The World and Everything in It — November 11, 2020

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

President Trump is battling it out in court in three states, charging election fraud.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also WORLD Tour.

And on this Veterans Day, WORLD reporter Jenny Rough talks with a former Green Beret medic whose close encounter with death sent him on a spiritual journey.

And WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney says theory is critical, but that’s not the same as Critical Theory.

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

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

REICHARD: Now here’s Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Supreme Court again considers fate of Obamacare » The Supreme Court is once again considering the fate of Obamacare. 

Eighteen Republican-led states want the high court to overturn the law. 

Their argument centers on the so-called individual mandate, which levied a tax penalty on Americans who don’t buy health insurance. Two years ago, a GOP-led Congress lowered that tax to zero. 

And Republicans say you can’t separate the rest of the law from the now-defunct mandate, so it’s time to strike down the law. But Chief Justice John Roberts replied… 

ROBERTS: I think it’s hard for you to argue that Congress intended the entire act to fall if the mandate were struck down. 

He said that’s because Congress could have nixed the entire law but didn’t. 

In 2012, Roberts cast the deciding vote—upholding Obamacare. He said the law’s mandate was constitutional under Congress’ powers to tax. 

Technically, the mandate to buy insurance is still part of the law, but there’s no more tax. So Texas solicitor general Kyle Hawkins argued…

HAWKINS: The mandate as it exists today is unconstitutional. It is a naked command to purchase health insurance, and as such, it falls outside Congress’ enumerated powers. 

But conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to agree with Roberts that the law could stand without the individual mandate. If they joined the court’s three liberal justices, they could rule against the GOP plaintiffs with at least a 5-4 majority. 

Cunningham concedes to Tillis in N.C. Senate race » Republicans moved one step closer to retaining control of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. 

Democrat Cal Cunningham has conceded the North Carolina Senate race to incumbent Senator Thom Tillis. 

Republicans will now have at least 49 of the 100 Senate seats in the next Congress. And GOP Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan holds a 22 point lead with 75 percent of the votes counted. 

That likely means to hold the Senate, Republicans need only win one of the two Senate seats in a double runoff election in Georgia on January 5th.

Barr conditionally authorizes DOJ voter fraud probes » Attorney General William Barr has authorized federal prosecutors across the United States to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if or where they exist. WORLD’s Leigh Jones has more. 

LEIGH JONES, REPORTER: Barr’s action comes days after major networks called the presidential race for Joe Biden. But the Trump campaign says the election is not settled.  

Biden’s margin of apparent victory in several key swing states is very slim and President Trump has alleged widespread voter fraud. But the Trump campaign has yet to provide evidence of large scale fraud.

In a memo to U.S. attorneys, Barr wrote that they may conduct investigations—quote—“if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state.”

Otherwise, investigations must wait until after the election is certified. 

States have until Dec. 8th to resolve election disputes, including recounts and court contests over the results. Members of the Electoral College meet Dec. 14th to finalize the outcome.

For President Trump to win reelection, court action or recounts would have to erase a Biden lead in several key swing states.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

Vatican releases report on accused cardinal » The Vatican has released a 400-plus-page report on the handling of sexual abuse allegations against former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Pope Francis escaped most of the blame for ignoring allegations. But the report on the Vatican’s internal investigation named a series of former and current bishops, cardinals, and popes who it said turned a blind eye to the alleged crimes.

McCarrick served as a priest, bishop, and archbishop in New York and New Jersey from the 1950s until becoming archbishop of Washington, D.C., in 2000.

The report places most of the responsibility on the late Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick as archbishop of Washington after an inquiry confirmed his misconduct with seminarians. The investigation found Francis continued the policies of previous popes until choosing to defrock McCarrick last year after a Vatican investigation.

Russian peacekeepers arrive Nagorno-Karabakh amid ceasefire » More than a dozen planes carrying Russian peacekeepers arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday. That after Moscow helped broker a deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan to halt fighting over the disputed region. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown reports. 

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: The ceasefire came after Azerbaijani forces made big gains that the Nagorno-Karabakh leader said made it impossible for their side to carry on. 

But that angered many Armenians, who stormed government buildings, demanding the parliament invalidate the agreement. Dozens of protesters gathered again Tuesday in front of the parliament building in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. The region lies within Azerbaijan but ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia have controlled the region since a separatist war there in 1994. 

Heavy fighting erupted in late September, leaving hundreds, possibly thousands, dead.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown. 

Palestinian spokesman and negotiator Saeb Erekat dies » Longtime Palestinian spokesman and negotiator Saeb Erekat died Tuesday after being diagnosed with COVID-19. He was 65 years old. 

The American-educated Erekat was at the table for nearly every round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians dating back to 1991. Over the years, he was a constant media presence. 

He tirelessly argued for a negotiated two-state solution to the decades-old conflict. But he consistently defended Palestinian leaders and blamed Israel for the failure to reach an agreement.

Erekat received a lung transplant in 2017 and was at especially high risk from the coronavirus.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the lawsuits challenging election results.

Plus, Janie B. Cheaney on critical race theory.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD: It’s Wednesday the 11th of November, 2020.

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

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: election lawsuits.

The Trump campaign has filed legal challenges over vote counting in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan. These are all states where Joe Biden leads the president by razor-thin margins.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel says evidence of problems in Michigan is mounting. Here she is talking to Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co.

MCDANIEL: We have 2,500 incident reports of irregularities at polling locations where people weren’t able to witness the process. But beyond that, we now have 131 affidavits. One from a whistleblower who states that they were told to backdate ballots by their supervisor and also everyone else in the facility was told to backdate ballots that would have been invalidated.

REICHARD: Democrats dismiss the lawsuits as political theater. They say the president is just delaying his inevitable defeat. But most Republicans support his right to keep fighting. Here’s Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell:

MCCONNELL: President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.

EICHER: Senator Marsha Blackburn noted the last time a presidential race came down to the wire, it was Democrats who asked the courts to intervene.

BLACKBURN: In 2000, Al Gore spent 37 days exhausting every option. And President Donald Trump should also exhaust all options that are available to him. He is doing this to make certain that the votes that are legal are counted. That illegal votes are tossed out.

REICHARD: Well, it is Washington Wednesday. And joining us now to talk about the election legal fight is Marc Clauson. He’s a professor of history and law at Cedarville University, a Christian college in Ohio. Good morning, professor!

MARC CLAUSON, GUEST: Good morning. Hope you’re doing well.

REICHARD: I’m well, thanks for asking. Let’s talk about these challenges. Initially the Trump campaign sued over access to ballot counting by election observers. But now the legal challenges are focused on which ballots should be counted. Can you explain the legal grounds for these lawsuits?

CLAUSON: Yeah, actually they’re varied. There are at least three different grounds that they have for the lawsuits. One is the irregularities which may be because of technological problems—glitches by computers systems and so forth—to rectify that problem. The other would be simple fraud, that is tampering with ballots or some other activity that would be illegal under election law, committing fraud. The other would be an overreach of authority of government. That would be the Pennsylvania situation, where the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania actually ordered the ballots to be allowed three days after the election was over, even though the legislature had said that wasn’t to be the case. So, there are three different kinds of lawsuits going on. All of them eventually want some kind of recounting or investigation into fraud. So that’s kind of what it’s all about in a general kind of way.

REICHARD: Lower courts have already thrown out some of the initial challenges, right?

CLAUSON: Yeah, some of the lower district courts, lower courts in states, not surprising in most states where the election has—it’s sad to say—but in most states where the election has taken place in a state that voted for that candidate, the lower courts tend to vote for that state to uphold the state in its decisions. They can be appealed. Some of the big ones have not been thrown out. The Supreme Court even required that the votes in Pennsylvania that were allowed three days later should be sequestered, set apart, and the court may well hear that case.

REICHARD: Election 2000 is still fresh on the minds of many people. We heard Senator Marsha Blackburn mention it a moment ago. Remind us what happened there.

CLAUSON: Oh, in Florida, yeah. Well, what happened was in Broward County, Florida, they used the kind of punch card for voting and they found that these things were partly punched, double punched, not punched at all, and the Broward County Board of Elections began to count these ballots and they had a totally inconsistent approach to counting them. It tended to look like they were counting for one candidate or the other, predominantly, throwing out ballots that would support the opposite candidate. And finally there was a suit filed in that case. It made it all the way up to the Supreme Court that said just stop the counting because you’re not doing anything consistently. We can’t be sure we’ve had a fair election here. Stop counting. We’ll declare whoever the winner is right now as the winner of Broward County. Because he won Broward County, he won Florida. Because he won Florida, he won the Electoral College and became president. That was President Bush. That’s essentially what happened. It was one county determining the whole fate of the country.

REICHARD: Would you say the current court fight is fundamentally the same as the one waged in 2000?

CLAUSON: It’s a little different. We don’t have the hanging chad problem anymore, but we have some significant problems. And I would consider, I would actually say the overreach of authority might be the most significant. You’re talking right now of at least 127,000 ballots that have been sequestered in Pennsylvania and if those are thrown out, that means Pennsylvania likely goes to Trump. Now, that doesn’t give him the Electoral College. We still have North Carolina and Georgia, they’re having a recount there. Wisconsin, he’s asking for a recount there. Michigan has computer glitches and those might be significant enough that they can change the outcome. We don’t know that at this point, but we know that in some Michigan counties, the vote tallies were completely Democratic when they had always been Republican and they went back and checked and they said, “Nope, that’s a mistake.” We’ll see what happens there. Thirty-eight counties we’re talking about there. So, they’re different kinds of challenges. They all boil down to the same thing. There are irregularities. We need to correct this.

REICHARD: The legal challenge after the 2000 election involved just one state. President Trump is challenging the results in multiple states. Does that change the nature of the fight or how it might play out?

CLAUSON: Well, I think it just makes it more difficult for him. For one thing, the nature of the challenges is varied and so many states being involved, there’s a lot of possibility for the courts saying you just haven’t given us enough evidence to prove your fraud case or to prove your irregularities case. Or maybe to show us it made a difference at all. So he could still end up losing if he doesn’t win all of those. 

REICHARD: The president said early on that he expected the election would end up at the Supreme Court. Walk us through the steps these challenges will take to get there.

CLAUSON: Yeah, the first level is obviously the district court where you introduce evidence of your case—your legal theory as well as the facts you’re bringing to prove your case. If the court doesn’t accept the evidence as being sufficient, it will throw it out. If that happens, you can appeal. And you appeal to the circuit court. In the federal system you appeal to the circuit court and they’ll usually expedite it in cases like this. What usually may take weeks or even months, they may take in a period of a couple days in this case. If you lose there, if the Trump campaign loses there, he can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court will expedite that. They’ll usually take it within a couple of days, what would have taken years. And it’ll be before the court, likely, within a week or two of now, right now, I would say. If it’s going to happen at all. Now, the other cases could wind their way up to the Supreme Court, too, but they’re on different legal theories than the Pennsylvania case, which looks like it’s on a track for the Supreme Court, if they take it, of course. They’re not required to take a case in situations like this, but they may believe it has such significance that they have to take it, even though they don’t really want to, I would say, politically speaking.

REICHARD: Finally can you speak, professor, to the legitimacy and the wisdom of election integrity? I mean all of these steps the president is going through seems very important to half the country.

CLAUSEN: Yeah, election integrity, I think, is crucial. If we don’t have confidence that our elections take place freely and completely fairly and openly, then we begin to lose confidence in the whole system itself. Our republican constitutional system begins to be undermined by just our attitudes. We lose faith in it. When we lose faith in it, we begin to actually practice our politics a little bit differently at that point and we begin to do things we wouldn’t have ordinarily done, even. There have been a lot of people, lately, who have said, “Are we even competent to do it? We could do this better than we have. What’s wrong with us?” It’s a real problem to not have complete integrity in your election process.

REICHARD: Marc Clauson is a professor of history and law at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Thanks so much for joining us today!

CLAUSON: Thank you! Good to be with you.

MARY REICHARD: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour with Africa reporter Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Ethiopia Tigray conflict, massacre—We start today here in Africa. 

AUDIO: [SHOUTING, TRUCK DRIVING PAST]

Ethiopia appears to be on the brink of civil war. Government forces have moved into the northern Tigray region, where a militant group is trying to seize control.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front—or TPLF—used to be an influential part of the country’s military and government. But when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018, he introduced massive political reforms. That won him the Nobel Peace Prize, but left the TPLF feeling marginalized. The group broke off from the government last year.

AUDIO: [Abiy Ahmed, speaking Amharic]

The government accuses the rebels of attacking a military base in Tigray last month. The TPLF says the government started the fighting. Both sides are heavily armed.

Meanwhile, a separate rebel group killed 54 people in western Ethiopia on Sunday. Gunmen from the Oromo Liberation Army dragged people from their homes, took them to a school, and shot them. Survivors say the gunmen targeted ethnic Amharas, the second largest ethnic group in Ethiopia. 

Ethiopia is one of Africa’s most powerful and populous countries. It’s also a key U.S. security ally. Rights groups worry the Tigray conflict will destabilize the nation and lead to more ethnic attacks.

Canary Islands migrants—Next, we go to the Canary Islands. 

AUDIO: [BOAT ENGINE, TALKING]

More than 1,600 migrants arrived in the islands this weekend. They came in small boats from West African countries like Senegal and Gambia. Migrants trying to get to Europe began coming to the Canary Islands after Mediterranean countries cracked down on migrant traffic. At least 11,000 migrants have traveled to the islands this year, compared to about 2,500 at this time last year.

The increased traffic involves increased risk. At least 140 people drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Senegal last month. A boat carrying about 200 migrants caught fire and capsized just hours after setting off. It’s the deadliest shipwreck this year.

Denmark drops plans to kill mink—Next, we go to Europe. 

AUDIO: Since June 2020, COVID-19 has been seen in mink. As of yesterday 216 mink farms are infected.

Denmark has reversed its plans to kill millions of mink after some of the animals tested positive for a mutated version of the coronavirus. Officials feared the mutated strain might jump to humans, and the government didn’t want to take any chances. 

Last week, the prime minister ordered the country’s 1,000 mink farms to kill their entire populations—15 million animals. That sparked outrage. Critics pointed out that the move would devastate mink farmers, and the government quickly dropped the plan. 

Mink are small mammals related to weasels and ferrets. Denmark is the world’s largest mink fur exporter, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the world’s mink production.

Sri Lanka pilot whales—And finally, we end today in Asia.

AUDIO: [WAVES, TALKING]

Rescue crews in Sri Lanka returned 100 whales to the sea after they became stranded on a beach. Scores of short-finned pilot whales began washing ashore on Monday afternoon. It was the largest single pod of whales ever stranded in Sri Lanka. Whales are very social animals and may have followed one misguided whale off course. The country’s navy and coast guard joined forces with locals to help the whales. They used jet skis to tow them off the sand and back into the ocean.

That’s this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER: If you ever thought public sculptures were kind of pointless—silly indulgences we just don’t need—maybe think again.

In the Netherlands is a 30-foot sculpture called “Saved by the Whale’s Tale.” Two of them. Placed at the end of the tracks for an elevated train. The tail end of the tracks.

For almost 20 years, just a seemingly frivolous piece of public art.

But all that changed. One of the elevated trains came to the end but didn’t stop. Crashed right through and it was on its way down—except!

The sculpture stopped it. The front car of the train came to rest on one of the tails and there it sat, suspended on the tip of the tail.

Carly Gorter is a public information officer for the transit authority. The audio from Agence France Presse.

AUDIO: Ehh, the metro didn’t stop and now it’s hanging over an art piece called “Saved by the Whale’s Tail.”

Saved by the Whale’s Tail, literally.

The train was carrying no passengers, so they were never at risk. But the driver was and he escaped without injury.

He will not escape some questioning, though.

And when he answers, I’m guessing it’ll be a whale of a tale.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER: Today is Wednesday, November 11th. Happy Veterans Day. Welcome to WORLD Radio. 

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Today, WORLD reporter Jenny Rough introduces us to a veteran who endured the hardships of war. He tells us  how God used the difficulties to lead him to a life of faith.

AUDIO: [VIETNAM WAR BATTLE]

JENNY ROUGH, REPORTER: Fifty years ago, 24-year old Gary Beikirch lived in the Vietnam jungle. Beikirch was a Green Beret medic on Dak Seang Army base. The camp protected a tribe of indigenous villagers from North Vietnamese troops. He took care of any and every medical situation in the remote location. 

GARY BEIKIRCH: I delivered babies. I was also the camp veterinarian, the dentist. I had performed operations…

Beikirch survived by his training and his wits. Relying on himself was a lesson he’d learned as a young boy after his parents split up.

BEIKIRCH: We moved around a lot. We lived with aunts and uncles. I became very independent, very self-sufficient. So I learned that if I wanted something and I tried hard enough, I could get it. And that’s the kind of mindset that existed in me at the time of the battle.

The battle began with a surprise attack by the People’s Army of Vietnam on April 1st, 1970. 

BEIKIRCH: It was a devastating attack. We were surrounded by over 10,000 North Vietnamese troops…they had dug tunnels, and they broke through the tunnels, and they were right inside our wire. 

As a medic, Beikirch jumped into action. He treated bleeding women and children. At one point, he threw himself on top of an injured man who was still alive to protect him from artillery. That’s when Beikirch was shot — in the spine. He couldn’t walk. His 15-year old bodyguard Dao, dragged Beikirch around the camp. 

BEIKIRCH: And he carried me throughout the battle. We were able to continue to treat the wounded, bring people down to the medical bunker to safety.

The two kept working, even after Beikirch was shot again. Then Dao heard the whistle of an incoming rocket and threw himself between the explosion and Beikirch. The rocket killed Dao.  

Beikirch woke up in a hospital. His stomach ripped open. Tubes poked out of every part of his body. In his hospital bed, he realized there was nothing he could do to save himself. 

BEIKIRCH: When you’re in a battle, if you got a weapon, you have a certain amount of courage. But if you’re weaponless, you have nothing to have courage in. There was nothing that I could base my courage upon because everything had been defeated by death. So my courage failed me. I was there alone at the mercy of death.

He’d never been a spiritual person, but when a chaplain handed Beikirch a cross, Beikirch prayed the first prayer of his life. 

BEIKIRCH: I said, God, if you’re real, I need you. That was all my prayer was. You know, it’s not going to be recorded in any common book of prayers or anybody’s famous prayers, but it was just a prayer from some empty shell of a person who had nothing else left.

When he left the hospital, Beikirch began to wrestle with questions of faith. But where to find the answers? A friend suggested psychedelics. Acid. Peyote. Mushrooms. Beikirch had post-traumatic stress. And guilt over Dao’s death. Tripping on drugs seemed to help.

BEIKIRCH: After I came down, after I got off a high, I still hurt. So I said, what else is there? 

He drifted up and down the east coast. He reconnected with a cousin and her husband, Buck—who mentored Beikirch. Buck listened, instead of talked. He heard about how Dao gave his life so Beikirch could live. Buck gave him a book and Beikirch began to read about the life of Christ.

BEIKIRCH: The Holy Spirit just took the word of God and revealed to my heart that that was the God that I met in Vietnam, and that’s when Christ became my savior.

Buck suggested Beikirch get alone with God, to study His word. With a Bible, Beikirch started hiking the New Hampshire White Mountains. One day, he found a cave — and moved in. For 18 months. During the day, he attended seminary classes. But at night, he retreated to the cave and wrestled with God.

BEIKIRCH: It was my experience with God while I was in the woods that really brought me healing.

NIXON: And now Mr. Secretary, if you would read the citations…

President Richard Nixon awarded Beikirch the Medal of Honor in 1973. But it was intimacy with God that brought him fulfillment.

Beikirch soaked in the majesty of the mountains. The stars in the sky. And he soaked up the words of the Psalms. He communed with God. 

BEIKIRCH: When I went in there with God, God introduced me to solitude. Solitude is a victory. Loneliness is a defeat.

Eventually, Beikirch understood that if he was to love God and love others, he couldn’t stay in his cave forever. He moved out, got married, and went on to become a pastor, and counselor. He’s spent his life helping others. Part of that work involved taking younger people into the mountains to enjoy God’s creation.

BEIKIRCH: We’re given this life for a greater purpose than just survival because survival causes us to look within. It’s what do I need to survive? Living is different. Living causes us to look out to others. What can I do to help someone else? 

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough.

MARY REICHARD: Today is Wednesday, November 11th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney now on how dogma replaced discipline.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: Two years ago, three liberal professors decided to test the limits of academic credulity. They wrote 20 spurious papers (with subjects like “Rape culture in dog parks”) and submitted them to academic journals. Four were actually published, three were awaiting publication and five were under consideration when the project was exposed as a hoax.

The stated purpose behind the hijinks was to expose the sophistry of so-called “grievance studies,” which track all social problems to oppression by white males. Quote, “a culture has developed in which only certain conclusions are allowed … and puts social grievances ahead of objective truth.”

Could social grievance, critical theory, and cancel culture all be related? Two of the hoaxers, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, connect the dots in their new book, Cynical Theories.

According to the authors, it began in the 1960s with the acceptance of postmodernism as an academic philosophy. Postmodernism claims that objective truth can’t be known, that knowledge is socially constructed, and that dominant forms of knowledge always favor the dominant. So, for example, the only reason to study Shakespeare is to “deconstruct” him, to expose how he enables white male privilege.

The problem with postmodernism was that it led nowhere. If nothing is objectively true, then nothing is objectively good. But beginning in the 1980s, academics repurposed the major tenets of postmodernism. If knowledge was a social construct benefiting the powerful, we must make room for other “ways of knowing.” If science was a tool of the white patriarchy, it couldn’t be trusted. If indigenous groups, people of color, and LGBT’s had been kept down, it was time for them to step up.

That’s how a theory became Capital-T Theory—not an academic discipline, but dogma. It marched through the social sciences and eventually invaded the hard sciences as well. And two decades after indoctrinating graduates who now occupy the highest ranks of culture, corporation, and government, Capital-T Theory is everywhere. Corporations sponsor retreats for white males only, where participants write apology letters to female colleagues. American schoolchildren learn that their country was built on racism and owes its wealth to slavery.

President Trump issued an executive order meant to purge Critical Race Theory from federal agency training programs. That’s a step in the right direction, but it took decades for an inert academic philosophy to resurrect itself as activism, and will take decades more to defeat it. Lindsay and Pluckrose hope for a return to the classic liberal disposition that welcomes all opinions to the public square and privileges none.

But societies need absolutes and moral standards. The spinelessness of postmodernism is exactly what allowed activists to hijack it, and now prevents them from moderating their own radicalism. The blunt narrative of oppressor and oppressed won’t stand the test of time, but can wreak a lot of havoc before it falls.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER: Tomorrow: Latinos for Trump. Democrats underestimated support for the president among Hispanic voters. We’ll tell you how that vote could change the political landscape going forward.

And, we’ll take you to Europe, where many countries are back in lockdown.

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: 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.

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Taste and see that the Lord is good. 

I hope you’ll have a great rest of the day. We’ll talk to you tomorrow!

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