Roseanne Barr continues to make news this morning. After her racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett led ABC to cancel Barr’s show, the reaction has been predictable.
From one side: a Washington Post columnist likened Roseanne to the Trump presidency and hoped that the latter ends in the same way as the former. (The same paper is also carrying a column claiming that “Trump’s not a liar. He’s a madman.”) Like many, Trevor Noah blamed Barr’s tweet on the president. Numerous celebrities celebrated the cancellation of her show.
From the other side: Barr’s supporters noted that Bill Maher compared President Trump to an orangutan and Joy Behar likened Vice President Pence’s faith to “mental illness,” but both kept their shows. One person tweeted, “I’m a black man and I stand with @therealroseanne! Yes, she made a horrible joke and she apologized. I see comedians, actors, etc make the same jokes and get applauded for it. This is outrageous.”
My point this morning is not to rehash the controversy ignited by Barr’s tweet. Rather, it is to think with you about what the reaction to her statement says about our culture and our faith.
The “great pillars of all government”
This is perhaps the most famous sentence in American history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are rights we celebrate and seek to advance as Americans. But notice the first half of the sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .”
Thomas Jefferson did not cite external or objective authority for his declaration. He did not point to law, history, scholarship, or Scripture. His authority was “self-evident” truth.
His strategy was understandable since the Founders sought to create a secular democracy rather than the…
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