The World and Everything in It: March 13, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is brought to you by listeners like us. I'm Sherrie Erdenberg recording this preroll as I watch God paint yet another beautiful sunrise in Cancun, Mexico where I'm vacationing with my husband of 44 years, Stu. We hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! A new report on threats to the U.S. We’ll hear what’s going on with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

MARCO RUBIO: They are increasingly partnering with one another.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Washington Wednesday, coming up. Also today, World Tour. And a young man pursuing a dream of composing for orchestras.

ELLIOT BUTLER: So it's just like, wow, this music is awesome. I'd love to be able to do this someday.

And Ireland refuses to redefine the family.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, March 13th. 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: Now news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: $300M aid to Ukraine » President Biden says the Pentagon will rush about $300 million in weapons to Ukraine.

BIDEN: The package includes munitions and rounds to help Ukraine hold the line against Russia’s brutal attacks for the next couple weeks, which I have the authority to do without asking Congress for some more money.

That after the Pentagon found some cost savings in its contracts.

The military recently revealed that it’s not only out of funds to replenish its supplies, but it’s already deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10 billion to replenish all the weapons it has already pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is ready to approve those funds.

MCCONNELL: Our friends in Ukraine are running out of ammo. And our friends in Israel need help as well.

But Republicans remain divided on funding more aid to Ukraine. The disagreement is mostly over the conditions of that aid. Many GOP lawmakers demand that President Biden first reinstall Trump-era immigration policies to help secure the U.S. Mexico border.

Polish Prime Minister at White House » President Biden announced the Ukraine aid as he hosted top leaders from Poland in the East Room of the White House.

BIDEN: Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, it’s an honor to welcome you on this historic anniversary.

Monday marked 25 years since Poland joined the NATO alliance.

President Andrzej Duda used the occasion to challenge other NATO allies to step up defense spending from 2 percent of GDP to 3 percent.

DUDA: Two percent was good 10 years ago. Now, 3 percent is required in response to the full scale war launched by Russia right beyond NATO’s eastern border.

Duda also met with U.S. lawmakers at the Capitol Tuesday urging all leaders in Washington to approve more funding for military aid to Ukraine.

Primary elections » President Biden has clinched the Democratic nomination for president. As several more states voted on Tuesday, Biden passed the roughly 2,000 delegate mark to seal the nomination.

And as of midnight, Donald Trump was on track to clinch the Republican nomination in short order.

Of course, neither candidate will officially be nominated until their respective party conventions in the summer.

Biden special counsel testimony » Special counsel Robert Hur was in the hot seat on Capitol Hill Tuesday defending his report on President Biden’s mishandling of classified information.

Hur said the evidence suggests that Biden retained classified materials after his vice presidency and that it was no oversight or accident.

HUR: This evidence included an audio recorded conversation in which Mr. Biden told his ghost writer that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”

At the time of that recording, Biden was a private citizen who had just signed an $8 million dollar book deal.

Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.

JORDAN: Joe Biden had 8 million reasons to break the rules. He took classified information and shared it with the guy who was writing the book.

Republicans pressed Mr. Hur over his decision not to pursue criminal charges against Biden.

Democrats, meantime, blasted him for his description of Biden’s cognitive decline within the report. Congressman Adam Schiff:

SCHIFF: You don’t gratuitously add language that you know will be useful in a political campaign.

Hur said politics played no role in his work, adding that he had to consider how a jury likely would perceive Biden’s memory and mental state in a criminal trial.

HUR: And because these issues were important to my ultimate decision, I had to include a discussion of them in my report to the attorney general. The evidence and the president himself put his memory squarely at issue.

House threat hearing » Meantime, in another House hearing room members heard from top intelligence and law enforcement officials about global threats to America.

One day after FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to a Senate panel, he told the House Intelligence Committee:

WRAY: We have seen over the last, I think, five years, an increase in the number of KSTs – or known or suspected terrorists – attempting to cross the southern border.

He said the United States was already on heightened alert before the October 7th terror attacks in Israel. But now, the threat is on another level entirely.

Wray and other agency heads said now is not a time for panic, but for heightened vigilance.

The testimony highlighted dangers posed by the porous U.S.-Mexico border, cyber-attacks, and growing threats in China and Iran.

Ken Buck leaving House, further shrinking GOP majority » The GOP’s already razor thin margin in the House is about to get even smaller.

Colorado Congressman Ken Buck is stepping down next week. Buck says while he’s resigning from Congress, he plans to remain involved in politics.

BUCK: So I’m going to get involved in this election cycle and make sure we choose the best candidates we can.

When Buck steps down, there will be 218 Republicans, 213 Democrats.

His departure will trigger a special election to serve the remainder of his term.

Inflation » A new government report shows that inflation numbers came in hot for last month, underscoring that the battle against rising prices is not over.

Annually, prices jumped by 3.2%, a tad above the 3.1% rate seen in January. Even when you strip out the volatile sectors like food and energy, the core inflation rate also rose by almost one half one percent.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: International threats to American security…on Washington Wednesday. Plus, World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 13th of March, 2024. 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. It’s Washington Wednesday.

On Monday, the Senate Intelligence Committee held its annual hearing on Worldwide Threats Assessment.

Leaders in the Intelligence Community briefed lawmakers and then discussed threats both typical and emerging, everything from authoritarian states to artificial intelligence, narcotics, and even climate change.

But as Committee Vice Chair Senator Marco Rubio observed:

MARCO RUBIO: The goals that Russia has, the goals that Iran has, the goals that North Korea has, the goals that the Chinese have, may be different goals. But one of the real developments that threaten the security of our country, is that they are increasingly partnering with one another. Not a NATO Alliance, not the sort of formal alliance that’s written out. But they are increasingly partnering with each other.

REICHARD: Joining us now to talk about these threats is Bradley Bowman. He’s the Director of the Center for Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously served as a Senate military advisor.

EICHER: Bradley, good morning.

BRADLEY BOWMAN: Good morning to you. Thanks for the opportunity to join you, I really appreciate it.

EICHER: Well, to begin, what did the Intelligence Community say are the top threats the U.S. faces from Russia in 2024?

BOWMAN: They had several things to say about Russia. Some good news and some bad news. Let me, let me start with the good news. According to our the intelligence community following Putin’s February 2022 massive reinvasion of Ukraine, Russia suffered more than 300,000 casualties. That’s more losses for Russia anytime since World War Two. And of course, we’re witnessing the largest invasion in Europe since World War Two. They have extra, suffered extraordinary losses, not just of people, but also equipment. We’re talking about thousands of pieces of tanks and armored personnel carriers, significant losses of aircraft and ships. And Putin, as the intelligence community said, failed to achieve his initial objective, which was essentially the subjugation or extermination of the sovereign nation state of Ukraine. He failed. The bad news is, is that, that we’ve basically kind of settled into a situation in Ukraine that really plays to Russia’s advantages in terms of attritional artillery warfare that kind of runs out the clock. Because, as our intelligence professionals have said, Putin really believes that time is on his side. If he can just grind down Ukraine, he believes that eventually, especially United States, but also Europe, will lack the will or the ability to stand with Ukraine. But no doubt his military has been weakened, and that’s going to make him more reliant on counter-space capabilities, you know, the ability to target our satellites. It’s also going to make him more reliant on his nuclear program, his nuclear weapons. We see him doing nuclear saber rattling periodically, and it’s also pushed him more into the arms of Beijing.

REICHARD: Well, speaking of Beijing, what dangers is the U.S. facing from China? 

BOWMAN: The number one threat the United States confronts, hands down, is the People’s Republic of China, because of their hostile ideology. Yes, they’re having some economic trouble, but an economy roughly the size of our own, and the most significant armament—the Indo-Pacific commander told me in a podcast a few weeks ago—the most significant militarization effort we’ve seen since World War Two where in many cases, China’s capabilities are as good as ours or are approaching ours. And they’re focusing their modernization effort on targeting U.S. forces, so that we could not come to the help of Taiwan, should they try to extinguish freedom in Taiwan. So what’s going to ultimately help Xi Jinping decide whether he wants to try to accomplish his objectives, his political objectives in Taiwan with military force? It’s going to be a number of things. It’s going to be his assessment of Taiwan’s military capabilities, America’s military capabilities, and his assessment of whether we have the political will to come to Taiwan’s help. So if we don’t even have the political will to give Ukraine 2.7% of what we’ve given Pentagon over the same time period in weapons, then why would Xi Jinping think we’re gonna send thousands of Americans to fight and potentially die in the Taiwan Strait? Just quickly on China focus, in addition to military modernization effort, significant cyber effort, significant counter-space capabilities, the ability to hit our satellites, and they’re increasingly learning from the Russians in terms of disinformation information warfare, increasingly powered by AI. So we’re going to, I suspect we’re going to see China doing more and more within our domestic politics and within our country to try to divide Americans and weaken us.

EICHER: Ok, on to the Middle East. We’ve talked a lot on this program about Iran’s proxies…groups like the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza. What threats does the U.S. face directly from Iran?

BOWMAN: You know, it’s a great question. You know, Iran is continuing to pursue its decades long strategy of asymmetrical proxy terrorism, where they try to attack us and our allies, while displacing the consequences and counter punches onto others, usually Arabs. And they’ve continued that with their support for Hamas, and Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis. Um, you know, so how they attack us directly, well, they kill—you know, Iran-backed groups killed three American service members in Jordan a few weeks ago. We saw more than 165 attacks since mid-October, till about a few weeks ago. 165 attacks by Iran-backed terrorists on U.S. forces, with only 11 or 12 responses. Anyone who’s been on the playground knows that’s a formula for more of the same. So they’re directly trying to kill Americans in Iraq, Syria and Jordan. And they’re directly trying to kill Americans in the Red Sea using their proxies, the Houthis, providing them with weapons to do it, training, money to do it, and literally targeting information to do it. So they’re trying to push us out of the Middle East so they can more effectively export terrorism and support their terror proxies and exterminate the State of Israel.

REICHARD: One country you haven’t mentioned yet is North Korea. Recently, a top U.S. military official in South Korea said the danger has shifted from North Korea developing nuclear weapons, to North Korea using nuclear weapons to take over its neighbor to the south. North Korea has been a threat for a long time, but it seems like all these other threats have distracted mainstream attention in the U.S.

What do you make of today’s threats from North Korea?

BOWMAN: Yeah, North Korea is, your listeners need to know and be reminded that they have nuclear weapons, and they have intercontinental ballistic missiles. North Korea has the means to hit the, the United States with a intercontinental ballistic missile. So they’re a threat to South Korea, they’re a threat to Japan, and they’re a threat to the U.S. homeland. And frankly, for years now, because of underinvestment in missile defense, we’ve been playing catch up on that. And once again, we see North Korea taking steps to send artillery to Russia for use in Ukraine, just like Iran has provided drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. So just underscoring yet again, our adversaries understand the value of partners and we should too.

EICHER: Well another issue that came up during Monday’s hearing was U.S. border policy…lawmakers on both sides argued about the scale of the problem and how it relates to national security. So what are adversaries like Iran, Russia, and China doing to exploit that vulnerability?

BOWMAN: I would just highlight that according to the Intelligence Community Worldwide Threat Assessment, they continue to try to develop surrogate networks inside the United States. And by the way, when you consider our porous border, and you consider what Hezbollah is doing in Latin America, the border goes very quickly from a domestic issue to a national security issue when you consider what China, Russia, and Iran all are doing south of our border. It’s difficult to say that we’re a secure nation state if we can’t decide who comes into our country. Iran, Russia and China know that and they’re going to take full advantage of and I would just end with this. Each of them see opportunities to try to weaken and divide Americans, particularly in the context of our elections. All of them have done this in the past. All of them continue to do that, and we should expect that to increase over the next few months as we approach our elections, because they understand that core source of power, to use a military term, the “center of gravity” for the United States, is our constitutional order, and the peaceful transfer of power. And if they can convince Americans that not China, Russia, or Iran are our adversaries, but our fellow citizens are our adversaries, then they can weaken us, and that gives them more opportunity to further their aggression abroad without America getting in the way.

REICHARD: Wrapping up here…any other takeaways from the hearing?

BOWMAN: I would just highlight for your listeners that the United States is spending near post World War Two lows on defense as a percentage of gross domestic product and federal spending, so we can afford to spend what we’re spending on defense. And as I tried to argue, not deterring aggression is far costlier when you consider when America has gone to war. But you know, just to drive the point home, I would use this metaphor. It’s a bit like having your neighbor experiencing a home invasion. And the question is, do you want to pass a baseball bat over the back fence? And by passing a baseball bat over the back fence, you’re helping your neighbor defend their home, you’re imposing costs on the home invader, and hopefully defeating the home invader or bruising him so badly that he reconsiders his line of work. And if the home invader is as successful in attacking your neighbor, [it] is going to increase the chances that are going to invade your home next. So I for one say we should pass that baseball bat over the back fence to Ukraine. We should pass that baseball bat over the back fence to Israel. And if we don’t, you’re gonna have a much bigger problem in in Asia with Taiwan, which is going to be a lot more expensive than a few baseball bats.

REICHARD: Bradley Bowman is Director of the Center for Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Thanks so much.

BOWMAN: Thank you very much.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

AUDIO: [Parents shouting]

Nigeria kidnapping — Today’s roundup starts here in Nigeria with parents seeking answers on the fate of their abducted children.

Armed men seized nearly 300 children from a school in northern Kaduna state last week.

No one has claimed responsibility, but residents of the town of Kuriga, where the raid took place, have blamed bandits who stage kidnappings for ransom.

The mass school abduction is the first in nearly three years.

Shehu Lawal says two of his children were among the kidnapped.

SHEHU LAWAL: [Speaking Hausa]

He says here that the community lacks any security or military presence as he pleaded for the government’s intervention.

Authorities have launched a search and rescue mission for the children.

Uba Sani is the Kaduna state governor.

UBA SANI: No child will be left behind, all of them will come back home...

Other abductions have also hit the country over the past week. On Saturday, armed men broke into an Islamic school in northwest Sokoto state and kidnapped at least 15 students.

And in northeast Borno state, suspected Boko Haram insurgents seized more than 200 displaced people who were gathering firewood.

AUDIO: [Ongoing rescue]

Indonesia deaths — Over in Indonesia, rescue crews and residents are clearing roads and searching for survivors after heavy rains drenched Sumatra island last week.

The seasonal monsoon rainfall has caused some rivers to swell and triggered landslides and flash floods.

At least 26 people have died and about 11 others are still missing.

RESIDENT: [Speaking Indonesian]

This resident says the floodwater caught the villagers off guard with some of them unable to save their belongings.

The National Disaster Management Agency said the floods also damaged farmlands and infrastructure, including bridges, schools, and roads.

Haiti violence worsens — In Haiti, worsening gang violence has left more people in need of food and safety.

AUDIO: [Street]

Scores of people have died and more than 15,000 others have fled their homes since Feb. 29. That’s when armed gangs launched coordinated attacks to kick out Prime Minister Ariel Henry from office. Henry had traveled to Kenya to nail down a security deal when the violence began.

Schools, banks, and many gas stations have mostly remained closed. Henry remains in Puerto Rico due to closed Haitian airports and fears for his own safety. On Tuesday, he announced he would step down once Haiti can set up a transitional presidential council.

Food and medical supplies are also stranded in containers in the main port in Port-au-Prince.

RESIDENT: [Speaking Haitian]

This Port-au-Prince resident says she’s fleeing with her belongings, but doesn’t know where to go.

Port-au-Prince and western Haiti are still under a state of emergency.

AUDIO: [Street procession]

Spain rainfall prayers — We wrap up in the Spanish city of Barcelona at a prayer procession for rain after weeks of drought.

Saturday marked the 9th day of their prayers when rain began to fall.

Juan José Omella is the Cardinal Archbishop of Barcelona.

JUAN JOSÉ OMELLA: [Speaking Catalan]

He thanks God here for the gift of rain and for faith, hope, and charity.

Authorities in Spain’s northeast region of Catalonia declared a drought emergency in February after more than 1,000 days of drought.

It’s the first time Spaniards have held the procession through Barcelona's Gothic Quarter since 1945 when Spain faced a similar drought.

That’s it for today’s WORLD Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

ANNOUNCER: Live in 2024 the 76th annual Leadville ski joring!

NICK EICHER, HOST: There was nothing but joy in Leadville, Colorado where the 76th annual skijoring competition took place.

What you never heard of skijoring? Well, it’s anything but boring. A little like water skiing except with horses, not boats, and snow, not water.

ANNOUNCER: Ready when you are! Shake a leg! (crowd roars)

This is really fast. The horse at full speed and rider on a slalom course with jumps.

This is not for the faint of heart or exposed of skin. Savannah McCarthy is one of the riders.

SAVANNAH MCCARTHY: Your face goes numb. And then you get to the finish line. You hope your skier is still there and you do your best to stop your horse if you can.

You hope your skier is still there.

Nick Burri is one of those skiers who I’m guessing hopes so, too.

NICK BURRI: Pure adrenaline that gets me to do it. Hospital bills rack up, but it’s just for the thrill of it.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Maybe buy skis that convert to splints?

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, March 13.  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: A young composer.

Outside the music world, modern overtures and symphonies don’t get a lot of attention. Neither do the composers behind them, but their skillset is remarkable.

NICK EICHER, HOST: What’s it like to write classical music in 2024, in the shadow of Beethoven and Bach? Here is WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson.

BUTLER: My name is Elliot Butler. I’m 26 years old. My wife and I live in Bloomington, Illinois.

KIM HENDERSON, SENIOR WRITER: Sounds like a regular guy, huh? This Elliot Butler. Until you get past the Packers sweatshirt. And the day job in insurance. Then you find out what really makes Elliot Butler tick.

BUTLER: I’m a composer.

MUSIC: [OVERTURE]

Composing, as in for an orchestra. With bass clefs and treble clefs and notes, hundreds of them, dancing all over a page.

MUSIC: [OVERTURE]

And somehow it turns into this.

Butler’s parents were both music majors in college. They passed their love for music down to him like a set of family silver.

BUTLER: She was always, you know, playing piano and singing. My dad would occasionally pull out the trombone.

Butler took piano lessons before he started carrying a cello case. He played in his community's youth orchestra. Then one evening, as a teenager, he went to a major performance.

MUSIC: [DONNA DIANA]

And he heard that, the sound of Austrian composer Emil Von Reznicek’s “Donna Diana.”

Everything changed for Butler.

BUTLER: So it's just like, wow, this music is awesome. I'd love to be able to do this someday.

He went home and started creating chord progressions on the piano, making simple melodies. Then he put what he wrote into a notation program.

BUTLER: Where I could hear it played by different instruments in this, like a computerized version of an orchestra.

Yes, computerized. Technology has revolutionized composition.

BUTLER: Some kids will play sports, some kids will play computer games. And I certainly liked doing both of those things. But our computer game time was always restricted. Our composition time was not as restricted.

So Butler kept working at his craft. With a computer, he built his own orchestra.

BUTLER: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones and a tuba, I think was the woodwinds and the brass . . .

And a percussion section…

BUTLER: Timpani, snare drum, bass drum and cymbal, and a string section. So it wasn't a large orchestra by any means that I was writing for. But it was an orchestra.

Then, in 2015, he entered a composition competition for high school students.

BUTLER: It was a national one, and I expected nothing from it. But then I find out when they released the preliminary results that I was a finalist. And that was so cool. The possibility that I might be able to hear a professional orchestra play my pieces.

That acknowledgement of his talent spurred him on. Butler decided to major in composition.

But in college, his Christian worldview put him at odds with some types of modern classical music.

BUTLER: I didn't love the idea that music is supposed to sound kind of angry, and to represent these darker sides of humanity. And I wanted to kind of build my own musical idea kind of around what humans are really designed to listen to.

He says that influenced the type of composition he pursued.

BUTLER: It doesn't mean that the music of others is objectively bad. It's just my musical tastes and my musical philosophy is that I like composing using the harmony that Johann Sebastian Bach did.

Bach, who wrote SDG, which stands for Soli Dei gloria, “glory to God alone,” at the bottom of all his compositions.

Butler went on to get his masters degree. While he was finishing his thesis, he heard something about the orchestra he grew up listening to. The Illinois Valley Symphony Orchestra.

BUTLER: That they have decided to, for their next orchestra season, so the 2023-2024 orchestra season, feature a piece by a local composer.

The process is actually known as a “call for scores.” Butler wanted the commission.

He wanted to hear that orchestra perform one of compositions. So he got to work.

MUSIC: [OVERTURE]

The winning result was an 11-minute piece called “An Overture to Harmony.”

Butler attended two rehearsals before the big premiere last November. It’s good for the musicians to connect with a face. And he got to make suggestions.

BUTLER: You know, I'd like to hear a little bit more horn here, if possible. Or if you could pick this section up just a little bit in tempo…

Having a piece played by an orchestra in front of an audience is every composer’s goal.

AUDIO: [PIANO]

But these days, Butler is back at it. After his day job, he comes home and sits down in front of a keyboard, waiting for inspiration.

He’s eager to complete another composition.

BUTLER: Yeah. Yeah, it's been a while.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday March 13. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: gender politics.

International Women’s Day isn’t the most popular holiday of the year. But in Ireland, political conservatives have more to celebrate than usual.

WORLD Opinions commentator Katelyn Walls Shelton says Americans can learn a lot from Ireland’s culture war.

KATELYN WALLS SHELTON: Last Friday–on International Women’s Day–Ireland attempted to erase the word “mother” from its constitution. Despite early projections that the referendum would pass, it failed miserably.

It’s ironic that on a day designed to honor women, some in Ireland tried to replace such a uniquely feminine word with gender neutral terms like “members of a household.” Ireland’s Minister for Equality said he hoped such changes would make Ireland “a kinder, a more inclusive society.”

Of course, the erasure of women and redefinition of “family” is a pervasive effort amongst liberal elites who everywhere seek to flatten distinctions in the name of “equality.” But as author Leah Libresco Sargeant has noted, “when ‘equal’ treatment for men and women means asking women to be interchangeable with men,” women always “wind up shortchanged.”

Perhaps most ironic is that Ireland’s historic language actually protects women from government pressure to be interchangeable cogs in an economic machine. The statute notes that “by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.” It also says that the State “shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged … to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”

Apparently some consider the original language misogynistic. But must any talk of women raising children in the home elicit the old trope of the “barefoot woman pregnant in the kitchen”? I suspect women might appreciate the choice to love children and create a nurturing environment for them instead of being pressured to farm them out to external “care”.

In fact, the erasure of the Irish statute would have left women vulnerable to exploitation by the state. We see this very thing play out in America, which has no such protection for mothers in its law, and where women largely receive no paid maternity leave and are sometimes pressured to return to work days or weeks after giving birth. Often, both parents need to work in order to reach financial stability. As a result, families often outsource childcare to the state via public schools that catechize their children in the secularism that caused the problem in the first place.

Author John Duggan spent part of his childhood in Ireland. He says the effort to change the Irish Constitution is only the latest push to move Ireland toward full secularization. Pro-lifers might remember that just six years ago, Ireland amended its Constitution to allow for abortion. Ireland had previously been one of the only Western nations holding strong against radical abortion activists.

Irish and Americans alike would do well to remember that the de-Christianization of society will only ever result in injustice. And injustice always comes first for the weakest, most vulnerable members of society. Friday’s vote didn’t go the way many on the left hoped it would, but it shows what’s really at stake today in Western culture. When all differentiation between men and women is coded as misogyny, we lose the distinctiveness of each. As Leah Sargeant puts it, “Real justice for women requires welcoming us as women, not helping us better pass as ‘neutral’ humans.”

I’m Katelyn Walls Shelton.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: leaked documents expose the truth about so-called transgender “experts.” We’ll hear from a pediatric endocrinologist. And, a family works through the ethical dilemmas posed by IVF. 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 records that “as [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’  Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.’” —John 9:1-3

Go now in grace and peace.

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