We have excluded entire countries of immigrants. We have turned people into fractions. We have expelled, deported, rejected, oppressed and denied, even as we dug ourselves out of our worst epochs.
It’s a bleak note to play when beginning a column, but it’s mostly true. Though I love much of what this country has done — the moments when we have overcome and created and unified — if saying that makes me unpatriotic to some folks, then fine. But I am not half as treacherous as the people who deny all that I just said when denial is convenient, who glorify every minute of it, who take history to the print shop when it doesn’t serve them.
In this way, U.S. Rep. Andy Barr’s Republican senate campaign can completely square itself in the American tradition. He is unique, however, because he campaigns in a way that you wonder when he’ll blink twice and ask for help.
Here is a sample of his campaign planks: “Cut Waste, Grow Freedom.” “Communist China Must Be Defeated.” “The Second Amendment is NOT Optional.” If Barr represents anything substantial, it’s this: Republicans so love Big Tech that they made an entire campaign using ChatGPT.
These issues are not what the public cares about, mostly because they’re not real concerns — every Democrat worth their salt knows that taking away people’s guns is a dead letter. How Barr joins these issues (lies and fear to protect freedom) with “Close the Border, Deport the Illegals” (lies and fear to attack it) remains to be seen.
Barr was elected around a decade ago to Lexington’s 6th Congressional District. He beat Ben Chandler, a moderate Democrat, and mostly walked the center-right line. His good old aesthetic almost looked satirical: in a 2019 Federalist Society recognition, he’s lauded for “strengthening Kentucky’s signature bourbon, equine, coal, agricultural and manufacturing industries” (the first two had to go before the next three), and he’s identified as a co-chair of the Congressional Horse Caucus.
“He had to keep it somewhat moderate in some capacity. But now that he’s going statewide, he’s leaning so far into it. It’s been unreal,” said Logan Gatti, chair of the Louisville Democratic Party.
Barr went on the map with an ad campaign that acted like it got ten cents for every soundbite. DEI is “Dumb, Evil Indoctrination.” He calls his main opponent, Nate Morris, a “corporate loser,” and by then he’s teed up for the piece de resistance: “It’s not a sin to be white. It’s not against the law to be male. And it shouldn’t be disqualifying to be a Christian.”
Gov. Andy Beshear is a white, Christian man. President Joe Biden was one, too, as is Sen. Mark Kelly, whom the Department of Justice attacks for no reason, and a lion’s share of other prominent American Democrats.
It seems like Barr’s real fear is that non-Christians are governing and — from the New York City mayor’s office to a Vermont senate seat — are doing a better job of it than Barr can hope to do. Screw pluralism, Barr says. Screw tolerance. America’s survival depends on uniformity. It should not matter, and does not matter, that Barr is a Christian. If faith helps him, then live and let live. It’s the hate that is disqualifying — the hate, and the stupidity.
I use the second word to emphasize that Barr, a career politician, seems not to know one thing about the people who built the government through which he’s trying to rise. John Adams did not leave much to doubt when he wrote in a treaty that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion,” nor did Thomas Jefferson when he cut out, with a razor, every mention of miracles from his Bible.
Barr is welcome to hate American ideals; those very ideals defend that right. But he has no business calling himself “100% America First.” After the 2024 election, progressives lost so much of the patriotism that they got back in the cycle. They need to find it again. People like Barr do not get to decide what America looks like.
“The people that do the work should have a say in how the work is done,” said JP Lyninger, the Metro councilman who represents Manual’s district. Over the half hour when we spoke, I watched Lyninger’s energy about where his movement was going compound.
“[People] start to ask, ‘it seems like the establishment is holding hands and not fighting for us and not taking care of us. Who is fighting? Well, it looks like the socialists are the ones who are fighting. So I’m going to look into what they believe,’” he said.
Socialism may still be a bad word in Kentucky, and besides, you don’t have to dash to the left if you want to advocate for economic justice. No one needs to adore trade unions and slap socialist stickers everywhere to hate the fact that CEOs make 350 times more than their employees.
Fixing the economy for workers is one part of the Barr antidote, and welding it with love in the face of his depravity requires just one word: solidarity. When one person falls through, and we don’t help them, then no one will have a reason to help us. A good candidate can beat Barr in November, but it will take all of us. But it’s hard to think of a decent movement that didn’t.
