The World and Everything in It: November 19, 2025

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Washington Wednesday, the Epstein files, the feud among conservatives, and why enforcement and compassion are at odds over illegal immigration.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Hunter Baker is standing by.

Also today, WORLD Tour.

And later, a conversation with author Os Guinness on truth, renewal, and why he thinks despair is premature.

GUINNESS: Think of G.K. Chesterton’s magnificent line: Six times the church has gone to the dogs, but in each case who was the dog that died.

And commentary from WORLD Opinions’ Carl Trueman.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, November 19th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

MAST: Up next, Kent Covington has today’s news.

SOUND: [Mohammed bin Salman welcome band]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Saudi crown prince visit » A royal red carpet welcome outside the White House Tuesday for the crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman, including a military band and a fly-over of US fighter jets.

SOUND: [Mohammed bin Salman welcome flyover]

Inside the White House, the president spoke to reporters alongside the crown prince, one day after Trump said the United States will agree to sell F35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, saying the country is an important and reliable ally.

TRUMP:  We've been really good friends for a long period of time. We've always been on the same side of every issue.

The visit also comes after the Saudis pledged a 600 billion dollar investment in the U-S during the president's visit to the country earlier this year, which Salman said his country is increasing to nearly a trillion dollars.

TRUMP:  Investments in plants, in companies, uh, money on Wall Street and what it really means for everybody that really counts as jobs, A lot of jobs.

But in the minds of many, a shadow loomed over the day’s events, as this was Salman’s first visit since the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which US intelligence concluded Salman likely approved. But Salman denies that charge, saying his government took “all the right steps” to investigate the matter.

SALMAN: And we even improved our system to be sure that nothing like that happens. And it’s painful and it’s a huge mistake and we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.

President Trump is also renewing his push for the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords to normalize relations with Israel.

The Crown Prince says his country wants to join the Accords, but he first wants to see "a clear path" toward a two-state solution for Palestinians.

House vote on Epstein files » On Capitol Hill, the House voted almost unanimously to approve a bill that would force the Justice Department to release more files tied to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

AUDIO (vote count):  On this vote, the yeas are 427. The nays are one. Two thirds being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended. The bill is passed.

A short time later, the Senate approved it unanimously.

At a news conference hours earlier, Annie Farmer, who with her sister Maria was victimized by Epstein, said in her view, the Justice Department did not properly investigate the matter, the Justice Department under Presidents Biden and Trump failed the victims.

FARMER:  This is not an issue of a few corrupt Democrats or a few corrupt Republicans. This is a case of institutional betrayal. Yeah, because these crimes were not properly investigated. So many more girls and women were harmed.

President Trump for months urged Republicans not to fall for what he called a Democratic hoax and a distraction. But this week, shifted his stance, saying he was tired of Democrats using the issue as a political weapon to suggest his administration had something to hide. And he urged Republicans to back the bill, which now awaits his signature.

Duffy on flight reductions, space race » The government shutdown is over, and staffing in air traffic control towers is largely back to where it was prior to the shutdown.

But Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy says that only means they’re back to facing the same problems they had before once again pointing to aging infrastructure.

DUFFY:   We saw though, uh, more pressure coming from air traffic controllers. We, we, we saw risk elevations and that's why we took the steps to say, you know what, we're gonna, over the next week, we are gonna reduce capacity by 10%.

He said Congress has given the Transportation Dept $12 billion dollars, but they’ll need another almost $20 billion to finish the job. And he said it will take about 3 or 4 years to get it done.

Meta prevails in historic FTC antitrust case » The parent company of Facebook and Instagram just scored a historic victory in an antitrust legal battle with the FTC. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: A federal judge has ruled that Meta does not hold a monopoly in social networking and that the company does not need to spin off Instagram or WhatsApp.

Judge James Boasberg said regulators failed to prove that Meta has unfairly cornered the market, even if its past acquisitions raised concerns.

He noted how quickly the social-media landscape has shifted since the FTC first sued back in 2020.

The judge wrote that TikTok now stands as Meta’s strongest rival.

Meta called the ruling a recognition that it faces fierce competition.

The decision stands in contrast with recent rulings against Google …which courts have found to be an illegal monopoly in both search and online advertising.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Nigerian girl escapes captors as search continues » A Nigerian girl has escaped her captors as the search continues for 24 other students kidnapped.

Gunmen stormed the Government Girls Secondary School in northwestern Nigeria before dawn Monday, scaling the fence and exchanging gunfire with police.

The attackers abducted 25 girls and killed one staff member.

Security forces and local hunters are sweeping nearby forests where criminal gangs often hide.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: our weekly conversation with Hunter Baker on Washington Wednesday. Plus, China’s surveillance state is expanding. We’ll hear how on World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 19th of November.

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Time now for Washington Wednesday. Joining us is Hunter Baker, political scientist, WORLD Opinions contributor, and provost at North Greenville University. Hunter, good morning!

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

MAST: We’ll start with the Epstein files. Yesterday, Republicans and Democrats in the House overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill to force the release of more Epstein-related documents held by the Department of Justice.

All but Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins voted in favor. Higgins is on the House Oversight Committee investigating Epstein. He posted on X that he’s opposed to exposing victims and witness information in the files the way this bill would require.

EICHER: President Trump has called the whole thing a distraction and a hoax. He previously promised to release the files but his administration backed off in the spring. Now he is sounding a slightly different tune:

TRUMP: I don't care about it, released or not. What I think you should do, if you're going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein's friends...

EICHER: Well, Hunter, that is a very big shift, and no doubt it drove the near unanimity in the house. Do you think this signaled confidence on his part, or was he just realizing this is a no win situation?

BAKER: There's a lot of danger in speculating about this, and, you know, kind of trying to figure out what Donald Trump's mind and motives are here. But I will say that I think that he has a pretty finely tuned kind of a radar, and I think that he realizes there is no victory available in blocking this thing. I mean, you know, when you have a person in Epstein's situation super high profile in prison, should be protected, should be watched, ends up dead, then we are all tremendously suspicious. And to get in the way of finding out what really happened is just not good for any politician who's going to face the voters, or whose party is going to have to face the voters. So I think that he finally decided to yield.

I will say one thing that's really interesting, and what's come out so far is the information about Larry Summers. For those who don't know who Larry Summers is, he was Secretary of the Treasury. He was president of Harvard University. He is currently a professor at Harvard. He has held a number of very notable posts. I mean, when it comes to the world of economics in the United States, no matter what the top echelon is, he's in it. And yet, in this release, we have him seeking advice from Jeffrey Epstein about how to basically get with a mentee, pretty, pretty bad stuff. And you wonder what else we're going to find as as it all comes out.

MAST: This is connected to Epstein, but it’s more a matter of Republican infighting,

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has moved from being one of Trump’s fiercest allies to a person in possession of a pejorative nickname from the president.

TRUMP: Marjorie Traitor Green. I don't think her life is in danger. I don't think, frankly, I don't think anybody cares about her.

This comes after Greene openly pushed the Epstein matter … and refused to back down.

The president’s version of events is that the congresswoman was disappointed after he discouraged her from running for Senate in Georgia … and that’s what led her to turn against him.

Greene responded.

GREENE: I’ve never owed him anything, but I fought for him, for his policies, and for America First. And he called me a traitor…

MAST: Hunter, Greene represents a so-called “safe” red district in Georgia, what she might not be safe from is a primary challenge. Should she worry?

BAKER: Well, obviously, when you have based your entire political identity on Donald Trump, which is what she did, it's a bad sign when you get a Trump nickname, right? But on the other hand, I would want to congratulate her on what I would call some political growth and maturity here. You know some of what she did in the past, the way she acted during one of the previous State of the Union addresses, I thought was embarrassing, interrupting yelling out, “say her name, say her name.” She is in a super safe district. She won't be defeated by any Democrat. The only danger would be from a Trump backed opponent, and and I don't know who might be out there that he might want to back, but you know, one of the things that we've seen with Trump is that these kind of disagreements are reversible. Ted Cruz was once a major rival and critic of Donald Trump—

EICHER: Don’t you mean “Lyin’ Ted?”

BAKER: —And Marco Rubio, aka little Marco, also, you know, a major rival, and now both of those guys are comfortably allied with him. She can make it back. I do want to say that I think it's a bad look for her to be hoping to run for the Senate this quickly after beginning her career. A similar example I could think of was Richard Nixon, but that's Richard Nixon. And Richard Nixon had successfully exposed a Soviet spy in a major case before the U.S. Congress, so she maybe should sit back for a while.

EICHER: Let’s widen the lens. Trump’s also defending Tucker Carlson after Carlson’s lengthy interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Here’s what the president said:

TRUMP: He’s said good things about me over the years…but you can’t tell him who to interview…get the word out, ultimately people have to decide…people are controversial…

EICHER: At the same time, conservative legal scholar Robert George has resigned from the Heritage Foundation board in protest over how that whole Fuentes episode was handled.

Hunter, connect those dots for us. What does Trump’s defense of Carlson—and Robbie George walking away from the Heritage governing board—what does that tell you about the state of the conservative movement in Washington?

BAKER: So this issue with regard to anti-Semitism is one that we often associate with the left, at least sort of the academic left, but it also also has been sort of a question on the right. There's a history there. Joe Sobren was a fantastic writer for National Review, and very close with Bill Buckley, and he began to be more suspicious of the motives of the nation of Israel, and wondering whether the United States should be so tightly allied with it, you know. And eventually that became such a large disagreement, he was removed from National Review and really never had the same career again. Pat Buchanan, similarly, often would raise these kinds of questions about Israel. And you know, he was a stronger figure and more capable of withstanding strong critiques from figures such as David Frum.

But now you have Tucker Carlson, Candice Owens, others of that type. And Carlson having Nick Fuentes on is maybe a different sort of a kettle of fish compared to the kinds of things that somebody like Pat Buchanan might have said in the past. And so, you know, extremely provocative figure Fuentes is in addition to things that he might say about about Israel or Jews, also recently expressed his love for Joseph Stalin. So that gives you a sense of sort of the the flavor of the remarks.

And so now we have Robert George basically reacting to the Heritage Foundation president, not really being able to fully distance himself from Tucker Carlson, who hosted Fuentes. Robert George leaving the Heritage Foundation is a huge deal. I'm not saying that people won't disagree about this, but, but if you want to look at a figure who has been a giant of the pro-life movement, a giant arguing for traditional marriage, and to do so as a professor at Princeton all these years, I mean, somebody who has put his credibility on the line again and again, the fact that he's resigning from Heritage there's going to be continuing conversation.

EICHER: Hunter, you mentioned that not everybody's going to agree, and not everybody does. I want to read a post on social media by a really smart guy from a group called the New Founding, Josh Abbatoy. He's a he's a Harvard guy. He praises Robbie George much the same way you do, but he says he thinks that George has made a mistake here, citing Robbie George's close friendship with Cornel West, a dear friend of Louis Farrakhan. Speaking of anti-Semitism, Abbatoy accuses Robbie George of having a bit of a blind spot there, and adds, I'll quote here, “these strict associational tests always work out more strictly when dealing with radicals on the right.” So Hunter, what of that? Does he not have a point?

BAKER: I think it's a pretty subtle argument. Abbatoy is a smart guy, interesting guy. I know him. I am not sure that the argument about Cornel West is as telling as it might be. I mean, Robert George and Cornel West, they became friends at Princeton, and basically what they do is they go places, and they talk about civil discourse, and, you know, the ability to have friendships across party lines and things like that. I have never heard any of that stray into any kind of publicity for Louis Farrakhan or for anti-Semitism. So I would argue there's a difference there, but it's not, it's not a crazy argument from Abbatoy.

MAST: Let’s turn to immigration, Hunter. On the ground, Border Patrol has been conducting mass arrests in Charlotte, North Carolina. At the same time, Catholic leaders have been urging “compassion.” The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement, and Pope Leo was asked about U.S. immigration policy. He didn’t condemn the policy outright, but he did say this:

POPE LEO: Many people who have lived for years and years and years never causing problems have been deeply affected by what's going on right now. The spiritual rights of people who have been detained should also be considered.

So how do you think about this moment? Compassion on the one hand, of course, of course! But what about the need for a functioning border and a system that isn’t overwhelmed?

BAKER: Well, it's really important here to realize that the church is not the state, and so the church to some extent, you know, one of my books, I called it the soul of the system that that the church kind of acts as a conscience for the broader society. I think that it is perfectly valid for the Pope to be raising these points about, how can we deal with an impossible situation compassionately. But at the same time, I think you're absolutely right that in the modern world, we have to have a functioning border, and we have to have some kind of a rational process. And I really think that it begins by recognizing everything that we've done wrong before. We've had a tremendously negligent system, and it has been so negligent that it has basically broken any normal sort of way of handling this thing, right?

You know that we we talk about things like due process. And then the question comes up, well, how do you give due process to millions of people? Well, so we're going to have to figure that out. But before, before I go there, that means that we've got to get the now correct. And so I think that we're getting the now correct, which is we're starting to actually control the border. I think that the numbers of people crossing the border have been vastly reduced. I think that that that momentum has got to be continued, and once we're once we're solid about that, then we can continue to work through the ways to address the the millions of people who are already here.

But no, I don't think that should be a merciless process. And I think that the church should help out every way that it can. But let's not be mistaken. We do have to have some way to deal with it. We do need to know who these people are. They do need to pay taxes. You know, I think that probably we need to have some sort of a worker visa program or something like that. People go out and then they can come back in. But it has to be done. I don't, I don't really think that it's avoidable at this point.

EICHER: You know, we always talk about controlling the border. We've got to have a border, etc, and so forth, but these questions of deportations of millions of people who came here illegally with a wide open border. Those are tougher questions. But why are they tougher?

BAKER: It's tougher because I think that there is always a temptation to say we have messed up so comprehensively and there are so many millions of people involved that we just need to declare an amnesty and start over. And I think that that logic has has kind of been out there again and again. But the problem is, if you do that, then you actually undermine the legitimate system. In fact, you you vastly reduce the chances that people will choose the legitimate system. So I think that we just need to go back and we need to look at, how do we give people in Mexico sort of a rational and not overly burdensome process where they can come to the U.S. and work, and we can easily keep track of them, and they can pay taxes,

EICHER: Hunter, Baker, political scientist and world opinions contributor. It's always a great discussion. Thank you Hunter.

BAKER: Thank you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour.

The Solomon Islands were a U.S. stronghold in the Pacific during World War II. Now it’s becoming a regional testing ground for China’s increasing influence. WORLD’s Amy Lewis has the story.

AMY LEWIS: When public disorder and petty crimes threatened the calm of the small village of Fighter One, local official Dr. Pedical Togamae hoped local police would intervene. When they didn’t, he and other leaders took matters into their own hands. They invited a Chinese police liaison team to teach them their community policing methods.

PEDICAL TOGAMAE: We really want to make this community a quiet community.

Togamae says he and his committee are only looking for ideas and won’t necessarily put into practice everything they’ve been taught.

TOGAMAE: We were the ones that invited them. We want to hear some ideas, and they explain what they usually do.

The Chinese taught them—and leaders in 16 other villages—how to fingerprint residents, register each household, and map the community to, in their words: “improve security.” Chinese officials used games to familiarize children with surveillance drones.

All these techniques are part of what’s called the Fengqiao Experience. It’s a Chinese method of community surveillance and control begun by Mao Zedong in the 1960’s and reintroduced with a vengeance under Xi Jinping. In China, people are encouraged to report anyone who disagrees with the communist party or strays from its rules in any way.

In 1942, Fighter One was the primary base for U.S. Navy and Air Force fighters and bombers during World War II. Over time, it became a small village. Six years ago, Togamae spearheaded fundraising to build a road from his remote village to the main road. That also brought them electricity for the first time. And lots more people.

Our connection was a little spotty.

TOGAMAE: We have a community issues like…noisy, not nice, or drinking overnight, drunken drivers drive through the community, thieves breaking in at some of our homes.

He says that, within six years, his village grew from 10 households to 50. But he adds, they won’t know how many people that includes until they complete the data collection the Chinese officials taught them.

Togamae believes his village will be safer if the police have everyone’s fingerprints. They’ll also catch criminals more quickly. But the first official elected town council hasn’t implemented those tactics—yet.

This is the first known time the Fengqiao Experience has been taught outside China.

PETER KENILOREA: I think there must be something bigger behind this…

Peter Kenilorea, Jr., is a Solomon Islands parliamentarian and chairman of the foreign relations committee. His father was Solomon Islands’ first prime minister.

He says village-wide fingerprinting concerns him.

KENILOREA: So there are certain contexts in which you consent to, to fingerprinting, but to have one in terms of the context of prevention of crime is, is definitely unheard of for us here in Solomon Islands.

But it’s not unheard of in China.

KENILOREA: I'm aware of their social credit system that they have, you know, and in China, and how they, they start to influence people's behavior by threatening them.

Solomon Islands’ government website says the training in Fighter One is the beginning of the Solomon Islands-China Police Cooperation Model Communities. Kenilorea fears that one model Fengqiao community today could lead to a Pacific model next.

KENILOREA: …and they could sell it as, you know, various economic, kind of, prerequisite maybe.

From 1998 to 2003, internal ethnic fighting in Solomon Islands brought a collapse of law and order, with that, less respect for police officers.

WICKHAM: You know how society loses certain things during conflict?

Dorothy Wickham used to own two pieces of property in Fighter One and is the editor of the Melanesian News. She says the ethnic conflicts resulted in a loss of community etiquette and cooperation. It changed the social structure of families and communities. She fears that is driving residents to extreme measures to try and replace what was lost.

WICKHAM: If they look at the Chinese model and they think, okay, maybe that will work here, and they'll ask for it.

She understands the frustration, and why the community went looking for help. Local police have been ineffective with small issues, things like quiet hours go unenforced. So do the bigger infractions.

WICKHAM: We have the laws, but it's the enforcement that is the problem, here.

Fighter One wants to get its peace back, and Fengqiao methods appear to fit the local culture.

WICKHAM: We have always followed the leader who is the most feared. That's what's in our culture, the Melanesian culture.

Chinese influence in Solomon Islands isn’t new. Chinese people have been investing in and integrating into the island culture for over 100 years.

WICKHAM: We've got Chinese shops even in the rural areas, because nobody else wants to go and invest there.

In post-Cold War 1993, the United States closed its Solomon Islands embassy. The Biden administration reopened it in 2023 when it became concerned about China’s military ambitions. But the ambassador lives 875 miles away in Port Moresby, where she’s also the ambassador for Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. That leaves a significant gap that China has leveraged to its advantage.

Dorothy Wickham says there are better options than preventative fingerprinting, surveillance drones, and data collection. When boys in her neighborhood make noise late at night, she does what caring adults and community-minded neighbors have done for generations.

WICKHAM: I go out and chase our young boys around this neighborhood who make too much noise, and keep reminding them, ‘You're not the only ones who live here. You know you have other people who go to bed at eight.’

For World Tour, I’m Amy Lewis.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, November 19th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: What happens when a culture loses touch with the truth?

That question is one that author, apologist, and theologian Os Guinness says is the greatest challenge of our age. And yet, he has great hope for renewal.

I spoke with Os recently and I started by asking him to diagnose the problem. I asked where does he see the crisis of truth most clearly today, and how does he see it shaping how people think about power and authority?

Let’s pick up our conversation there.

OS GUINNESS: Well, the crisis of truth has two huge consequences. One, if you don’t have truth, you’re open to deception and lies. But two, if you don’t have truth, you will move by power. Now, of course, that’s the whole point that Nietzsche made in the 1880s. “Do you want a name for my world?” he said. “This world is the will to power, and nothing else besides.”

Now, contrast that with the biblical position, say, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s famous remark, “One word of truth outweighs the entire world.” If we don’t have truth, we’re open to deception. Think of the growth of AA, AI I mean, and if we don’t have truth, everything will be a matter of power.

EICHER: Now, you’ve often warned that America is at risk of losing the very principles that made America great. If you were to identify one or two or even three signs of that loss here in the year 2025, what would they be and what kind of renewal do you think it would take to recover those things?

GUINNESS: Well, I find today that very few Christians can actually say what the roots of the American experiment were. In other words, most of Europe followed the Greek and Roman ways—monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and so on. But the American experiment grew out of the Reformation and its rediscovery of what they called in the 17th century the Hebrew Republic. In other words, Exodus and Deuteronomy and the whole notion of covenantalism, the consent of the governed, and things like that. And they are distinctively different from the Greek and Roman way and we’ve got to get back to knowing what happened back then—not just as a matter of history, because if this is God’s founding His nation, there are lessons for a high view of freedom today. And I find very, very few Christians can defend that. And to me, it’s tragic.

EICHER: Now, you’ve contrasted this idea of decline and fall—we’re talking about civilizations—but you’ve contrasted decline and fall with the notion of exile and return. And I’d like for you to talk a little bit about that and what gives you confidence that renewal through an exile and return is still possible. Do you see places where you see it starting?

GUINNESS: Well, if you think of the ancient world, it was ruled by fate. You think of Oedipus Rex—the Delphic Oracle speaks. He and his parents do everything they can to beat the Oracle, but everything they do makes sure the Oracle is all the more certain. Fate. There’s no escape.

Now, you think, as modern people, we don’t believe that, but actually, atheists and secularists have the modern equivalent, which is determinism. If you can figure out scientifically all that influences us, we can never do otherwise than we do, whether it’s economic for Marx, psychological for Freud, genetic for others, and so on.

Now, I think our biblical view is freedom—even the freedom to repent. So the secular view that decline always leads to fall is not the biblical pairing. The biblical pairing is exile. Yes, there are certainly huge consequences if you leave the way of the Lord. Adam and Eve are East of Eden. Cain is a wanderer on the earth. Israel in captivity to Babylon and so on. And the church—corruption, decline again and again and again. If we leave the way of the Lord, we’ll be in trouble, and we’ll be effectively in exile.

But the wonderful biblical promise, which you get from the first great prophet Moses right through to the last in the Old Testament, Malachi and Habakkuk and so on: “If you return to me,” says the Lord, “I will return to you and restore your fortunes.” And of course, that happened with Ezra and Nehemiah saving Judaism. And that, of course, is the story of Christian revival, awakening. Think of the First and Second Great Awakenings.

Or think of G. K. Chesterton’s magnificent line. Looking over the story of the church—“Six times,” he said, “the church has gone to the dogs. But in each case, it was the dog that died.” In other words, we really do know that through repentance, you can return, and the Lord will return and reawaken us. So we have strong hopes in revival.

Now, can it happen? Of course. Will it happen? That’s up to the Lord, and there are powerful things against it today. So I’m not just saying because it can happen it will happen. No, no. It’s only in the Lord’s mercy that His word breaks out and His Spirit comes down in conviction and power.

EICHER: Os, before we go, if you could speak directly to Christians who may say, you know, I feel exhausted by politics. I’m exhausted by cultural battles. What charge would you give to them right now?

GUINNESS: Well, on the one hand, we’ve got to put politics in its place, as it were, because politicization is the making of politics more than it should be. So there’s a lot of politics in the Bible, but it is not the first thing. And I love the old saying, “The first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing.”

So we’ve got to put it back in its place. And the first thing is much more in the area of our daily lives—in terms of churches, families and schools and things like that. And if those are flourishing, freedom will flourish, and they’re much more important than politics.

But above all, we’ve just got to live the gospel today. The challenge of our world is faith against modernity, rather like a David against Goliath, and we’ve got to know that just to let God be God and live the way of the Lord is the most powerful thing we can do, and we trust in Him without any fear.

So the idea that it’s all up to us, and we’ve got to do it through politics, is a huge temptation that’s leading people astray and also tiring people out.

EICHER: What wonderful wisdom that is. Os Guinness, it’s great to talk with you. Thanks again so much for taking time for us.

GUINNESS: My pleasure.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: First a warning for those who have younger listeners present. Our next discussion may not be appropriate for children.

Today is Wednesday, November 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, WORLD Opinions contributor Carl Trueman says a court ruling in Canada shows how legal ambiguity can invite real harm. When the law fails to draw clear lines, those most at risk are children.

CARL TRUEMAN: In a recent ruling, Canada’s Supreme Court decided that the mandatory requirement of at least a one-year prison sentence for possession of child pornography was unconstitutional. Why? Because in the thinking of the court, it tied the hands of judges who might need to take other circumstances into account. The ruling is highly problematic. To be sure, it reveals a lack of clarity when it comes to legal definitions…but even more troubling is what it says about the overall direction of Canadian—and Western culture.

One specific scenario the court examined was that of an 18-year-old male who receives an explicit picture of a friend’s 17-year-old girlfriend and looks at it and keeps it on his cellphone. The court argued in such a case some kind of strictly monitored probation, rather than a custodial sentence, would be appropriate.

Most would agree that this case is of a different moral register to that involving someone who enjoys watching videos of children being abused. It is deeply sad that we live in a culture where the phenomenon of teenage children sending nude pictures of themselves has become part of life. The legal problem is that the law has not itself kept pace with the various facets and levels of sleaze that now exist. Until—and unless—the law makes the above distinction, this blanket transformation of criteria for judgment creates a terrible situation. The most evil and intentional consumers of the most vicious pornography will now find legal arguments to mitigate their guilt and minimize the type of punishment they receive.

Having said that, 18-year-olds are considered adults. A society that treats the production and distribution of explicit pictures of underage girls as something less than criminal is a society that has already accepted the sexual objectification of underage children as a part of life. Acts that lead to permanent humiliation of girls are very serious and are due serious penalties.

This challenge is set to become even more intense. The whole notion of so-called “victimless crimes” is rearing its ugly head with the advent of AI generated pornography. Does the man gazing in the privacy of his living room at the abuse of children who do not actually exist commit a crime? If so, against whom? Who is hurt when all that is involved is a screen full of pixels that have no objective reference in the real world? For starters, it’s a crime against himself. One can argue that the man who finds his satisfaction this way is dehumanizing himself and the fake children he stares at. Though does not the same apply to violent pornography involving consenting adults? Are not women degraded by it? And is the voyeur not reduced to a creature of appetites who treats others as mere instruments for his depravity? Have we not already surrendered the moral imagination of our culture to the normalization of sexual evil? We have. And it hamstrings our ability to make important distinctions.

Pornography is already a cultural nightmare. It’s set to become a legal nightmare too. The fear relative to child pornography is that in the West we already have a culture that makes the weak very vulnerable and routinely thinks of children as highly sexualized. Just look at the books sexual revolutionaries want on shelves in elementary school libraries. Such a culture will tend towards trivializing pedophilia, particularly when virtual pornography will make it a supposed “harmless” crime.

Yes, the law needs to calibrate the range of crimes relative to child pornography. It must distinguish the idiotic hormone-addled teenagers from the predatory pedophiles. But I am cynical that our legal systems are up to the task. We live in a culture that routinely glorifies evil and is deeply obsessed with transgressive sex. The arguments made by the Canadian Supreme Court without further qualification will ultimately serve the wicked and make the weak, in this case children, even weaker.

I’m Carl Trueman.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: China’s ambitions to dominate space exploration and weapons production. And, medical residency programs under the microscope. Is the current system the best one? That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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