Is Barr Learning From Trump?

It's easy to forget that it was less than two weeks ago that AG Bill Barr created a media firestorm ... by complaining publicly that President Trump was making the AG job almost 'impossible' by creating regular media firestorms with his tweets.

Barr's remarks were always a bit of a head scratcher. After all, federal judges--and not just Obama judges--remind us on an almost daily basis that they regard their jobs as platforms for overt political activism. That has pretty much been the core of Trump's tweeted critiques of the federal judiciary, and it's almost 'impossible' to believe that a low profile approach would change that situation.

But in the second place, it's not as if Barr himself has avoided controversy. Virtually every public statement he has made has induced a media firestorm. Yes, that was guaranteed to be the case from the start of Barr's tenure at DoJ--the media were always going to be looking to savage Barr. But on the other hand it's not as if Barr has shied away from controversy. If anything, many of his public statements look a bit like deliberate provocations in their plainspoken profession of traditional conservative views--especially with regard to religion. I welcome that, of course.

Barr was at it again, on Wednesday, delivering an address to the 2020 National Religious Broadcasters Convention. That wasn't the act of an AG seeking to avoid a media firestorm. Moreover, Barr offered some fairly pointed remarks directed at the media. While he didn't refer literally to 'fake news,' the substance of that view is clearly what he had in mind. And to top it off, he appealed to the assembled religious broadcasters to play a prominent role in redressing the imbalance of the MSM:

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.

Those remarks came near the end of the address, but there was plenty of red meat for the MSM leading up to that. The style may not be Trump's, but the content isn't really any different. Consider ...


On the current state of politics in America:

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.  The other vision propels a form of totalitarian democracy, which seeks to submerge the individual in a collectivist agenda.  It subverts individual freedom in favor of elite conceptions about what best serves the collective. 

So, the ruling elites are propeling a vision of Man that includes a form of 'totalitarianism,' under the guise of democracy. The aim is subvert individual freedom. Barr offers an historical sketch on how these two different 'visions of the individual and his relationship to the state' arose. Barr's thoughts on this topic will do nothing to reassure his critics, who have accused him of advocating for a theocracy:

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. 

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.”  

... 

But just as our robust vision of liberal democracy came to fruition in 1789, 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. 

The French Revolution? I remember that--the Reign of Terror!

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.

...

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.”

No doubt our elites will recognize themselves, but most will not thank Barr for making these historical connections. Nor will they appreciate his characterization of Progressivism:

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.

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.

Barr then goes on to describe the bulwarks against Left totalitarian messianism. Imagine your typical Prog learning that the AG regards "religion, the decentralization of government power, and the free press" as bulwarks against their agenda. We've already seen what he thinks of the corporate press that supports the Prog agenda. When it comes to the role of religion and limited government, if Progs had any doubt about Barr's views, their worst suspicions will be amply confirmed.

For starters, Barr sees belief in an immutable moral order and in the transcendant Supreme Being from which such an order flows as essential for safeguarding our liberties:

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.  

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. 

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.”

As if that weren't bad enough, Barr goes on to reveal himself as a categorical opponent of the modern administrative state:

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. 

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 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.  

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. ...

And there's plenty more where that came from--believe me! I urge you to read it all.

Barr's style may not be the stuff of mass political rallies, a la Trump, but when it comes to getting right in the face of the elites he has little if anything to learn.