Sam Alito and the Campaign to Defend the Traditional Moral Order

Radical Catholic extremists see modern society as a holy war: true believers against the infidels. And in their view, most Americans are infidels.

The Supreme Court Historical Society held its annual dinner last week. Attending the event was the gonzo journalist Lauren Windsor, who, posing as a staunch Catholic sympathetic to Sam Alito, was able, after some buttering up, to get the Justice to share his thoughts on the “polarization” of the country. These thoughts she recorded and posted to Twitter:

WINDSOR
Considering everything that’s been going on in the past year, you know, as a Catholic and as someone who, like, really cherishes my faith, I just don’t—I don’t know that we can negotiate with the Left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end. I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.

ALITO
I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other—one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working—a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.

and

WINDSOR
People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that—to return our country to a place of godliness.

ALITO
I agree with you. I agree with you.

More traditional journalists might bristle at Windsor’s methods here, but how else could she have penetrated the marble walls of the Hall of Justice to get a glimpse beneath the black robe? It’s not like she bugged his bedroom and recorded private conversations with his flag-mad missus. She got Sam Alito, one of the OG Leonard Leo Justices, to speak candidly to her about his views on God and country. That is infinitely more valuable journalism than quoting the condescending and disingenuous letter the Justice wrote to Senators Durbin and Whitehouse, in which he refused to recuse himself. Furthermore, if there’s anyone who doesn’t deserve the courtesy of privacy, it’s the smug misogynist who authored the Dobbs decision.

Alito’s remarks are notable because, in contrast to his comments to Windsor last year, he is now, as the cliché goes, saying the quiet part out loud. Martha-Ann might be the half of the Alito couple who likes to make statements using actual flags, but Strip Search Sammy is also showing his true colors.

For me, what stood about the exchange was how similar Alito’s remarks were to comments other members of the radical Catholic cabal have recently made. This business of “one side or the other is going to win” suggests a Manichean view of social issues, especially abortion and LGBT rights. According to the radical Catholics, there is a great battle going on between the forces of good (i.e., Catholic extremism) and evil (i.e., anyone who believes in abortion rights and acknowledges that gay people exist).

Bill Barr—who, like Leonard Leo, served on the board of the Catholic Information Center, a DC institution run by Opus Dei priests—gave a speech at Notre Dame Law School five years ago expounding on this new holy war. And he did so while he was Attorney General. Indeed, the transcript of the speech is on the Justice Department’s website. Here are some excerpts:

Suffice it to say that the campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has brought with it immense suffering, wreckage, and misery. And yet, the forces of secularism, ignoring these tragic results, press on with even greater militancy.

Among these militant secularists are many so-called “progressives.” But where is the progress?

We are told we are living in a post-Christian era. But what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? What is it that can fill the spiritual void in the hearts of the individual person? And what is a system of values that can sustain human social life?

The fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.

Using battlefield imagery, Barr decries

the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religion we are experiencing today. This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.

These instruments are used not only to affirmatively promote secular orthodoxy, but also drown out and silence opposing voices, and to attack viciously and hold up to ridicule any dissenters.

One of the ironies, as some have observed, is that the secular project has itself become a religion, pursued with religious fervor. It is taking on all the trappings of a religion, including inquisitions and excommunication.

Those who defy the creed risk a figurative burning at the stake—social, educational, and professional ostracism and exclusion waged through lawsuits and savage social media campaigns.

Please note that, in practical terms, “defying the creed” means “insisting that the government protect the civil rights of the LGBT community” and “wanting women to have access to healthcare.”

Barr also condemns the law being weaponized like a “battering ram” that is being “used aggressively to force religious people and entities to subscribe to practices and policies that are antithetical to their faith.”

“The problem is not that religion is being forced on others,” said the nation’s top lawyer who wants to force his religion on others. “The problem is that irreligion and secular values are being forced on people of faith.”

Alito himself made similar remarks at the 2022 Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit in Rome. This excerpt is from a synopsis produced by Notre Dame Law School:

“Therefore, we can’t lightly assume that the religious liberty enjoyed today in the United States, in Europe, and in many other places will always endure. Religious liberty is fragile, and religious intolerance and persecution have been recurring features of human history,” [Alito] said.

Indeed, Rome is where St. Peter, St. Paul, and countless other early Christians were martyred.

“If we look around the world today, we see that people of many different faiths face persecution because of religion,” Alito said, noting that religious liberty is a life-or-death matter in many parts of the globe. He cited examples of groups such as the Yazidis in northern Iraq, Christians in Nigeria, Coptic Christians in Egypt, and Uyghurs in China that have been victims of horrific violence.

Alito also talked about the challenges that lie ahead for religious liberty around the world.

“Religious liberty is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power,” he said. “It also probably grows out of something dark and deep in the human DNA — the tendency to distrust and dislike people who are not like ourselves.”

Another test is the growing number of people who reject religion or don’t think religion is important.

“It is hard to convince people that religious liberty is worth defending if they don’t think that religion is a good thing that deserves protection,” he said. “The challenge for those who want to protect religious liberty in the United States, Europe, and other similar places is to convince people who are not religious that religious liberty is worth special protection. That will not be easy to do.”

It will be impossible to do, one hopes, if the only way to protect “religious liberty” is to criminalize abortion and strip away LGBT rights.

Leonard Leo, the dark money maestro and radical Catholic eminence grise, expressed similar sentiments at the commencement speech at Benedictine College last year. “The barbarians are determined to threaten and delegitimize individuals and institutions who refuse to pledge fealty to the woke idols of our age,” he said. “The secularists are fine with Catholics in the public square so long as we don’t, you know, practice our faith. They want us to draw the curtains at home and keep it in the pews, and it remains to be seen how long they’ll accept even that.”

Those critical of his despotic, reactionary predilections—you know, us barbarians—Leo dismissed as “progressive bigots” who “distort who we are and what we believe in, and will go so far as to intimidate or harass us in public in an effort to drive us into professional and social exile.”

The progenitor of this kind of thinking was the Rev. C. John McCloskey III, the late Opus Dei priest who headed the Catholic Information Center when it was frequented by Barr, Clarence and Ginni Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and—oops!—Robert Hanssen. The charismatic priest—he had rizz, as the kids say—was singlehandedly responsible for recruiting a number of powerful Washington insiders to the cause. This is from a piece Charles P. Pierce wrote for the Boston Globe in 2003, about a group he termed “The Crusaders”:

There is a glow to the priest when he talks…He is talking about a futuristic essay he wrote that rosily describes the aftermath of a “relatively bloodless” civil war that resulted in a Catholic Church purified of all dissent and the religious dismemberment of the United States of America.

“There’s two questions there,” says the Rev. C. John McCloskey 3d, smiling…“One is, Do I think it would be better that way? No. Do I think it’s possible? Do I think it’s possible for someone who believes in the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of family, over a period of time to choose to survive with people who think it’s OK to kill women and children or for—quote—homosexual couples to exist and be recognized?

“No, I don’t think that’s possible,” he says. “I don’t know how it’s going to work itself out, but I know it’s not possible, and my hope and prayer is that it does not end in violence. But, unfortunately, in the past, these types of things have tended to end this way.

“If American Catholics feel that’s troubling, let them. I don’t feel it’s troubling at all.”

Radical Catholics like Alito, Barr, and Leo seek to repel the—as Barr put it— “monstrous invasion of religious liberty” where “the battle is being joined” and “the secularists are attacking.” (They put the war in culture war.)

How do they hope to do this? Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, prime mover of Project 2025 and another radical Catholic in a position of power, offers this vision for the future in his foreword to Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative’s Promise.

First, strip away rights for gay people:

The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.

And then, expand the criminalization of abortion, depriving women of healthcare:

But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.

Although it is powerful to hear Alito speak the words, what Strip Search Sammy told Windsor is nothing new. He merely confirmed what we already know, which is this: There is a powerful cabal of radical Catholic extremists who seek to strip away our civil rights in the name of God. This cabal has captured the Supreme Court, which will continue to issue reactionary rulings that put the lives of millions of Americans in jeopardy, to make the country hew to their retrograde religious beliefs. They see this as a holy war: true believers against the infidels. And in their Manichean classification system, most of us are infidels.

Leonard Leo & Co. will not stop until they get their way, and the United States is a full-blown Christian theocracy. They. Will. Not. Stop. Which means that, as Bill Barr put it, “We cannot sit back and just hope the pendulum is going to swing back toward sanity.”

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Photo credit: Bernard van Orley, Battle of Pavia.