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mahatmakanejeeves

(56,893 posts)
Thu Feb 27, 2020, 03:43 PM Feb 2020

Bill Barr Delivers Remarks at the 2020 National Religious Broadcasters Convention

Bill Barr's speech yesterday is some dark stuff that perverts theories of religion, democracy and free speech. It's not the kind of speech an Attorney General should give, but it's exactly what you'd expect the King's propagandist to say.



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. 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.

{snip}

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 virtue of any individual is defined by whether they are aligned with the program. 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.”{snip}

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.

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.

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. The key to restoring the press in that vital role is to cultivate a greater diversity of voices in the media.

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.

{snip}

Thank you all for the opportunity to talk with you today.
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Bill Barr Delivers Remarks at the 2020 National Religious Broadcasters Convention (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Feb 2020 OP
I always wondered why some religious people were thrown to the lions, now, I understand why! n/t RKP5637 Feb 2020 #1
Religion is not being driven from the public square. Cartoonist Feb 2020 #2
TRUMP MUST BE VOTED OUT! TrumpCrimeWatch Feb 2020 #3
These remarks are not in the AG lane. Barr should start trying to do his job. Karadeniz Feb 2020 #4

Cartoonist

(7,298 posts)
2. Religion is not being driven from the public square.
Thu Feb 27, 2020, 03:57 PM
Feb 2020

People are rejecting it as they see it for the oppressive hate group it is, as proven daily by Trump's religious followers.

TrumpCrimeWatch

(2 posts)
3. TRUMP MUST BE VOTED OUT!
Thu Feb 27, 2020, 04:02 PM
Feb 2020

Trump TOAD "Bill Barr" is potentially more egregious than Trump himself. He's Trumps very powerful legal enabler. As if Trump really needs any [more] enabling.

These two are a very dangerous pair, Trump & Barr.

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