Politics & Power Quote by Robert Reich

Reich’s line lands like a civics lesson with teeth: a theocracy isn’t just “religion in public life,” it’s a state that treats private conscience as regulatory territory. The crisp pivot from “we do not want” to “government has no business” does rhetorical work. It turns an abstract fear into a jurisdictional boundary dispute. Reich isn’t begging for tolerance; he’s asserting limits, the way an economist might talk about market failures and overreach. The state, in his framing, is an institution prone to mission creep, and belief is the kind of “market” it’s least competent to police.

The subtext is a warning about soft theocracy, not just the caricatured version. He’s arguing that you don’t arrive at religious rule only by declaring scripture the law; you can get there through incremental moral legislation that treats certain doctrines as default citizenship requirements. “Barrier” is the key word: not harmony, not dialogue, but insulation. It implies that mixing these powers doesn’t ennoble politics, it contaminates it, turning policy into a proxy battle for spiritual authority.

Contextually, Reich is speaking into a recurring American moment: culture-war policymaking around sexuality, reproduction, education, and “religious freedom” claims. By pairing “what they ought to believe” with “private lives,” he links thought and intimacy as parallel spheres of autonomy. It’s strategic: even listeners indifferent to church-state theory may bristle at being managed in their bedrooms or minds. The intent is coalition-building through a shared suspicion of governmental moral micromanagement.