade That Spread Death” to learn more. Both put the impact of that pandemic in perspective by describing how 12,000 people died in Philadelphia in a period of just six weeks in 1918.

How did it spread so quickly in Philadelphia in particular? Here’s the simplified timeline: a few sailors with the virus arrived at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in September of 1918. Within days 600 sailors had it. About ten days later, a patriotic rally and parade to raise money for the war brought 200,000 Philadelphians to mingle in the streets. Within a few days after that gathering, every hospital bed in the city was occupied with people suffering from the flu. Reverend Thomas Brennan recorded what he saw at Holy Cross Cemetery during the pandemic, writing, “Who can describe the scenes that met the eye during these harrowing days? Animus meminisse horret luctuque refugit” (meaning, “my soul shudders at the recollection”).

But why, knowing that the deadly disease was spreading so quickly, did the city allow the rally to go on? In the days just before the parade, why did the head of Philadelphia’s Naval Hospital tell newspapers that, “there is no cause for further alarm. We believe we have it well in hand.”

Barry explains that part of the answer to this puzzle is that Congress passed the Sedition Act in May of 1918, making it a crime with a possible sentence of up to 20 years to “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States...or to urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production in this country of any thing or things...necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war.” Government propaganda instructed Americans to report to the Justice Department anyone “who spreads pessimistic stories...cries for peace, or belittles our effort to win the war.”

In this wartime atmosphere, some public health officials tried to keep morale high at the cost of truth. Shortly before the parade, newspapers reported that Philadelphia’s public health director, Wilmer Krusen, said he had “no concern whatever” about his ability to “nip the epidemic in the bud.” He ignored doctors pleas to call off the rally. Doctors tried sending letters to newspapers, but editors wouldn’t print their letters, or stories based on the doctors’ warnings.

Writing about the problem of misinformation from U.S. government and health officials during the 1918 flu pandemic, Barry noted that the public became suspicious of all information: “without leadership, without the truth, trust evaporated.”

Learning about mistakes made in Philadelophia in 1918 makes me ponder the situation we find ourselves in now, with the new coronavirus.

Earlier this week, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said of the virus that “it’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness...We expect to see more cases of person-to-person spread among close contacts. ... The goal here is to slow entry of this virus into the United States.”

President Trump reacted to these facts with tweets suggesting there’s a widespread conspiracy among the media and Democrats to weaponize the outbreak to hurt him politically. He tweeted, “low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible. Likewise their incompetent Do Nothing Democrat comrades are all talk, no action. USA in great shape!”

Then during a press conference Wednesday about the virus, President Trump claimed, “We're rapidly developing a vaccine...In speaking to the doctors we think this is something that we can develop fairly rapidly." In fact, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that a vaccine won’t be ready for 12 to 18 months, and that’s only if trials taking place now succeed.

During that same press conference, Trump announced that he is charging Vice President Mike Pence with leading the national COVID-19 response, asserting that Pence “has a certain talent for this." However, as a former Governor of Indiana, Pence oversaw a rural HIV outbreak that spread to epidemic proportions when he slow walked approval for needle exchanges. It became a case study in what not to do during a public health emergency. During the press conference, Trump noted that he was also requesting $2.5 billion to respond to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The scramble to assign unqualified people to carry out the U.S. response to the virus and to fund that response is happening because the Trump administration has hollowed out the government agencies needed for pandemic prevention and response. For instance, the executive branch team charged with coordinating a response to a pandemic was eliminated by the Trump administration in 2018. With regard to funding, there have been significant funding cuts to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) under Trump. In 2018, the CDC’s funding for global disease outbreak prevention was cut by 80 percent. The result was that the CDC canceled its work in 39 of 49 countries – including in China- to prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics.

In a step sure to further erode public trust, the day after Trump’s press conference the New York Times reported that Mike Pence will be vetting all statements about the COVID-19 situation coming from government health officials and scientists. Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s leading experts on infectious diseases who has advised half a dozen presidents on public health crises, was scheduled to go on five talk shows this coming Sunday. According to news reports today, Friday February 28, Dr. Fauci canceled all five appearances.

"“But if such desire drives you to know our disasters,
although my soul shudders to remember and once more shrinks from grief,
I shall begin.”

A Direct Current Through the Body Politic

Gleichschaltung was the Nazi word for strategically establishing a synchronized system of totalitarian control over all aspects of society – the press, clubs, schools. In simple terms, Gleichschaltung was the “Nazification of state and society.” It was a coordinated campaign that pushed the whole society into line with Nazi ideology and policy. Everything became political – sports, the arts, libraries, entertainment, family. There was no ideology-free zone. Even during a religious event, perhaps something like this morning’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., politics would be front and center.

The goals of Gleichschaltung included paying homage to der Fuhrer (the Leader), removing all foreigners (which meant most everyone except those of the “Aryan” race), intimidating or murdering anyone who opposed Nazi ideas (such as communists and members of trade unions), and brainwashing the populace to believe that sacrifice for der Fuhrer and the state was both welcome and desirable. With regard to embracing sacrifice, in the U.S. today that might look like encouraging farmers, who have borne the brunt of President Trump’s trade war with China, to believe that his trade war will entail only short term sacrifice, with big benefits for farms and the Homeland in the long term.

Under Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” gained almost complete control of communications - newspapers, radio, television, movies, magazines, books, public ceremonies, as well as music, theater, and art. In this way, Germany became saturated with Nazi ideology and full coordination – or Gleichschaltung - was achieved. Today in the U.S. if one wanted to achieve something similar, strategies could include demonizing and repressing the free press, and calling for the elimination of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which includes National Public Radio and PBS), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. But that could never happen here, right?

In their mission to create Gleichschaltung, the Nazi Party co-opted or destroyed any organization or club – from sports clubs to community choirs to agricultural associations - that might have influence. If such a strategy was enlisted in the U.S., for example, one might replace the heads of the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, and the Environmental Protection Agency with people hostile to the missions of their own departments. Or the president could insert himself into the National Football League by repeatedly tweeting threats such as, “Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!"

On a local level, mayors and town council members did the bidding of the Nazi Party, with the threat of reprisals from Nazi stormtroopers if they did not oust Jews and opponents of the Nazis from jobs in public institutions. In addition, purging the civil service was central to Gleichschaltung. In an example from our own time, someone like former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Maria Yovanovitch would most certainly have been pushed out.

People who read my column sometimes email me to ask, in essence, “what should be done then?” One of my answers is to pay attention to the warnings of history. Yale history professor Timothy Snyder puts it much more eloquently in his book “On Tyranny.” He writes, “European democracies collapsed into right-wing authoritarianism and fascism in the 1920s and ‘30s...The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands...We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex...Americans today are not wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism...Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”

*RGJ posted this opinion column on Feb. 6, 2020 but then deleted it soon afterward due to complaints. Fortunately, they put it back up on Feb. 11. The incident reminds me of something London-based author Umair Haque recently wrote. He asks, "What happens to a society that can’t say the unspeakable? The answer is both simple and obvious: the unspeakable does...A set of words that Americans can’t say, because America’s thinking class, leaders, politicians, and so forth, won’t, can’t say them, to begin with. You know the words. The words are ones like “fascism” and “authoritarianism” and “theocracy” and “concentration camps” and “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.”..There are four key political effects of failing to speak the unspeakable. Opposition becomes appeasement. The opposition fractures, because it’s not unified in fighting a thing that doesn’t exist. And because those terrible things have never happened, nobody can be held accountable for them at all. Finally, reality stops mattering in any way whatsoever, because what you see before your eyes doesn’t really exist. What happens culturally when a people won’t speak the unspeakable? The result is the development of one of the most crucial institutions of any social collapse: a silent majority. A silent majority is called that because it’s made of people who should, and mostly do, know better. But they lack the courage, wisdom, insight, and defiance to speak. They are cowed and intimidated. They are fearful and anxious...As a silent majority refuses to speak, as it holds its tongue, so norms begin to disintegrate, from democratic ones of peace, tolerance, equality, and fairness, into fascist-authoritarian ones of violence, intimidation, bullying, ethnic hierarchies, and purification. What was once severely abnormal and unacceptable becomes a grim everyday reality...Remember what we are really fighting for — and always have been. Freedom, truth, democracy, justice, equality. Progress and civilization. Decency and humanity. Then we are capable of unifying around those things..."

The Show Trial

*First published as an opinion column by Quest Lakes in MVN on Jan. 31, 2020

This week Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Trump’s legal team for the Senate impeachment trial, declared that “if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."

I was astonished by this statement, even though it was made by the likes of Dershowitz, a celebrity lawyer known for representing people like Claus von Bülow, Mike Tyson, and Jim Bakker. Dershowitz is the guy who got a sweetheart plea deal for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who preyed upon girls as young as 14.

Dershowitz was saying that anything Trump does should be interpreted as for the public interest, which would make it legal. So even though there was clearly a quid pro quo in which Trump withheld U.S. aid to extort a foreign government to conduct a sham investigation of his domestic political rival, that is ok. Why? Because, Dershowitz proclaims, Trump believes that his re-election, at any cost, is in the “public interest.” This sounds very much like the old belief in the divine right of kings that said monarchs cannot be held accountable for their actions by any “earthy authority.”

Dershowitz is a Yale educated lawyer, and he knows very well that his assertion is utter nonsense.

As the impeachment trial in the Senate went on, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann doubled down on Dershowitz’ absurd proposition. Herschmann delivered a melodramatic plea, declaring that Trump’s “accomplishments” as president, such as trying to build additional sections of walls along the southern border, show that *all* of his actions are in the public interest. Herschmann then begged for an end to investigations into the numerous instances of abuse of power that Trump has engaged in. Finally, he urged an immediate end to the impeachment trial itself, saying, “Let’s try something different now. Join us. One nation. One people.”

Herschmann is a well-educated man. It’s likely he knows that one of the Nazis' favorite political slogans was "One People, One Empire, One Leader" (“Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”).

During the process of this trial, it has become obvious that this is nothing more than a show trial, a way for the GOP to show their allegiance to Trump. They’re signalling that they’ll go along with the idea that Trump has the rights of a king, that he is the chosen one, an imperfect vessel chosen by God to carry out His will.

And indeed, for the last 11 days, Republican Senators have given interviews and made declarations on Twitter to this very effect. The impeachment trial has provided them the public opportunity to agree with Trump’s statement last summer that “'I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president” (nevermind Articles 1 and 3, the foundations for the powers of the legislative and judiciary branches, and checks and balances on executive power).

So now here we are, on what might be the last day of this show trial, with no witnesses, and with “jurors” who declared before the trial that they had already decided to acquit the defendant.

This spectacle has cleared the way for Trump to carry out all the plans he has for this nation. Every terrifying last one of them. Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.

*First published as an opinion column by Quest Lakes in MVN on Jan. 31, 2020

Renouncing Facts for Feelings

Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder recently commented that "fascism always begins with clearing the horizon of factuality."

During a December 2019 speech for a Turning Point USA conference in Flordia, President Trump talked about the Green New Deal, and made a number of disjointed declarations about wind turbines and wind energy. In Florida he remarked,

“… I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody I know. It’s very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured — tremendous, if you’re into this, tremendous fumes, gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything — you talk about the ‘carbon footprint’ — fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything, right? So they make these things, and then they put them up, and if you own a house within vision of some of these monsters, your house is worth 50 percent of the price.” In previous remarks this year about wind turbines he said they reduce the price of nearby properties by 65% and also claimed that wind turbines cause cancer.

If my neighbor made a similar speech at the local bar after one too many, I wouldn’t pay much attention. But Trump is the president of the United States, and his continual distortion of reality has purpose and impact worldwide.

Victor Klemperer, who kept a diary while living under the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the German Democratic Republic, noticed that one way totalitarianism is expressed is hostility to “verifiable reality. ” Lies are frequently presented as undeniable facts. Trump’s comments on wind turbines are one of many examples of his distaste for facts. And the false or misleading claims he makes have been accelerating each year. At this point, journalists have documented more than 15,000 false or misleading statements by Trump during his presidency.

Why is this important? Because as historian Timothy Snyder points out, “If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.” This is the reason Trump has branded America’s free press as the “lying press” (Lügenpresse). There must be no truth except the one he declares.

Trump’s windmill speech is also an example of another sign of budding totalitarianism. Since he’s become president, Donald Trump has declared himself an expert on everything from windmills to nuclear arms to ISIS. He’s made statements such as:

"I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth..." (April 2016.)

"Nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump." (July 2016.)

“I know the details of taxes better than anybody. Better than the greatest C.P.A.” (December 2017)

"I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have." (January 2019.)

To believe that Trump is a leading expert on renewable energy, infrastructure, taxes, drones, nuclear arms, ISIS, and much more, one must abandon the world of reason and devote oneself to an almost religious faith in Trump. Victor Klemperer, who survived the Nazi reign in Germany, wrote that one of his university students urged him to “abandon yourself to your feelings, and focus on the Fuhrer’s greatness, rather than on the discomfort you’re feeling...”

To continue to support Trump, one must embrace the lies, and simply believe. Accept that Trump knows more “than any human being on Earth.” Afterall, as he’s told us, he is “the chosen one.”

*First published as a column by Quest Lakes in the RJG and MVN on Dec. 27,2019

Bill Barr and the Great Crucible of Crisis

*First published as a column in Nov. 2019 by Quest Lakes in the MVN and RGJ with the title "Information Bubbles and the Death of Irony."

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