Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
William Barr promotes Christian tyranny in latest speech
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/02/william-barr-promotes-christian-tyranny-in-latest-speech/. . .
In typical Christian nationalist form, Barr quoted American Founding Father John Adams: “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.”
Asked to comment, Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Andrew Seidel, author of The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American, maintained, “Barr is misreading Adams.” To substantiate the point, he observed, “Adams, like the other founders, thought religion and morality were two separate entities; Barr thinks they are one and the same. The founders thought religion could be a substitute for morality. We now know that they were wrong on this point.”
What Seidel means here, as he details in his book, is that as Enlightenment elites, the Founding Fathers believed that they were educated and cultivated enough to be moral without religion, but that the masses were too uncultivated to do the same. The masses would therefore require religion. Seidel maintains that the founders were wrong on this point, and we can admit as much while still admiring their positive achievements.
Seidel adds, “If the founders believed that religion was important to ensure moral behavior for the masses but not for themselves, that means that the founders were moral without religion. It also means they founded the American government on their own morality, not religion,” concluding that “Barr is inadvertently refuting his entire argument by trying to co-opt Adams.”
Seidel’s work can also help us see that Barr is twisting Tocqueville in his attempt to marshal the nineteenth-century French observer of American democracy in support of his view that moral behavior is impossible without religion. A claim, by the way, that is entirely fact-free. . . .
In typical Christian nationalist form, Barr quoted American Founding Father John Adams: “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.”
Asked to comment, Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Andrew Seidel, author of The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American, maintained, “Barr is misreading Adams.” To substantiate the point, he observed, “Adams, like the other founders, thought religion and morality were two separate entities; Barr thinks they are one and the same. The founders thought religion could be a substitute for morality. We now know that they were wrong on this point.”
What Seidel means here, as he details in his book, is that as Enlightenment elites, the Founding Fathers believed that they were educated and cultivated enough to be moral without religion, but that the masses were too uncultivated to do the same. The masses would therefore require religion. Seidel maintains that the founders were wrong on this point, and we can admit as much while still admiring their positive achievements.
Seidel adds, “If the founders believed that religion was important to ensure moral behavior for the masses but not for themselves, that means that the founders were moral without religion. It also means they founded the American government on their own morality, not religion,” concluding that “Barr is inadvertently refuting his entire argument by trying to co-opt Adams.”
Seidel’s work can also help us see that Barr is twisting Tocqueville in his attempt to marshal the nineteenth-century French observer of American democracy in support of his view that moral behavior is impossible without religion. A claim, by the way, that is entirely fact-free. . . .
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
without Barr’s religion, i.e., christianity; hinduism, buddhism, etc., are not eligible 
