Is he right about what he says below?? In what follows, here and in subsequent blogs, I will respond to a number of Barr’s arguments during the Notre Dame speech, or his rather opinions. Because his opinions come, as most opinions, without evidence.

First what he says about the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism:

“By any honest assessment, the consequences of this moral upheaval have been grim.”

“Virtually every measure of social pathology continues to gain ground.
In 1965, the illegitimacy rate was eight percent. In 1992, when I was last Attorney General, it was 25 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. In many of our large urban areas, it is around 70 percent.
Along with the wreckage of the family, we are seeing record levels of depression and mental illness, dispirited young people, soaring suicide rates, increasing numbers of angry and alienated young males, an increase in senseless violence, and a deadly drug epidemic.
As you all know, over 70,000 people die a year from drug overdoses. That is more casualities in a year than we experienced during the entire Vietnam War.
I will not dwell on all the bitter results of the new secular age. Suffice it to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has brought with it immense suffering, wreckage, and misery.“

---

And in response there is so much we might say, so many things we might ask mighty Bill. What is the evidence for an earlier, or traditional moral order bringing along with it less human suffering? Was it Slavery? Was it any number of genocides, was it the destruction of whole tribes of native peoples, in many cases destruction to the last man? Or later, and almost up to the present time, was it a Southern Jim Crowe society when tens of thousands of Black lynchings were, if not approved, were not stopped by our elected representatives? And on and on. One might as well say that the so-called collapse of the traditional moral order has infinitely improved the quality, the morality of our lives, made us better people. And in spite of Bill’s numbers that’s what I would say. While we always need to better understand what’s happening, by saying that people by no longer attending church, and Barr’s Catholic church at that, brought these ills upon themselves is not going to cut it.