The World and Everything in It: September 12, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Collegiality even in disagreement. That’s exactly what’s needed, says one Supreme Court justice.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also the Monday Moneybeat: today the collapsing Euro and how the European Central Bank is responding.

Plus the WORLD History Book. Thirty years ago this week, a drug lord faces justice.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, September 12th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: 9/11 commemoration » Americans remembered 9/11 on Sunday with tear-choked tributes and promises to “never forget.”

At the World Trade Center in New York, Bonita Mentis said it’s hard to believe 21 years have passed.

MENTIS: It’s hard for me to talk about it. I lost my sister. She was only 25 years old at the time.

In Washington, President Biden spoke at the Pentagon…

BIDEN: Twenty-one years and we’ve still kept our promise to never forget. We’ll keep the memory of all those precious lives stolen from us.

Biden vowed that the U.S. would continue working to root out terrorist plots.

First lady Jill Biden spoke at the third attack site, a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Ukraine update » The Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. said Sunday that Ukraine still mourns 9/11 with the American people. Oksana Markarova told CBS’ Face the Nation:

MARKAROVA: We know this pain and we feel this pain in Ukraine. We know how is it when terrorists attack you at home.

Ukrainian troops continue a major counteroffensive against Russian forces. They carried out successful strikes in the northeastern part of the country on Sunday.

Kyiv's counterattacks forced Moscow to withdraw its troops from parts of the Kharkiv region to keep from being surrounded. In their hasty retreat, they left large numbers of weapons and munitions behind.

ZELENSKY: [Speaking in Ukrainian]

In a video address, President Volodymyr Zelenksyy praised his military for retaking the city of Izyum.

But Russia struck back at Ukraine's infrastructure last night, triggering widespread blackouts.

Zaporizhzhia » Meantime, workers at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant were able to reconnect it to the electricity grid, allowing engineers to shut down its last operational reactor.

That in an effort to avoid a radiation disaster as fighting continues to rage in the area.

The six-reactor plant lost its outside source of electricity a week ago. Shelling damaged or disconnected all of its power lines.

Operators say shutting down the last reactor is the safest course of action.

King Charles » AUDIO: Three cheers for his majesty the king” Hip hip hooray!

King Charles III formally became the sovereign of the UK in a ceremony at Saint-James Palace in London.

He technically ascended to the throne upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II last week. But the constitutional ceremony is an important part of the process.

The king said he will strive to live up to his mother’s “inspiring example.”

CHARLES: I am deeply aware of the great inheritance and of the duties and heavy responsibilities, which have now passed to me.

Queen Elizabeth » Meantime, in a somber, regal procession, a hearse carrying the queen’s flag-draped casket drove slowly through the Scottish countryside Sunday en route to Holyroodhouse palace in Edinburgh.

Mourners packed city streets to take part in a historic goodbye.

AUDIO: You know, she’s been such a good queen to us all. You know, she’s been loyal, she’s been dignified. She’s been kind and compassionate, everything you’d want from a monarch.

The hearse drove past piles of bouquets and other tributes on the six-hour drive from the queen’s castle in Edinburgh.

The queen’s casket will be flown to London tomorrow. It will then be transported to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday to lie in state.

Yellen on recession, gas prices » Is the U.S. economy in a recession?

A recession’s widely defined as two straight quarters of negative growth in GDP. By that definition, the answer is yes. But Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNN on Sunday:

YELLEN: We’re not in a recession. The labor market is exceptionally strong. The unemployment rate is extremely low.

She said as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to combat soaring inflation, it risks tipping the country into a painful recession.

YELLEN: Of course it’s a concern. The Fed is going to need great skill and also some good luck to achieve what we sometimes call a soft landing.

That would mean taming inflation without a deep economic downturn. She said she hopes that the Fed can still achieve that.

Yellen also cautioned that gas prices could spike this winter amid a crackdown on Russian oil.

I'm Kent Covington. Straight ahead: understanding your adversary.

Plus, the History Book.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday morning and we welcome you to another week of The World and Everything in It on this Monday, September 12th. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time for Legal Docket.

So far this summer, we’ve featured an interview that Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett gave at the Reagan library and a speech by Justice Samuel Alito.

Today, a totally different viewpoint, an interview with Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She was the featured guest back in June at the national convention of the progressive group, American Constitution Society.

REICHARD: Her former law clerk asked her questions as did members of the audience. We’ve edited the nearly hour long interview to fit our time here, but we’ll link to the entire event in today’s transcript.

Here now is Justice Sonia Sotomayor and her former clerk, Tiffany Wright.

WRIGHT: On the topic of current, the current state of events in the world, we're living in a time where public competence in institutions generally seems to be declining. And until recently, the judiciary and especially the Supreme Court, had enjoyed relatively steady competence from the public. And Gallup is now reporting that for the first time since they started polling on the issue, public competence in the court has plummeted and is at its lowest point. So why should the public continue to have confidence in its institutions of government, including the Supreme Court.

SOTOMAYOR: Institutions are made up by human beings. Because we are human, by necessity, we make mistakes. What you believe in is an institutional structure, our government, how it operates together, the three branches of government, a checks and balances in the way they operate. And in the people who created us. You are as equal if not the fourth branch of government, and perhaps the most important because you vote, and you are the ones who elect or at least indirectly appoint the other branches. And to that end, when we as institutions have made mistakes, other parts of the branches, because the four work in tandem, remember, I created the people as the fourth now. The people have worked to make changes. I've just recently done very close study of Dred Scott. Dred Scott is reputed to be one of the worst decisions of the Supreme Court. It's hyperbole to say that it caused the Civil War. It didn't cause a war. But it is the decision used on both sides of the Civil War, to motivate their respective adherence to fight. The North used the Dred Scott decision to tell northern states that the southern states were looking to spread slavery throughout the country, the southern states were talking about the Republicans undoing the Constitution by not following it, and not respecting the southern states rights to have slaves. And we ended up in a civil war. And the civil war in the 13th 14th and 15th amendment directly undid the three rulings of the Dred Scott case. Took a war. But it took nearly another century, before Brown versus Board of Education, and a pitstop of incredible impact, Plessy versus Ferguson, blessing separate but equal, for civil rights leaders in 1954, to have finally won the battle of freedom and civil rights started in Dred Scott, and ended in Brown versus Board of Education to make all people equal under the Constitution. But that was all four branches working together. But it can be lost if we don't all play our part. And I think, for my motivation, that I want to give you as young lawyers is: Dred Scott lost his 11 year battle for freedom in the courts. And he died a year after Dred Scott was decided. Never even got to enjoy the freedom he had bought because one of the people who helped him in his legal battle, the son of his original slave owner, secured his debt to buy his freedom, but he hardly got to breathe it before he died. Yet he won the war. And so that's why I think we have to have continuing faith in the court system, in our system of government, in our ability, I hope not through war, but through constitutional amendment to change in legislation, towards lobbying towards continuing the battle each day, to regain the public's confidence that we, as a court as an institution have not lost our way. 

WRIGHT: This question stems from a quote that I heard some time ago in an interview. And the quote is, what punishments of God are not gifts? I was reading your middle school book with my son, and you write about things that are difficult. Losing your dad at a young age, having a chronic illness, growing up in the projects, but shout out to girls from the projects because we run the world. And but you write about them not from a place of pain or negativity, necessarily, but an appreciation for what you've gained from them. So can you talk about the value of adversity? And how it's made you a better person a better justice, a better judge?

SOTOMAYOR: If it doesn't kill me, it makes me stronger. And so yeah. That is, what adversity does to you. It forces us to find the best and strongest part of yourself. It forces you to be inventive about ways to face the problem and get around them. It forces you to look at your soul and say, Will I survive? I will. Now, can you do that without adversity? And I will say to every parent in this room, because most of you are affluent, you have one heck of a challenge. Because that is the 100% question that all of my relatives who came up in circumstances similar to mine, are asking about their children. Will they be able to do as much as we did? Because they have not grown up with our hardship. I say I don't know. Because I don't know, if you don't suffer a little bit whether you realize and maybe a lot, whether you realize and accept how much that helps you become a better person. And it does. It helps you to forgive weaknesses in other people. One of the biggest things that I realized was the people who loved me the most, particularly my father, because I knew how desperately he loved me. But that love wasn't enough not to let him kill himself. He died of alcoholism. Couldn't stop drinking. And what that made me realize is that people do things in life. They're responsible for the choices. We all pay for our choices. My dad paid for his okay. But I could forgive him. I could look and say, we as human beings are not perfect. But it doesn't mean we're horrible people. We do wrong things. Every parent in this room has had a child look at them and say, Don't you love me anymore? And every parent has said, Are you silly? Yes, I love you. I just don't like what you did. Think about that. I thought about it when I was a district court judge and I had defendants before me and some of them did some horrible, horrible crimes. But I still had to look for their humanity. It didn't stop me from punishing them, and some of them I punished very harshly. That's not the point. I was there to impose a sentence and do it in a respectful way. And so I think that's what adversity teaches you. And it is my hope that those who don't suffer adversity think about that in trying to put themselves in the shoes of other people. And know what the value of struggle is. Know what the value of hardship is, and at least be grateful for what you have and not resentful of what other people have had to work for. And I do think it is important to understand that hardship can be a gift from God, not a punishment.

WRIGHT: How do you go about cultivating relationships with people with whom you really, really disagree? 

SOTOMAYOR: With every single person that I meet, particularly if I disagree with them, I try to find the goodness in them. I try to find what part of them can we communicate with together. And so I may have used and I have used as an example, my relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas, I suspect that I have probably disagreed with him more than with any other justice. That we have not joined each other's opinions more than anybody else. And yet, Justice Thomas, is the one justice in the building that literally knows every employee's name. Every one of them, and not only does he know their names, he remembers their families names and histories. He's the first one who will go up to someone when you're walking with him and say, Is your son, okay? How's your daughter doing in college? He's the first one that when my stepfather died, sent me flowers in Florida. He is a man who keeps, cares deeply about the court as an institution, about the people who work there. He has a different vision than I do, about how to help people, and about their responsibilities to help themselves. I've often said to people, Justice Thomas believes that every person can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I believe that some people can't get to their bootstraps without help. They need someone to help them lift their foot up so they can reach those bootstraps. That's a very different philosophy of life. But I think we share a common understanding about people and kindness towards them. That's why I can be friends with him. And still continue our daily battle over our difference of opinions in cases. But you really can't begin to understand an adversary unless you step away from looking at their views as motivated in bad faith. And so, yes, I have friends of all backgrounds, and friends have all political views. And I will continue to do so because that's important to me. Understanding how I can make the best pitch, long term, to achieve the goals that I think are important.

REICHARD: You’ve been listening to excerpts of US Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaking at the American Constitution Society’s annual convention this past June And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now for our weekly conversation on business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen, head of the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. Good morning!

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Good to be with you, Nick.

EICHER: It’s hard to pick the big story of the week, David. Do you think it might’ve been the markets sort of pulling out of a three-week slump or was that not the top story for you this week?

BAHNSEN: I think there were two stories: the smaller one—but, you know, important to follow economically—was Europe increasing their Fed rate, their overnight rate, essentially, what we call in America, the Fed-funds rate by 75 basis points, which is three quarters of a percentage point. It was the highest interest rate hike they've basically ever had, in one time.

Now, that doesn't say much, because since the formation of the European Central Bank, there hasn't been really very many rate hikes at all, they've been cutting rates most of the time.

But the problem is that the Euro has collapsed—and the Euro has dropped so much against the dollar. Because the Fed is tightening more, Europe is having to play defense. You really have central banks right now engaged in sort of a currency war, and Europe is having to do what they really don't want to do.

There, it's going to do more damage to them coming out of this moment, to tight monetary policy. But if they don't, their currency continues to collapse. And so that was a bigger economic story this week.

I think the secondary story is when you mentioned the markets, recovery was somewhat violent, there were a couple of days over 400 points, there was another day up a good amount as well in between. And so the reason it's a bigger story is not about this week, it's not about recession, it's not about inflation, it's not about the economy. It's for investors, it's for people to remember, the market timing is a fool's errand. It is impossible to do. The market had rallied 4000 points from mid June to mid August, and then dropped 2500 points in a couple of weeks, and then came back 1500 points. And in a week, these up and down movements are what we call volatility, not a straight line up not a straight line down, you know, where the s&p basically is, where it was before Russia invaded Ukraine. Interesting more. And so you've had a lot of roller coaster along the way, I think this has now been over six months since the invasion. It's been a lot of up and down movement. It's not been just a straight path. But when all said and done, that's where it's ended. And so trying to guess those gyrations, I think it's an important lesson for investors to remember, their investment strategy needs to be better than that.

EICHER: Let’s just go with one listener question this week, because it’s kind of a big question, and it’s related in a way to the ECB’s move, Europe’s move, on interest rates. You mentioned the Euro’s collapse, so I think this is especially relevant.

The question is from Emery of Louisville, Kentucky, and he works in home remodeling.

EMERY: Hi, Mr. Bahnsen. My question is in regards to hard currency versus fiat currency. And I was wondering, in your opinion in a perfect world, what the biblical ideal would be, then how should we as Christians live in this world if that does not align with what we believe the biblical pattern is? Also, since this is a very in depth topic, I was wondering if you could recommend any resources to dive into this topic further. Thank you.

Probably better define terms, too, hard currency and fiat currency.

BAHNSEN: Well, actually, in this case, how one defines those terms is very important to the answer. Because if what one means by hard currency is physical gold and silver and that somehow there's a biblical commandment, that the medium of exchange we use be a precious metal? I certainly don't believe that. But if one means a standard that limits the growth of money supply, that there'll be some form of objective standard that is governing the currency. I'm completely for it. And I think the principles of that are in Scripture, but I would disagree with people who say that the Bible was providing all the details as to how a modern currency system ought to work with the level of complexity that exist in today's economy as a medium of exchange. So here's what I'd start with what is currency? It is a medium of exchange, it is something to facilitate divisibility that the analogy I used in dividend Cafe this last week, is if I want a yellow pad of paper, and someone else wants a cow is going to be really hard for me to have to take as many yellow pads of paper, as they may have to get even exchanged with the cow. And yet, we certainly don't want to divide up that cow. Okay. And so a medium of exchange gives people the ability to transact in uneven quantities at different values. And so the presupposition in the question is when I agree with that, you want a fair medium of exchange. And there is a biblical concept of honest Weights and Measures that I'm completely sympathetic to. What I would prefer we have in our modern society is a objective standard. And there's a lot of different ones out there. Scott Sumner has this idea of nominal GDP targeting, which is a fancy term for the central bank being committed to just increase money supply, in concert with the actual level that GDP is going up each year. And adjusting year by year, Milton Friedman had similar ideas, the point being, that I don't think that there is a problem with fiat currency meaning paper, but I believe the growth of that money supply should not be left to willy nilly discretion. And so this puts me in a position where almost everyone could find something to disagree with, there are some who want it to be a very hard standard of gold, which can become problematic in a deflationary sense, as we saw during the Depression, and there are some they want no standards at all that they want just the wisdom of, of 12 PhDs around a conference table to handle all this. And what I'm suggesting is that we ought to have a standard, but that we do not need to pretend that standard is prescribed in detail in Scripture. And so this is really hard to answer in only a short period of time. I can't point to one particular book because I don't think it's been written yet. I think there are books that advocate for certain specific views that I don't want to advocate for. But I will tell you, I most certainly intend to write a book on this subject someday, to hopefully add my contribution to what I think is a topic far too many Christians get really wrong. 

EICHER: Yes, in your spare time!

Well, we’ve come to the end of our time for this week.

You can submit your question for the Moneybeat Mailbag and again, we do prefer that you use your phone to make a voice memo. Try to keep it short and send me a file, as Emery did, at feedback@worldandeverything.com.

David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. His personal website is Bahnsen.com.

David, talk to you next time. Thanks!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, September 12th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming up next, the WORLD History Book. This week an attack on a U.S. Embassy and a drug lord goes to trial. But first, we return to 1962—and a milestone in the civil-rights movement. Here’s arts and media editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Sixty years ago this week, a U.S. district court of appeals ordered the University of Mississippi to enroll its first black student, James Meredith. In an interview in 2012, Meredith described how he saw the situation surrounding his admission to Ole Miss.

JAMES MEREDITH: What happened in 1962 at Ole Miss was war between the state of Mississippi and the United States of America.

Meredith was an Air Force veteran. He had spent two years studying at the historically black Jackson State University. When he attempted to enroll in the all-white University of Mississippi, he was denied admission—despite Brown v. Board of Education’s supposedly ending segregation almost a decade earlier.

The democratic governor of Mississippi had claimed no school in his state would be integrated as long he was in office. Meredith knew he’d need to get the courts involved.

JAMES MEREDITH: I was at war. And I knew I could win the war against Mississippi by only one means. And that was to get the federal government in a position where they had to use their force to support my rights.

Even after the courts ordered Ole Miss to accept Meredith, politicians continued to block his admission. Whites in Mississippi engaged in violent rioting. President Kennedy threatened martial law, and U.S. marshals escorted Meredith to class in early October. His example paved the way for other blacks to attend Ole Miss. Six years later, Donald Cole, who eventually became vice chancellor for academic affairs at Ole Miss, enrolled at the school. Audio here from a short documentary by the school.

DONALD COLE: I remember being outside playing and coming inside, and my parents’ eyes were glued to the television. And I remember saying, “What are y’all watching?” — “Shh, shh! University of Mississippi is being integrated.”

After graduation, James Meredith got involved in politics as a Republican, sometimes working with men who had formerly supported segregation.

Next we turn to 1992.

Thirty years ago this week Manuel Noriega, the former leader of Panama was convicted in a U.S. federal court. Two years earlier, American soldiers had captured Noriega in operation “Just Cause.” President George H. W. Bush :

GEORGE BUSH: A US Air Force C-130 is now transporting General Noriega to Homestead Air Force Base, Florida. He will be arraigned in the US district court in Miami on charges stemming from his previous indictment for drug trafficking.

Noriega had been an U.S. ally during the ’80s, but the relationship broke down toward the end of the decade. Noriega had smuggled drugs into America for years, and he began aligning himself more closely with the Colombian cartels than with the United States.

GEORGE BUSH: The United States is committed to providing General Noriega with a fair trial. Nevertheless, his apprehension and return to the United States should send a clear signal that the United States is serious in its determination that those charged with promoting the distribution of drugs cannot escape the scrutiny of justice.

On September 16th, 1992, Noriega was sentenced to 40 years in a federal prison for eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering. That sentence would eventually be reduced to 17 years for good behavior, but Noriega wouldn’t go free. Instead, the U.S. government extradited him to France where he was convicted in French court of money laundering. Then at the end of 2011, France sent him back to Panama where he had been convicted in absentia to finish out 60 years worth of accumulated prison time. Noriega died of a brain tumor in 2017 at the age of 83.

From American intervention in Panama, we turn to American tragedy in Libya.

Ten years ago, on September 11th, 2012, a group of Islamic terrorists attacked the goverment compound in Benghazi, Libya. President Obama addressed Americans the next day.

BARACK OBAMA: Good Morning. Everyday, all across the world, American diplomats and civilians work tirelessly to advance the interests and values of our nation. Often, they are away from their families. Sometimes, they brave great danger. Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi. Among those killed was our ambassador, Chris Stevens, as well as foriegn service officer Sean Smith. We’re still notifying the families of the others who were killed.

Two other men were killed: CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Days later, ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, told American media this attack wasn’t planned.

SUSAN RICE: What our assessment is, as of the present, is in fact, it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where of course as you know there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video…

But evidence emerged that suggested the State Department had intentionally misled the American people as to the cause of the attacks.

Congressional hearings sought to uncover other errors in judgment and whether they had cost Ambassador Stevens and the other three men their lives. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio questioned Hillary Clinton who had been secretary of state at the time.

REP JIM JORDAN OF OHIO: Everything points to a terrorist attack. We just heard from Mr. Pompeo about the long history of terrorist incidents—terrorist violence—in the country. And yet five days later, Susan Rice goes on five TV shows, and she says this, “Benghazi was a spontaneous reaction as a consequence of a video.” A statement we all know is false.

The questions surrounding Benghazi continued to plague Clinton during her bid for the presidency in 2016.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Pro-life answers to pro-abortion arguments.

And, more on the legacy of Queen Elizabeth II.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. (Romans 12:18 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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