The World and Everything in It: December 11, 2023

NICK EICHER, HOST: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: This week we kick off WORLD’s December Giving Drive.

EICHER: And because so many took advantage of a WORLD Mover dollar-for-dollar match, another WORLD Mover stepped up and made the same offer this week.

REICHARD: Right! Between now and Friday, every gift you make to start off our December Giving Drive will matched dollar for dollar.

EICHER: Double your impact this week at wng.org/donate. 

REICHARD: We hope you enjoy today’s program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! A lot of so-called “trials” these days happen within a federal agency, not in a traditional courtroom. The Supreme Court considers an individual’s right to a jury trial.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: The right to trial by jury, whether it's criminal or civil, is a very important foundational freedom in American society and a check on all branches of government.

NICK EICHER, HOST: 

That’s ahead on Legal Docket,

Also today the Monday Moneybeat, we’ll talk November jobs and big-bank CEOs’ congressional testimony.

And the WORLD History Book. Today the story behind a popular Christmas carol.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, December 11th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel war latest » The Israeli Defense Forces continue to carry out airstrikes on its shared border with Lebanon.

SOUND: [Airstrike]

That’s the northern border of Israel, where another Iran-backed terror group, Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israeli forces. And there is growing concern that Israel may soon be fighting a war on two separate fronts.

Meantime, in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to the west. The IDF says it just carried out more than 150 airstrikes in a 24-hour period.

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a message for militants fighting under the command of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar:

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

His words: “It is the beginning of the end of Hamas.  Don't die for Sinwar. Surrender – now.”

With a growing humanitarian crisis for civilians in Gaza, Israel continues to face mounting pressure from some global leaders to agree to a prolonged cease-fire.

But U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken counters:

BLINKEN: When it comes to a cease-fire in this moment, with Hamas still alive, still intact, and again, with the stated intent of repeating October 7th again, and again, and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem.

Blinken on ammo sale to Israel » Back in Washington, Secretary Blinken is also defending a move to sidestep Congress in selling thousands of rounds of tank ammunition to Israel.

BLINKEN: We want to make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against Hamas. A small portion of what has been requested is going through on an emergency basis.

And what has been requested is more than $100 billion dollars to pay for aid to Israel and Ukraine, among other things.

Blinken again warned that funds for aid to Kyiv are running low. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Biden tomorrow at the White House to underscore the need for more help.

Border--security package » But the purse strings are controlled a couple miles away on Capitol Hill. And Republicans are clear about what it will take for them to grant the president’s funding request. Sen. Roger Marshall:

MARSHALL: The border situation is getting worse every day; record days, 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 people crossing our border every day. Since Joe Biden became president, 10 million people have crossed the border illegally.

They want major policy shifts on the border, including changes to asylum rules.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said last week that’s a hill they will die on.

And many Democrats say they’re open to those changes. Sen. Chris Murphy told NBC’s Meet the Press, they won’t consider any kind of total freeze on asylum claims, but …

MURPHY: We are willing to talk about tightening some of the rules so that you don’t have 10,000 people arriving a day.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is asking for a half-billion dollars in federal aid to help deal with the border crisis in her state.

Hunter Biden » Attorneys for Hunter Biden are crying foul over his indictment last week on felony tax charges. But GOP Congressman Byron Donalds is pushing back, telling Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures:

DONALDS: His attorney Abby Lowell, the only reason why he got indicted is because his last name was Biden. No, Abby, the only reason that it took so long for him to be indicted is because his last name is Biden.

Hunter Biden is scheduled to appear before Congress this week for closed-door testimony. House GOP leaders have rejected his request—or in fact, demand—that he be allowed to testify publicly. And they say if Hunter defies their subpoena, they’ll hold him in contempt of Congress.

Tennessee tornadoes/storms » In Tennessee thousands of people are cleaning debris off of their lawns, and some are sifting through rubble where their homes once stood.

Powerful storms spawned a spate of tornadoes over the weekend, carving paths of destruction and killing at least six people.

A Nashville resident says one of his coworkers was among them.

RESIDENT: He was 31. He was 31 years old. He got a ten-year-old boy. And that's the other reason that I didn't sleep last night too. It's not... I'm thankful that we're all alive, but what hurts me more than anything is that he lost his life last night.

The storms also knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.

Javier Milei inaugural speech » In Argentina, newly elected President Javier Milei delivered his inaugural speech Sunday, bracing the country for difficult days ahead. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: If you think inflation in the United States has been bad, Argentina is currently grappling with 143 percent annual inflation. That’s almost 50 times greater than the current U.S. inflation rate.

That has plunged four in 10 Argentinians into poverty.

The South American nation also has an enormous trade deficit and crushing debt.

MILEI: [Speaking Spanish]

And President Milei did not sugarcoat the country’s predicament.

MILEI: [Speaking Spanish]: No hay plata.

“No hay plata” translates to “There is no money.”

And he added, “There is no alternative” to—in his words “shock treatment.”

Milei warned that the needed spending cuts will be painful in the short term, but it will get better.

The conservative economist-turned-politician won a landslide election victory by vowing to reverse the massive money-printing and big-spending policies that he said caused the crisis.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: The right to trial by a jury of one’s peers on Legal Docket. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday morning, December 11th, and you’re listening to The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

If you skipped the beginning, I do want to repeat here before we get going: we’re in our December Giving Drive, and we do know how it is in the holiday season, time flies! Holidays seem to sneak up on us. So many things to do to prepare and the time can get away in a hurry.

And this is a critical month for WORLD, too. This is when most of our revenue comes in … the resources we need to provide the programming you depend on.

So a generous WORLD Mover thought it’d be a great idea to provide an incentive to move early, offering a dollar-for-dollar match for all end-of-year gifts. Meaning that whatever gift makes sense for you is doubled.

REICHARD: But you have to give by Friday night, before midnight eastern time, to activate the WORLD Mover Match.

So the incentive is to qualify for the 2-X match by giving early. But, for me, you know I’m a box-checker. I like to cross things off. That makes it a double incentive: give early, double your impact, and shorten the old holiday to-do list.

EICHER: And, Mary, for everyone else, the listener who’s more in the mold of procrastinator Nick, or if you just like to hit the snooze button, we’ll remind you a few more times before the deadline.

Well, it’s time for Legal Docket. Today, we’ll cover one case, but it’s a big one. It hits on one of the great features of our system of government, what makes the checks-and-balances work: and that’s the separation of powers—specifically concerning federal agencies and their power to regulate.

Legal correspondent Jenny Rough is here to talk with us about it. Jenny, thanks for joining us.

JENNY ROUGH: Good to be back.

[Sips coffee]

Excuse me. Just taking a sip of coffee here. You understand. You’re both morning coffee drinkers, too, right?

REICHARD: Yes, mushroom coffee with collagen protein. Throw in a hard boiled egg on the side, I’m good.

EICHER: One cup, thank you very much, early, early, pre-commute. Hot tea the rest of the day, zero caffeine.

ROUGH: You know, tea, eggs, coffee beans, mushrooms, that’s all regulated by the Food and Drug Administration!

And that office commute? If you drove, your car most certainly had safety features regulated by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

In fact, since I’m on a roll here, I’ll add that if you swung by the post office on your way to work to, ah, mail in your WORLD Mover donation, maybe your Christmas cards, maybe all of it. Well, those services are overseen by the Postal Regulatory Commission!

EICHER: Aha, that big pot of alphabet soup simmering with federal initialisms and acronyms: the PRC, the FDA, NHTSA. We call it the administrative state, the sprawling body of government institutions that affects our day-to-day lives.

ROUGH: Yup.

REICHARD: Well, one agency we may not notice is one that our friend David Bahnsen does notice, I suspect, every single day: the agency that regulates the stock market, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. And our case today involves that agency: SEC v. Jarkesy.

ROUGH: Right, and even though the ruling in this case will be either for or against the SEC, the precedent it might create will potentially affect many agencies.

So, before we delve into today’s case, let’s review where these federal agencies fit within our system of government. By necessity, some of this is kinda basic, but important.

First: The Constitution divides our federal government into three branches.

REICHARD: Maybe we could say separates the government into three branches to separate the powers.

EICHER: Article I, legislative powers to make the law. Article II, executive powers to enforce the law. Article III, judicial powers to judge disputes about the law.

REICHARD: And if you hear the phrase Article III courts, that’s what it’s referring to. The federal judicial branch.

Think of Article III courts as a triangle, with district courts at the bottom, very broad, where the jury trials happen. Then the middle of the triangle, circuit courts. That’s the first level of appeal. Then we narrow all the way to the top, the Supreme Court, just one. The final level of appeal.

ROUGH: That’s a good way to picture it.

And Congress—we’re going back to Article I now—Congress has delegated some of its legislative power by creating federal agencies. Like the SEC.

So what does the SEC do? Well, the SEC makes rules and regulations that govern the stock market. Those rules have the force of the law. And the SEC can and does enforce them, along with other securities laws. The SEC also has its own administrative law judges who resolve disputes about them.

EICHER: In the administrative-law system, there is no federal judge or jury trial. If you have a dispute with the SEC, you get an SEC expert to decide your case.

If that sounds unconstitutional to you, you’ll resonate with the man whose name is on our case today, George Jarkesy. He sued.

REICHARD: Here are the facts. Jarkesy managed two hedge funds. The SEC went after him for fraud. First, it accused him of false advertising, said he led his investors to believe a big accounting firm served as the auditor and that a prominent investment bank served as broker.

ROUGH: That’s a problem. Because if a potential client thinks Jarkesy is working with a top-notch accounting firm or a reputable broker, the potential client might say, “Okay, I’ll give this guy my money.”

The SEC also said he misrepresented his strategies. Told his clients he was going to invest one way, but then invested another. And that he inflated the value of the funds’ assets.

EICHER: Now, when the SEC brought the claim against him for breaking the rules, it had a choice. It could have assigned the claim to the federal court system for a jury trial. Remember that bottom level of the triangle? The other choice was for the SEC to handle the matter in-house. “Handle it in-house” is how the SEC went.

At the end of the day, an administrative law judge found the SEC was right that Jarkesy committed fraud, and the SEC fined him almost $1 million.

Jarkesy eventually got his appeal to the Fifth Circuit.

REICHARD: So to keep this straight, he didn’t get a jury trial, but he was allowed to appeal to an Article III court. He entered the judicial system in the middle of the triangle, so to speak.

ROUGH: Exactly.

And piggy-backing off of that, the issue in this Supreme Court case isn’t whether Jarksey committed the fraud. The issue is who gets to decide if he committed fraud. He argues he’s entitled to a jury trial, a jury of his peers would decide. He says Congress can’t take away that right. So that’s what the Supreme Court will look at here.

REICHARD: It’s the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution that establishes the right to a jury trial.

But at oral argument, the government said it can take away a Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial in circumstances like these.

At the Supreme Court, Brian Fletcher represented the SEC. He started off by pointing out that the administrative state has operated this way for a long time.

BRIAN FLETCHER: Throughout our nation’s history, Congress has authorized the agencies charged with enforcing federal statutes to conduct adjudications, find facts, and impose civil penalties and other consequences prescribed by law.

EICHER: True, there’s a lot of history on the side of the SEC.

But it’s just as true that the Seventh Amendment has a long history. Here’s Justice Neil Gorsuch.

JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH: Well, we'd agree that the right to trial by jury, whether it's criminal or civil, is a very important foundational freedom in American society and a check on all branches of government, wouldn't we?

FLETCHER: We do.

ROUGH: Part of the analysis here depends on whether the dispute between the SEC and Jarkesy centers on a public right.

REICHARD: Public rights as opposed to private rights.

ROUGH: Yes. So think of private rights as lawsuits between two individuals, like a car crash.

Or even lawsuits between the government and an individual, where the government is going after your money or property.

Say, for breach of contract.

REICHARD: Contrast that with a public right. That usually involves some kind of public benefit. Like Social Security. If an individual wants a benefit from the government, an administrative law judge in the Social Security Administration would resolve the dispute.

Historically, Congress has assigned public-rights disputes to agencies.

EICHER: Here, the SEC argues it has a strong interest in protecting the public from securities fraud to secure for the public the right to fair and honest markets. So if that’s the analysis, that makes Jarkesy’s case appropriate for an agency.

But it isn’t that simple. Especially in cases like this where the government’s trying to take away an individual’s property, and money is considered property.

Justice Clarence Thomas said property rights are usually private. So he asked SEC lawyer Fletcher to clarify things.

JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS: And how would you define public rights?

FLETCHER: So I acknowledge, that the public rights concept is contested. The Court has never fully plumbed its outer perimeters

ROUGH: The Supreme Court hasn’t fully explained the difference between public rights and private ones.

Chief Justice John Roberts brought up all sorts of examples to show how this distinction gets easily tangled. Take the car crash between two individuals. We said earlier that’s a private-rights dispute. But maybe it’s not.

CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: The federal government, in association with the states, built the interstate highway system, an enormous benefit to members of the public. Could the government decide that accidents interfere with what they were trying to accomplish in the highway system and create an agency to hear and adjudicate who's liable, responsible, and how much for accidents on the highway system? No court, no jury?

REICHARD: Lawyer Michael McColloch argued for Jarkesy. He said the SEC’s “trial” wasn’t fair. I’m using air quotes around the word trial here. The administrative law system doesn’t use the same processes and procedures as a traditional courtroom.

MICHAEL MCCOLLOCH: The discovery rights are almost zero. The division of enforcement gets a one- or two- or three-year head start on you. The rules of evidence don’t apply. The hearsay rule doesn’t apply except when it does.

McColloch’s biggest hurdle was to convince the court that a 1977 case called Atlas Roofing didn’t apply. There, the federal agency known as OSHA, Occupational Health and Safety Administration, claimed a roofing company violated its regulations.

ROUGH:  The agency held the hearing. Eventually, the Supreme Court held that was okay, a jury trial wasn’t required. Regulating safety and health is a public right.

McColloch tried to distinguish this case from the Court’s precedent. But Justice Elena Kagan thought Atlas Roofing did apply. She said the court hasn’t even bothered with cases like it since.

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN: And the reason that we’ve not had those in 50 or 60 years is because those have been thought the easy cases. We’ve never suggested in a case where Congress has given an agency the power to enforce something, and the agency is bringing the charge, if you will, that, you know—that’s just settled!

McCOLLOCH: Well, it’s settled only to the extent no one’s brought it up, forced this issue, since Altas Roofing.

KAGAN: I agree! Nobody has had the chutzpah, to quote my people, to bring it up sinceAtlas Roofing.

REICHARD: Two more snarls are in this case, too. One asks whether Congress has given the SEC too much power by allowing it to choose either an agency hearing or a federal court. Another focuses on how SEC administrative law judges are removed. But the court didn’t ask about those.

ROUGH: Also, even if the Supreme Court decides this dispute does belong in Article III court, it doesn’t automatically mean a jury trial. There’s more analysis to be done.

I’ll end with this quote from the Chief Justice:

JUSTICE ROBERTS: The extent of impact of government agencies on daily life today is enormously more significant than it was 50 years ago. I mean, the government is much more likely to affect you and proceed against you before one of its own agencies than in court. And that concern and that threat is far greater today than when Atlas Roofing was set up.

ROUGH: I understand his concern. The government intrudes into more places every day. But shouldn’t the application of the law be the same, regardless of the size of the administrative state? Articles I, II, III, the Seventh Amendment. Either the Constitution allows this setup, or it doesn’t.

That’s this week’s Legal Docket. I’m Jenny Rough.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. He’s head of the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group, and he’s here now.

David, good morning!

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good to be with you, Nick.

EICHER: Let’s start with November jobs. Just shy of 200-thousand jobs added, the unemployment rate still below 4, coming in at 3.7 percent. And I know you like to look at a three months moving average, because the number fluctuates. But I’m looking at the whole year, David, and it’s really remarkably consistent. Only four months with under 200K jobs added (nothing under 100K) and all the rest considerably over that. But just eyeballing the chart, that’s easily a 200-thousand job average for the past 12 months. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?

BAHNSEN: Well, I think that's right. I think that if you look at over the whole year, there's been really impressive job growth. And particularly if you think about where expectations were at the beginning of the year, that a recession was assumed, that the Fed tightening was not only assumed to be something that would really eat away at jobs, but was hoping to eat away at jobs. I mean, that was sort of the whole intent, that they were going to use monetary policy to slow down the economy, meaning slow down job and wage growth. And it clearly has not happened.

Now, I don't think that the job market is as frothy, excessively hot, whatever that word means. The amount of job openings has come down. But it hasn't come down to below average levels, it's come down to closer to average levels. That's a very big difference. And I think that the, you know, 200,000 new payrolls in November is indicative of a good, but not overly, you know, excessive, where no one can figure out why things are happening the way they are. That's where they were when the economy reopened after COVID, is all of these so-called experts scratching their heads like, “How is this happening?” Right now, I think it's data that's within reasonable expectations.

EICHER: I want to ask about congressional testimony by the seven big-bank CEOs this past week on Capitol Hill. And I guess the big news coming out of that had to do with a recommendation on higher capital requirements. Banks having to hold a bigger percentage of deposits. What’d you take from that testimony?

BAHNSEN: Well, I thought that all of the bank CEOs did a very good job, and I most certainly am on their side of this issue. And I don't even know how to disagree with the other side. Because for the life of me, Nick, I can't understand what the argument might be. Now, I just want to make very clear, we're not debating about whether or not banks should be properly capitalized. There's no question that I favor banks having the systemic level of capitalization necessary to make them safe, ongoing institutions, particularly the very large ones, that we all know they would bail out as too big to fail if something were to happen. So I think that there should be these requirements for them to hold adequate levels of capital.

The idea, though, that they aren't is what is utterly confusing to me.They have as much capital as they've ever had at higher ratios. And each of these various things that has come up lately has had nothing to do with big banks not having enough capital. We've gone to the big banks and said, “Hey, will you help us out with these regional banks that have run into trouble?” And so with First Republic, with Silicon Valley Bank, it wasn't JP Morgan or Bank of America that were inadequately capitalized. We were going to them asking for them to help take on the liabilities and the depositors of the regional banks.

So what you have right now is a Fed that is, through their actions of rapidly raising rates the way they did in 2022, there were some issues that were created at some of the regional banks. And right now you have Congress talking, and it's really from a Fed recommendation, the vice chair of supervision, looking at wanting to bring in a global standard called Basel III to our big banks. And the point is, if you raise capital requirements, you have to hold more capital against what bank activity, then you have to get a higher return for the banks. And all you can do to do that is get it from customers, either by paying less in deposits or by charging more for loans. That's it. Those are the only options. And so to me, they're a gnat in search of a windshield. There is no issue here. They're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist and they're trying to do it in a way that is going to hurt customers or big banks.

EICHER: The wires moved a photo of the bankers holding up their hands in the affirmative to the question of whether the higher capital requirements idea would be harmful. All of them saying it would be. Is that kind of stuff persuasive with respect to policymaking? What do you think?

BAHNSEN: This isn't a congressional policy. I mean, they're not looking at codifying this in legislation. This is Federal Reserve regulation. Now, the Senate Finance Committee can go get all over the Fed, they have some oversight responsibilities with the Fed, but they don't really have the authority to do anything about it. But I may have made this comment before: Chairman Powell was asked about this at a luncheon event I attended with him a couple of months ago, and he didn't exactly seem like a cheerleader for it, either. So I think that you have a Biden appointee, Vice President of supervision, who came in looking to do something crazy like this. And I'm not even sure the rest of the Fed is on board with it, let alone the Senate Finance Committee. We'll see. There's always people like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who, if it were up to her, she’d just shut down all of the banks. So yeah, there'll be some support, but I would be surprised if there is a groundswell of support for it.

EICHER: What about the markets this week? Kind of quiet.

BAHNSEN: Well, I do think it's sort of nice to have had a boring week in the markets. It's been such a big rally in the stock market lately. That to see things settle a little bit. Oil prices down in the low 70s. You have to start wondering, is this just part of the reason markets are going higher, that oil didn't hold up there in the high 80s, didn't go in the 90s? Or are oil prices potentially indicative of, you know, a softening demand, even weaker results expected from China? I think a lot of the stories are getting set up right now in December that are going to matter into 2024. We already know about the election, oil is going to be a big story, China is going to be a massive story. And by the way, so is Japan. So it's a very interesting global set of stories right now.

EICHER: Ok, David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. You can keep up with David at his personal website, Bahnsen.com. His weekly Dividend Cafe is at dividendcafe.com.

Thank you, David!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, December 11th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today, how personal loss and the war between the states created a well-loved Christmas carol. WORLD Radio executive producer Paul Butler has the story.

PAUL BUTLER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: America’s most famous 19th century poet was the prolific writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

He was born into a religious family. In college he became a Unitarian. He had a high view of God and His creation, but he didn’t believe in original sin, the Trinity, or the preexistence of Christ. As a young man he wrote of religion this way:

LONGFELLOW: Would it not be better for mankind if we should consider it as a cheerful and social companion…and not as a stern and chiding taskmaster, to whom we must cling at last through mere despair, because we have nothing else on earth to which we can cling?

But Longefellow would soon learn that in moments of despair, he would need something to cling to. While studying abroad, Longfellow’s first wife died of miscarriage complications. He returned to America a more somber man, and threw himself into his writing.

He started teaching Modern Languages at Harvard University in 1834. His fame grew as a writer. He remarried in 1843 and by all accounts Frances Elizabeth Appleton and Henry Wadswsorth Longfellow had a happy home.

But in 1861, tragedy struck once again. While Frances was sealing an envelope with wax, her dress caught fire. Longfellow ran into the room and tried smothering it with a rug—but it was too little too late. She died of her injuries. Longfellow was severely burned himself in the process. It is one of the reasons he wore a long beard the rest of his life—to hide the physical scars. The inner scars couldn’t be hidden. Six months after the fire, Henry wrote of his anguish to a friend:

LONGFELLOW: I cannot speak of the desolation of this house and the sorrow which overwhelms and crushes me. It seems indeed as if the whole  world were reeling and sinking under my feet.

The nation’s Civil War added to Longfellow’s heartache. He had been engaged in the fight to end slavery since the 1840s. Many of his poems furthered the abolitionist movement and later motivated the Union troops. And while he believed the cause was right, he was despondent over the loss of human life. After news of the Union’s second defeat at Manassas, Longfellow wrote:

LONGFELLOW:  Every shell from the cannon's mouth bursts not only on the battlefield but in far away homes North or South carrying dismay and death.

In 1863, Longfellow was caught off guard when his own son Charles ran off to join the Union Army without his father’s blessing. It was yet one more devastating blow for the famous poet.

On December 1st, 1863, Longfellow is at dinner when a telegram arrives. He reads that his son has been severely wounded. Longfellow immediately leaves for Washington D.C.

After two fitful days of waiting and searching, father and son are eventually reunited. Charles is in critical condition, but stable. Longfellow brings him home. Henry doesn’t write much in his journal for a few months…but as Charles recovers, so too does his father.

Folklore claims that it’s during this Christmas of 1863—as Longfellow still mourns the devastating loss of his second wife—and the near death of his son that he hears church bells on December 25th and is inspired to sit down and write his poem: “Christmas Bells.” But there is no record of it in his journal. The poem is first published in 1865, and in subsequent publications it bears the authorship date of December 25th, 1864, more than a year after his son’s arrival home. Meaning he writes the poem after months of reflection, not in a moment of sorrowful inspiration.

It’s likely that he heard church bells on Christmas day 1864, and perhaps they brought him back to Christmas bells the year before, or the many painful Christmases before that. But a poem isn’t a photograph or recording of a moment of time. Rather it is a meditation.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth good will to men

Bells are a recurring image in Longfellow’s writing. They appear in a handful of his poems over the years. They symbolize the broad declaration of truth.

And thought how as the day had come
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth good will to men

The church bells are the unifying theme in the poem. The final line of each stanza is more than a refrain, its very repetition mimics the pealing of bells.

Till ringing singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day
A voice a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth good will to men

But in Longfellow’s day, the hope of peace is in danger of being drowned out by devastating war between the states. It is here that he draws upon his earlier journal entry about the battle of Manassas.

Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth good will to men

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth stones of a continent
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth good will to men

The second to last stanza is the most personal of the poem. Longfellow meditates on the condition of his own soul while speaking for the nation:

And in despair I bowed my head
There is no peace on earth I said
For hate is strong
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth good will to men

But then the poet metaphorically hears the bells over the tumult of war. And each line of the final stanza seems to put into words what the bells ring out, not just at Christmas, but all year round.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead nor doth he sleep
The Wrong shall fail
The Right prevail
With peace on earth good will to men

19th century Baptist Theologian Augustus Hopkins Strong is one of many Christians over the generations to appreciate Longfellow’s writing, yet he points out that Longfellow fundamentally misunderstood the Prince of Peace. Strong writes that Longfellow’s “Jesus is a model of virtue, but he is not what the New Testament represents him to be—Immanuel, God with us, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.’

And it is only after the world understands that, will wrong fail, and right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men.

My thanks to Moody Radio’s Jon Gauger for bringing to life the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: A Texas woman pregnant with a child who has a genetic anomaly is fighting for an exception to the abortion law, and she may succeed. We’ll have a report.

And, what some malls are doing to stay alive in the age of Amazon. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” —Hebrews 10:23-25

Go now in grace and peace.

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