At the University of Notre Dame this past Friday Attorney General Barr excoriated “secularists” who were bent on destroying a country which is fundamentally made for a religious people. Taking the defense of religious liberty as his primary theme, Barr began his 4,000-word address by recalling that for the Framer’s of our Constitution, “religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government.” He argued that they believed this because they were drawing upon the “classical Christian tradition,” and so were aware that human beings cannot effectively govern themselves without recognizing their duty to their Creator, and the restraints required to avoid the rapaciousness of sin and evil. The Founders understood that if you lack all moral limits, either the state will coercively impose them in a way which leads to a tyranny of power, or liberty will give way to a tyranny of license. Barr insisted on the Founder’s middle way, which he stated was self-government predicated upon faith in God, and in “God’s eternal law.” Citing John Adams, American “self-government” was “made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” Yet today there is an “other” — a new religion, a competing creed — which has sought to dismantle the moral law writ into the universe, and replace it with an imposing set of new utilitarian rules for how we think and speak and conduct our affairs with one another.  Barr called “secularism” and “moral relativism” “wholly inadequate” to our form of self-government, waging undue destruction on the country. Barr inveighed, “By any honest assessment, the consequences of this moral upheaval have been grim.” Illegitimacy, abortion, the wreckage of the family, record levels of loneliness and depression — all are public signs of the consequences of this new creed.