The World and Everything in It: July 3, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today we wrap up our week of extended Legal Docket coverage with three final opinions, including DNA testing for death row inmates.

MARTENS: It feels like that’s some of the background here that’s driving the holding… just like, give the guy the DNA evidence, let him test it. 

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also a state supreme court case from Colorado redefines the word: “grandparent.”

And a journey out west to uncover the story behind Mt. Rushmore.

JONES: This is something that lasts for thousands of years, and we've got to do it right…

And the countdown begins to America’s 250th birthday. WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says it's a good time to remember what’s most important.

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

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Big Beautiful Bill latest » House Republican leaders worked through the night and … into the early hours of this morning … trying to win over GOP holdouts on what President Trump calls his “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

He says it will lock in 2017 tax cuts, boost the economy and more.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday …

JOHNSON:  It's impossible. This is a deliberative body. It's a legislative process. By definition. All of us have to give up on our personal preferences. I never gonna ask anybody to compromise core principles, but, but preferences must be yielded for the, for the greater good. And um, that's what I think people are recognizing and coming to grips with.

President Trump also spent much of the day — and night … meeting with and reaching out to Republican members who were still on the fence regarding the bill.

Some conservatives voice concerns that the bill doesn’t do enough to rein in spending … and would add to the national debt.

Democrats have derided the bill as tax breaks for the wealthy … and objected to new work requirements for Medicaid and food stamp recipients.

Israel latest » In Israel:

SOUND: [Demonstrators in Tel Aviv]

Demonstrators gathered in Tel Aviv to demand the release of all of the Israeli hostages still held by the terror group Hamas. They also called on Israel and Hamas to reach a new ceasefire deal.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said yesterday that's exactly what Israel has wanted all along.

SAAR: Hamas still holds 50 of our hostages in cruel captivity. The war can end tomorrow if it releases them and lays down its arms. We are serious in our will to reach a hostage deal and a ceasefire.

President Trump says Israel has already agreed to a U.S.-proposed 60-day ceasefire.

Hamas says it's still studying the offer, but that any agreement must ensure an end to the war and Israel's complete withdrawal from Gaza.

Ukraine defense » The Pentagon has paused shipments of some missiles and munitions to Ukraine. That comes after a review found depleted U.S. stockpiles.

Officials say the U.S. military has to maintain its sufficient inventory to ensure domestic readiness.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell:

PARNELL:  The department is rigorously examining and adapting its approach towards achieving this objective, while also preserving US military readiness and defense priorities.

Ukrainian officials were reportedly caught off guard by the move and have expressed concern that any pause could embolden Russian attacks.

NATO chief Mark Rutte says “Europeans, in the meantime, are really stepping up.” He adds that European allies have committed $35 billion for Ukraine’s defense this year.

RUTTE: So when it comes to the burden shift from the US to Europe that's taking place, what we cannot do without, uh, the practical US, uh, support.

Among the munitions paused are: Patriot interceptor missiles, Hellfire and Stinger missiles, 155 mm artillery shells, and guided rocket rounds.

Wisconsin abortion law » The Wisconsin Supreme Court is ending longstanding pro-life protections in the state. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: The law in question dates back to 1849, just one year after Wiconsin became the 30th state. The law made performing an abortion a felony except when necessary to save the mother’s life.

It fell dormant when Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide but came back into dispute after Roe was overturned in 2022.

The court’s liberal majority ruled 4-to-3 that the ban is no longer enforceable. The ruling stated that more recent rules—like restrictions after 20 weeks had effectively replaced the old ban.

Conservative Justice Annette Ziegler dissented, accusing the liberal majority of ignoring legislative authority.

State law protects the unborn in most cases only after about 20 weeks of pregnancy. But abortion is legal up to that point.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Sean Combs verdict » A titan of the music industry could spend years behind bars.

A federal jury convicted rapper and music executive Sean “Diddy” Combs Wednesday of transporting people across state lines for the purpose of engaging in prostitution.

Combs faces a maximum of a decade behind bars. But former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner says the “likely sentence will be measured in months, not years.”

EPNER: The starting point that the judge will work from under the sentencing guidelines will likely be 15 to 21 months that can go up or down based upon certain considerations.

The 55-year-old Combs did escape a guilty verdict on the more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking.

CA fireworks warehouse fire » Black smoke billowed into the sky west of Sacramento, California after an explosion at a fireworks warehouse.

Authorities said seven people were missing as of last night following the accident.

The explosion triggered several fires and forced evacuations in the area.

People were urged to avoid the area of Esparto and Madison about 40 miles west of Sacramento for several days.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: standing, delegation, and retroactive action…day four of our Legal Docket special reports. Plus, celebrating America’s founders in granite.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 3rd day of July, 2025. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Today we wrap up our coverage of the final opinions from the US Supreme Court’s term. Three decisions, split 6-3 or 5-4, revealed some unexpected alliances among the justices.

REICHARD: We begin with a 6-3 ruling in a high-stakes death penalty case out of Texas, a win for Ruben Gutierrez. He was convicted of the murder of an elderly woman in her mobile home back in 1998. Prosecutors said Gutierrez and two others thought the woman stashed away $600,000 in life’s savings inside her home.

BROWN: Gutierrez confessed to helping plan the robbery. But he says he didn’t enter the house, nor did he wield the weapon.

REICHARD: I called practicing criminal law attorney Matthew Martens to talk about this:

MARTENS: The question was, who had committed the murder, and had Mr. Gutierrez known in advance or participated with the real likelihood that there was going to be a murder, or did he just intend to commit a robbery, because that distinction matters under Texas law.

Gutierrez argued for years that DNA testing of the crime scene evidence could prove he wasn’t inside the home on that night of the murder. But his efforts to obtain DNA testing were denied by the Texa state courts.

BROWN: So, he sued the prosecutor under federal civil rights law, arguing it violates his due process rights for a state to restrict DNA testing after a conviction.

MARTENS: The lower court had said that he didn’t have standing. Meaning he didn’t have a right to be in federal court. And the Supreme Court said he has standing and can continue to sue.

REICHARD: Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the majority opinion. She pointed to an earlier decision with similar facts that said inmates do have the right to challenge DNA testing procedures in federal court. 

Here’s lawyer Martens again:

MARTENS: What stands out to me about it is the weird alignment of justices… You have Justice Sotomayor writing for the majority, but not just joined by the liberals—she’s joined by Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Chief Justice Roberts.

BROWN: The Court didn’t say Gutierrez is entitled to the DNA testing, though, just that he can keep trying. So it’s a narrow ruling, focused on standing, whether someone has the right to bring a case in the first place.

Martens noted the broader stakes:

MARTENS: It feels like that’s some of the background here that’s driving the holding… just like, give the guy the DNA evidence, let him test it. He’s probably guilty anyway. But that way we won't have to hear objections later on about someone potentially innocent being executed.

REICHARD: The three dissenters, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch thought even with DNA testing, the death sentence will stand. So in their view, the case shouldn’t proceed. But for Ruben Gutierrez, the execution is on hold for now as the case returns to lower court to sort out.

BROWN: Next, FCC v Consumer’s Research, a case that touches the bank accounts of nearly everyone with a phone or internet bill. It challenged a program that helps ensure poor and rural Americans have access to them. The court says that program stays.

The money for it comes from fees charged to telecom companies, who in turn pass that on to consumers as a line item on their bills. But a conservative free-market group calling itself Consumers’ Research said that’s just an unconstitutional tax, and one that Congress never approved.

WALKER: This is a really big deal…

REICHARD: Christopher Walker is professor of law at the University of Michigan. He teaches administrative law.

WALKER: This case is about the nondelegation doctrine which is a doctrine that’s only been used twice to invalidate a statute. But the basic idea is that the Court has said that when Congress passes a statute, it can’t give away its power to someone else.

And what Justice Gorsuch in dissent is upset about is that Congress well generally can’t give away their legislative power, especially when it’s a tax, or when it’s revenue generating that that’s a core power that Congress can’t give away. In other words, that Congress should have been setting that tax rate, they shouldn’t have been able to allow for the FCC or this private entity to be setting what the rate should be.

But the majority disagreed. Majority opinion writer Justice Elena Kagan said Congress gave enough guidance to the FCC, specifying that a “sufficient” amount could be collected, and that it has to service certain public needs like rural schools and hospitals.

Walker said this dispute was a chance for the Court to say to Congress decide what a tax rate is, or whether a private entity can do something, and not pass the buck to a federal agency, an unelected group. But it didn’t do that

WALKER: They refused to kind of recognize that, and instead say, hey, you know what? We're going to allow Congress to have a lot of flexibility and how it gives its power to other, you know, to agencies or maybe even to private entities. And I think that's the real big takeaway, is that there weren't enough votes on the court to kind of come and say, Congress has got to do its job. It's got to make the major value judgments.

Bottom line? You’ll still see that fee on your bill.

BROWN: Next, a 5 to 4 decision in Hewitt v US, a case about criminal sentencing and a law that brought rare bipartisan agreement. That law is the First Step Act that passed in 2018 under President Trump. It changed how some federal firearm offenses are punished. Specifically, it got rid of what’s called “stacking,” a practice that forced judges to impose multiple mandatory 25-year sentences, even for first time offenders during a single incident.

REICHARD: Matthew Cavedon is incoming director of the Project on Criminal Justice at Cato Institute, which filed a friend of the court brief in support of the inmates.

CAVEDON: There were cases where somebody who would have gotten four years in prison instead got 161 because of stacking these provisions. Another person got life without the possibility of parole instead of just 10 years.

BROWN: The First Step Act put an end to that and made the new rules partly retroactive. But that created a gray area. What if a person was originally sentenced before the law passed, but his sentence was later vacated? If he’s resentenced after the First Step Act went into effect, does he benefit from the new rules?

REICHARD: That’s what happened to Tony Hewitt. He received convictions for multiple firearm counts and was sentenced under the old rules. A federal appeals court threw that out, and he came up for resentencing after the First Step Act took effect.

CAVEDON: It might sound super technical. A lot of the disagreement in this case turned on a grammatical disagreement. Remember Lance Armstrong, champion of the bicycling world, champion of the Tour de France, had a very, very prominent career, but then ended up getting stripped of some of his gold medals because he failed steroid testing. What the majority said is, when we ask today, has Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France, the answer is no, because as of today, he doesn't have a valid gold medal. He had been a winner of the Tour de France, but as of today, he has not been.

BROWN: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by both liberal and conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Gorsuch. Justice Alito dissented, along with three other conservatives. The dissent thought Congress meant for the original sentence to matter, even if later overturned.

CAVEDON: So one of those issues where, even though people out there in the world like to talk about Trump judges and Biden judges and Obama judges and Bush judges, sometimes the disagreement is less about big, sweeping concepts and more about just those very, very picky details. I know a lot of world listeners are church goers. You might be familiar with this. Sometimes the most heated arguments can be about a specific phrase in the Bible rather than about the big picture things. And I think that's a lot of what was going on in the Hewitt case.

So what happens next? For a narrow group of inmates, judges now have discretion, and that could mean a five-year minimum sentence instead of 25 years.

REICHARD: That’s it for this week’s series of Legal Dockets. Next week we begin our summertime Legal Docket, focusing on what’s going on in the lower courts.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next: What is a grandparent?

That’s the question behind a recent Colorado Supreme Court decision. The ruling sets a new legal precedent for who can be considered a grandparent in that state.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: At the heart of this case, one couple, two sets of grandparents and three young children.

In April of 2020, 33-year-old Brandon Sullivan killed his wife, Amanda and then turned the gun on himself. The couple’s infant twins were found physically unharmed near their parent’s bodies. Authorities picked up their two-year-old sibling, found wandering outdoors near the family’s home in Delta County, Colorado.

After the murder-suicide, Amanda’s parents took custody of the children and later adopted them. Lower courts granted Brandon’s parents grandparent visitation rights. But in 2022 Amanda’s parents asked the courts to reverse that decision. The family's lawyer would not divulge why.

Last month the case reached the Colorado Supreme Court. In the end, the justices redefined the state’s official definition of what a grandparent is. Colorado lawyer Nicole Hunt has been following the case.

HUNT: Colorado statutes define a grandparent in a very narrow way. It applies only to people who are the grandparents of the current parent.

That very specific definition means the paternal grandparents were denied visitation rights…as the maternal grandparents are the legal adoptive parents.

HUNT: They technically, legally no longer had standing because they weren’t related in any way to the current parents, who were the mom’s parents.

Hunt, also a spokesperson for Colorado-based Focus on the Family, says the ruling is messy and troubling.

HUNT: I think for a lot of folks who are pro-family minded, gosh a mom and a dad both died and so these kids are left in this super traumatic situation and now they don’t have access to both sets of grandparents. That doesn’t feel like it sits right.

Historically, the outcome mirrors the U.S. Supreme Court’ ruling twenty-five years ago in the case Troxel vs. Granville. The justices ruled parents have a fundamental right to control the upbringing of their children.

HUNT: I can see the parents' right side being very important to control what’s in the best interest of your child. And I can also see why it would be very important to continue in the midst of crisis and trauma for kids to have stability with family members that they’ve developed significant familial bonds with.

There once was a time when things like this were much simpler. Richard Victor remembers those days.

VICTOR: Back in the day we didn’t need laws for grandparents to see grandchildren. You just made a phone call.

Victor is a retired family law attorney.

VICTOR: Back in the fifties and sixties many families all lived in the same home or same duplex and they were together. Only with the advent of significant divorces in the seventies, children born out of wedlock and the changing American family did we see a change in the structure of families.

Over time those ever-changing family dynamics made grandparenting difficult.

VICTOR: Grandparents were not being allowed to see grandchildren not because the laws said they couldn’t, but because there were no laws that existed.

In 1978, Victor started a national grandparents rights organization that helped lawmakers from around the country craft new legislation.

VICTOR: And so how should we protect the family under law? And I said from the child’s perspective up. And that’s when we started working on the laws. We found that there was a lot of political maneuvering in some states that favored grandparents. Some states favored biological mothers, not even fathers. And so we had a divergence of laws created within all 50 states.

And those laws still exist today. Nicole Hunt says that’s why the Colorado Supreme Court enforced its narrow legal interpretation of what a grandparents is. But laws can be changed.

HUNT: If Colorado wanted to change that to make it more encompassing, they could actually just expand the definition of grandparents in the statutory code.

Colorado isn’t the only state with a narrow definition.

HUNT: Georgia is one that does not allow for visitation even if a relative adopts. Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska, Indiana, South Dakota.

But Hunt says there are many states, like California, that have moved to a much broader definition of grandparent to avoid some of the confusion.

HUNT: New York, Illinois, North Carolina, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Utah…

And, Alabama.

AUDIO: You want to tell Grandaddy bye bye. Say bye bye grandaddy

That’s where Peggy Connell lives. Her six grandchildren call her “honey”.

AUDIO: Jump in…

Connell’s three-year-old grandson Cage lives in her neighborhood. Connell says while she’s grateful he’s just a wagon-ride away, she’s always encouraging him to think about his other set of grandparents, who live in another state.

CONNELL: I say oh, Cage, you’re going to see Mimi and Papa. That’s what he calls the other ones. And get him excited about that because they do love him and care for him. Don’t you want that for children?

Hunt says yes. That’s exactly what she’d like to see happen in Colorado.

HUNT: I would want to make sure that grandparents, especially faith-based grandparents, who have a Biblical worldview, have the opportunity to build those relationships and to maintain those relationships with their grandchildren.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Spanish Fort, Alabama, with assistance from Harrison Watters in Washington D.C.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The town of Swanville, Minnesota, population 326, had more than caps and gowns to celebrate at graduation this year, try over a million reasons to cheer!

It all started with a simple idea from two local businessmen nearly 40 years ato: give every graduate a scholarship. Since then, the whole town’s pitched in with tailgates, chili cook-offs, even cheese curd sales to raise money. 

In 1988, year one, students got $166 each. This year? Audio courtesy KARE-TV:

AUDIO: “Grand total of $5,000…$5,500…$6,000…$7,000”

21 scholarships averaging over $5000 each. The town also hit a milestone: more than a million dollars in scholarships since the program began.

Graduate Zach Gapinski summed it up:

GAPINSKI: To me, it's just this community saying, go be great. Go do something cool and make a difference in the world.

They don’t know the dollar amount until they cross the stage, but every student knows that in Swanville, small town means big heart.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 3rd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown..

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: building something that lasts.

Tomorrow, is the Fourth of July, when we celebrate our nation’s first steps towards freedom. The founders hoped to build a nation that could stand the test of time, and since then many have tried to build monuments to the founders that do the same.

REICHARD: Back in 1937, sculptor Gutzon Borglum started chiseling the granite of Mount Rushmore… and this year WORLD’s Mary Muncy visited the monument to learn the story behind it and what it still says about our nation today.

MARY MUNCY: Jim and Connie O’Connor stand looking up at the stone faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Connie says the view is moving.

CONNIE O’CONNOR: What man can do when they put their mind to it? It's just, it's amazing

JIM O’CONNOR: It's also reflective of American democracy.

State flags rustle in the breeze as people from all over the world study the details in the granite.

JIM: I think people forget very easily what makes America great and people need to just stop and slow down and remember what you know, what we're thankful for, and how God has blessed us.

That’s exactly the reaction the monument’s sculptor would have wanted, but the project started with a different vision.

In 1927, a South Dakota state historian named Doane Robinson wanted to entice tourists headed out west to Yellowstone to stop in his state. His idea? A rock carving of the “Heroes of the West.”

BEN JONES: He then tries to find a sculptor and make it happen.

Ben Jones is the current state historian of South Dakota.

Two sculptors turned Robinson down, the third one was a man named Gutzon Borglum.

JONES : He's fascinated and captivated by the idea of making something that lasts so long, ages and ages.

So carving a mountainside was right up his alley, but he didn’t think the “Heroes of the West” idea was quite right.

JONES: This is something that lasts for thousands of years, and we've got to do it right, and it should be something that speaks to different aspects of the nation's character.

Politicians believed something with national appeal would likely bring more tourists, and more funding. Borglum settled on sculpting four major American figures.

Washington founded the nation. Jefferson expanded it with the Louisiana Purchase. Lincoln preserved the nation in a time of crisis, and Roosevelt focused on conserving the land.

MOUNT RUSHMORE UNVEILED: It’s 1930 and sculptor Gutzon Borglum is about to inspect the first of three figures of the Mount Rushmore Memorial in the heart of South Dakota’s Black Hills.

Borglum thought long-term from the beginning.

JONES: This is a kind of a virtue that many in America find hard to grasp, is that thinking of building something so solid that lasts for so long.

But not everyone was on board.

At the time, some people wanted to preserve Mount Rushmore’s natural beauty, historian Robinson defended his idea in newspapers.

JONES: His comeback to that was, ‘we're taking something that's little known at the time—Mount Rushmore…it was just kind of a blip on the map. It wasn't anything that people went to and so they thought they were enhancing that in their own patriotic way.

And Mount Rushmore and the surrounding mountains are a sacred place to some Native American tribes in the area. Borglum tried to mitigate that by inviting the religious leader of the Lakota Sioux, Black Elk, to visit the site.

JONES: Black Elk will go to the top of the mountain and say a blessing for the safety of the workers and for the whole effort.

For 13 years, Borglum and his 400-man crew worked on the mountain with dynamite and jackhammers:

NEWSREEL: Hanging from the top in bosun chairs, Gutzon Borglum and his son go over the 60 foot Washington face. Taking measurements to make sure it’s properly proportioned…

They finished all of the figure heads and were working to carve at least Washington down to the waist, when Borglum got sick.

He died in 1940. His son Lincoln took over the project.

JONES: But they realized that getting it down to the waist, the rock was not suitable to do that, so they pretty much stopped at the faces and cleaned up the aesthetics of it.

Lincoln Borglum also remarked that there was no more usable rock to the sides of the monument, meaning no other figures could be added to it. He stopped the project in 1941, without a single fatality

Jones says state historian Doane Robinson got what he wanted: more visitors. But Borglum’s vision helped Mount Rushmore become more than a tourist attraction.

In the evening, the Park Service puts on a program about the monument that ends by honoring veterans.

Ed Selznick served in the U.S. military for 23 years.

ED SELZNICK: You take a vow to protect America from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And you've got your families back here who are relying on you, depending on you, your friends, your whole life, your whole lifestyle. It truly means it truly means everything.

A few people I talked to found the park underwhelming, or were just there to check it off their list. But most said they walked away knowing more about the founders and the principles that make America a great nation.

For Grace Huggins, it’s the capstone of her family’s western road trip.

HUGGINS: We’ve seen a lot of national parks that were the work of the hand of God, and this is special because it's the work of the hand of man, and it's, it's just about as beautiful. God, God gives glory to the things that that we reverently make and with beauty for him.

NEWSREEL: Designed to last the ages, the Mount Rushmore work is today considered one of the wonders of the world.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Tomorrow kicks off the year-long countdown to America 250—the semiquincentennial of the publication of the Declaration of Independence.

WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says the year ahead is a good opportunity for some national soul-searching.

CAL THOMAS: A question that would be helpful for discussion during our increasingly divided times might be: “What does it mean to be an American”? Is it defined in the lyric of the Lee Greenwood song?

SONG LYRIC: I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free…

That doesn’t fully answer the question of what an American is…or what’s more, what America is.

EDUCATIONAL FILM: Independence Hall in Philadelphia now stands quiet and tranquil…

Students once studied such things before American history was rewritten in many public schools and universities. They learned that the country was named for the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, whose claim to fame was the discovery that the land he was exploring, the New World, was not a part of Asia, but a separate continent.

German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller used Vespucci’s first name, whose Latin version was “Americus,” to label the future United States on his 1507 map. The name “America” was quickly and universally accepted.

That still doesn’t answer the question as to what America is and who are Americans. Frank Sinatra gave this answer in the introduction to his 1965 recording of “The House I Live In.”

SINATRA: Only in America could all that's happened to me, happen to a guy like me, anywhere else I might have wound up digging coal, or making fortune cookies…

That gets closer to answering the questions. America is a land of opportunity for those who can see it and seize it. If you can’t make it here, you are unlikely to do as well anywhere else.

America is also about overcoming obstacles. Rags to riches stories used to inspire people who had a bad start in life…that was before many accepted the false notion that we are entitled to what others own and don’t have to work for it.

America is an idea in a continuing quest for the ideal. When we have failed to live up to the Declaration and our constitutional principles, we don’t give up. We try to make things right because we have a standard – a foundation – that defines what is right.

EDUCATIONAL FILM: We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights…

These truths have helped us overcome the evil scourge of slavery and the denial of civil rights to those who descended from the enslaved.

What other nation offers such opportunities and hope? Freedom is not “just another word for nothing left to lose,” as Janis Joplin sang. But with freedom comes responsibility, including the expectation it will be renewed by each succeeding generation.

Ronald Reagan put it this way in a speech from 1961:

REAGAN: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well taught lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in America when men were free.

Let’s have a conversation during these next 365 days about what it means to be an American and what we will do to renew America for the next generation while preserving it for the current ones.

In answer to the questions about America and Americans, it’s hard to improve on the motto inscribed on the Great Seal of the United States – E pluribus unum, “from many, one.”

Let the countdown begin. I’m Cal Thomas.

THE HOUSE I LIVE IN: That’s America, to me…

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is here for Culture Friday. Collin Garbarino reviews the latest Jurassic Park movie. And we’ll meet a church that uses fireworks for outreach.

That and more tomorrow. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

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 records: “While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” —Matthew 4:18, 19

Go now in grace and peace.

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