Former Attorney General William Barr slammed social and educational trends within the nation’s public schools, questioning the prudence and even the constitutionality of funding them with public dollars.
Barr, in a Thursday speech accepting the Edwin Meese III Award from religious liberty advocacy firm the Alliance Defending Freedom, said people must reckon with the institutionalization of a “secular progressive orthodoxy” that is hostile to religion and harmful to children.
“We’re rapidly approaching the point, if we already haven’t reached the point, at which the heavy-handed enforcement of secular progressive orthodoxy through government-run schools is totally incompatible with traditional Christianity and other major religious traditions in our country,” he said.
“I think we have to confront the reality that it may no longer be fair, practical, or even constitutional to provide publicly funded education solely through the vehicle of state-operated schools,” Barr told an applauding crowd.
HERE’S WHERE CRITICAL RACE THEORY STANDS IN CLASSROOMS AND TRAINING ACROSS THE COUNTRY
Barr insisted that religion and education have been inseparable throughout Western history and that secularist ideologies subvert the natural order of the pairing.
<mediadc-iframe data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1621629609168,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000172-336d-d668-a372-3bef83ff0002","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1621629609168,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000172-336d-d668-a372-3bef83ff0002","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"iFrameEmbedCode":"","_id":"00000179-90a8-dda8-aff9-9bff16530000","_type":"00000161-b425-d761-a563-f7e77e270000"}”>iFrame Object
“They’re inherently bound together,” Barr said. “The whole idea of trying to separate them is actually a fallacy.”
“Education is more than just balancing your checkbook or vocational training. It’s really about — at the end of the day, it’s about the big questions,” he added.
Barr’s comments reflect something of a focus the Justice Department had during his tenure. The agency battled frequently on behalf of various religious liberty interests, including by filing legal briefs and writing letters on behalf of worshipers seeking more freedom to attend religious services during the height of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
Barr also took a swipe at critical race theory during the Thursday speech, a subject of continued debate in Congress and state legislatures across the country. On Wednesday, the Utah Senate and House both passed resolutions insisting that “public schools teach the important issues surrounding race in our country in a respectful, appropriate, and open-minded manner.”
Barr called critical race theory “nothing more than the materialist philosophy of Marxism, substituting racial antagonism for class antagonism.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“It posits all the same things as traditional Marxism,” he said.
