The World and Everything in It: October 1, 2025

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

He prefers the title secretary of war, Pete Hegseth: dismantling woke and calling in his generals for a pep talk on building the warrior ethos.

HEGSETH: No plan, no program, no no reform, no formation, will ultimately succeed unless we have the right people and the right culture at the War Department.

NICK EICHER, HOST:Washington Wednesday coming up.

Later, the small town lawyer whose everyday advice went viral.

FISHER: What I teach is very practical. It's very short. It's very concise. I want to help people.

And WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney on the necessity of marriage.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, October 1st. 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 with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Government shutdown latest »

On Capitol Hill last night: The Senate voted on whether to keep the government funded into November.

AUDIO:  On this vote, the yeas are 55 and the nays are 45. The bill upon reconsideration is not passed.

The yeas were the majority but did not meet the 60-vote threshold. And with that, the federal government partially shut down at midnight.

Two Democrats joined the Senate’s 53 Republicans, voting yes on a clean stopgap funding bill. That would have extended current government funding until just before Thanksgiving.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons voted ‘no.’

COONS:  This is about healthcare. This is about my party saying Enough is enough.

Democrats charged that provisions in what President Trump called his “one big beautiful bill” cut healthcare benefits for many Americans. Republicans say the law cuts waste, fraud, and abuse in healthcare.

And GOP Sen. John Kennedy said Democrats wouldn’t agree to fund the government unless Republicans agreed to make it bigger.

KENNEDY:  We want you to commit to spending $1.5 trillion more than you're spending now.

After the vote, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo saying “affected agencies should now execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.”

Gaza peace latest » Hamas says it is studying President Trump’s new 20-point proposal to end the war in Gaza.

But the president says the terror group will have to provide an answer soon.

TRUMP: We are going to do about three or four days. And we’ll see how it is. All of the Arab countries are all signed up. The Muslim countries are all signed up. We’ll see how it is. Israel’s all signed up. We’re just waiting for Hamas.

Numerous countries in the Middle East and beyond have thrown their support behind the deal, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Indonesia, and Pakistan.

The plan calls for an immediate ceasefire, hostages released within 72 hours, and Israel pulling back troops while keeping a security perimeter.

It also requires Hamas to effectively disarm.

Israel latest » In Israel, some residents are expressing cautious optimism about the peace plan … while others are taking a wait-and-see approach. Adi Nissim was a visitor at the Nova Music Festival memorial …

NISSIM : I believe that it can go both ways. I think that it's definitely an effort to change something, but there have been efforts the whole time during this whole war and change hasn't really happened, so I think it's all up in the air.

Meanwhile Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus were less than enthusiastic about the plan.

PALESTINIAN: [Speaking Arabic]

One resident calls the people behind the plan liars who care nothing for peace … and want to force Palestinians to leave the land and hand it over to Israel.

However, Palestinian Authority, which oversees portions of the West Bank, has welcomed the peace plan.

Trump-Pfizer announcement » At the White House, President Trump on Tuesday announced a new deal between his administration and Pfizer. Under the deal, the drug-maker will provide many of its drugs to the federal government at the same lower prices … at which they're sold in Europe and other developed nations.

TRUMP: In terms of pricing, it's gonna be great for Medicare, Medicaid, social security. It's gonna be great for everything 'cause you're. Medicine costs are coming way down.

Trump made the announcement alongside Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and top health officials in the Oval Office.

He also rolled out a new website, “Trump Rx,” where Americans will be able to purchase medicines directly from drugmakers.

The president says additional deals with other companies are expected soon.

Hegseth combat standards » And in Quantico, Virginia Tuesday … the president addressed a rather extraordinary gathering of some 800 military generals and admirals

TRUMP:  To each and every one of you. I thank you for your unwavering devotion to the armed forces and to the country … that we've all sworn a sacred oath to defend. We all have that oath, every one of us.

He did so alongside Pentagon chief Pete Hegeseth.

Hegseth, of course, was confirmed by the Senate as the Secretary of Defense — still his official title. But the president now calls him the Secretary of War … a ceremonial title change that made sense in light of Hegseth’s message to commanders.

HEGSETH:  From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this war, fighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit.

He added that at his direction, each branch will ensure that every combat role returns to the highest male physical standard—because, he said, those jobs are life or death.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker.  Plus, a special report on World Tour, and later, learning to communicate clearly.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 1st of October.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.
Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Joining us is Political scientist and WORLD Opinions contributor Hunter Baker. Hunter, good morning.

BAKER: Good morning

MAST: Hunter, last week the question was whether a government shutdown happens, now it’s what happens next, and both sides have their talking points. Here’s Majority Leader John Thune:

THUNE: Right here Mr President, it’s right in front of us. Right here. We can pass this today. Pass it right now. All we have to do, get support from the Democrats. House has passed it, this is the House passed bill. We take it up in the Senate, pass it, send it to President, President signs it into law, and the government stays funded.

And Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had this to say:

SCHUMER: All they want to do is force us, try to bully us, (they’re not going to succeed) into taking their partisan bill, take it or leave it. That is not how this place works. And that’s why we’re headed into a shutdown, because Republicans refuse to negotiate a bipartisan bill.

Both sides aim to make the other side feel the burn of a shutdown, who do you think comes out more scorched?

BAKER: I think that they have sort of a different calculus on each side. Chuck Schumer, the last time we faced a potential shutdown, he went ahead and cooperated with the President to avoid it, and he was burned—tremendous explosions on the left, making him look vulnerable. Some people think that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wants his Senate seat, and so suddenly he was the old guy who's not far enough to the left, not fighting hard enough against Donald Trump. Chuck Schumer is nothing if not a survivor, and he knows he is not going to do that again, so he is geared up to fight this time. And so the Democrats are saying that we're going to allow a shutdown, because what we want is to make sure that the covid era subsidies for Obamacare continue. So the line is, we are protecting your health care. The Republicans, on the other hand, they have sort of their open agenda and their secret agenda, or semi secret agenda. The Open agenda is to say that we're not going to fund health care for illegal immigrants. But on the side, they're looking at Russ Vought, the OMB director, and Vought,, has been thinking about this and planning on this for a long time, and he thinks that he can make significant cuts in the federal bureaucracy in the case of a shutdown, I think that Chuck Schumer knew that the first time around, and he didn't want to give Russ Vought, that kind of leeway. But this time we are going to have a shutdown, and we're going to see what Russ Vought is going to do.

EICHER: That's interesting. And I was going to bring that up with you, Hunter. It seemed like President Trump was listening to you last week talking about Russ Vought and the kind of pain that he could impose on the Democrats. Let's listen to what he said in a press conference yesterday afternoon.

TRUMP: We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like. And you know all you all know Russell Vought. He's become very popular recently, because he can trim the budget to a level that you couldn't do any other way. So they're taking a risk by having a shutdown …”

So what do you think Russ Vought actually can do as head of OMB? And do you think it'll work?

BAKER: Yeah, I think that when Congress passes a law, they don't pass a law saying how many people have to be hired to carry out a task. They say what they want done. They don't say everything about how it's going to be done, about the resources that will be used to do it. And that's where the executive has the ability to make some choices. And I think that Russ Vought is going to be able to say we have a fiscal situation that has to be managed. And I think I can manage it by getting rid of some non essential resources within the government, including employees and so again, this is not something that's coming out of left field. This is the kind of thing that he has been thinking about for years and years, and certainly during that interim kind of Biden administration. And now he's back in the seat, and he is ready to act.

EICHER: Yesterday, the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth addressed top generals at the Quantico Marine base near Washington…

HEGSETH: The topic today is about the nature of ourselves. Because no plan, no program, no no reform, no formation, will ultimately succeed unless we have the right people and the right culture at the War Department.

EICHER: He talked about culture and concerns about woke hiring and promotions, climate change … things like that that characterized the previous administration … the kind of things that Hegseth says undermine lethality. The military’s ability to do its grim task when called upon …

Now there was some expectation in the run-up that the secretary would’ve provided concrete detail on budgets or set policies in place … and some are scoffing at what he did do instead. What do you think?

BAKER: I'll be honest, I'm puzzled by this maneuver. First of all, I mean maybe the timing is bad. You're on the edge of a shutdown, and you're going to go to the expense of bringing every general around the globe to the Capitol for this kind of a presentation. And then when you do that, you build up all this suspense about what's going to be said. It's not necessarily the sort of drama that you expect. I mean, you have Pete Hegseth talking about why, why he's going to be a secretary of war and, and about the need for physical fitness and not having beards and and not being woke, I mean, and all these are, you know, sort of substantive things that are important to talk about, and Donald Trump addressed the generals. And you know, a lot of the rhetoric is sort of his normal kind of campaign rhetoric. So on the one hand, I am kind of puzzled that they would choose to bring them all together to do that, but on the other hand, maybe they are just really intent on sending the message that the woke thing in the military is over and that they have serious determination to end it. And so knowing that Trump does things for a reason, that's my guess is that they are not just trying to rhetorically send a message to the generals, but rather that they are saying it is time for culture to change, and we will put the people in place to change the culture.

MAST: I think we might file this one under “too little, too late” … the news of New York mayor Eric Adams’s ending his bid for reelection … In June he’d lost the Democratic primary to Socialist Zohran Mamdani … and not only Adams but the former governor … Andrew Cuomo … decided to mount independent campaigns. At this point Mamdani seems like a lock.

He painted this as a fight that goes back to Trump–with him as the one who will do the fighting. Here he is on CNN:

MAMDANI: Whether we're speaking about Adams or we're speaking about Cuomo we're speaking about supposed leaders who are willing to put their own personal ambition before the needs of the people they're supposed to serve. New Yorkers are right now under attack from an authoritarian administration in Washington. Donald Trump has ushered through legislation that will throw them off their health care, take SNAP benefits away from them all in service of the largest wealth transfer this country has seen. And instead of fighting back against that vision, instead of fighting for New Yorkers, these politicians are looking to get on the phone with Donald Trump.

So is Mamdani a lock or do you see a scenario where he loses this?

BAKER: His chances are pretty good. So even with Adams leaving, his name will still be on the ballot. So if there are Die Hard Adams voters, they'll probably still vote for him. You also have Sliwa, who is of the famed Guardians of the subways in New York,

EICHER: Guardian Angels.

BAKER: Guardian angels, exactly as the Republican candidate. And I don't think he's going anywhere. You probably would have needed to have been left with Mamdani and Cuomo, for Cuomo to really have a chance to win. So I think the chances are good that he's going to win, but honestly, I think that his time as mayor, assuming he has it, is sort of doomed to fail. And the reason I say that is is that the mayor does not necessarily have the power to do a lot of the things that he wants to do. Some of those powers reside in the New York legislature and governor, rather than in the mayor. But the other thing is, these sort of very left wing governments have not worked out well in New York City. We may recall that the reason New Yorkers elected Rudy Giuliani in the early 90s was because things were bad, and had been bad for quite a while with these very left wing mayors. And so it took a Giuliani two terms and then being followed by Mike Bloomberg, who in many ways, did the same things that Giuliani had done to really restore order to the city and to help it prosper. So I'm kind of in the camp that George Will is in thinking that it will be good for people to have this kind of socialist mayor, to have a bad experience and to sort of want to get that taste out of their mouths.

EICHER: All right, Hunter, a big piece in The Wall Street Journal on pastor and author Douglas Wilson. He recently planted a church down the street from the capital, a C.R.E.C. Church, his denomination … Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. In the piece, Pastor Wilson said he can summarize Christian nationalism as quoting here, “we should stop making God angry.” Now, this is good advice at all times. But he also says that the U.S. was a Christian nation at its founding, but now we are a backslidden Christian republic. Now, you've written about this in your recent book, Post-Liberal Protestants. And I think it's timely in a year when we're looking ahead to the country’s 250th birthday … our quarter mill … what’s your assessment?

BAKER: So first of all, I just want to say that I think that Doug Wilson is an incredibly interesting figure in American Christianity. He has written probably millions of words in various books and blog posts and things of that nature. I know him a little bit. I have been out to Moscow, Idaho, and have given a talk before, and I have seen the interesting impact that he and his projects have had on that city, and now he is becoming still more prominent. We were just talking about Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth is tied to Wilson's denomination. So you see that kind of spreading influence. I would disagree with his characterization of Christian nationalism as not making God angry. You know, in my view, as a sort of a Church / State expert, I think that Christian nationalism refers to or returned to the established churches of centuries past, where basically the church and the government are kind of united as entities. Nevertheless, I think that we are in a moment. I think that there are significant numbers of people who are interested in kind of an amped up, more ambitious kind of a public Christianity, and he, to some extent, is the face of that.

MAST: So we hear the term Christian nationalism all the time … and usually in a pejorative way. You’re a political scientist, how should it be defined … properly?

BAKER: Yeah, so, so Stephen Wolfe, a few years ago, wrote this book, The Case for Christian Nationalism. Political Scientist, got his PhD at LSU, and that Canon Press published that book, The Case for Christian Nationalism. But Stephen is calling for a return to the time when Church and State were unified, sort of the same way as Luther is Germany, or Calvin's Geneva. You know, those sorts of things. And so I think that it's a mistake to sort of say, well, Christian Nationalism is just sort of wanting to have Christian values in our society. I think, I think it entails something much bigger than that. Now, as a Baptist, I think that's a mistake. And part of the reason that I think that is, is that if we look at the part of the world that had these establishments, that's really Western Europe, right? And Western Europe is now roughly the most secular place on Earth, you know, I think that England is a great example of Christian nationalism, and you end up with a church that, in my view, is sort of neutered and ineffective, whereas in the US, where we have a, you know, pretty serious institutional separation of church and state, the church is far more vital and influential than in those places. So I think that the Free Church is a better idea.

NICK: Hunter Baker is a political scientist and provost at North Greenville University. Hunter, thank you.

BAKER: Thank you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a World Tour special report on Moldova.

On Sunday, half the voters in the small Eastern European country voted to remain in alignment with Europe instead of shifting back to Russian influence.

World’s Global Desk Chief Jenny Lind Schmitt has our report.

MAIA SANDU: I do believe that we managed to resist this huge interference and I’m actually very proud of the Moldovans.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT: That’s Moldovan President Maia Sandu at a news conference Monday morning. She’s referring to Russian interference before Moldova’s high stakes parliamentary election on Sunday.

For weeks, Sandu and other leaders have called out Russian meddling. In the days before the election, authorities arrested more than 70 people. They were allegedly linked with Russian intelligence — inside Moldova planning riots and other destabilization activities. On Friday, Moldova’s electoral commission banned two pro-Russian political parties from participating on allegations of foreign funding and bribing voters.

Orysia Lutsevych is with the British think tank Chatham House.

LUTSEVYCH: What was happening is that there was a myriad of parties that were using funding from Russia to buy votes. There were networks that were set up by one of the fugitive oligarchs Shor, where they would transfer people money for the votes they tell them to cast in the Russian banks.

Even so, Sandu’s pro-Europe Solidarity and Action Party won cleanly with 50.1% of the vote. Observers inside and outside the country are hailing it as a huge victory—not just for Moldova, but for all of Europe. But that doesn’t mean Russia has given up.

LUTSEVYCH: It is well known that Russia has a very aggressive agenda to get control of former Soviet republics and to reestablish its imperial control. That's why there's this war in Ukraine. That's why Belarus is losing its sovereignty, and that is why Moldova was also under extreme risk.

Moldova is sandwiched in between Romania and Ukraine. Under Maia Sandu’s government, the small country has been moving steadily towards EU membership. Russia sees that as a threat, and Putin wants Moldova back under his control.

Ivana Stradner is with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

STRADNER: …We love to talk about elections in Moldova, only around the elections, but actually Russia's influence operations, they are 24 hours, 365 days, trying to weaponize any issue

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Moldova condemned Russia and opened its doors to refugees. Russia responded by threatening the country’s gas supply. In January of this year, it cut off gas to the disputed Moldovan region of Transnistria. Analysts say it was a calculated move to foment pro-Russian sentiment in the region.

STRADNER: Russia's center of gravity is energy, and that's how they have been blackmailing Moldova for a very long time.

Stradner says if other countries don’t understand and anticipate Russia’s philosophy of warfare, they are doomed to fail. It’s not just about fake social media accounts spreading false information. It’s a complex hybrid war on many fronts… including energy weaponization, using the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, and trying to reignite old geopolitical conflicts.

STRADNER: It is also, for example, what's happening right now with drone incursion. People forget that this is also Russian psychological warfare to make sure to scare people in the West so we do not support Ukraine.

But Stradner says the warfare goes far beyond Ukraine.

STRADNER: This war is truly about democracy versus autocracy, and that's precisely why paying attention to Moldova was extremely important for the past few months.

She says going forward the West should offer forensic assistance to countries like Moldova to uncover Russia’s illicit financing trails.

President Sandu encourages other countries to join forces in the fight against Russia’s hybrid schemes. She says authorities should do more than uncover illegal financing networks, they need to also make sure the public knows about them.

MAIA SANDU:…it’s very useful when the free media also works on that because then the citizens could see not just what the state is saying about that but what the free media is saying about that because Russia is really trying to target the trust. Russia is trying to make people not to trust the state institutions. To accuse us of lying and accuse us of just inventing this.

And Lutsevych says that ultimately, economic development can help protect Moldova.

LUTSEVYCH: There are now nearly 2 billion that has that will be invested in Moldova by European Union on the economic for economic growth, making sure that they grow productivity and can export and increase prosperity, because that prosperity also undermines Russian effort and strengthen our democracies everywhere.

For this week’s World Tour, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 1st.

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: how to communicate better.

MONTAGE: How to talk to someone who doesn’t like you. How to stay calm in a heated conversation. How to handle bad apologies. How to stop saying “like” so much.

These are just some of the questions Jefferson Fisher tackles in his short-form videos on social media.

MONTAGE: So try that, try that, try that, and follow me, follow me, follow me.

He’s become something of a communication guru, and he’s grown quite a following. 6 million on Instagram, 3 million on Facebook ,a million on TikTok.

And earlier this year he published a book. It’s a New York Times bestseller and it’s called The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More.

MAST: But Fisher’s day job is as a small-town attorney. He never meant to be a national social-media influencer. We recently talked with him about his story, how he teaches others, and why he thinks winning an argument often loses something more important.

Here’s that conversation.

EICHER: Jefferson, I happen to know the story of the products Flickr and Slack—if you’re familiar with that particular business tool. Both of these began as attempts to build video games. Now, the games ended up going nowhere, but the tools the developers built to collaborate on the game projects are what took off. I thought of that when I saw your videos on Instagram: initially, they were meant to promote your law firm, but then your videos had taken on a life of their own. At what point did you realize the promotion had become the product?

JEFFERSON FISHER: The part where the purpose changed was what God had in store was something very different. I want to help people. Okay, well, if that's what you really want to do, you want to help people, then what does that mean to you? And I could help so many more people talking about communication than I could have with “Hey, have you been in an accident?” or you have this legal question, and let me help you with this legal need. Because my thought was, how could I help people communicate at home, at the dinner table, in their own meetings and lives and stresses, and so that's where, yes, the purpose you set out for was not the journey that you ended up taking.

MAST: Jefferson, since reading the book there are times I wish I had it under my arm as a handbook. Did you have a thought to that end of “I'm writing a book about communication and relationship theory, or was it more about being a toolkit?

FISHER: Yeah, definitely a toolkit. I probably am a little bit averse to a lot of communication theory. You can look on plenty of blogs, how to handle a difficult conversation. You know what you're gonna get? You're gonna get “You need to speak with empathy. You need to be an active listener.” And you're like, okay, that sounds great, but what does that mean? I think that's one of the things that sets a lot of my stuff apart when it comes to communications, that what I teach is very practical. You don't have to think on it. All you have to do is what I say at the end: Just try it.

EICHER: Well, you know the Bible is filled with wisdom on how we're to speak. I was struck in reading your book ... about the part where you say your parents prayed every night that God would give you wisdom. Would you talk a little bit about how that formation shapes you today?

FISHER: Yeah, every night my dad would pray, “Give Jefferson wisdom and always be his friend.” And it was something that just got instilled in me of what to seek. And there's plenty of verses about seeking wisdom. There are so many different aspects in the Bible that relate to asking for wisdom and also just the power of the tongue. And so there's so much that's in there of these principles, and it is my prayer that what I teach aligns with those for people in a very practical way.

MAST: I'm curious about some of those principles. You say winning an argument is a losing game. How do you live that out yourself when, say, you're paid to win, or maybe just even feel the urge to go for it and get a win?

FISHER: Yeah. I teach that when you set out to win an argument, you will often lose a relationship. I also teach that when you set out to win an argument, what you've typically won is to be the first to apologize. It's typically what it is that means you're the one up to now have to be the first one to say, I'm sorry. So you won the argument. Congrats, you've won awkward silence now when you pass each other around the kitchen table, because, you know, there's been some repair that has to be made because of the words that we chose to use. And yeah, in my world, I get hired to they would say, win arguments, but that's not really how it works. I don't get to choose my client's facts, and I can't change the law that applies to the case. You don't necessarily win the argument. It's just whose side has a better legal principle to stand on, and that's why we have appellate courts and Supreme Courts and everything else. And so it's not who's necessarily the most persuasive, and it definitely doesn't matter who wins.

EICHER: How do you guide people who find themselves dealing with an abuser, someone they simply cannot trust? I know you don't want to recommend connecting with people like that. But how do you draw those lines?

FISHER: Right. There's some people you have no need to connect with. The mindset there is to first protect yourself in the way you use your words to form boundaries and stick to the boundaries. If you continually pour out of your cup, giving more and more of yourself to this person, you're going to eventually look at your own cup and see that you're empty. And why is that? Because I'm not connecting myself. That's something greater than myself, and it's knowing that, yeah, there are times when you're going to be talking to somebody, and it's more of a negative force of being able to control yourself rather than trying to control them.

MAST: Do you ever see that it's a cop out to set a boundary? Do you think it's possible to have too many boundaries, or to be too rigid with them out of avoidance rather than out of true danger.

FISHER: Absolutely. Yeah, they're definitely people who use boundaries as an excuse to own their problems, to own their behavior, people who say, Well, that's sorry, that's my boundary. You're stepping over my boundary, and you're like, I'm just, I'm asking for an apology here. If a boundary is meant to protect, there's nothing that you're going to have to do. It's all going to be only what I need to do. In other words, if I know that I value my family, I'm going to put up a boundary that I'm not going to go to that networking event at 6pm. I need to be at the house putting my kids to bed because I value that. Nobody else has to do anything. It's just me.

EICHER: Jefferson Fisher. The book is The Next Conversation. Enjoyed it. Good to meet you.

FISHER: Yeah, y’all as well. Thank you so much. I’m honored and honored by your listeners.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Here’s WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney on how a decline in marriage leads to a chaotic society.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: I once enjoyed the privilege of visiting Greece, where I felt the weight of history even in the subways. Especially at Mycenae, on the rolling plains of the southern coast.

From here the Greeks sailed to Troy to wage their legendary war. According to Homer, the expedition was almost doomed from the start when King Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the gods, to obtain fair sailing weather. His wife Clytemnestra never forgave him. Ten years later, when the King returned, she and her lover murdered him. Her son King Orestes felt duty bound to execute her for the sin of adultery as well as murder, thus activating the Furies, ancient earth-goddesses whose chief function was avenging blood. As dramatized by the Athenian playwright Aeschylus, around 500 B.C., the story becomes a courtroom drama posing this question: which has greater weight, a blood relationship or a civil contract? Is the murder of the husband, not a blood relative, less of a crime than matricide?

The court decides that Orestes was justified. This, according to Charles Hill in his book Grand Strategies, is literary notice of a milestone in human progress: the determination that marriage, not blood, is the foundation of civil society. God settled that question in Genesis 2:14, and every civilized culture has followed suit. It's only in primitive societies that kinship takes precedence, leading to feuds and vendettas.

Early in this century social observers like Charles Murray and Brad Wilcox began noticing a sharp decline in marriage among the poor. Clan was replacing covenant: blood kin had a greater claim to loyalty than the latest live-in boyfriend. The results were reduced earning power, greater stress, and troubled adolescence as the cycle continued.

So a recent NBC survey of 3000 18- to 29-year-olds isn’t encouraging. It asked them to prioritize a set of 13 life goals. Respondents diverged into four groups according to sex and political affiliation. Of those, only male Trump voters rated “Getting Married” as high as number four. Female Republicans saw it as less important than “Financial Independence” and a “Fulfilling Career.” Democrats of both sexes put marriage and children almost dead last.

Priorities do change among the young, so these disturbing results aren’t the last word. But it’s noteworthy that both groups of Republican Gen-Xers placed children before marriage, rather than the other way around. Are they subconsciously valuing blood over bond?

Years ago, my daughter worked for the late Andy Williams in Branson. Part of her job was to lip-synch onstage while Andy sang a medley of his greatest hits. At every performance, when he segued into "The Hawaiian Wedding Song," she could look into the audience and see gray-haired couples cuddling up in the darkness. Those marriages were not perfect, but they were covenantal. They were the backbone of "middle America" whose great-grandchildren were surveyed by NBC. Are they the last of their breed?

We walk around with no thought for the ground under our feet. But if the earth turned to Jell-o, we'd notice. Tribalism and blood feuds may not be likely, but social chaos looms. The reformation of America begins at home.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: the search for clues behind the rise in autism. And, one of our reporters takes a ride in a driverless taxi. How’d it go? That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

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

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 Psalmist writes, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: ‘Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted.’” —Psalm 85:3, 4

Go now in grace and peace.

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