Excerpts from Attorney General Barr’s speech at University of Notre Dame on October 11, 2019
Today, I would like to share some thoughts with you about religious liberty in America. From the Founding Era onward, there was strong consensus about the centrality of religious liberty in the United States. The imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just a nod in the direction of piety. It reflects the Framers’ belief that religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government. They crafted a magnificent Charter of Freedom – the United States Constitution – which provides for limited government, while leaving “the People” broadly at liberty to pursue our lives both as individuals and through free associations. This quantum leap in liberty has been the mainspring of unprecedented human progress, not only for Americans, but for people around the world.
But in the 21st century, the challenge we face is precisely what the Founding Fathers foresaw would be our supreme test as a free society. They never thought the main danger to the Republic came from external foes. The central question was whether, over the long haul, we could handle freedom. The question was whether the citizens in such a free society could maintain the moral discipline and virtue necessary for the survival of free institutions. By and large, the Founding generation’s view of human nature was drawn from the Classical Christian tradition. These practical Statesmen understood that individuals, while having the potential for great good, also had the capacity for great evil. Men are subject to powerful passions and appetites, and, if unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community at large. No society can exist without some means for restraining individual rapacity. But, if you rely on the coercive power of government to impose restraints, this will inevitably lead to a government that is too controlling, and you will end up with no liberty, just tyranny. On the other hand, unless you have some effective restraint, you end up with something equally dangerous – licentiousness – the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good. This is just another form of tyranny – where the individual is enslaved by his appetites, and the possibility of any healthy community life crumbles.
So the Founders decided to take a gamble. They called it a great experiment. They would leave “the People” broad liberty, limit the coercive power of the government, and place their trust in self-discipline and virtue of the American people. In the words of Madison, “We have staked our future on the ability of each of us to govern ourselves…” This is really what was meant by “self-government.” It did not mean primarily the mechanics by which we select a representative legislative body. It referred to the capacity of each individual to restrain and govern themselves. But what was the source of this internal controlling power? Social order must flow up from the people themselves – freely obeying the dictates of inwardly-possessed and commonly-shared moral values. And to control willful human beings, with an infinite capacity to rationalize, those moral values must rest on authority independent of men’s will – they must flow from a transcendent Supreme Being.
In short, in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people – a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and man made law and who had the discipline to control themselves according to those enduring principles. 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.”
How does religion promote the moral discipline and virtue needed to support free government? It gives us the right rules to live by. The Founding generation were Christians. They believed that the Judeo-Christian moral system corresponds to the true nature of man. Those moral precepts start with the Two Great Commandments – to Love God with your whole heart, soul and mind; and to Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.
To read the full text of the Attorney General’s speech go to www.justice.gov website and enter into the search function the following: opa/speech/attorney general barr/notre dame.
