The World and Everything in It: September 18, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The United Nations is accusing Israel of much more than warfare:

HIRSH: If people are repeatedly told that Israel is committing genocide like Nazis…then I think that is an encouragement to relate to Jews in general as though they were evil.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also remembrances for Charlie Kirk from around the world.

And is our culture’s obsession with weight unhealthy?

MINTLE: We have all these influencers now who use the drugs and show how different they look. And all of this is just adding pressure to an already obsessed generation.

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says Americans must reclaim the virtues that made us strong.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, September 18th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Federal Reserve announcement » The Federal Reserve is cutting its key interest rate by a quarter-point, the first cut since December.

Chairman Jerome Powell said the board decided that under the circumstances, the time is right to make a change.

POWELL:    In the near term, risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment, to the downside. A challenging situation. When our goals are in tension like this, our framework calls for us to balance both sides of our dual mandate.

With that balanced approach, the Fed also projects it will cut interest rates twice more this year.

Until now, Powell and most of the Fed board had been united on holding off on rate cuts as they evaluated the impact of high tariffs and other policy shifts.

 POWELL:  Higher tariffs have begun to push up prices in some categories of goods, but their overall effects on economic activity and inflation remain to be seen.

President Trump welcomed the Fed’s rate cut but blasted it as too small, saying the central bank should have acted more aggressively. 

Trump UK state visit » President Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are set to meet today in London for trade talks. The president says UK leaders are hoping to get U.S. tariffs on British goods reduced.

But while it’s down to business today, it was all pageantry at Windsor Castle on Wednesday.

SOUND: [Marching band]

Trump looked on from a tent, sitting alongside King Charles III, as the UK hosts the president for a second state visit.

SOUND: [Bagpipes]

The festivities included lunch with the royal family in the State Dining Room, wreath-laying at Queen Elizabeth II’s tomb, and a state banquet at Windsor Castle in the evening, with speeches.

Former CDC director testimony » On Capitol Hill:

AUDIO:   The Senate Committee on Health Education, labor and pensions will please come to order.

The committee heard testimony from the former director of the CDC, Susan Manarez who told senators that America’s public health system is headed to a “dangerous place”

HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Monarez last month. And Monarez claimed that was because she refused Kennedy’s request to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations without seeing the evidence behind the changes.

MONAREZ:  I refused to do it because I have built a career on scientific integrity and my worst fear was that I would then be in a position of approving something that would reduce access of life-saving vaccines to children and others who need them.

Kennedy rejects her account, calling it “false.” He says he never asked her to ignore evidence and that she was removed —after less than a month on the job because she was “not trustworthy.”

FBI gate crash » A Pennsylvania man is facing felony charges after ramming his car into a manned gate at an FBI office in Pittsburgh.

Authorities say after 49-year-old Donald Henson smashed the gate just before 3am Wednesday, he pulled an American flag from his car, threw it over the gate, and ran away.

Christopher Giordano is the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the office.

GIORDANO: We do believe that there is a mental health problem and a history of mental health issues with the subject.

Giordano called the incident “a targeted act of terror,” but FBI officials later clarified they are not treating it as a terrorism investigation.

Routh trial, audio » The trial is underway this week of Ryan Routh, a man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump on a golf course last year.

And the Department of Justice now has released the audio of the Secret Service agent’s radio transmission from the day of the incident.

SECRET SERVICE: Shots fired! Shots fired! Shots fired! Individual in a bush with a gun.

That shot was fired by the Secret Service agent heard there after spotting the barrel of a rifle poking out of the bushes in his direction.

SECRET SERVICE: All units be advised it looks like an AK 47 style assault rifle pointed through the fence onto the golf course. Individual has not gained entry to the golf course. He is on the exterior of the compound.

Prosecutors say Routh’s fingerprints were on the scope of that rifle.

Routh is representing himself in the trial. The prosecution is expected to rest its case as early as today.

Ukraine expects $3.5 billion fund for U.S. weapons » Ukraine will soon receive U.S.-made missiles for Patriot air defense systems and HIMARS rocket launchers under a new international funding program. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher reports.

ZELENSKYY: (Speaking Ukrainian)

BENJAMIN EICHER: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday the first batches are already moving, with more shipments expected in the weeks ahead.

The weapons are being financed through a NATO-led mechanism that pools money from U.S. allies to buy American arms.

Known as the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, the fund has already secured more than $2 billion, with total commitments expected to reach $3.5 billion next month.

Separately, Washington and Kyiv are launching a $150 million fund to spur investment in Ukraine’s mineral sector—part of efforts to rebuild the economy while sustaining military support.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: United Nations accusations against Israel. Plus remembrances of Charlie Kirk around the world.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYNRA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 18th of September.

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

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

First up on The World and Everything in It: the United Nations says Israel is committing genocide.

On Tuesday, the UN released a report saying Israel is trying to eradicate at least part of the Palestinian population.

But what does “genocide” mean, and does the UN have the power to declare it? WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

ABRAHAM: We still do have more than 20 members of our families, her families, sheltering at the two churches there…

MARY MUNCY: Fares Abraham is a Palestinian American businessman from Bethlehem. He and his wife lead a Christian discipleship program in the Middle East called Levant Ministries. His wife and her family are from Gaza.

ABRAHAM: How many people have to die to atone for the sins of Hamas to say, you know, enough is enough?

Abraham says Israel’s recent military campaign in Gaza appears to be focused more on removing Palestinians from their land than freeing hostages.

ABRAHAM: And we don't have to second guess it, because it's being aired, it's being documented. The highest level of the Israeli government are saying it flat out, and they're declaring their intention of emptying Gaza of its residents and relocating them somewhere else.

For two years now, the United Nations has been investigating accusations that Israel is committing genocide.

CHANNEL 4 NEWS, NAVI PILLAY: We heard from live witnesses, we got a lot of live testimony, we held oral hearings here in Geneva.

Navi Pillay was the Chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory during the investigation. She spoke to Great Britain’s Channel 4 News after the reports’ release on Tuesday.

PILLAY: We were extra careful about ensuring that we personally investigate and verify everything. You know that’s the best we could do because we were not allowed into the country.

Israel, for its part, says the UN took officials’ quotes out of context and used unverifiable evidence.

The UN used at least some casualty numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry, an organization run by Hamas and its evidence standard is lower than what is used in a court case investigating genocide.

Still, Pillay says the investigation is a first step for government action, because many governments, including the U.S., are under an obligation to intervene in cases of genocide under the Genocide Convention—an international treaty that criminalizes it.

So what is the Genocide Convention and how does it work?

EYEL MAYROZ: We're going back to the 1930s.

Eyal Mayroz is a senior lecturer in peace and conflict studies at the University of Sydney, Australia.

MAYROZ: A Jewish-Polish legal expert by the name of Raphael Lamkin… noticed that there were a lot of mass killings of a particular kind that didn't have a name...

So he worked on a definition, and in 1948, the United Nations adopted a shorter version.

It says “genocide” means any “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.”

The five categories for acts considered genocide include killing members of the group, inflicting bodily or mental harm, imposing life-threatening conditions, preventing birth, and forcibly relocating children.

The UN says Israel is committing four of those.

Under the Genocide Convention, signatories, like the United States and other governments have a duty to provide effective penalties for anyone meeting that definition.

EYEL MAYROZ: Genocide is predominantly a legal term. Therefore, only a qualified court, for example, the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, is allowed to rule legitimately that something that is taking place is either genocide or not.

But Mayroz says proving intent to commit genocide can take years, and by then it may be too late to do anything about it.

In 2023, South Africa brought a case accusing Israel of genocide to the International Court of Justice. The court says there likely won’t be a ruling until 2027.

Mayroz says the real impact of a “genocide” declaration by anything other than a court of law is changing public discourse.

MAYROZ: We saw in Gaza, when the genocide label was started to be used on daily basis by advocates, by the media, then the attention of both international publics and the media grew.

Mayroz thinks this early declaration by the UN is a good way to address what he thinks is genocide in Gaza. But others disagree.

DAVID HIRSH: I think that it's very important in terms of antisemitism.

David Hirsh is the academic director and CEO of the London Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.

HIRSH: If people are repeatedly told that Israel is committing genocide like Nazis, which is what people associate with genocide, especially when they're talking about Jews. Then I think that is an encouragement to relate to Jews in general as though they were evil.

Hirsh believes that so far Israel’s actions have been within the bounds of war… and that Hamas should be blamed for committing genocide, both of Israelis and Palestinians. He says Israel has been trying to protect civilians.

HIRSH: I don't know of any other conflict, military conflict, in which one side has been providing food and medicines and fuel to the civilians of the other side.

Hirsh says Israel should be held accountable for any bad actions during the war. But loaded terms like genocide should be used with great caution.

On the ground in Israel, one resident told WORLD that he sees the war as self-defense, not genocide.

ISRAELI: It is not us in this scenario that we're looking for a war. We gain nothing from it, and there's no reason for us to want to do it. We're just trying to protect ourselves.

Now, Israelis are facing a tough question. What does it mean to be protected?

Palestinian Christian Fares Abraham thinks that safety on both sides of the border will take more than court orders or weapons of war.

ABRAHAM: Palestinians are not going to drive the Jewish population out, and the Jewish population are not going obviously, drive the Palestinian out. They have to figure out a way to live between the river and the sea…in peace.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Up next, remembering Christian conservative Charlie Kirk.

SOUND: [Crowd singing "Amazing Grace"]

This week, hundreds of people gathered in Arlington Heights, Illinois—Charlie Kirk’s birthplace—to remember his legacy.

AUDIO: Charlie’s example showed us that political dialogue doesn’t have to be about shouting someone down, but about listening and engaging. Even when we see things differently.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And it wasn’t just Arlington Heights. People all over the country gathered for prayer vigils.

In Orem, Utah, the town where Kirk was shot, thousands gathered to pray and reminisce about how Kirk impacted them.

AUDIO: The last thing that he was doing was basically testifying that Jesus Christ was his Lord and Savior. Those were one of his last words before the next person got up to speak. And I’m so moved by that.

WORLD reporters attended a handful of those vigils to understand more about why people gathered. We begin with Emma Eicher who attended a memorial in Phoenix.

EMMA EICHER: On the Arizona State University campus, Dan Beazley stands outside holding a ten-foot tall cross made from cedar wood. It weighs 65 pounds.

DAN BEAZLEY: I built this cross four years ago, and God told me to bring it to wherever the darkest situations are around the country.

Last Wednesday, Beazley saw that someone killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk. So, he hopped in his truck and drove from Michigan to Arizona. He rolled into Phoenix on Friday night. And the next morning, he started a memorial outside Turning Point USA headquarters. Since then, hundreds of people have paid their respects. The sidewalks are covered in bouquets and handmade signs mourning Kirk.

The air smells like flowers wilting in 100 degree heat.

BEAZLEY: Everybody came up and just started to share their hearts with the community as to what they felt and what their love for Charlie, their love for God, their love for the country, their love for the Bible.

SOUND: [STADIUM CHATTER]

On Monday evening, Dan holds the cross outside the ASU Desert Arena for a vigil hosted by Turning Point USA. There’s 14,000 seats in the stadium and families, college kids, and older couples fill more than half of them. Nearly every person wears red colors, or a MAGA hat, or shirts that say “I Am Charlie Kirk,” and “Freedom.”

SOUND: [NATIONAL ANTHEM]

At 5:30pm, everyone stands with a hand over their heart as an ASU student sings the national anthem. And one by one, speakers take the stage.

Almost all of them knew Kirk personally. Troy Holderby is president of the College Republicans at Arizona State.

TROY HOLDERBY: I'd like to do a quick experiment. If Charlie Kirk had an impact on your life, can I hear you please?

[APPLAUSE]

Over the next 3 hours, 22 people honor Kirk’s legacy. Some call for political action in the wake of his murder, like conservative firebrand Jack Posobiec, who promises to take up Kirk’s mantle.

JACK POSOBIEC: Charlie Kirk will not have died in vain as long as I am alive. As long as there is blood in my veins and air in my lungs, I will make sure that the radical left, the media and the Democrats never forget the name of Charlie Kirk!

Others call for a different response, one rooted in scripture.

STEPHEN DAVIS: Charles has left us with a clear set of instructions to read our Bible, to evangelize the gospel, to get married and have kids and fight for America. How about that for an idea?

[APPLAUSE]

A consistent theme appears throughout the night. Kirk was known publicly for being a prolific debater, but his coworkers and friends knew him as a family man who loved Christ. Tyler Bowyer is the Chief Operations Officer of Turning Point USA. He’s worked with Kirk from the very beginning.

TYLER BOWYER: A bunch of us kids, 20 something year olds, kids running a massive organization and turning into what Turning Point USA is today. But I’ll tell you, the biggest thing that I loved watching was watching him become a husband and a father.

Afterwards, outside the stadium, nearby speakers blast hymns. 31 year old Elijah Day says he’s taking the words from the vigil to heart.

ELIJAH DAY: There will be a reckoning. There will be a price to pay for the choice to murder a young man, a father of two children, a husband and a son of God. And I think all of us will stand for that, and we will be fighting as hard as we can going into 2026 and in the future.

And Dan Beazley is still standing outside, holding onto the cross as the crowd fades into the night.

BEAZLEY: Everybody just loves what Charlie stood for, and Charlie loved America, and he loved the cross, and that's why I'm here.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher in Phoenix.

REICHARD: On Sunday, I attended a vigil in the small town of Ozark, Missouri. Hundreds of faces in the town square were lit up with candles as music and testimonies filled the night.

Local organizer Jessica Wood framed the purpose to OzarksFirst.com:

WOOD: It’s an opportunity for the church to stand up and show everyone what it is to be a church. That you can handle a crisis like this and spread the Gospel.

Mourners prayed for the Kirk family, for the man charged for killing him, and for the soul of Iryna Zarutska, the woman slayed on public transit in North Carolina. And they prayed for the nation.

The founder of the local high school chapter for TPUSA spoke of Kirk’s influence:

HIGH SCHOOLER: Charlie Kirk inspired me to be the man I am today. He inspired me to immerse myself in the Christian faith and start my chapter.

For 18-year-old Luke Gordon, Kirk gave him courage:

GORDON: See him out there doing what nobody else would do. Going out there, promoting free speech and just having free debate with each other, listening to what people had to say. Not judging, but holding to his standards. Real debate. It’s really encouraged me to…I’ve always been kind of a quiet person and the back of the crowd type of guy. And it’s encouraged me to come out, really try to do something for this country. Because if I don’t do it, I shouldn’t expect you to.

Taylor Newsome is in his thirties, and he sees a movement afoot:

NEWSOME: Charlie lived his faith out loud. I mean, we live in an age where there’s a lot of lukewarm Christians who privatize their faith…He was the tip of the spear against woke ideology and he was pushing back against that…I’ve heard Turning Point has like 32,000 new chapters that people have signed up for, so looks like there’s already an amazing movement that’s taking place in his wake.

BROWN: The scene in the Missouri Ozarks was repeated many times around the world since last Wednesday’s assassination. Vigils in South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and London:

LONDON AUDIO: And one thing Charlie Kirk did is he very much advocated against violence, especially political violence. He said when people stop talking, bad stuff starts.

And across the ocean in the Middle East...Jews and Christians were mourning the loss of Charlie Kirk. WORLD’s Travis Kircher is currently on assignment in Jerusalem, and has this report.

SOUND: [Temple Mount singing]

TRAVIS KIRCHER: About three dozen pilgrims led by Rabbi Yehuda Glick ascended the Temple Mount in Jerusalem yesterday. They sang psalms and offered prayers in memory of slain conservative commentator, Charlie Kirk.

Glick described Kirk as a friend of Israel:

GLICK: Who inspired so many people around the world, mainly in his believing in dialogue. His main identity was dialogue. And here we are people who like him, loved Israel. Like him, loved Shabbat. And like him, understood the value of family.

While Jews worship freely at the Western Wall, the Temple Mount is administered by Muslims. Non-Muslim prayer is strictly forbidden at the site. In an unusual arrangement, often referred to as the status quo, Israeli police provide security to ensure that no Jewish or Christian religious activities occur on the Temple Mount except in limited areas.

About a half-dozen armed Israeli police escorted the pilgrims as nearby Muslims looked on.

Glick said Kirk’s true impact stemmed from his words, not the manner of his death.

GLICK: And I want you to understand: The fact that he was assassinated doesn't prove that every word he said was true. But he fought for the truth.

[SOUND: Temple Mount singing]

Reporting for WORLD, I'm Travis Kircher, in Jerusalem.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: More from our monopod beat: Ned the snail happens to be a romantic underdog. Found in a garden in New Zealand, he’s one out of 40,000, because his shell coils to the left instead of the right.

And that means that unless a lefty female turns up, Ned’s love life is, uh, stuck in neutral.

Giselle Clarkson is an illustrator and writer with New Zealand Geographic. She spotted him while weeding her bok choy:

CLARKSON: We’ve had lots of enthusiasm and encouragement for Ned, a lot of people who can relate and really want the best for them as a symbol of hope for everyone who’s looking for love.

Sadly so far, no “shell-mate” has answered the call.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 18th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: problems with weight loss.

Ozempic. Mounjaro. Wegovy. Zepbound. You’ve probably heard of these injectable weight loss drugs. Some 33 million Americans have tried them, and many of them have lost lots of weight.

REICHARD: But how should Christians think about weight loss and body image in the midst of the weight loss obsession? WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson brings us this report.

SOUND: [MEDICAL CLINIC]

KIM HENDERSON: Ochsner is a state-run family medical clinic in Monroe, Louisiana. Charles Norman is here for an appointment. He’s explaining how he injects himself with the drug Mounjaro.

PATIENT: Real easy. Just put it to your side right hand and click it on and pop it. That's it. It'll click back when you finish.

Dr. Amy Givler is seeing Norman for the first time. She says another practitioner put him on Mounjaro for diabetes, not weight loss, even though he was on the heavy side.

GIVLER: You lost a good amount of weight, and now you're normal. Your diabetes is in perfect control, which is fantastic, yeah.

Givler has seen it over and over. The wonder-working power of GLP-1 drugs, as they’re called.

GIVLER: I'm just going to say for diabetes, it has been amazing.

This class of drugs is great at controlling diabetes, and great at shedding weight.

COMMERCIAL: Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic…

And it’s that weight loss component that’s turned drugs like Mounjaro and Ozempic into superstars.

MONTAGE: Everyone’s talking about a new class of game-changing drugs… Ozempic, Ozempic, Ozempic … Major potential breakthroughs in the booming world of weight loss drugs … Part of that weight loss comes from the way Ozempic works … Doctors say they work by mimicking hormones in the gut…

Our society prioritizes thinness. So when injectable drugs that make you eat less became available, Americans ate them up. They spent an estimated $71 billion for GLP-1 medications in 2023 alone.

But what are the real costs of a drug like Ozempic?

MINTLE: There's just so much pressure on the internet, when you're looking at billboards, when you're shopping, I mean, everywhere you look, you know, weight is significant.

That’s Linda Mintle. She’s the chair of behavioral sciences at Liberty University’s college of osteopathic medicine.

MINTLE: We have all these influencers now, social media gurus who use the drugs and show how different they look. And all of this is just adding pressure to an already obsessed generation.

Mintle isn’t against GLP-1s. She thinks they may be a good tool for some patients fighting obesity. But using the drugs to drop weight when it’s not medically necessary? That’s a problem.

MINTLE: This is not going to treat all the emotional issues that a lot of people eat out of.

Dr. Ben Bikman agrees. He’s a metabolic scientist who goes as far as labeling some Ozempic use as “drug abuse.”

BIKMAN: There are perfectly lean women, who are very healthy, who have leveraged these weight loss drugs in order to get even skinnier than they already are because they have an eating disorder, and this has made it even easier...

Bikman is a professor at Brigham Young University. He says it’s naive to ignore the problem, especially when it’s so obvious.

BIKMAN: They start to look like zombies. It's very sad. It's sickening. It's disheartening. Even to see it happening in 18 or 19 year old college students whose parents are enabling it. I get extraordinarily incensed about the whole thing.

CREEKMORE: I think the church needs to back away from what I would call diet culture.

Heather Creekmore is a Christian body image coach and self-described “recovering comparer.” She wants Christians to think differently than the world does about their bodies and dieting.

CREEKMORE: We've demonized bread, and Jesus calls himself the bread of life. Like, isn't that confusing to anyone? So I think we need to stop and question, why have we bought into this?

Creekmore believes that a lot of people who are grabbing Ozempic to lose 20 pounds have the wrong perspective on food and identity.

CREEKMORE: God created us to eat, right? Food is a good gift from him. I was made on purpose, for a purpose, and that purpose is more than just weighing a certain amount or looking a certain way.

Linda Mintle agrees.

MINTLE: The real solution is a spiritual one. We need to value what God values, and take care of our bodies, be healthy, to do the work that God has called us to do, but not to obsess and be preoccupied with them and define ourselves based on our weight.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Monroe, Louisiana.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 18th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Here’s WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on what we need to do to preserve America from the inside.

CAL THOMAS: Charlie Kirk has been called many things, including an influencer, especially of young people.

A better label might be “converter.” The power to speak truth in a way that changes a political mindset is better than influencer. Kirk possessed that power which led to his murder by a 22-year-old man who wanted to rob him of it.

Written on one of the shells recovered at the scene was “Hey fascist! Catch!”

Among the many videos of Kirk debating students who disagreed with his conservative philosophy and Christian faith was a young man who asked about some of what he called Kirk’s “fascist statements.” 

STUDENT: Dude, like you …
KIRK: Can you name one thing that I believe that’s fascist?
STUDENT: Um, you believe that like … um
KIRK: I’m such a bad fascist, I let the people who disagree have an open mic to talk to me for two hours uninterrupted, I’m such an awful fascist.

The student appeared flustered, looked around for help and couldn’t answer. It appeared he had simply repeated what he had read on the internet, or heard from others.

The internet and its social media pages are a sewer. Many on the Left blame conservatives for political violence. Yet the body count tells a very different story. Online reactions from those who disagreed with Kirk range from how Kirk brought this upon himself to much more disgusting and vile celebrations of the assassination.

Anyone celebrating Kirk’s murder on social media – or promoting any violence against anyone – should be banned. This isn’t about free speech. It’s about incitement.

Social media has kept too many Americans from knowing each other. We are identified by labels which say nothing about our humanity and intrinsic value. We speak of some of our fellow citizens as being on the “other side.” China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are on the other side. Their dictators are opposed to what we stand for. Do we need enemies among us? If so, we will become out of one, many, the opposite of our unifying national motto.

When I was more active on the college lecture circuit in the ’80s and ’90s I participated in civil debates. Afterwards, I would occasionally have dinner with my political opposite. One was liberal Senator George McGovern, a Democrat from South Dakota. He was a World War II veteran, as was my father. McGovern and I became friends because we got to know each other beyond politics.

It was the same with the late Bob Beckel, who ran Walter Mondale’s 1984 campaign. He used to say “I managed Mondale to the greatest loss in political history, now I’m on TV as an expert. It’s a great country.” I agree. Bob became my best friend and we grew to love each other. I had the privilege of leading him to Christ. We even changed the other’s minds on a few issues because we took time to listen to what the other had to say.

This is supposed to be a special year leading up to the 250th anniversary of our nation’s birth. Instead, it is rapidly becoming something else. We had better re-examine the values and virtues that initially contributed to this unique nation or, like other nations before us, America will implode and cease to exist.

That was part of Charlie Kirk’s message to the young. A young man who didn’t want them to hear it killed him, but his ideas will find other voices because many of those ideas are true and truth has the power to change people's minds.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday.  Also, we review Angel Studios’ new sports movie: The Senior. And George Grant has this month’s Word Play. That and more tomorrow.  I’m Mary Reichard.

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

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: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” —John 15:12-15

Go now in grace and peace.

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