For the fundamental “sin” of serving in President Donald Trump’s administration, Attorney General Bill Barr has faced unrelenting personal and professional attacks from the progressive left and the liberal mainstream media.
Barr is not the sort to let such constant attacks from the media go without mention, however, and he just struck back against the “massively consolidated” establishment press that is “remarkably monolithic in viewpoint” and is subversively working in furtherance of a “tyranny of the majority” rather than serving as a check against such, The Daily Caller reported.
“Liberal” vs. “totalitarian” democracy
The fiery remarks from Barr came in a speech he delivered on Wednesday in Nashville, Tennessee, at the 2020 National Religious Broadcasters Convention, in which he largely focused on three foundational things he views as a vital “bulwarks” against “despotism” in this nation, namely “religion, the decentralization of government power, and the free press.”
Barr first spent time discussing the differences as he sees them between a “liberal democracy” of the sort devised by our nation’s founders and a “totalitarian democracy” of the kind that arose out of the French Revolution.
In Barr’s view, the modern “progressive” left has steadily shifted from the liberal to the totalitarian version of democracy, and that shift has been aided by the mainstream media.
The attorney general made numerous references to French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville throughout the speech, in particular his reflections on the free press in the early age of the United States, and he noted how the incredibly diverse and decentralized press of those days — virtually every town and city had one or more newspapers publishing vastly different ideas and opinions — served as a check against a mobilized and inflamed majority that could tyrannize a minority.
Barr decries “monolithic” media
“Today in the United States, the corporate — or ‘mainstream’ — press is massively consolidated,” Barr said. “And it has become remarkably monolithic in viewpoint, at the same time that an increasing number of journalists see themselves less as objective reporters of the facts, and more as agents of change.”
“These developments have given the press an unprecedented ability to mobilize a broad segment of the public on a national scale and direct that opinion in a particular direction,” he continued.
“When the entire press ‘advances along the same track,’ as Tocqueville put it, the relationship between the press and the energized majority becomes mutually reinforcing. Not only does it become easier for the press to mobilize a majority, but the mobilized majority becomes more powerful and overweening with the press as its ally,” Barr said.
“This is not a positive cycle, and I think it is fair to say that it puts the press’ role as a breakwater for the tyranny of the majority in jeopardy. The key to restoring the press in that vital role is to cultivate a greater diversity of voices in the media,” the attorney general added.
Vigilance against the threat
Barr has personally experienced the result of an inflamed and mobilized segment of the population egged on by a “monolithic” media establishment working toward a mutual “progressive” set of objectives — goals of which Barr, among others in the Trump administration and on the right more generally, are standing in the way.
The attorney general admirably refuses to be a passive observer as the ideological left and mainstream media work hand-in-hand to ever-so-steadily destroy what the Founding Fathers envisioned, and he remains determined to publicly expose their tactics and shine a much-needed and highly critical spotlight on them.
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