The World and Everything in It — December 3, 2020

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A slimmer Democrat majority in the House leaves the party less room to maneuver. We’ll talk about what it may mean over the next two years.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Also travel restrictions around the world are affecting the flow of goods and services. We have a report on that.  

Plus WORLD’s Daniel of the Year.

And commentator Cal Thomas warns of threats to religious freedom that in turn threaten our other liberties.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, December 3rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BASHAM: And I’m Megan Basham. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: COVID-19 hospitalizations hit record high in U.S. » Hospitals are treating a record number of COVID-19 patients following the Thanksgiving holiday nearly 100,000 people. 

Daily coronavirus deaths could also shatter records very soon. Almost 2,700 people died from the disease on Tuesday—just short of the record high set back in April.  

Dr. Cindy Friedman with the CDC said the agency hopes you’ll be home for Christmas. 

FRIEDMAN: Cases are rising and the safest thing to do is to postpone holiday travel and stay home.

If you are going to travel for the holidays, the CDC says get tested before you go and after you get back.

But the agency also announced Wednesday that it’s loosening its quarantine guidance. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield says if you come in contact with someone infected with the virus, the data show you no longer need to quarantine for 14 days. Ten days will suffice or even 7 days with a negative test. 

REDFIELD: Only a 1 percent likelihood of someone being missed at 10 days. And then at 7 days, if you test out at day 5, 6 or 7, there was a 5 percent chance that you might miss someone.

The agency said the change makes following the guidance less of a hardship.

UK approves Pfizer vaccine for emergency use » Amid the COVID surge, the world is anxiously awaiting the arrival of several vaccines. But for at least some people in the UK, that wait is over. 

Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, developed with Germany’s BioNTech now has a green light in Britain. Regulators on Wednesday authorized it for emergency use.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said rolling out the vaccine will be difficult. 

JOHNSON: There are immense logistical challenges. It’s got to be stored at minus 70 degrees. Each person needs two injections three weeks apart. So it will inevitably take several months before all of the most vulnerable are protected. 

Minus-70 celsius is almost minus-100 degrees Fahrenheit. Many facilities simply aren’t equipped to store supplies at that temperature. 

The government has ordered vaccines for up to 20 million people, but not all the shots will be available immediately. 

U.S. regulators at the FDA will meet one week from today to review Pfizer’s application for emergency use in the United States. 

Ga. secretary state: second recount shows Biden won » Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says it appears that a second recount of presidential ballots will not change the end result. He told reporters Wednesday…

RAFFENSPERGER: As many of us have said, we wish that our guy would have won the election, but it doesn’t look like our guy has won the election. And it looks like Vice President Biden will be carrying Georgia, and he is our president-elect.

He said, as expected, the second recount has produced “no substantial changes to the results from any county.” 

Biden narrowly won the state by about 13,000 votes. An earlier hand recount of every ballot barely moved the needle.

Raffensperger also pushed back against President Trump’s claims that the election was stolen and called on the president to tone down his rhetoric. 

RAFFENSPERGER: He tweeted out ‘expose the massive voter fraud in Georgia.’ This is exactly the kind of language that is at the base of a growing threat environment for election workers who are simply doing their jobs. 

President Trump over the weekend blasted Republican Governor Brian Kemp for not intervening. 

TRUMP: The governor’s done nothing. He’s done absolutely nothing. I’m ashamed that I endorsed him.

He tweeted that Kemp should—quote— “use his emergency powers” to “overrule his obstinate Secretary of State, and do a match of signatures on envelopes.”

Kemp said state laws block him from interfering with elections. 

Hong Kong sentences pro-democracy activists » In Hong Kong, the government—now under the thumb of—Beijing is locking up pro-democracy activists for speaking out. That as China continues its crackdown on liberties in what used to be a semi-independent territory. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports. 

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Activist Joshua Wong will spend the next 13 months in a prison cell after protesting police brutality last year outside a police station. 

The government also sentenced activist Ivan Lam to seven months behind bars. And another, Agnes Chow, received a 10-month sentence.

Authorities arrested the three activists last month.

A magistrate said the trio called on protesters to “besiege” the police headquarters and undermined law enforcement during the rally, which drew thousands of people. 

The activists belonged to the defunct Demosisto political party and helped to draw global attention to Hong Kong’s crackdown on dissent. 

Hong Kong officials have arrested at least 31 people under China’s new so-called national security law which Beijing imposed on the territory in June.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin. 

Congressional panel warns of China military expansion » Prominent economist Walter Williams died on Wednesday after teaching one final class at George Mason University. 

The African American author and teacher grew up poor and worked as a cab driver before earning his doctorate degree in economics in 1972.

In The Wall Street Journal, Williams’ colleague, Professor Donald Bordeaux, said Williams eloquently challenged popular economic ideas, such as minimum wages. 

He authored more than 150 publications in well known journals and was known for his straight talk and plain English.

He told the EconTalk podcast…

WILLIAMS: I delight in being able to take roughly 600 words and explain potentially complex economic ideas without the jargon so that the ordinary person can understand.

He also wrote 10 books, including The State Against Blacks, which PBS later made into the documentary “Good Intentions.”

Walter Williams was 84 years old.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: House Democrats lower expectations for the next two years.

Plus, Cal Thomas on religious liberty and totalitarian regimes.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: It’s Thursday, the 3rd of December, 2020. This is The World and Everything in It and we’re glad to have you along with us today. Good morning, I’m Megan Basham.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up: the next House of Representatives.

Just two years ago, House Democrats walloped Republicans. They gained seats in districts President Trump did not carry. That gave Democrats a comfortable 35-seat majority in the House.

BASHAM: But on election day this year, voters bucked expectations. WORLD’s Sarah Schweinsberg reports on what that means for the 117th Congress.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: Heading into election day, Democratic leaders and polls predicted the party would keep its strong House majority and even pick up more seats.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, Republicans picked up 11 seats. That means Democrats still have the majority but it’s much narrower: just 11 seats. 

There are still two House races too close to call. In New York’s 22nd District, Republican Claudia Tenney leads by just 12 votes. And in Iowa’s 2nd, Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks leads by even less: six votes.  

If those two leads hold, Republicans will trail in the House by just nine seats. 

The Democratic reversal of fortunes has led to finger pointing within the ranks. 

In a call with party leaders, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger of Virginia accused the party of not protecting its more moderate members. 

SPANBERGER: We need to not ever use the word “socialist” or “socialism” ever again. Because while people think it doesn’t matter, it does matter. And we lost good members because of that.

But far-left Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had a different take. She said Democrats who lost failed to run inspiring campaigns. 

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Very effective Republican attacks are going to happen every cycle, and so the question is how do you defend ourselves against that. For example our digital campaigning is very weak, and this is an area where Republicans are actually quite strong.

Garrett Bess is the vice-president at Heritage Action, a conservative policy advocacy group. 

He attributes Republican gains to a combination of voters rejecting far-left policies and high voter turnout. 

BESS: I would attribute a lot of that to just the leftward lurch of the Democrat party and Republican voters who maybe aren’t enthusiastic about President Trump, just being terrified of the modern Democrat Party.

Despite heavy losses, Democrats are still expected to keep Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. But her tenure may be short-lived. In order to get support from younger, progressive members in 2018, Pelosi promised she would step out of leadership by 2022.  

Bess says that further weakened Pelosi’s power. 

BESS: She’s effectively lameducked her speakership. By saying those types of things, she’s in some way limiting her power with her own caucus. 

Mark Harkins is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute of  Government Affairs. Harkins agrees that Democratic leaders in the House have a difficult task ahead of them. They have to protect moderate members.

HARKINS: Because if the moderate members lose, they no longer are the House leadership.

But they also have to placate progressive members on issues like climate change and taxes. 

Here’s how Harkins expects them to do that. First, they won’t introduce as much legislation. That will cut down on the number of votes members have to take. A smaller voting record means less to answer for. 

HARKINS: It’s to their advantage to ensure that those moderates are not forced to take votes, which are difficult for them to defend, and for them to be able to maintain their seat. And so the way to do that is to lessen the number of votes.

The second tactic will be to introduce “safe” legislation—issues that could unite progressive and moderate members. Things like economic stimulus packages, immigration reform, and infrastructure spending. 

HARKINS: That’s where you’re going to see some of your environmental agenda, it would be in an infrastructure bill. Those combined, helping the economy while trying to protect the environment. 

Heritage Action’s Garrett Bess says Republicans could also get behind some of these bills. 

BESS: If economic stimulus type legislation comes to the floor that looks like transportation or infrastructure spending, or maybe broadband expansion. Those kinds of things would generate a significant amount of Republican support as well. 

And finally, to make sure the legislation Democrats bring to the floor actually passes, Georgetown’s Mark Harkins says leaders could waive an important procedural vote. 

HARKINS: It’s called a motion to recommit. And it’s a vote that’s given to the to the minority to allow them to say, hey, you get one shot to change one thing in this bill at the very end, and we’ll vote on it. 

The procedure can be used as a tool to add something controversial into a bill at the last minute. Heritage Action’s Garrett Bess says Democrats want to get rid of it because late-in-the-game additions from Republicans or progressives could weaken a bill or divide the majority. 

BESS: I think it’s proof that Pelosi and others are actually really concerned about their slim majority and want to do everything possible to protect their remaining vulnerable Democrat members.

Overall, Bess and Harkins say it’s likely that fewer bills will come out of the House in the next two years. And the Democrat’s slim majority will force them to play more to the middle. 

And while the prospect of more Congressional gridlock frustrates many voters, Mark Harkins says, in some ways, that’s the beauty of the system. 

HARKINS: When you stand on the minority side of government, it’s very comforting to know that it’s difficult to get things done, and that we move incrementally.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: travel restrictions and trade.

Most people live in countries that have closed their borders to all non-essential travel to contain the spread of COVID19. That’s disrupted holiday plans, family get-togethers, weddings and long-distance relationships.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: But those border restrictions also have an effect on essential travel, on commerce and the flow of goods and services. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown explains.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: Ogdensburg International Airport is tiny. It has one runway, surrounded by pine trees in upstate New York. You walk straight out of the terminal onto the tarmac, then up the steps onto the single-engine plane. It’s like having a personal jet. Especially since COVID hit. There’s hardly anyone else on the flight. 

SARACCO: It’s pretty dismal right now.

Stephanie Saracco is the airport manager. 

SARACCO: Percentage wise, we’re down about 84 percent.

Ogdensburg International is 4 miles from the Canadian border. The airport used to get at least half its business from Canadians driving over the bridge to catch a flight to Chicago or Washington, D.C. 

SARACCO: However, we have lost that for the time being. And I hope that comes back with a vengeance when the borders open.

People aren’t flying south for the winter, and college students aren’t coming to and fro for holiday vacations. But the airport is also suffering because commuters aren’t commuting. 

Essential workers are still free to cross the border. And trucks carrying merchandise can also pass. But people who live on one side of the border and work on the other, or people who travel for business, are out of luck.

Bill Anderson directs the Cross-Border Institute at the University of Windsor. He lives near the border of Ontario and Michigan, and studies the flow of trade crossing the Detroit River. 

ANDERSON: And there’s a lot of people to cross back and forth for business purposes. There’s a lot of interaction that goes on between companies that are located in Ontario and Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, all through that region. And those crossings are not generally possible right now.

He says the number of people crossing the border is down by about 95 percent. Trucks are still transporting goods…

ANDERSON: On the Ambassador Bridge, it’s anywhere from 6,500 to 7,000 trucks a day going back and forth.

…Because otherwise there would be empty spaces on grocery shelves. But in-person business meetings can’t happen. That has a less tangible, immediate effect. But it still has an effect.

In the Detroit River area, the auto industry is huge. Anderson says about half the traffic crossing the border is related to cars in some way.

ANDERSON: You’ve got companies to make cars and then you’ve got a whole bunch of companies that make the equipment that make the cars. And so they’re mold makers and automation specialists and whatnot.

So what happens when an automotive factory needs new machinery or new molds? 

ANDERSON: There’s a procurement process that’s quite challenging. When you make a contract, for many millions of dollars, to buy machinery to go into a new assembly line, you’re making a very big commitment. And quite often, they want you to come and visit them. And sometimes they want to come out and visit your site. 

In other words, a company wants to send someone across the border to check out the new machinery in Ontario before installing it in a plant in Detroit. But they can’t. Unless they get special approval from the government and even then, they’d have to quarantine for two weeks after returning.

ANDERSON: And they’re at a real disadvantage, because the fact that they can’t cross the border, they can’t do the face to face. And they’ve been losing contracts because of this.

So it’s not just a question of banning people and allowing goods. The two are interconnected in multiple ways. Annabelle Mourougane is an economist in Paris. She works for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

MOUROUGANE: We should not totally, totally differentiate between travel for goods and merchandise, and travel for people.

She points out that passenger planes typically double as cargo planes: They carry merchandise and goods in the belly hold, right alongside the passengers’ suitcases. Almost half of all air cargo tags along in passenger planes.

MOUROUGANE: So you have a lot of connection between the different types of transportation as well.

But since passenger planes haven’t been flying as much, the price of air cargo has gone way up. Bill Anderson says many airlines have been trying to retrofit passenger planes to become cargo planes.

ANDERSON: The airlines have been trying to make a shift to air cargo. Because that’s about the only place where decent revenue was coming from.

Many countries also rely on foreign workers to cross borders and staff hotels, work as nannies, harvest crops. That kind of travel isn’t impossible right now but Annabelle Mourougane says it is difficult.

Quarantines and testing requirements take time and money. That slows down the whole trade process of both goods and services. And many businesses may just decide it’s not worth it. 

That’s one reason Bill Anderson says it’s important to get borders right.

ANDERSON: I don’t think people don’t realize what that trade relationship looks like. It’s like, stuff is coming out of a factory in the United States, getting on a truck, going into Canada, and being installed in a car that comes down the production line that day, or the next day. It’s all, you know, sort of orchestrated in that way. And as a result, you know, the border really has to work, or, or a lot of our industrial systems get into big trouble.

Annabelle Mourougane says countries need to ease border restrictions as soon as possible…

MOUROUGANE: Because it has a detrimental effect on the economy. 

…But it only works if multiple countries are on board with lifting restrictions. At the very least, Mourougane hopes nations will clarify the rules a bit.

MOUROUGANE: Adding more clarity on the rules, and adding more coordination across countries will help facilitate the movement of these workers.

In the meantime, businesses are working around restrictions as best they can. At the Ogdensburg International Airport, manager Stephanie Saracco hopes business picks up soon.

SARACCO: We are open for business and when folks want to fly, we are here.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Calling all deer hunters! Beware of a deer in the Czech Republic packing heat.

Here’s what happened. 

Several hunters along with a hunting dog were staked out in the forest. The dog spooked the deer, causing the panicked stag to run straight at the hunter.

The deer’s antlers tore the man’s sleeve and snagged the strap of his .22- caliber Hornet rifle in his antlers, then scurried away. 

Another hunter reported seeing a deer with a gun about a mile away.  

Revenge of the beasts! As though 2020 couldn’t get any worse.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 3rd.  You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we are so glad you are!

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD’s 2020 Daniel of the Year.

Each year for more than two decades, WORLD has honored courageous Christians for their faithful work in the kingdom of God. 

This year’s honoree is civil rights leader John Perkins.

REICHARD: Perkins was born in 1930 and grew up as a Mississippi sharecropper. His grandmother reared him after the death of his mother. When Perkins was a teenager, police shot and killed his brother. 

Perkins fled Mississippi, vowing never to return. But after he put his faith in Christ, he and his young family returned to the South. He began a ministry to fight poverty.

BASHAM: Perkins organized economic boycotts of businesses that discriminated against blacks. That led to his arrest in 1970 in Mississippi. Police beat him so badly that much of his stomach had to be removed. 

Yet his response to these injustices? He’s spent the last 50 years preaching Christian forgiveness and reconciliation.

REICHARD: In last month’s WORLD Magazine profile, Marvin Olasky wrote: “John Perkins is our…Daniel of the Year because police killings, riotous responses, and a bruising presidential campaign have made his refusal to hate more important to civil peace than at any time since the Civil War.”

BASHAM: Six years ago, John Perkins spoke to the students of Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri. His message was titled: “Reconciliation and Redemption.” 

In honor of Perkin’s recognition as our Daniel of the Year, here is a portion of that speech. Let’s listen.

JOHN PERKINS: The thing that’s driving me now is, there is a new people emerging in the world. And I think it’s because we understand the incarnation in a different way. I think we begin to understand the fullness of it. There’s a new generation coming, there’s a change coming. There’s a new people. 

It’s almost like He’s creating new churches. Churches that build on multiculturalness. Churches who want to reach across these racial lines. People who hear the gospel—that God was incarnated, and is incarnated in Christ.

And He’s reconciling the world unto Himself. And He’s given us the ministry, and there’s a new generation that’s coming and taking that responsibility. They take it out of joy. Because they begin to understand what God has done for them. We can understand this salvation, what salvation is all about. God saves us from our Adam sin. He saves us from our personal, day by day sin. 

I like John 1:9. I’m talking about salvation. I’m talking about God taking the burden away from us, and releasing us, and setting us free so we can serve God. That was the idea of redemption. Not to set us free to serve just ourselves. He even says, with the work of our own hands, so that we can give to those other than me. Myself is not the end. 

He says for me, to love Him with all my heart and all my soul and all my strength, and then to love your neighbor as you love yourself. God has told us to go into all the world. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every ethnic group. Teach them to observe all things, whatsoever I commanded you. And He said that He’s now at the right hand of God. God is there and I think He’s working now.

I think He’s calling out right now, a people for His name, that’s gonna take on His work. And then we are going to overcome this racism and bigotry. There ain’t no room for that. It’s a contradiction to truth. 

The question I’m getting from these young people is how to? They’re saying how do we do that? Lord, teach me, I want to know more about it. I want to know more about the culture. I want to enter that culture. We want to be reconciled. We want to be brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. People are adopting children. They’re doing all these things. We’re being intentional about that.

Moses was ordered to make the tabernacle…what we make on earth is supposed to reflect what’s going on in heaven. And in heaven, there’s this multitude of people who got the land which they came from, they got their color, they got their nationality from those places, but they are worshipping God together.

That’s what He wants us to do. That was the church He sent into the world. That’s when He sent the Apostle Paul, from the Church of Antioch. He told them first to go to Jerusalem. The opening church was a multiracial Church. There were proselytes from all over the world, from all the nations that were known in the world. Those people were at Jerusalem.

And when that 120, when the Holy Spirit came to live in us, and to form the church—you have got to know that—there are two aspects: there’s the individual, and then there is the church, and the church houses the truth of God, and no one person has the truth of God. 

And if one person tells you that he’s got the full truth of God, you’d better run away from him. He’s a cult leader. The gospel, the truth of God was committed to the saints of God. There has to be the elders, there has to be the deacons. There has to be the overseers, whatever you call them. They were there in order, because God gives us truth in bits and pieces.

And that truth comes together. He doesn’t give everybody the same gift. Neither did He give everybody all of the truth. And we’re to learn from each other and be guided by each other. That’s what God wants, and I see that church moving in the world.

Jesus said, “Go into all the world. Lo I’m with you, even to the end of the world.”

BASHAM: That’s World’s Daniel of the Year, John Perkins, speaking to students at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri in 2014.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Coming up next, a preview of Listening In. This week, a conversation with  author and theologian Trevin Wax. In this excerpt, he and host Warren Smith talk about a certain worldly view of life and how we ought to counter it as Christians.

WARREN SMITH: There’s kind of an umbrella expression that I’ve heard psychologists and philosophers use and that is the phrase “expressive individualism.” Can you say more about what that means?

TREVIN WAX: Expressive individualism is the academic term for describing this way of life in which the purpose of life is to find yourself and then express yourself to the world. It’s this idea that there is only one way of realizing your humanity. And you must discover what that unique essence is that you have deep down inside of you, no matter what, you know, your religious affiliation, or what the previous generation or what your friends or family or anyone would tell you, you, you have to be yourself.

SMITH: Given that what you’ve just said is true. The question then becomes, for me, what’s the antidote to that disease? 

WAX: I think it’s important for us to spot this philosophy when we see it. To recognize what in it is appealing, and true. Because there is truth about our individuality. Our uniqueness. Our being specially made in the image of God. I mean, there is truth in there. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be so appealing. It wouldn’t catch on with so many people if there were nothing true about it. 

But to dig deeper to find out what the deeper longings are behind that, so that when we do then begin to show how that way of life doesn’t work, how it doesn’t actually account for the persistent feelings of guilt, and shame that we have, that it doesn’t actually resolve our sin problem, that it doesn’t actually lead to the fulfillment we thought it would lead to. What you want to do is, you want to present some of the problems with that way of life, almost as if you’re putting a pebble in someone’s shoe that they’ll walk around with. So that even if they haven’t completely come to faith, yet, they’re beginning to doubt the understanding of life that they’ve always had, and beginning to be open at least to another approach, which would have us look up to God first. 

So that when we see ourselves, we see ourselves in light of God, in light of His holiness, see our sinfulness, see our need for him. See the fact that Jesus counters this. Looking at this approach to life when he says, you know, the way that you gain your life is by losing it. It’s on the other side of self denial that we find true and lasting fulfillment and joy, right? 

So it’s very counterintuitive. But Jesus’s words of wisdom and truth here continue to have a powerful effect today and people will be open to them, when they begin to recognize that this way of life that passes for common sense has more problems than they may have ever anticipated.

BASHAM: That’s Trevin Wax talking to Warren Smith. To hear the complete conversation, look for Listening In tomorrow wherever you get your podcasts.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Commentator Cal Thomas now on how America’s guarantee of religious freedom is at odds with the power hungry.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: In totalitarian societies, governments suppress the church and religious worship. That’s because dictators believe citizens should worship them as the highest authority. They view the real High Authority as a threat to their power and position.

In the United States, religious liberty has been under siege for some time. Last week’s Thanksgiving gift to believers from the Supreme Court may be only a temporary reprieve from government’s assault on faith and conscience. The narrow 5-4 ruling serves as a warning the threat is not over.

The court majority ruled that Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York overstepped his authority and the Constitution, when he arbitrarily declared that, during the COVID pandemic, worship services must be limited to a number he created out of whole cloth.

When government sets itself up as the ultimate authority on all things, including the right to gather and worship freely, other liberties are also at risk. If the First Amendment is to be challenged, even watered down when it comes to faith and practice, why not impose stricter controls on speech and the press? That’s what totalitarian states do. Once people believe the principle that government endows rights, it is a very short step for government to take them away.

In China and elsewhere around the globe, dictators view God as a challenge to their rule. They demand total fealty. Those who seek to go over their heads with appeals to Heaven must be arrested, jailed, and in some instances murdered—all to preserve the almighty state.

One of the founding principles that brought Pilgrims from England to America was the freedom to worship God as their consciences dictated. The Constitution guarantees that right. Thomas Jefferson penned the term “separation between church and state” in a private letter to a friend. But in more recent years it has come to mean the right of the government to define the meaning of “church.” That restricts the practice of faith to one hour on Sunday morning. And in the case of Gov. Cuomo and some other governors and mayors, it dictates how many people can gather to worship Someone other than them.

President-elect Joe Biden has promised to name more liberal judges to federal benches. If he succeeds, expect more challenges to religious freedom and other constitutional rights, including the right to free speech and the right to keep and bear arms.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Tomorrow: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet.

And, I’ll review the Netflix series called The Queens Gambit. 

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Megan Basham.

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

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