Last week, the attorney general of the United States, William Barr, gave a speech at the University of Notre Dame Law School. The event was co-sponsored by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. And it was a train wreck.
Some people took to Twitter to complain about Notre Dame even hosting this man, given his apparent willingness to do everything and anything possible to shield the president from legal trouble. Bosh. A major seat of learning should feel free to invite any member of Congress or Cabinet to speak on campus. I dislike the censoriousness that has blossomed improbably on the left. My rule of thumb: Draw the line at Holocaust deniers. Everyone else should be heard. If you do not like what the person has to say, argue with them. That is what universities, and public discourse more generally, should be all about.
In Barr's case, however, the appropriate response to his talk was embarrassment. The man may be brilliant, but his talk was ridiculously stupid.
"From the Founding Era onward, there was strong consensus about the centrality of religious liberty in the United States," Barr explained. "The imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just a nod in the direction of piety. It reflects the Framers' belief that religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government." Of course, the Bill of Rights was not applied to the states until the adoption of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, and, in the case of religious liberty, the relevant clauses of the First Amendment were not applied to state and local government until the 1947 Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education of the Township of Ewing.
So, Barr is overstating the case a bit. Is he unaware of what was done to the Mormons in the 19th century? What was done to the Jehovah's Witnesses in the 20th century? I set aside the bigotry directed at Catholics, which was usually mob rule, not jurisprudence, but the Mormons and the Witnesses were subjected to trials endorsed by the law at that time.