Hard honesty

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, April 17th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday.

John Stonestreet is here. He’s President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Yesterday, John, we reported on a new Justice Department review alleging the Biden administration unfairly targeted pro-life activists—and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley told our Capitol Hill reporter Carolina Lumetta that Congress may need to get involved.

DOJ released its nearly 900-page report, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke about it with NBC’s Laura Jarrett. He said his departmental review showed the Biden DOJ worked hand-in-hand with outside organizations to target pro-lifers—and Blanche was critical of the way those cases were handled.

BLANCHE: And then you flow from that the consequence, which is that prosecutors have a tremendous amount of power, and so when a prosecutor gets a case, they have a lot of decisions that they can make. They’re supposed to make the right decision, the one that’s consistent with justice. And what we saw, unfortunately on several occasions, the prosecutors did not do that.

John, we’ve been critical of the Trump administration for its inattention to pro-life issues. Does this change anything?

STONESTREET: No, I think the Trump administration in the second term has been less than supportive of pro-lifers, has been less than pro-life. He's made it very clear at the beginning of even the campaign that he had done what he wanted to do on the issue of life, which had to do with Roe v. Wade. And that was significant and big, but he wasn't going to do anything else, particularly as it came to something like chemical abortion.

The administration has been clear opposing lawsuits by conservative states who wanted to roll back some of the Biden-era kind of open-door policies—or access policies—to chemical abortion pills and mifepristone and so on.

But that doesn't change in the least how bad President Biden and his administration was on life, and directly targeting pro-lifers, and what that means, I think, on a state level. That it wasn't enough to just say, “Oh, we want to secure abortion rights.” It was, “We want to silence dissent. We want to punish those who we deem are wicked.”

And we see the same thing happening on a state level by radical politicians who falsely accuse pro-lifers as being evil, as being anti-woman, as interfering with healthcare, and even being criminal in some cases.

So I think it helps at least clarify the landscape of what the life battle looks like in these days, where we certainly don't have the support from one side that we once did on a political level, and we have growing hostility—and even a sharper kind of clarification on what the enemy is willing to do.

BROWN: On the life battle, I'm thinking of a profoundly sad admission from the actress Christina Applegate in her new memoir. As one writer put it, it's not that what she wrote is controversial—it's that it's honest.

She was 19 years old at the time, preparing to have an abortion. Just a little of what she wrote—it's hard to read, and it's hard to talk about it.

She said, “I'm pregnant and I'm killing my child on Thursday. Where can I go to recuperate from murder?”

And then there's this part where she's actually talking to the child in the book:

“Hello, little thing. I feel you every moment of my day. Such a tiny existence, such an immense effect you have. You are a miracle, a tiny-handed miracle. I love you, but you know your fate. It's not your time. I know you didn't make that decision, but it can't be your time. You will live on, though. You will live through another. I hope you will forgive me, but mommy can't be with you right now. But know she loves you more than any other miracle.”

One commentator put it this way: what makes this so unsettling is not that it's incomprehensible behavior, but because it is profoundly human.

STONESTREET: Yeah, it is. What a remarkable thing. It's one thing to support abortion by denying the humanity of the preborn. It's another thing to do it while acknowledging it.

As our science and medical knowledge has grown so immensely—even since the days of Roe v. Wade—our ability to look in at things that were previously unseen, what we now know about how life develops in the womb, there's no question about it.

In a sense, this is another chapter of a book that was started by the former president of NARAL in an article maybe 10 years ago, in which she said it doesn't do us any good—those of us who are pro-abortion—to pretend it's not a life. She said, “Of course it's a life.”

I think this was in the pages of—it wasn't Vogue, but it was one of those more high-class women's magazines back in the day that were really popular. But she wrote, “Of course it's a life, but it's a life worth sacrificing.”

What a remarkable admission that was. This is what happens when you force someone to acknowledge, in practice, what is true—when someone actually has to live this out, when someone has to look another in the eye.

Saying you should go kill that person is an easy thing to say. To actually pull the trigger is another thing completely—particularly now when you're adding another element, where she's not just talking about it as a miracle, she's talking about it as her miracle. She's referring to herself as the little one's mommy.

This is life. This is the reality. This is the truth that we can't not know, as J. Budziszewski put it in his book years ago—the things that you cannot deny. We can suppress it, but it's like beach balls under the water. You push them down, but they pop back up.

And this was a moment of rare honesty. To the point where she even referred to herself as committing murder—it is a remarkable moment of honesty.

BROWN: Well, switching gears here. A lot of people talking about that image depicting President Trump as Christ—backlash coming from everywhere. What's your take?

STONESTREET: Well, I mean, there's a lot to think about this. Number one is, it was blasphemous. There's no question.

One initial response is the accusations that people who claim the name of Jesus—will tolerate anything from this president. That proved to be untrue in this case.

There was wide and loud and thorough backlash. There was condemnation from all sides. There was the ability to distinguish between this man that many respect as a leader and a president, and saying something that crossed the line.

I think there are other examples in the history of his presidency—both the first and the second—where people weren't willing to draw that line. But when it came to loyalty to Christ and someone claiming that sort of perspective, there was no gray area here.

People were definitive. People were clear. And people were out loud about it, as they should be.

But it is something we don't talk a lot about anymore, and that is blasphemy. Why is it such a despicable thing in the eyes of God?

When Scripture lists the really bad sins, idolatry and blasphemy are right up there. Why is that the case?

And one of the reasons I was encouraged by the backlash—is because it requires, to understand how despicable the evil is, an understanding of the holiness of God. The otherness of God. That God has no rival.

But that understanding of the holiness and the greatness of God is where Scripture begins. It's where a biblical worldview begins. It's the only place to begin to properly understand both God and ourselves.

So it's not to be taken lightly. And I was really encouraged that so many people did not take it lightly.

BROWN: Blasphemy, for sure, definitely. Isn't it also blasphemy to have on a wall Jesus, and right next to Jesus, JFK, and then Martin Luther King Jr.?

I mean, that to me says same level, same reverence. And this is what I grew up seeing, going into some homes. What's the difference?

STONESTREET: Well, I mean, there's a difference, just in the sense that it's different between what somebody says about you and what you say about yourself.

And the fact that Trump reposted this, I think, was what many people found problematic—and rightly so.

But you're right in the sense that to put anyone on the same tier as God, which, by the way, was done. I remember worship hymns that were written to President Obama, sung by little church choirs of black children. I remember images that were created of Obama as Jesus.

Now, he never reposted them. He was smarter than that, which was a good move.

I don't want to play the “other than” game. They're both wrong.

EICHER: John, I want to turn to technology. Yesterday we reported—Lauren Smyth had a story—on a charter school that relies fully on artificial intelligence for instruction, and it’s drawing a lot of interest.

But alongside that, there’s a different signal in a new Gallup survey. Among 14- to 29-year-olds, there’s a surprising level of hostility toward AI. Thirty-one percent say it makes them angry. Forty-two percent say it makes them anxious.

One researcher says it may be because many young people see the handwriting on the wall, or what they think is handwriting on the wall—that AI is coming for their jobs

At the same time, there were online celebrations following the attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home. One teenager told The Free Press, “Altman is violent, so we’re just fighting violence with violence.”

John, is this just economic anxiety—or does it point to something deeper in how this generation has been formed?

STONESTREET: I mean, I think it's interesting. Forty-two percent said it made them feel anxious. I'm not sure that tells us a whole lot, given we're talking about Gen Zers, who have the highest levels of anxiety that we have ever seen, and everything makes them anxious.

And we have that—it just plays out over and over and over.

Part of what makes them anxious is the kind of way that they relate with others—digitally, through media and technology, particularly through screens. AI is another evolution of that.

So I guess at some level there's something missing here, where there's been something kind of fully adopted as a way of being human. Not thinking, but Googling. Not relating, but texting or emoting.

In some cases, not even dating a real human, but using artificial substitutes. And now you have something that's better at all those things than what they have been using.

And it's the problem.

I think there's certainly a lack of awareness here. For example, “AI is taking my job”—I don't know if that's the right take on this at all.

Because we have a really complicated relationship between Gen Zers and work to begin with.

And if you don't want AI taking your employment after you graduate, then don't let it take the job that you have of writing your own paper before you graduate.

You just have to put all this together.

And all of this goes back to what you said—formation gone wrong.

We are a world that has been formed by our digital habits more than almost any other habits that we have.

It's how we have developed habits of conversation, habits of effort and diligence, habits that have undermined our resilience and our ability to actually do hard work and respect authority.

So to suddenly blame the latest iteration of this is probably a little short-sighted.

At the same time, they're not wrong in terms of the threat that it plays to work.

And I think at the end of the day, anytime technology is a tool to help us be more fully human, it is legitimate.

Anytime it replaces essential and exclusively human behavior and activity—and even identity—that's when it becomes a problem.

But that happened a long time ago, even before AI.

EICHER: One last question before we let you go. The White House Religious Liberty Commission had its final hearing this week. It’s expected to issue its final report and policy recommendations next month. What do you hope is included in there?

STONESTREET: That's a great question.

I do think we need to, at some level, address this complicated aspect of religious freedom that is being violated in the name of governments interfering with parental rights.

That's not just a religious freedom issue, but it is a big religious freedom issue, because the parents that are most likely not to want school officials to transition their kids, for example, without their knowledge or permission, are religious ones.

And right now, I think that is a growing battle. So that needs to be stated clearly.

I think it needs to be extended beyond religious freedom, as we said, but it can't be less than that.

I do actually really appreciate, by the way, the scope of the conversation about religious liberty that this president and this commission has reached.

I think there needs to be serious protections figured out, particularly in blue states.

There needs to be some way to do something about a state like Colorado, who just relentlessly goes after religious conviction over and over and over—keeps going to the Supreme Court, gets smacked down and embarrassed, and comes back and does the same thing all over again.

We're kind of three and oh now, and they're oh and three, and yet the drama continues.

So that's part of it.

And I also think the parental rights piece, to me, is where so much of this lies right now.

That's a really important aspect of it.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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