The World and Everything in It - October 22, 2021

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday: a backlash is coming to the cultural chaos.

Also: values-free education, is that even possible?

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk about that with John Stonestreet.

Also today a new sci-fi film fans have waited decades to see. We’ll tell you whether Dune lives up to the hype.

And Word Play. This month, an ode to autumn.

BROWN: It’s Friday, October 22nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Democrats tout progress on Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar spending proposal » The White House and Democrats are hurriedly reworking key aspects of President Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar spending plan hoping to pass a scaled-back version soon.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters …

PIERRE: A couple days ago, the president spent hours meeting with congressional members, and everyone basically said the same, which is there’s progress.

After two moderate Senate Democrats balked at the president’s $3.5 trillion dollar price tag, the White House began pushing a $2 trillion spending plan.

The reworked proposal scales back spending on social services and climate change programs while reworking the tax hikes that would help pay for the spending.

The White House is even floating an idea what would abandon plans for reversing the Trump-era tax rates in favor of an approach that would involve taxing the investment incomes of billionaires.

But House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said he’s not impressed by the proposed changes.

SCALISE: Whether it’s a trillion dollars, imagine what a trillion dollars in new taxes and spending would mean to families to families who are already facing high inflation and lower wages. They would be hit even harder with this bill.

Democrats plan to pass a spending bill without any Republican votes using reconciliation. But they can’t afford a single Democratic defection in the Senate.

Pfizer trial: Booster shots fully restore vaccine protection » Pfizer says new data suggest a booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine restores protection against the virus to nearly 96 percent.

The company released results of a large study on Thursday, but the data is not yet peer reviewed. The trial tested 10,000 participants, 16 years of age and older. The median age of participants was 53.

Earlier data showed that the effectiveness of its two-shot vaccine diminishes over time. Protection starts at 96 percent and drops to about 84 percent after four months. That data gave rise to a push for boosters.

The FDA authorized Pfizer booster shots for higher risk Americans last month. And earlier this week, it gave the thumbs up to Moderna and Johnson & Johnson boosters.

Unemployment claims again fall to new pandemic low » The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits has once again fallen to a new pandemic low. WORLD’s Leigh Jones has details.

LEIGH JONES, REPORTER: The Labor Dept. says new jobless claims dipped slightly last week to 290,000. That was the third straight drop and the fewest people to apply for benefits since March of last year.

Applications for jobless aid have fallen steadily from about 900,000 in January.

But even as unemployment claims begin to normalize, hiring has slowed in the past two months, despite a near-record number of open jobs.

The Labor Department's report Thursday also showed that the number of people receiving jobless aid continues to fall steadily. In the week of Oct. 2, 3.3 million people received unemployment benefits, down from 3.6 million in the previous week.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

House votes to hold Bannon in contempt » The House voted Thursday to hold former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena.

The committee investigating the January Capitol riot demanded that Bannon testify. But Bannon says he’s shielded from a subpoena by the Trump administration’s executive privilege though he left the White House years before the Capitol riot.

The vote split largely down party lines.

AUDIO: On this vote the yeas are 229. They nays are 202. The resolution is adopted.

Democrats voted “yes.” Republicans mostly opposed the measure.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the vote was bigger than Bannon and that it was in fact a vote to uphold the authority of Congress.

PELOSI: If in fact you want to negate the ability of a check of one branch of government over another then you are undermining the Constitution. So this goes beyond Bannon in terms of its importance.

But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy fired back …

MCCARTHY: Issuing invalid subpoenas weakens our power, not if somebody votes against it. He has the right to go to the court to see if he has executive privilege or not. I don’t know if he does or not but neither does the committee.

It will now be up to the Department of Justice to decide whether to bring charges against Bannon.

Trump launching company to compete with social media & tech giants » Former President Donald Trump announced this week that he’s launching a company to compete with social media platforms that have censored or blocked him. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has that story.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The new company is called the Trump Media & Technology Group.

The new venture said it had been created through a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp., and seeks to become a publicly listed company.

Trump has spoken for months about launching his own social media site ever since major platforms such as Twitter and Facebook either banned him or suspended his accounts.

In a statement, Trump said—quote—“We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced.”

The company is planning to soft-launch the Truth Social media app early next year. It’s also planning a video-on-demand service dubbed TMTG+. It will feature entertainment programming, news and podcasts.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: running into reality.

Plus, expressing the joy of a new season.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, October 22nd, 2021.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday. 

I want to welcome John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. 

Morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: I found this out from you, John, that—and I’m quoting here—“the surgeon general this week named the first female four-star officer to serve in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps” only to go on and read a little closer and find out the surgeon general was talking about the health secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, who is transgender, and that in naming Dr. Levine to this post, he was positioning the move as a step forward for women.

But all of that that reminded me of the big dustup in recent days over the comedian Dave Chappelle, who got Netflix in trouble for his provocative statements on transgenderism, and the highly popular podcaster Joe Rogan stirring up trouble for interviewing transgender skeptics—people like Abigail Schrier.

I wonder about these two sort of mainstream voices—not Christians at all—and wonder whether there’s coming a wider cultural pushback. What do you think?

STONESTREET: I think we're running into a number of things.

And, there’s a third to that you didn't name which is Margaret Atwood, believe it or not, who said something that got her labeled a TERF, which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Who says people don't learn things from The World and Everything in It, and there you go, a new acronym that everyone needs to know. But Margaret Atwood, who of course, is really famous for giving us women protesting abortion regulations, dressed like Puritans because of the show The Handmaid’s Tale, you know, showed some concern about the transgender movement canceling women.

Which of course, the entire appointment, and the tweet from the Surgeon General, illustrated, you know, this way, he's the only female and notice he didn't say, woman, he said, female that's a biological term, and talked about this man, being a female, celebrating female, and there's not a female in the picture, maybe not a female in the room and the ceremony. Now my point here is, is if there is a wider cultural pushback, it's going to come by basically hitting the limits of reality. There's only so much you can bend things in the real world because they reflect what actually is, to quote Dallas Willard: you can't step off the roof and then choose not to hit the ground. Gravity's not that pliable. And that's the same thing here. 

You just can't continue to treat aspects of reality as if male and female don't exist, because they actually do exist. And you're gonna continue to run into reality. So I think we're gonna see that. And let me also say this, particularly out of this story of Dave Chappelle, and Margaret Atwood, who have no moral or theological reasons to raise their voice, and so many Christians and Christian leaders and Christian pastors can't bring themselves to speak out against this. And here you have Dave Chappelle doing it. Dave Chappelle willing to say what is true, or maybe a more accurate thing, unwilling to say what is not true? And maybe we can learn the lesson.

EICHER: Here’s another trend story: Walgreens shut down five more stores in San Francisco and according to Jason Riley in The Wall Street Journal, the number is now 22 stores closed and Walgreens is not alone. “Much of this lawlessness,” he writes, “can be linked to … a … ballot initiative … under which theft of less than $950 … is treated as a nonviolent misdemeanor and rarely prosecuted.” He goes on to say California has decriminalized shoplifting and is now getting more of it.

Now, your organization’s namesake—Chuck Colson—was very much a prison reformer, but do you wonder whether the current trends are going too far and the law-abiding are the ones paying the price with higher criminality in their neighborhoods and business activity packing up and moving out?

STONESTREET: No, I don't wonder that at all. It's obviously true. I mean, the trends are headed in this direction. And to be clear, Chuck Colson wanted to reform prisons, but not basically to go from tough on crime to light on crime. He didn't believe that at all. I can't tell you how many times I heard Chuck Colson thoroughly critique the dominant narratives about crime and the rise and crime and the rise in the prison population or treating crime as if there are two parties involved: the state and the perpetrator and the perpetrator offends the state. And that's often what happens in an era of big government.

And that's, of course, the mindset you see behind the San Francisco policy, which basically says, Well, the only person that's really going to pay the price is California, we don't want to really pay that price. That's why it's a misdemeanor. And you know what, we're not going to prosecute it, because we don't have enough resources to go around.

As if the store Walgreens doesn't actually exist in this equation, as if the workers don't actually exist, as if the families of the perpetrators that are also being harmed don't exist, and the victims of the families who now have lost access to a resource that they need in their community that as if they don't exist, and that was the Christian worldview bent that Chuck Colson brought to the whole conversation is that this isn't just about the criminal and the state. It is about the community. It is about the victims, it is about the victims community, it is about the state, and it's about the perpetrator and the perpetrators community.

That's a lot of players that are harmed in one way or another when somebody does something wrong. That's the sort of reform we need. That's not the sort of reform that San Francisco is doing.

And for the record, it's also not the right kind of framework that San Francisco applied when they shut down the In and Out Burger. I don't know if you saw this story, Nick, for failing to police vaccine cards of their customers as they walked in, because you know, that's what In and Out should be doing.

BROWN: John, two interesting stories from the education front:

First, from Alabama, my home state, which banned the teaching of critical race theory in the public schools, this was a move of the state board of education.

And second, a radical high-school teacher in California who was too radical for California. He thought his job was to turn students into revolutionaries and he made no bones about that. But after he was suspended, a local parent made the comment: “unless it’s private school, morals, values and political views aren't welcomed in public education.

I think I understand where the parent is coming from, but aren’t we fooling ourselves if we think education without morals, values and political views is possible?

STONESTREET: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I appreciate what this mom said, I looked at this story closely. I mean, this was a radical high school teacher. He wasn't holding back at any level. And I get any parent that says, I don't want those values. In my school, I don't want my kid to be under the influence of somebody with those values. That's not what education is about.

But it is a misnomer to think that there is such a thing as education, without morals without values. This is actually something that C.S. Lewis wrote about years ago, I think Men Without Chests, which is the opening essay in The Abolition of Man, is so profoundly helpful, even today. Because what Lewis talks about is the an educational system that fills kids heads with facts and their bellies with passion, but does nothing to cultivate the moral imagination. And of course, we could see that that is exactly what's happening today.

We're coming out of this, follow the science trust the science, here's the education, you know, kind of an educational snobbery that has defined elite education on one hand, you might say, filling heads with facts. And then of course, the the educational approach that is behind advancing things like critical race theory, or critical queer theory, or any of the other critical theories, which is, you know, whatever you feel in your gut, that's the most true thing about you. And everything in reality has to change in order to accommodate that. You're filling kids heads with knowledge in their bellies with passion and doing nothing to cultivate the moral will and the moral imagination.

But as Lewis closes that essay, he says, you know, we do this, and then we're shocked when we find traitors in our midst.

Another way to say this, Myrna, would be that the introduction to these moral absolutist ideas about LGBTQ identity or the way we're talking about things like race or the environment, you know, Good heavens, no one would look at Greta Thunberg and think that she's morally neutral. She is advancing what she thinks are moral absolutes.

And isn't it interesting that just 10 years ago, we were talking about moral relativism, everyone should believe what they want, no one should impose their views? And now you can't find a moral relativist.

Yeah, and especially in education, especially among the cultural, academic media, elites. I mean, they're clear on what's right and wrong and that you're wrong. You know, if you disagree, and not only wrong, but you're you know, what's wrong with the world wrong with America and you might end up ending the planet. I mean, there's an absolutism that defines our generation.

That's only possible because of the previous generation of trying to be quote unquote, morally neutral. This is what Lewis was talking about in Men Without Chests.

EICHER: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 22nd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a much-anticipated epic sci-fi film. Reviewer Collin Garbarino will tell you all about it.

DUNCAN: Dreams make good stories, but everything important happens when we’re awake.

COLLIN GARBARINO, REVIEWER: Fans have been dreaming of a worthy screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s best-selling science-fiction novel Dune since its publication in 1965. In the 1970s Alejandro Jodorowsky tried adapting the novel, but the project never began filming. David Lynch’s 1984 version with its incoherent plot and irritating voiceovers disgusted fans and critics alike. In 2000, the Sci Fi Channel aired a three-part miniseries that stuck to the book’s narrative but failed to capture its grandeur. But with director Denis Villeneuve’s new film, debuting today in theaters and on HBO Max, Herbert’s classic finally gets the screen adaptation it deserved.

CHANI: My planet Arrakis is so beautiful when the sun is low. Rolling over the sands you can see spice in the air.

Dune is set thousands of years in the future, and humans have spread themselves across the galaxy. Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet, is a noble-born young man. His parents Duke Leto and Lady Jessica, played by Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson, rule the lush and beautiful planet Caladan. But from the beginning, viewers realize Paul isn’t your typical lordling. He’s the culmination of many people’s plans. He’s to be the chosen one, a messiah figure.

PAUL: There’s something awakening in my mind. I can’t control it.

REVEREND MOTHER: What did you see?

The gears of political intrigue start moving when the galactic emperor instructs Leto to accept the desert planet Arrakis, aka “Dune,” as his fiefdom. Arrakis will enhance the duke’s power because it’s the only source of spice—the most valuable commodity in the universe. Spice stimulates the mind, allowing its users to experience altered states of consciousness, and it’s the secret to the spacing guild’s interstellar travel.

LETO: The emperor asks us to bring peace to Arrakis. House Atreides accepts.

The monstrous Baron Harkonnen, played by Stellan Skarsgård, once ruled Arrakis. He exploited the planet for its spice and oppressed its native inhabitants. These natives call themselves Fremen. They live in Dune’s harsh desert and have learned to become the universe’s ultimate survivalists. 

CHANI: The outsiders ravage our lands in front of our eyes. Their cruelty to my people is all I’ve known. [woman chanting] What’s to become of our world?

Duke Leto hopes to profit from the spice trade, but he also hopes to cultivate an alliance with the Fremen. He sees these fiercely independent people as a means to secure his family’s position. But the Harkonnens spring their trap faster than the wary Atreides anticipate.

GURNEY: Get everything with guns off the ground! Go!

PAUL: This is an extermination. They’re picking my family off one by one.

Duncan: Let’s fight like demons.

Don’t expect resolution to the Harkonnen-Atreides war: This movie is only part one of two.

REVEREND MOTHER: You inherit too much power. You have proven you can rule yourself. Now you must learn to rule others. Something none of your ancestors learned.

PAUL: My father rules an entire planet.

REVEREND MOTHER: He’s losing it.

PAUL: He’s getting a richer one.

REVEREND MOTHER: He’ll lose that one too.

Spacing guilds? Intergalactic feudalism? Space messiahs? If you’re thinking Dune must spend many of its 153 minutes on world building, you’d be right. Herbert wrote countless pages explaining the intricacies of his universe’s politics, religion, and customs. But Villeneuve doesn’t make it too tedious for us. He drops his viewers into this fully realized universe with just enough exposition about background matters to keep those unfamiliar with the book from getting lost.

But the movie preserves the book’s exploration into how politics exploits religion and how religion can sometimes exploit politics. Paul’s destined to be a messiah, but don’t expect him to be a Christian one. Paul’s story was inspired by the colonial European powers’ subjugation of Islamic culture.

Chalamet seems born to play Paul Atreides. He’s brooding and beautiful, and he possesses an air of one resigned to wielding great power. 

PAUL: Dad, what if I’m not the future of House Atreides?

LETO: A great man doesn’t seek to lead. He’s called to it. But if your answer is no, you’ll still be the only thing I ever needed you to be. My son.

The rest of the cast deliver equally excellent performances. Isaac projects doomed nobility, Skarsgård gluttonous villainy. Ferguson has the haunted look of a woman who knows she can’t protect those she loves. Jason Momoa’s Duncan Idaho is the only cheery character in the film, but his smiles and jokes reinforce the film’s feeling of dread rather than inject levity.

DUNCAN: Look at you, put on some muscle?

PAUL: I did?

DUNCAN: No.

Dune is rated PG-13 for disturbing images and strong violence, but it’s refreshingly free of bad language. The film has plenty of action, but don’t expect non-stop thrills. Dune’s an epic, and it leans into that genre primarily through the scope of its plot and its cinematography. Villeneuve wants the audience to experience the enormity of the space vessels, the enormity of the desert, the enormity of the sand worms, the enormity of the political machinations. Really. You need to see it on a big screen.

Every scene carries a seriousness that becomes oppressive, but don’t let the movie’s gravitas dissuade you. Dune is a beautiful movie about the resilience of the human spirit in the face of oppression.

LETO: We are House Atreides. There is no call we do not answer. There is no faith that we betray.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, October 22nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Well, there’s a chill in the air this morning. And God is painting a colorful tableau on the trees outside.

EICHER: And our friend George Grant is going to do his part to return the favor with a likewise colorful piece of writing. Here’s a pumpkin-spice, October Word Play.

GEORGE GRANT, COMMENTATOR: Novelists, essayists, and poets have perennially waxed eloquent at the waning of the year. John Donne declared, “No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.” George Eliot agreed saying, “Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird, I would fly about the Earth seeking the successive autumns.” Emily Bronte concurred professing, “Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.” Jim Bishop exulted, “Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.” L.M. Montgomery exclaimed, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” And, who could ever forget Winnie the Pooh’s gleeful oratory? “It’s the first day of autumn! A time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!” And, Elizabeth Barrett Browning beckoned, “Go, sit upon the lofty hill, and turn your eyes around, where waving woods and waters wild do hymn an autumn sound. The summer sun is faint on them—the summer flowers depart—sit still—as all transform’d to stone, except your musing heart.”

Perhaps these writers’ temptation to plunge into a sea of purple prose during this time of year is compensation for the fact that our Anglo-Saxon forbearers only had names for two seasons: winter and not-winter.

The word “autumn” comes from the Old French “autumpne,” which in turn came from the Latin “autumnus.” Its earliest origins though are uncertain. The word was introduced into the English language, by Geoffrey Chaucer, who in 1374 described how “Autumn comes again, heavy of apples.” The word was picked up by William Tyndale in his 1526 translation of the Epistle of Jude. And Shakespeare, taking his cue from Tyndale, as he often did, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew.

Though the use of “fall” as an alternate name for the season has some ancient precedents, it was not widely used until emigrants to the American colonial settlements of New England used the term to describe the time of year when the leaves fall from the trees.

In any case, Jane Austen summed up the allure of autumn for writers of all stripes in that wonderful scene from her final novel, Persuasion, when Anne Elliot “took a turn through the countryside” with the “Miss Musgroves,” Mary, Louisa, and Henrietta, and Captain Frederick Wentworth. Anne resolved that, “Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn—that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness—that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”

Ah yes, autumn!

I’m George Grant.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to thank the talented team that made this week’s programs possible:

Mary Reichard, Kent Covington, Katie Gaultney, Kristen Flavin, Josh Schumacher, Caleb Bailey, Kim Henderson, Onize Ohikere, Janie B. Cheaney, Bonnie Pritchett, Jenny Rough, Cal Thomas, Collin Garbarino, and George Grant.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Carl Peetz and Johnny Franklin are our audio engineers who stay up late to get the program to you early! Leigh Jones is managing editor. Paul Butler is executive producer, and Marvin Olasky is editor in chief.

And thank you because your giving makes possible independent Christian journalism.

Jesus said, But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

May your heart be open and ready to hear from God’s word this weekend as you gather together with His people.

Lord willing, we’ll meet you back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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