Former Attorney General William Barr warns of the greatest threat to Western Civilization:  The public school system | Eastern NC Now

Brandon Drey, writing at the Daily Wire, reports:

Western civilization faces its deepest crisis since the resurrection of Jesus Christ according to former U.S. Attorney General William Barr told a Christian conference in Chicago, Illinois, last weekend.

“That’s because our whole civilization is based on the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that tradition is under sustained attack by increasingly militant secular forces,” Barr said. Among such forces, Barr said, were the many so-called “progressives.”

Barr, who recently served as the country’s top attorney in the Trump Administration, attended the 2022 Issues, Etc. “Making the Case” Conference at Concordia University Chicago as a keynote speaker with six other doctors and reverends.

During his segment on Saturday, Barr told the audience about what he believed was a threat to the entire western world: the U.S. public school system — which seeks to control how children are raised while creating a hostile environment for traditional religion, The Federalist reported.

The former attorney general has argued that for years, America’s unique self-government system cannot exist without traditional religion — an argument that closely aligns with the words of the second U.S. President John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

In 2019, Barr delivered remarks to the Law School and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame about religious liberty in America and how modern secularism has attacked that freedom over the last 50 years.

During that speech, he said ground zero for such attacks on religious liberty occurs in the public school system by adopting a curriculum incompatible with traditional religious principles or mandating—in some states—LGBTQ+ lesson plans without parental consent of the child. Meanwhile, the state starves private schools from generally-available funds, he said.

Barr reiterated the largely controversial speech at the conference last weekend and called out the unconstitutional anti-religious rhetoric in American public schools. He said the government violates the Free Exercise Clause by establishing one religion over another. The clause prohibits the government from interfering with the religious obligations of citizens.

“What we’re living through is not a situation where religion is intruding into the government’s rightful arena—it’s exactly the opposite,” Barr said. “It’s that government and politics are usurping the role of religion.”

Barr said the progressive movement in the United States represents these ideas.

“It basically is an ersatz religion that gives them a sort of truncated version of the place filled by religion in people’s lives,” he said. “It also explains the bitterness in our politics today because once you adopt this view, then your political opponents aren’t just disagreeing with you, they’re evil.”

However, he thanked the current Supreme Court’s adherence to the original Constitution and believes it’s a moment in history to address the existential national crisis by ending the government monopoly over the education system that pushes transgender and anti-white racism ideologies, The Federalist reported.

Barr instead promoted full school choice that would allow parents access to public education dollars and spend it on the institutions that match their beliefs.

However, Barr warned American Christians that the idea could not cure the crisis alone. He said he could not see a way out and the way for Christian citizens to live in peace in this republic until the educational system is addressed.