The World and Everything in It: July 18, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. My name is Joyce Rockwell, I live in Dunwoody, Georgia, with my husband David, and I'm a retired nurse. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Elon Musk launches a new AI company and the Senate hears of AI’s threats to national security. What are the opportunities and dangers?

AUDIO: The overarching goal of xAI is to build a, a good AGI with, with the overarching purpose of just trying to understand the universe.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today Germany slows down on legalizing medically assisted suicide, while other nations debate expanding the practice.

And Part One in a story of how border communities care for the remains of migrants who die trying to enter the U.S.

And WORLD Opinions commentator Bethel McGrew calls out political bias in critics of a “conservative” film that succeeds at the box office.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, July 18th. 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: Time for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: 

Russia grain » Russia says it’s pulling the plug on a wartime deal that allowed Ukraine to safely ship grain and other goods to countries around the world.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres called that announcement very bad news.

GUTERRES: Today’s decision by the Russian Federation will strike a blow to people in need everywhere.

Ukraine is often referred to as the world’s “bread basket.” Many countries that struggle to fend off famine in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia rely heavily on grain from Ukraine.

Samantha Power is Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

POWER: It’s just another example of Russia callousness and disregard for human lives and livelihoods.

The Kremlin said it would suspend the Black Sea Grain Initiative until demands to get Russian food and fertilizer to the world are met.

While Moscow has complained about restrictions on Russian shipments, it has shipped record amounts of wheat since last year.

Kerch Bridge » Meantime, Vladimir Putin is stepping up security around a bridge that has served as a key supply route for Russia’s military after a fresh attack on the bridge. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher reports.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: The Kremlin claims that two Ukrainian maritime drones carried out the strike on the Kerch Bridge which links Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea.

The attack temporarily shut down the bridge and snarled traffic for hours.

Putin claimed Russia no longer uses the bridge for military purposes and called the strike an act of terrorism, adding that two civilians were killed.

The United Nations recently estimated that more than 9,000 civilians have died in Ukraine since Russia invaded.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Southwest U.S. heat » Record-breaking heat is seering the southwestern U.S.

On Monday, Arizona residents marked the 18th straight day with temperatures topping 110 degrees. And the high temp in California’s Death Valley on Sunday, almost 130 degrees.

A Death Valley tourist describing the oppressive heat.

Tourist: Oh, your arms are burning. Your face is burning. We just bring a lot of water. I bring three ice chests.

Forecasts say the heatwave is moving east, preparing to bake Southeastern and Gulf states this week.

PA flood, NE rain update » As southwestern states pray for rain, the skies have opened up over the northeast.

With historic rain threatening to turn more roads into rivers, New York Governor Kathy Hochul urged residents to stay home.

HOCHUL: We are in a very very what I would call an unstable weather condition. We are in danger of seeing record rainfalls again substantial rainfall and every part of the eastern side of New York is under a flood watch at this moment.

Severe weather also grounded hundreds of flights and knocked out power for thousands.

Major flooding in Vermont last week led to hundreds of highwater rescues and evacuations.

Candidates on Israel » Several Republican White House hopefuls gathered in Washington on Monday to talk foreign policy and all things Israel.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told a crowd at the Christians United for Israel Summit:

DESANTIS: Jerusalem is the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish people and U.S. policy must recognize that.

DeSantis said that while he served in Congress, he played a key role in establishing the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

Former Vice President Mike Pence touted the signing of a historic pact between Israel and Arab neighbors while he was vice president.

PENCE: The most significant breakthrough for peace in decades, the Abraham Accords.

And former ambassador Nikki Haley told the audience that she bolstered America’s bond with Israel as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

2024 campaign funding » Republican candidates, though, have a lot of catching up do in the fundraising department.

President Biden’s reelection campaign now has $77 million dollars in its war chest, according to new campaign finance reports. Biden’s campaign raised $72 million in the second quarter of this year.

Former President Trump raised less than half that total in the same period, $35 million. Governor Ron DeSantis was next in line, raising more than $20 million.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: The threats and opportunities of artificial intelligence. Plus, respecting the human dignity of migrants who die at the border.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 18th of July, 2023.

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

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

First up on The World and Everything in It: Artificial Intelligence.

Last week, the news was full of AI. From secret briefings at the Senate to Elon Musk’s new company, x-AI, to the new Mission: Impossible. What’s going on, how should we understand the opportunities and threats?

REICHARD: Joining us now is Jason Thacker. He’s an assistant professor of philosophy and ethics at Boyce College in Louisville. He also is the director of the research institute at The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Good morning, Jason.

JASON THACKER: Morning, Mary. Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Last Tuesday, the Senate held a closed-doors meeting to discuss the national security threats of artificial intelligence. Now, we don’t yet know the specifics of what they heard, but later in the week Senate subcommittees held hearings to discuss copyright violation and defamation risks.

It’s ironic that on Wednesday, Tom Cruise’s new movie about a rogue artificial intelligence system hit the big screen, essentially driving home the point that some AI systems are just too powerful and dangerous to control.

Jason, what are some potential real-life national security threats of artificial intelligence?

THACKER: Yeah, I love the irony in that is because I think this kind of reveals to us that AI is not some kind of far off flung reality that maybe we'll one day have to address; it's actually affecting us deeply now. It's shaping our understanding of God, ourselves, as well as the world around us. So we need to be not only thinking about some of the future potential and some of the dangers, but also a lot of the real world kind of influence now. But in terms of kind of the national security debate, there's a lot of different areas that we can touch on. But I think some of the big ones in terms of misinformation and information warfare, the idea not only being able to share these things widely, but also to create them widely, especially with generative AI. We have the potential and the ongoing use of cyber warfare and increasingly using artificial intelligence in that, as well as a lot of the military uses of these things with our weapons and tech and weapon technology, especially increasingly putting humans in what are known as off the loop in the sense of not being directly control of some of these systems and how quickly they're gonna have to respond.

REICHARD: Meanwhile, on Friday, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk unveiled a new company called xAI. Here he is explaining it in a Twitter Spaces recording on Friday. You’ll hear him mention AGI. That stands for artificial general intelligence. It’s the ability of a system to perform the variety of tasks humans do at the same level or higher.

ELON MUSK: I guess the overarching goal of xAI is to build a, a good AGI with, with the overarching purpose of just trying to understand the universe. I think the safest way to build an AI is actually make one that is maximally curious, and, and truth seeking. So, like, you know, this, this won’t ever actually get fully to the truth, it's not clear, but, you want, should always aspire to that.

Musk went on to talk about how AI could help researchers understand things like dark matter, gravity, and where all the aliens are.

Jason, this venture sounds like something straight out of Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. What do you think Musk is likely to find with this company?

THACKER: Yeah, I find it really interesting in the way we frame that because there are a lot of ways that artificial intelligence will be used and is already being used to discover new, new aspects of reality and objective truth, especially a lot of empirical or scientific truths. But pairing that with AGI and saying that this is definitely a possibility, or something we're trying to pursue is interesting to me, especially because general AI is a dream for many. We're not even sure if it's possible from a philosophical standard, especially from a faith perspective, if this is even something obtainable, to create a human-like intelligence, we haven't been able to do that before. Everything is known as more narrow artificial intelligence. But I really think it comes down to that idea of the material world can't really reveal a lot of the meaning and the value that we're looking for even a lot of the moral truths that we look for. It's not grounded in nature. It's actually grounded in a supernatural power. It's grounded in God Himself. And I think that's something interesting as we start to navigate a lot of these questions. There are a lot of potentials, but there are also significant dangers and a lot of overhyped promises that I think we need to be aware of in a lot of these debates.

REICHARD: Well, in other news, the Instagram companion app called Threads was the number one downloaded program last week, that is up until an app called Remini stole the spotlight. It's designed to improve the quality of photos and videos. But on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that users were able to go a step further and add elements to their pictures. And in particular, there's a feature to generate pictures of babies based on the features of adults in the uploaded pictures. I mean, it's no joke, the app creates photo realistic portraits of families that don't even exist.

Now here's where the article gets interesting. Dalvin Brown, the reporter, interviewed several people who were using the app this way who are childless in their 20s and 30s. Brown says that this app is helping people to envision themselves as parents down the road and implies that that's a very good thing. So is it a good thing, or is something wrong with this picture?

THACKER: Well, I say that it's kind of both/and in many ways. I think there's some kind of good things that reveals even the centrality the family. I think, often in a society that prioritizes kind of the isolated individual, and even makes us more isolated with our tools, reminding us that it's not, we can't just do life alone, there actually is the centrality of the family, God's good design for men and women and children. So it's revealing in some sense, in a good way. But in other ways, it's also showing a lot of the loneliness, I think that we experienced in our society, how addicted we are to our devices, and how many even in the story have put off childbearing, put off relationships to focus on their career. I also think it can give us kind of a false sense of control and a false sense of power in the sense that we are able to create these things. There are a host of issues in terms of privacy and data-related issues in terms the handling this type of information, uploading these type of photos to the server. So I would encourage and and caution listeners to be very careful about the things that we upload online, especially into a lot of these AI based systems, because there are a lot of future ramifications and a lot of stuff we haven't even figured out yet, but there's a lot going on in that story, obviously, but I do think it's interesting, kind of a reminder of how we've been created in the longing for family and community.

REICHARD: Jason Thacker teaches at Boyce College and directs research at The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Jason, good talking with you. Thank you.

THACKER: Yeah, thank you for having me.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Reconsidering euthanasia in Canada and Europe.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Canada’s euthanasia regime is known as MAID, Medical Assistance in Dying. A few months ago, Canada put on hold a plan to offer MAID to people with serious mental health conditions. The reason? Medical experts said the health care system wasn’t ready for the case load.

REICHARD: And just over a week ago, July 7th, in Germany, lawmakers voted down two bills that would have legalized euthanasia for patients with excruciating pain.

Is this a shift back to reason, or just speed bumps on the road to expanding the industry of assisted death?

EICHER: Joining us now to talk about it is Alex Schadenberg. He’s the Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in London, ON.

REICHARD: Good morning, Alex.

ALEX SCHADENBERG, GUEST: It's great being with you. And I'm glad you're dealing with these difficult topics.

REICHARD: Could you give us some background on the pattern of legalizing euthanasia? Particularly in Canada, but also if there are any parallel developments in Europe?

SCHADENBERG: Well, there were very few countries that legalized euthanasia. The Netherlands were sort of in a sense first when they legalized it in 2002. But they, in fact, had legalized it in the 70s to a court decision, and then didn't formally legalize it till 2002. But we have, there was very few countries and then in the last few years has been several that have decided to go ahead and legalize this. Nonetheless, it's actually not really a landslide is, like a lot of people would like to describe. In fact, there's been every year there's, there's multiple states and multiple countries that debate euthanasia, or assisted suicide and defeat it, and there's the odd country that goes ahead and legalize it. So you know, it's not as people like to say that there's this big push to legalize assisted suicide or euthanasia, in fact, not quite the truth.

REICHARD: I guess we need to distinguish between those two. What’s the difference between euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide?

SCHADENBERG: Right, they're very similar, but different at the same time. So with euthanasia, it's a form of homicide. So the doctor, or nurse practitioner as it is in Canada also, would lethally inject you, they would give you, lethally injected lethal drugs into your bloodstream, you would die then by a homicide. Whereas assisted suicide is using the same drugs with the same intention but you are given or prescribed the drugs and you have to take it yourself. So one is assisting a suicide and the other is a homicide.

REICHARD: In light of Germany’s recent move to not pass these laws, do you think there’s hope for pressing back, or is the cat out of the bag?

SCHADENBERG: Well, actually, there's been lots of hope for pressing back. The situation in Germany is far more complicated, though, than that, because what happened in Germany in 2020, is in February of 2020, there was a court decision that didn't legalize assisted suicide. What it did is it said that German citizens have a right to suicide is sort of like this radical autonomy idea. Then there was another court decision in Germany in 2022, which said that they don't have a right to be prescribed drugs. So they have a right to suicide, but they don't have a right to be prescribed drugs for suicide. And then the recently the Bundestag, the parliament dealt with two bills. One was more, how would you say liberal than the other nonetheless, they debated two bills, and they voted on two bills, and they defeated both of the bills. So in fact, assisted suicide has not been legalized by the legislature, but by the courts, suicide has become a type of a right. It makes it a little bit confusing.  But the fact of it is is a difference between saying you can go and kill yourself and doctors will approve it and give you those lethal drugs, there's a difference, there's a clear difference between the two and in the parliament clearly recognized that.

REICHARD: Alex, why did Canada pause expanding access to MAID earlier this year? Do you see a path towards protecting more vulnerable people or is this more likely a temporary delay?

SCHADENBERG: So what happened in Canada is that in 2021, we expanded our euthanasia law. So the original law said that---that was passed in 2016---said that a person's natural death had to be reasonably foreseeable, which wasn't defined, and it created a ton of confusion. Nonetheless, it meant that if you did not have a terminal condition, you were not qualified for MAiD euthanasia, right? And then in 2021, Bill C-7 was passed, which struck that down, but they also added to that law. And additionally, you could have euthanasia for mental illness alone. Okay. But then they put a hold on that for two years, because they said, you know, we just weren't ready to be killing people with mental illness. Yeah, just whatever that means. Anyway, that's really what they were saying we're not ready yet for this. And now they've delayed it for another year. It has more to do with the fact that after legalizing euthanasia, under Bill C-7 with for non-terminal conditions, there's been a lot of deaths of people with disabilities who made it very clear, they did not want euthanasia, they do not want to die, but they've been living in extreme poverty, or they're finding it impossible to get medical treatment, or they, they're, they're experiencing homelessness. So they're being approved for death based on their disability. So let me go back one step, when Canada got rid of that your natural death had to be reasonably foreseeable what remained in the law is that you needed to have an irremediable medical condition, which is not really defined. So what that means is people with disabilities, or almost any disability essentially qualify to be killed by lethal injection, if they ask for it, because you know, to have a disability, essentially, you have an irremediable medical condition. They didn't define it, because of course, they removed the terminal portion out of that. So there's a lot of people who have chronic conditions that you would say are irremediable. But they're not dying in any way. But these same people now qualify for what they would call medical aid and dying, which is homicide, euthanasia. And the disability community was very, very upset by the fact that people were dying without getting proper care and support that in fact, the government was trying to turn down the heat and one way to turn down the heat is to delay the next expansion. And of course, the next expansion was euthanasia for mental illness, which they had already approved. But as I say, they had set it to come into place starting in March of 2023. So by delaying it, they turned down the heat on themselves is what I would say, and I think that's what it was all about, so.

REICHARD: Is there any aspect of the euthanasia story that you think needs more attention or is being misreported in the mainstream media?

SCHADENBERG: Well, the fact of it is, is when we're talking about assisted suicide and euthanasia, there's actually always two big, big issues. The first is why was someone being approved. And you say, Oh, well, you know, the law is tied to the laws this or the laws that? Well, I can tell you in my own country, the law is not defined. But there's the second question is why are people asking for death? And I think that's the greater question because someone like me, who is opposed to killing people, I'm primarily concerned with trying to help someone who is in a situation as to why they're actually asking for it, to convince them that this is not the way out. And most people are asking for death, not because of their medical condition, but because they're experiencing loneliness. They're experiencing, you know, depression, they are feeling that their life is lacking meaning, purpose or value. They're going through a situation where they feel that death is better than continued life. And so the answer to this then is given, "Well, let's give them lethal drugs." Well, that's abandonment, okay, so when they talk about assisted suicide or euthanasia is being about freedom of choice and autonomy? No, this is a lie when you actually look at the why that people are asking for this. It's all about abandoning people in their time of need. This is what this question is essentially about. And this is not about autonomy. This is about rejection.

REICHARD: Alex Schadenberg is the Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Alex, thanks so much.

SCHADENBERG: Thank you so much.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Last week in the Scottish Highlands, hundreds of golden retrievers and their humans gathered at the birthplace of the breed.

SOUND: [Barking, photographer clicks]

The video shows what you’d expect with the easy-going, easy-to-train breed: scads of pups excited to be there, eventually sitting for a photograph as a good pup should. Especially when treats are on the line!

The first golden retrievers arrived more than 150 years ago when a Scottish aristocrat crossed a water spaniel with a wavy-coated retriever.

So he was able to get dogs that were suited to the rugged terrain of the Highlands.

That first litter of pups set the standard for the breed. Names? Primrose, Cowslip, and Crocus.

EICHER: Well, you did say an aristocrat.

REICHARD: I did! And that’s where their descendants gathered to mark the happy occasion.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 18th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: death on the border.

A quick listener note: this story may be too heavy for younger listeners, so a warning to parents. The details are going to be coming here pretty quickly.

For the past two years, southern border communities have struggled to handle the massive influx of illegal immigrants.

EICHER: But not all migrants make it across the border. It’s often a dangerous crossing, and many die on the way.

When their remains are found, most have fake identification or none at all.

WORLD correspondent Bonnie Pritchett paid a visit to the border to find out about the people trying to restore dignity to the dead. It’s a three-part story, and we begin today with part one.

SGT. AARON HORTA: We're going here on Highway 57. We’re going to respond to a call in reference to a deceased person. So, we’re in route to the to make contact with Border Patrol. Okay?

BONNIE PRITCHETT, REPORTER: Aaron Horta is Maverick County’s Deputy Sergeant. And the body he’s going to see he suspects that it belongs to another migrant. When we met Horta in late March, officials had already responded to about 20 migrant deaths this year. As of July 11, that number is 44.

SOUND: [TRUCK STARTING, DOOR SHUTTING, WARNING DINGS]

Horta climbs into his black Chevy truck and calls Border Patrol.

HORTA: This is from the Maverick Sheriff's officer. This is Sergeant Horta. I received a call reference to a deceased person. Where is it located at, sir? 

Dark gray clouds shroud the sun as Horta pulls away from the Sheriff’s Office in Eagle Pass, Texas. He’s heading toward the 17,000-acre ranch where Border Patrol agents discovered the body.

HORTA: Before this before the border crisis once every Blue Moons we went to a ranch on a call in reference to a deceased person. Now, last last year, we responded every every week, every day. One time I responded five times to a deceased person in the day. Five times. 

About 25 miles of scrubland later, Horta turns off the two-lane highway at a ranch gate. Border Patrol officers are waiting. Soon after, a Memorial Funeral Services employee arrives, tasked with collecting the remains.

The procession moves slowly along a deeply pitted dirt road. Eight miles into the ranch, the lead truck’s brake lights signal we’ve arrived.

HORTA: It's a female. Female deceased. The smell. Thank God it wasn’t hot. The smell was… 

A few feet from the road, on the other side of a rusty barbed wire fence, lie the woman’s remains. She’s lying face down in the dirt and tall dry grass. Beside her is a black backpack.

But its contents reveal little about its owner.

HORTA: She only had like a water bottle like halfway. Just one.  And some chips, some Doritos chips. But no I.D.

With no identification, she’ll be known by her Maverick County case number. Or, more commonly, Jane Doe.

In 2022, a record 853 immigrants died crossing the US southern border. That’s according to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

OWENS: When they get to the border, they cross a dangerous and treacherous river.

That’s Jason Owens, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. In April, he was chief agent for the Del Rio Sector. That includes Maverick County. He spoke during a Border Patrol rescue demonstration in Eagle Pass. Behind him flowed the Rio Grande.

OWENS: When they make it across the river, they are in some of the most remote, austere terrain, desert with extreme temperatures, no water, no vegetation. And if they can't keep up with the smugglers or they can't follow the instructions of smugglers they're simply abandoned to die.

The dead become the responsibility of county officials. And, like most of its neighbors, Maverick has no medical examiner. So, officials pay local funeral homes to collect the bodies.

Until March, that was Rito Valdez’s job.

He grew up working in the family business, Memorial Funeral Services in Eagle Pass. He said migrant deaths are part of life in this border town. But not like the last two years.

VALDEZ: But then, you know, when they started coming the immigrant from different countries, Cuba, Africa, Venezuelan, Costa Rican, not a lot of Mexicans. It was It was strange, but it came up to seven a day. Cases. So that's something that we were like, wow.

In the Del Rio Sector, where Valdez works, 256 migrants died during fiscal year 2022.

Local funeral homes had limited or no storage facilities. And last fall, a portable morgue provided by the State of Texas reached capacity.

Valdez saw only one solution.

VALDEZ: That's why I was I was I got to a point for us to to decide to bury them, because that's something more dignified for them. For that person.

That well-meaning decision would later prove problematic.

At the ranch, Jane Doe is sealed inside a silver body bag. Four Border Patrol agents help pull the woman from the field and onto a stretcher, then slide it into the bed of the funeral home pickup. She’ll be delivered to her next resting place.

Before leaving the ranch, Sergeant Aaron Horta stops to call Judge Kina Mancha. She’s the Justice of the Peace on duty.

SOUND: [PHONE RINGS]

SOUND: [INDISCERNABLE VOICE]

HORTA: Hello, Judge. I'm here by the Paloma ranch. We have a deceased person. 

MANCHA: Do you have it already? 

HORTA: Yes. The funeral service, they already took custody of the body.

MANCHA: Okay, do you have the information?

HORTA: Yes. 

MANCHA: I'll send you or text you all the information, the case number and everything. 

HORTA: Okay. Do we have a time of death?

MANCHA: Two-o-five.

HORTA: Two-o-five. Perfect.

With no witnesses to her death and no autopsy, Jane Doe’s time of death is set as the time the Justice of the Peace is notified. Horta scribbles the time on a scrap of yellow note paper. He’ll add the information to his report.

Gray clouds still linger as Horta drives off the ranch and turns south onto the highway toward town.

HORTA: That person that passed away, their family’s probably looking for her and they don't know where she’s at. So that's some things that that that I like think about, Like, why do people put themselves in danger like that, like, risk crossing over here? [HORTA SIGHS]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Bonnie Pritchett, in South Texas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 18th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHARD, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Next up, a new voice: WORLD Opinions writer Bethel McGrew. She’s a high school teacher, she’s a Ph.D. mathematician, and she writes on matters of culture. Today, she weighs in on the film titled Sound of Freedom.

BETHEL McGREW, COMMENTATOR: If you weren’t already planning to see the new film Sound of Freedom, the mainstream media seems determined to make sure you do—not that this is their intention. The modestly budgeted thriller shines a light on the pitch-black world of child sex trafficking, based on the true story of former special agent Tim Ballard. It opened on July 4 and proceeded to surpass box office expectations, beating out the new Indiana Jones movie in per-screen earnings. It’s well-written, well-acted, and exposes global crimes against the most vulnerable. So is it being met with glowing reviews?

Well, let’s flip through a few headlines. Rolling Stone sneers, “Sound Of Freedom Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms,” further elaborating that the “QAnon-tinged” thriller is “designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer.” The Guardian echoes the same refrain that the film is “QAnon-adjacent” and “paranoid,” only to reluctantly admit halfway through the review that it’s actually a “mostly straightforward” thriller, and you have to squint at the “subtext” to pick up on the really sinister stuff. Then we have Jezebel, complaining about a rescue scene that the only thing “visually distinguishing” it from a kidnapping is “the implied virtue,” because the hero escapes with the little girl in a speeding van. I wonder if Jezebel reviews medical shows like this: The only thing that visually distinguishes this open-heart surgery from a scene out of a slasher movie is the implied virtue.

So is there anything to all the cries of “QAnon” this and “MAGA” that? Although the media has repeatedly tried to link Ballard’s group Operation Underground Railroad with a far-right fringe, the organization has distanced itself from lurid conspiracist speculation. However, some deeper controversy has swirled around Ballard’s tactics, financial transparency, and honesty. Some of these concerns may be legitimate, though it’s difficult to tell when outlets like Vice mix reportage with fabrication, like the false claim that victims aren’t offered after-care for their trauma.

The media is also accusing lead actor Jim Caviezel of “embracing” QAnon, using some admittedly naïve quotes to smear him as a fringe figure.

It might be true that Caviezel could be more careful in the company he keeps or the speculative ideas he circulates. But if the movie is good, then why should it matter? Caviezel would hardly be the first movie star to entertain some odd ideas. (Tom Cruise, anyone?)

In the end, the reason for the coordinated backlash is clear: Movies made by and for conservatives simply aren’t supposed to do well. Sound of Freedom broke this unspoken rule by becoming a theatrical success story, in a time when theatrical success stories are few and far between.

The reason for that success is likewise clear: This is a simple story of good versus evil, masculine virtue, and the sort of intimately focused heroism audiences crave in a post-Marvel landscape. It used to be enough for Peter Parker to save one little girl from a burning building. Now, the entire known universe must hang in the balance. But Sound of Freedom reminds us that sometimes, saving one little girl is enough. 

I’m Bethel McGrew.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Defense spending. The House passed a defense bill last week. What’s in it and what are its policy priorities? And, part 2 of our story on communities responding to death on the border. 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 two blind men were sitting by the roadside: “And stopping, Jesus called them and said, “What do you want me to do for you?” They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.” And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.” Matthew 20, verses 32-34.

Go now in grace and peace.

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