gracchusdixit

When Donald Trump nominated William P. Barr to replace Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as Attorney General of the United States, a chorus of voices across the political spectrum expressed the hope, and in some cases the absolute confidence, that Barr would uphold the rule of law, respect our constitutional norms, and defend both the Mueller investigation and the Department of Justice against partisan attack.  This optimism was based on the premise that Barr is a long-time member of the Washington legal establishment and an “institutionalist,” in other words, a man with a professional and public reputation to protect.

During his confirmation hearing in the Senate, Barr himself played this putative role to a tee.  Although he declined to be pinned down on certain not inconsequential matters concerning the Mueller investigation, he skated through by mumbling the usual pieties about “transparency” and “the rule of law”.  Since his confirmation was never in doubt, even those Senators who were opposed to his nomination did not do very much to press their objections.

We now know that Barr’s testimony was nothing more than a charade, designed to lull a supine audience, and the hope that he would honorably fulfill his obligations as Attorney General was naive or delusional.  Since taking office, Barr has revealed himself to be little more than a shill for his boss.

The shilling began, four weeks ago, when Barr publicly misrepresented the conclusions of Robert Mueller and arrogated to himself the authority to pass judgment on Trump’s guilt or innocence, an authority he does not legally possess.  It became embarrassingly clear, four days ago, when he did it all over again, pretending that the Muller report does not say what it actually says.

Those who were hoping for something better are now calling Barr a “political hack” and are mystified that such a savvy political player would lie about the contents of the Mueller report just hours before it was released, surely knowing that his lies would be exposed.  These people do not understand who our newly minted Attorney General really is.

William Barr has never been the traditional Republican “institutionalist” he was imagined to be.  He is, instead, a radically conservative Catholic, a cultural revanchist who abhors the secular modern world and would, if he could, turn back the clock several hundred years.  In his view, the purpose of the law is not to mete out justice in an even-handed and dispassionate way; it is a weapon of war, a shield for defending the righteous and a sword for slaying the wicked.  Barr lies so brazenly, because he has no regard for truth in its own right; the only “truth” he cares about is the ideology that commands his absolute faith.  He is a theological warrior, who would be perfectly at home in the brutally ruthless religious conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries.  

If all that sounds hyperbolic, don’t take my word for it; take William Barr’s.  In 1995, shortly after he had served his first term as Attorney General, Barr published an article in a journal called (I’m not kidding) The Catholic Lawyer.  Here are his opening words:

We live in an increasingly militant, secular age.  We see an emerging philosophy that government is expected to play an ever greater role in addressing social problems in our society.  It is also expected to override private interests as it goes about this work.  As part of this philosophy, we see a growing hostility toward religion, particularly Catholicism…We are locked in a historic struggle between two fundamentally different systems of values.  In a way, this is the end product of the Enlightenment.  On the one hand, we see the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism.  On the other, we see the steady erosion of the traditional Judeo-Christian moral system.  

This article aimed to conflate the principles articulated by the Constitution with Christian theology—or at least Barr’s peculiar version of that theology—and to decouple the Constitution from the skeptical tolerance and learning of the Enlightenment.  His argument was dishonest throughout, cherry-picking statements by the Founders illustrating their religiosity, ignoring statements demonstrating their religious skepticism.  Nothing in Barr’s subsequent record suggests that his views, or his rhetorical tactics, have changed in the least.  On the contrary.

Like any American, William Barr is entitled to his religious beliefs.  What he isn’t entitled to—indeed, what our Constitution explicitly prohibits—is the power to impose his particular religious beliefs on other Americans.  That, however, is the sort of power Barr has always sought.

He believes, for example, that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided by the Supreme Court, that abortion should be outlawed, and that women who choose to have abortions should be criminalized.

He believes that capital punishment should not only be upheld but expanded, on the excuse—against all evidence to the contrary—that it deters crime.

He advocates mass incarceration for the same specious reason and believes that, far from reducing the unparalleled number of people penned up in American prisons, we should imprison even more.

He believes that marijuana should be outlawed by the federal government, even when its use is purely medical, not because it is the “gateway drug” Jeff Sessions claimed it to be but rather because its use is sign of moral depravity and social decay.

He believes that homosexual relationships of all kinds are sinful and that those who piously discriminate against gay Americans are merely exercising their Constitutionally-guaranteed “freedom of religion”.

Worst of all, he seems to think that crimes committed in the name of the ideology he believes in are not crimes at all.  During his time as George H. W. Bush’s Attorney General, Barr led the campaign to pardon officials in the Reagan administration, who had been convicted in the Iran-Contra affair, a secret and illegal scheme in which weapons were sold to Iran and the proceeds were used to fund right-wing paramilitary groups—the “Contras”—to overthrow the socialist government of Nicaragua.   To William Barr, there was nothing wrong in scheming to topple a popular but godless socialist government, no matter how criminal the means.  

Barr’s role in this unseemly affair perfectly illuminates his ideological agenda.  It also explains his eagerness to join the Trump administration as well as his brazen defense of Trump himself.  In Donald Trump, William Barr discovered a willing (if sometimes witless) instrument to achieve the end he desires, which is to impose his medieval moral code on an unwilling country.  

Because such chances come along only rarely, William Barr seized it, launching a campaign to replace Jeff Session as Attorney General.  To that end, he wrote an unsolicited 19-page memo, claiming that a President of the United States can never be prosecuted for obstructing justice, because the President is the ultimate authority when it comes to administering justice.  This is the legal equivalent of saying that, when the fox is in charge of the hen house, he cannot be punished for gobbling up the hens.  Barr’s argument was a transparent and shabby sleight of hand, but it was good enough for Donald Trump, who, in a state of paranoid panic, was prepared to accept any lifeline, however tenuous.   He took the bait by nominating Barr, and from that moment, the fix was in.  For William Barr, it always was.