Life Imitates Comedy (?)

Donald Trump's continued success in repelling Democrats' attempts to bring him down (25th Amendment, emoluments clause, Russian collusion, Ukraine, impeachment) and the fact that his policies have not, yet, resulted in disaster (tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, immigration enforcement, tariffs, withdrawing from the Paris Accords and the Iran deal, talks with North Korea) have his reeling opponents imagining things, for example, that a public dispute between the President and Attorney General Barr is fake:

“Critics suggested Barr’s comments to ABC News were simply a coordinated attempt between him and Trump to defuse the outrage sparked by his Department of Justice’s botched sentencing recommendation for Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone,” declared the Huffington Post, quoting a litany of liberals...

More amusing is the liberal depiction of Mr. Trump as a Machiavelli who is manipulating everyone in secret. Usually the line is that he’s an idiot.

The WSJ references an SNL skit from 1986, in which the doddering President Reagan reveals himself to be a mastermind in private.

Donald Trump isn't really that smart, right?

Barring Barr

The attorney general gives a speech on secularism, and the left goes bananas.
--William McGurn, WSJ

(Photo from National Catholic Reporter)

Speeches by public figures are so numerous and predictable that I rarely pay attention, but because of the brouhaha I had to take a look. Aside: the Barr speech and the reaction to it are a version of the Streisand effect, named after Barbra Streisand's 2003 attempt at photo suppression that backfired by calling widespread attention to pictures of her Malibu home.

I personally found the speech by Attorney General William Barr (below the page break) to contain a main proposition that should be debated: [bold added]

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....

Instead, 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.

Rather than debate William Barr's ideas--ideas that trace back to the Enlightenment--opponents prefer to shout him down and associate him with the worst villains of history:

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman accused Mr. Barr of “religious bigotry” and described his words as a “pogrom type speech.”

Political ethicist and professional attention seeker Richard Painter tapped out a series of even more furious tweets, here calling the speech the latest episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” there suggesting Mr. Barr isn’t much of a Christian, here again saying Mr. Barr sounded like “vintage Goebbels.” Over at MSNBC, meanwhile, retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Joy Reid the attorney general is “Torquemada in a business suit,” a reference to the Spanish Inquisition’s grand inquisitor.

Mr. Barr is pondering an age-old question: how do we form a good society? The innate sinfulness of man (too quaint? contemporary terms are racism, sexism, greed, narcissism, tribalism, sociopathy, psychopathy, misanthropy, and misogyny) requires controls to prevent individuals' most harmful actions.

If "coercive" government is the sole means of restraint, the result is ultimately tyranny. And, unless the powerful government is administered by selfless philosopher-kings, it becomes peopled with sinful individuals who can act with no hindrance--no one governs the governors--in satisfaction of their own appetites. Ultimately every Socialist or National Socialist society becomes corrupt--the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Maoist China are also the deadliest examples--as the favored few become immensely wealthy over the immiserated masses (ironically this was the capitalist evil that Marx railed against).

William Barr embraces the "Framers' view" that a people and society steeped in religion will act morally most of the time and need only limited government and laws to hold society together.

“Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.”---Grant Gilmore (1910-1982)

Come, Progressives, let us reason together. Don't shout down people who question the ever-expanding role of the State. After all, they want what you want: a State that will wither away.