On Wednesday, Attorney General Barr spoke to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. Max Boot is not a fan of the speech and what he calls its “ugly, extremist sentiments.” I didn’t find its sentiments to be ugly or extremist, and I don’t think Boot’s more specific indictments hold up. I’ll focus here on the one I think is most off-base.
Boot writes:
Perhaps Barr’s most bizarre statement was his contention that we need more religion in politics, because “religion tends to temper the passion and intensity of political disputes.” Has he never heard of the Thirty Years War — or the more recent conflict over abortion in America? Only in Barr’s fantasy-world is religious fervor a force for political moderation.
In the speech, Barr first spends a few paragraphs on Alexis de Tocqueville’s explanation of how religion can, as Barr puts it, “protect against majoritarian tyranny”: “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.”
Barr then says:
There is another way in which religion tends to temper the passion and intensity of political disputes. Messianic secular movements have a natural tendency to hubris. Their goal is to achieve paradise in the here and now. Those who participate in these movements believe their goals are so noble, they tend to see their opponents as evil and believe that any means necessary to achieve their objectives are justified. That is why the most militant agents for change are entirely comfortable demonizing their opponents and are all too ready to destroy those opponents in any way they can.
This is not to deny that religion can also lead to self-righteousness. Of course it can. But religion usually has a built-in antidote to hubris in the form of sharp warnings against presumption. . . .
It is perfectly fair to argue that Barr has too rosy a view of the effect of religion on our politics. But there is nothing “bizarre” in the view that religion in some ways tempers political passions, which is all that Barr was saying in his allegedly offending quote. Nor was Barr denying that religious politics can take destructive forms; it’s a point he expressly affirms, although he downplays it. I’m pretty sure he has heard of the Thirty Years’ War.