Commentary
On May 20, 2021, then-Attorney General William Barr gave an amazing speech on the erosion of religious freedom and the implications for our society.
He said: “[U]p until the 1970s, or so, the instruction received in the public school system openly embraced Judeo-Christian beliefs and values, and most certainly was not hostile to, nor fundamentally in conflict with, traditional religious beliefs. … This is when the left embarked on a relentless campaign of secularization intent on driving every vestige of traditional religion from the public square. Public schools quickly became the central battleground. … It was secularization by subtraction.”
He continued: “Yet even as the schools were forcibly secularized, the notion of moral instruction did not simply go away. The rich Judeo-Christian tradition was replaced with trite talk of liberal values—be a good person, be caring. But there was no underpinning for those values. What passed for morality had no metaphysical foundation. It is hard to teach that someone ought to behave in a certain way unless you can explain why. … When you take away religion, you have left a moral vacuum.”…