Culture Friday: Clarity of language

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Friday the 26th of April, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet. He’s president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

BROWN: Well, John, with the takeover of college campuses—in particular I’m thinking of Columbia University. This elite, Ivy League school producing our future leaders. This is kind of an early warning, it seems!

But I was really struck by the visit this week of House Speaker Mike Johnson to the campus. He met with Jewish students, he gave a reporter Q&A … all within earshot of the protesters. Some of them tried to shout him down, insult him, use very foul language in his presence … and I thought he embodied very well the proverb that says, “a gentle answer turns away wrath.”

STONESTREET: I think he set a good example on how to actually courageously stand for truth and, and not do everything you can to appease the mob, which is obviously the problem at Columbia University and a lot of other schools where these protests showed up over the past week, which is its own topic. But the philosophy of education has for a while now—particularly higher education—been to create activists, not thinkers, to actually create people who will protest, not people who are able to actually think and speak across the lines of disagreement that are so deep in our culture. And it's a pretty radically different view of education than what has historically been known.

I mean, the word education comes from educare, which means "to lead out of." Historically, that meant ignorance, like people, students don't know. I don't know, I've worked with college freshmen. They need to be led out of their ignorance. But so much of education recently has been to lead them out, in other words, to pull out of them, you know, whatever inherently good is inside them, as if young people have some sort of morally superior view, just by sake of being young, and being a protester, and, you know, getting the categories of oppression, right.

I think there's at least a little bit of this story from these protests, where people are realizing the monsters that have been created with this really wrong view of what it means to educate and what educational institutions are all about. And that's overdue.

EICHER: Yeah, it seems that way. Well, John, another big week at the Supreme Court, another abortion case. The question presented is whether Medicare rules have the power to override robust state protections for the unborn. This case is out of Idaho, where unborn children are protected in law at all stages. Idaho allows abortion only in medical emergencies where the life of the mother is in danger.

The Biden administration contends hospitals that accept Medicare regardless of state law must carry out abortions when a mother’s health is at risk. Effectively, a nationwide “health” exception if this stands. The state of Idaho replies that the federal demand would turn hospitals into, its words, “abortion enclaves.”

What do you say about that?

STONESTREET: Well, I think the meaning of words are always at stake when it comes to anything having to do with abortion. And this is a really important example of that. You know, what do we mean by "healthcare?" What do we mean by "reproductive rights"? What do we mean by "exceptions"? And you know, all of that sort of stuff is at play. And it really kind of goes to show that anyone who thought and I, it seemed to be this is what, you know, the former president was arguing in his Truth Social post a few weeks ago about abortion is that, you know, everyone's happy, you know, that it's back to the states where it belongs. And, you know, that's kind of a way of saying that the Supreme Court now with the Dobbs decision has settled the matter. And that's not true.

It's no more true that this issue has been settled, even on a legal level, even on a certainly not a moral level. But even in terms of what belongs to the States versus what the federal government has the purview to determine, that's not settled. Dobbs no more settled the abortion debate than Roe did, and they're going to be settled over the meaning of words. You know, whether abortion and abortion services are healthcare, which of course as pro-lifers, we would say absolutely not. And, you know, health exceptions are famous when it comes, especially to abortion rights to be big enough for Mack trucks to drive through them.

So this sort of clarity of language is going to be really difficult to achieve. And you know, I was listening just a few minutes ago to the oral arguments and you're just, you know, you talk about, we're using the same vocabulary but not the same dictionary. That is a pretty, I think, capable way of explaining the abortion debate in America right now on the two sides. We just don't mean the same thing by the same words.

EICHER: And John, speaking of that, you know, same words, different meanings: I want to talk about the new rule on Title IX from the Biden administration this week. Title IX, if you don’t know, relates to sex-discrimination in education. Of course, what’s happening this week is redefining Title IX as an expansion of LGBT rights, especially “T.”

Our colleague Mary Reichard interviewed a constitutional scholar this week on the program, Ilya Shapiro. I’d like to listen to what he had to say about the effect of tightening Title IX sexual harassment rules, which on the face of it, you think, that’s good. But I hadn’t heard this perspective. Have a listen.

ILYA SHAPIRO: It rolls back the Trump-era protections for those who are accused of sexual harassment or misconduct, in this context, expanding the definition of what sexual harassment might be. So if you use the wrong pronouns, all of a sudden, you might be investigated under these rules, in kind of a Kafka-esque way where you’re denied a lawyer, you can’t confront whoever is accusing you or even see the full evidence against you. This obviously would have the effect of chilling speech and discussion of students, faculty, all the way from kindergarten through higher education.

EICHER: What do you say, John, on this Title IX change?

STONESTREET: Well, I think this analysis is exactly right, and a lot of times what happens with these “clarifications” that different administrations and these departments within these administrations do to create a whole new set of rules determined by unelected officials, I mean, there's a whole lot to be talked about here. So a feature of Trump's clarifications was to soften the kind of presumption of guilt on accusations of sexual harassment. Well, now this new document not only rolls that back, but it broadens the definition of sexual harassment and brings in these new categories.

By the way, the entire interpretive framework here of Title IX by the Biden administration, in this case, actually never refers to biological sex at all. Biological sex is not even a category to be considered anymore, at least according to the letter of the law. It's all about sexual characteristics, sexual behaviors, sexual stereotypes, and things like that. So that that is, of course, at the root of what we're dealing with here, which is Title IX, which was designed to protect women, now actually leaves women more vulnerable than they actually were before Title IX was put into place, because now someone with ill intent going into a locker room, a private space, to steal an opportunity, a scholarship, or something like it can do it as long as they self-identify as a woman. And there needs to be no sort of clarification on what a woman means. So what we're seeing here is this pendulum effect that goes from one administration to the next administration.

And it's so interesting to me. I've been thinking a lot about this kind of who should I vote for in the fall, and this framework that often gets applied here. I think what happened with Title IX is proof that we need a new framework. The framework we tend to use is should I vote for the lesser of two evils. But that assumes way too much power for a particular person. Now that person whoever is elected president, becomes an example for the world. And it can certainly serve to coarsen rhetoric and all kinds of things that happens in our political discourse. But the fact of the matter is on the ground, at least in America, the vote is not about a particular person. It's about a whole platform. It's about a whole party's commitment to certain aspects of their platform, which we have seen in very real time with this particular administration. And this whole group of unelected people that come along with the president, and staff up these departments and create these rules. And every time the pendulum swings on these rules, in all these departments, it goes further than it was the previous time. In other words, there's momentum being picked up.

So I just want to appeal to a different framework, I think we got to stop talking about what it means to vote for the lesser of two evils. And in a very real sense, we need to start talking about oh, this phrase to a former colleague of mine, Kevin Bywater at Summit Ministries that we need to talk about what it means to lessen evil with our vote. And we're seeing very in very real ways that it's really not even about the two candidates anymore. It's about everything that goes along with them, with the party platforms, and these true believers that end up coming in and staffing these positions and can make a real difference in real dollars and real people's lives.

BROWN: Have you heard about this? A tech company is releasing a Catholic Apologetics Chatbot.

The reaction on social media is pretty strong against it. One person made the point that "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," and so we need flesh and blood spiritual counselors.

What do you think of the promise of having a spiritual guide who can answer any question, any time?

And why are Christians in the tech space so fascinated with AI chatbots?

STONESTREET: I saw that story, and I wondered if it was a real story or not a real story. But I assume we, we're going to need to deal with this more and more in the days ahead. Look, all of this reflects, kind of, what these sorts of programs which really pull off of a specified set of content. What set of content is it pulling off of? You know, a chatbot, priest or counselor that pulls off of the actual teachings of the Catholic Church and the Theology of the Body and even the recent statement Humanitas Dignitas, or however you say that in Latin—and I should know that my daughters take Latin, but I never did.

That's going to be way better counseling than what the church in Germany is getting right now with bishops who are actually abandoning the basics of doctrine and truth. So if you're asking me to choose between those that are actually ignoring clear Christian teaching, and if this actual service and AI just pulls off of a set of content, if it's pulling off of the right content, it's going to be better, because you know, "In the beginning was the Word," that exists before the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Now, look, I don't think this is a good idea. I don't think that even if you get it to pull off of the right bag of content that it's going to actually be the sort of counseling, you know, at least in terms of what we need for some of the deeper problems that humans in the human condition individuals face. But I think the question is, what is being asked of this program, and I think that's a really important thing to realize upfront.

The only proof I think is necessary is what happened after the Golden State Warriors lost the play-in game for the NBA Playoffs a few weeks ago. And Klay Thompson, I think, went 0 for 9. And they were talking about how many bricks he threw up and an AI article writer pulled off of that, and then wrote an article about how Klay Thompson had vandalized the arena by throwing too many bricks at it.

So you know, that just tells you that there's still limits to AI and what it can do and even if it pulls off of accurate content, there's a good bit of human interpretation it may not be able to land on.

BROWN: Well, John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks so much, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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