The World and Everything in It: September 19, 2024

PREROLL: Hey, good morning, it’s Nick Eicher. I’ll be back in about 15 minutes to let you in on a conversation with military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson. We talked about his new book … The End of Everything. He has a warning for us that we really need to hear: namely, that the world is a dangerous place and that a weak United States just makes it more so. You may not enjoy that part of the program, but I do think you’ll benefit.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! 

Communication devices belonging to a terror group explode across southern Lebanon. Deterrence or escalation?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: We’ll talk with an Israel expert.

Also, is it strike two for the Secret Service after the second attempt on the life of Donald Trump? And historian Victor Davis Hanson on national security in a dangerous world.

HANSON: I think the key takeaway is an inability to assess your own relative strengths and weaknesses, vis a vis the people who want to destroy you.

And American healthcare needs reform, but WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says don’t follow the UK’s model.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, September 19th. 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: It’s time for news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Hezbollah handheld radios explode » The White House says it remains focused on trying to tamp down tensions in the Middle East after a second wave of explosions in Lebanon aimed at crippling Hezbollah’s communications.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby:

KIRBY:  Looking at the last couple of days, it's just a little too soon to know, uh, what kind of impact, um, those incidents are going to have in the region writ large.

One day after thousands of pagers exploded on members of Hezbollah in Lebanon another coordinated blast rocked the terror group. This time, hundreds of walkie-talkies detonated at the same time.

Lebanese officials say at least nine people died and 300 were wounded in Wednesday’s explosions.

Israel is not commenting directly on the incidents.

GALLANT: [Speaking Hebrew]

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant would say only that the focus of the war is shifting north toward its border with Lebanon.

Hezbollah has ramped up attacks against Israel since last October.

Fed cuts rates » The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by an unusually large half-point.

The move marks a dramatic shift after years of high rates aimed at fighting inflation and bringing consumer prices down.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell:

POWELL:  Our patient approach over the past year has paid dividends. Inflation is now much closer to our objective, and we have gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%.

The rate cut is the Fed’s first in more than four years, and it reflects the central bank’s new focus on bolstering the job market.

House vote » On Capitol Hill …

AUDIO: On this vote, the yeas are 202. They nays are 220. Two voting present. The bill is not passed.

And with that, a funding bill pushed by Republican leaders fell short last night.

The legislation would have tied government funding for the new budget year with an election security measure. It would have mandated that states require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

Johnson pulled the bill from consideration last week and said he would work over the weekend to build consensus for it within the Republican ranks. But he wasn’t able to win over enough Republicans with Democrats united against it.

Trump security » Hours earlier, House Republican leaders publicly demanded action in the wake of a second assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer:

EMMER:  Secret service can and should do more to protect President Trump. We cannot normalize what has happened to an American president and our current Republican nominee.

And Speaker Mike Johnson said he has reached out to the Biden administration personally to call for more security around the former president.

JOHNSON:  I called and demanded that President Trump receive the same level of protection that the sitting president does because he is under such great threat. I mean, clearly he's the most threatened figure in American public life.

The Trump campaign on Monday asked the Secret Service to step up security around the former president. Still no word on the agency’s response.

President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer want to boost the Secret Service's budget. But some GOP members say money isn’t the issue and that the Secret Service has systemic problems that more funding won’t fix.

Wray on China hacking » The FBI has disrupted a group of Chinese cyberhackers who were working to hack into infrastructure, government agencies and private organizations in the U.S. and other countries.

FBI Director Christopher Wray says the Chinese government is engaged in an ongoing effort.

WRAY: To infiltrate U.S. infrastructure, co-op devices in your organizations, and frankly a whole lot of homes, and use them to target us and our allies.

Wray heard there speaking at the Aspen Cyber Summit in Washington.

The Justice Department did not identify any of the Chinese cyberhacking targets by name.

Kentucky conversion therapy » Conservative lawmakers in Kentucky are lining up to challenge a controversial executive order from the state’s governor banning so-called conversion therapy.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear signed the order this morning claiming that children who undergo counseling to support biblical sexuality are at higher risk of anxiety and depression.

BESHEAR: The practice of so-called Conversion therapy hurts our children It has no basis in medicine. It has no basis in science.

Under the order, if a child struggles with same-sex attraction, Kentucky therapists, including Christian counselors, would be forced to remain neutral on the issue.

However, legal and legislative challenges to the order are in the works as many say the governor has overstepped his authority.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: More analysis of electronic explosions in Lebanon. Plus, a conversation with Victor Davis Hanson.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 19th of September.

We’re glad you’ve joined us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Up first, a novel way to deter war.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of people were injured and at least 14 killed after electronic pagers and walkie talkies exploded in southern Lebanon. The terror group Hezbollah purchased the devices months ago.

What do these attacks mean for Israel and the Middle East?

REICHARD: Joining us now is Enia Krivine. She is with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, senior director of its Israel, Programs and National Security Network.

Enia, good morning.

ENIA KRIVINE: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: So glad you’re here. Well, let’s set up some context first. Before the events of this week, what tensions existed between Israel and Hezbollah?

KRIVINE: So Israel and Hezbollah are in the midst of what has been an almost 12 month conflict on the background of years of tensions, and what we've seen in the past week and days has been a sort of a crescendo where both sides have taken one step closer to what might be an all out war.

REICHARD: Well the word of the day seems to be escalation. I’m wondering how do these explosions benefit Israel, strategically?

KRIVINE: After the attacks of October 7, 2023 when Hamas invaded Israel's southern border communities and massacred 1,200 people, Israel declared war. And the very day after, on October 8, Hezbollah also began attacking Israel from the north. So fast forward 11 months, Israel has evacuated tens of thousands of people from their northern communities, and over a million people have been living under intermittent rocket fire from Hezbollah for almost a year now. So Israel has got is looking at this situation and trying to figure out how to get its people back to the northern communities. So what you're seeing now is an Israeli attempt to try and push Hezbollah back, to convince Hezbollah to end this war, to return a sense of security and safety to the north of Israel that would allow these tens of thousands of citizens who have been internally displaced for almost a year to finally return to their home. Now it's going to take a lot more than these deeper explosions and communication infiltration in order to give Israelis the security they need to make that move and to go home. But what I believe if Israel is responsible for this attack---of course, they haven't taken responsibility for this attack on the communications devices of Hezbollah members in Lebanon. But if Israel is responsible, it fits with this goal of weakening Hezbollah so that they are the terror organization, Lebanese terror organization is less combat ready and allowing their north, northern residents an opportunity to go home.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about the tactic used now. The UN Human Rights Chief is looking into whether Israel crossed a line with these attacks…and Enia, we do have international laws of war, the Geneva Convention protocols. How do these actions apply to the Geneva Convention?

KRIVINE: Well, the Geneva Convention has nothing in it that talks about the potential use of, you know, communications device being exploded on a designated terror organization. So this is an unprecedented territory that we're in, and I'll leave it up to international lawyers to litigate that. But what we've seen is that the north of Israel has been under attack on almost a daily basis from a designated terrorist organization in Lebanon. Hezbollah has the blood of hundreds of Israelis on its hand from this conflict and previous conflicts, not to mention the blood of hundreds of Americans on its hands. So when Israel, facing this terrorist threat, is trying to figure out again how to return sovereignty, safety, security to its northern regions, and it occurs to me that, if this was an attack by Israel, there's probably no more precise munition that you can get to than placing a small explosive device in the pockets of these terrorist members, you know, on their person, essentially. So again, this is something that I'm sure is going to be discussed and litigated with international lawyers, but it looks to me as if it's about as precise of a response to 11 months of shelling that you can get.

REICHARD: Enia, we’ve heard mixed reports about what and when Israel told the United States about its plans for this attack. Do you think this will change U.S. support for Israel?

KRIVINE: So the U.S. has a long history with Hezbollah. In the early 80s, the Lebanese terrorist organization that was the precursor of Hezbollah, killed 200 over 240 US Marines in southern Lebanon. So this is not an organization that the US and that this government is going to go out on a limb to try and defend Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, again designated in the U.S. and Western countries. This is an organization that specifically targets civilians with a lot of American and and Israeli and indeed Jewish blood on their hands from lots of different places. So I'm sure that America wants calm. I know that D.C. does not want an escalation in the north. But what I think that right now, folks in Washington are probably trying to look at the results, see how accurate these attacks were, see what the collateral damage was, and my guess is that this, if it was, indeed as precise as it looks like it was, and if this is going to deter Hezbollah from this ongoing escalation that it's been ratcheting up on a daily and weekly basis with Israel, then it is in the U.S. interest to try and deter what an all out, full scale war would look like, and the humanitarian catastrophe that it could involve.

REICHARD: Enia Krivine senior director with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Thank you so much.

KRIVINE: Thanks so much.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Evaluating the Secret Service, again.

Questions have been swirling since Sunday when the Secret Service spotted an intruder in the bushes on a Florida golf course allegedly waiting to assassinate former President Donald Trump.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Lawmakers wonder whether the Secret Service is allocating resources correctly, if it has enough personnel… and how much responsibility the Secret Service bears for this second narrowly foiled attack on Donald Trump.

WORLD Radio’s Mary Muncy has the story.

CHERYL TYLER: When you're on duty for the day. You know your particular assignments.

MARY MUNCY: Cheryl Tyler is a former Secret Service Agent who worked on the Clinton and second Bush details. She says when a protectee wants to go anywhere that isn’t planned, the Secret Service might only have ten minutes to prepare.

TYLER: We got to get the cars packed up. You try to get someone to where they're going prior to them getting there and arriving. Does that always happen? No.

One agent might be calling headquarters asking for more personnel, another is calling the place they’re going.

TYLER: From what I understand, the communication came to the supervisor and said that he was gonna go. He wanted to go play golf, and he'd be ready in 10 minutes. Well, when he shows up and stands there at the car, he's ready to go.

She says that’s different than what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania in July. The Trump rally was a preplanned event where the Secret Service had time to set up a perimeter and coordinate contingencies. But this round of golf in Palm Beach, Florida was an “off-the-record movement.” And that takes a lot more vigilance.

TYLER: The biggest challenge the Secret Service has is not having enough personnel.

Tyler believes the Secret Service did their job. The potential assassin didn’t get a shot off and is still alive to answer questions, but she agrees with the agency’s acting director who said the agency needs a “readiness mindset” not a “reactive mindset.”

But others say the agency needs more than a deeper bench.

Melanie Burkholder is a former Secret Service agent who also worked on the Bush detail.

MELANIE BURKHOLDER: I was thinking Reagan was the last time we will see anything like that because we’re too sophisticated, we’re too knowledgeable, there’s too much technology, there’s too much connectivity. And, by golly, we’re seeing it now.

Burkholder says a person’s protection level is supposed to be determined by the threat level. A higher threat level means the perimeter should expand.

BURKHOLDER: However, it seems as though they've also tied that to who is that person. As far as are you a candidate? Are you an elected or are you a former president, who's also a candidate?

She says it’s amazing that the agent spotted the muzzle in the bush, but they should have had drones flying and pushed the perimeter out.

BURKHOLDER: Why was the perimeter where there have been known media to get pictures of the former president golfing there, just 30 yards away from him with this person, this potential assailant, having a rifle that is capable of 300 yards out?

And that perimeter question has made it to the Hill.

JARED MOSKOWITZ: Clearly, just from my vantage point, the perimeters at these events are clearly too small.

Florida Democrat Jared Moskowitz is one of the 13 Congress members tasked with investigating the Butler, Pennsylvania attack.

MOSKOWITZ: They’ve got to expand the perimeters. People are able to get too close to the former president.

WORLD asked these lawmakers if a second assassination attempt changes anything for the ongoing investigation.

MOSKOWITZ: I’ll leave that up to the chairman and the ranking member. I mean, at the end of the day, the whole point is to figure out what’s failing.

Moskowitz says this is an opportunity for the country’s protective forces to get it right going forward—a critical chance to reevaluate their protections.

MOSKOWITZ: It’s tough to always prove a negative, right? It’s like how many school shootings have we stopped? But I think it’s safe to say the last 60 days have not been the brightest moment for the Secret Service.

Laurel Lee is another one of the 13 lawmakers on the investigation task force.

LAUREL LEE: The task force is looking at, in addition to the facts and circumstances of that day, also what we need to be doing at secret service to make sure that they have the strategic operations plan and the resources and people assigned to carry out their duties.

Former Secret Service agents Tyler and Burkholder say finding more recruits won’t be easy. It’s a dangerous and stressful job.

But for now, Burkholder says there needs to be more accountability within the agency.

BURKHOLDER: If I had someone go past my secure area and have harmed one of my protectees, I would have immediately resigned because I would consider myself a failure. I have one job, it's to keep that person safe, and it takes many people to do that, but I would have considered myself a failure.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy. Leo Briceno helped write and report this story.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Space may indeed be the final frontier, and last week another “first” happened on a spaceflight operated by SpaceX:

GILLIS: Welcome aboard the Dragon Spacecraft. I’m Sarah Gillis, one of the Polaris Dawn crew members.

Gillis isn’t “just” a SpaceX engineer and astronaut. She’s also an accomplished violinist!

GILLIS: Here is “Reye’s Theme” by John Williams, brought to you from the stars.

Then Gillis, hair floating overhead, began to play the Star Wars tune…

AUDIO: [GILLIS VIOLIN SOLO]

Her solo was later mixed with performances of youth orchestras around the world to create a video, a beautiful effort to raise money for a children’s hospital.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 19th. This is WORLD Radio, and we thank you for listening. 

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. In the current WORLD Magazine for September, I wrote a column lamenting that American politics doesn’t seem to turn on foreign-policy issues.

AUDIO: [Montage of Walz, AOC, Harris, and Trump]

To be fair, this is no recent development. What is, is how dangerous the world has become, even more so—arguably—than when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had nuclear weapons trained on one another.

Still today the Arms Control Association says there are close to 10-thousand nuclear warheads at the ready: Russia has them, as does the U.S. and UK, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, China, and North Korea. Iran—depending upon whom you believe—is getting close. Let’s not forget bioweapons and cyberweapons and military applications of artificial intelligence.

HANSON: There’s a certain therapeutic mind that doesn’t understand that peace is not the natural order of things. It’s chaos, war, and danger. Peace is a parenthesis.

That’s Victor Davis Hanson. He’s a military historian at Stanford. He’s also a classicist. He wrote a book called The End of Everything and he and I talked this summer after I read his book in preparation for that magazine column. It was quite the beach read.

Not really.

The End of Everything traced the utter destruction of four ancient civilizations—the Thebans, Carthaginians, Byzantines, and Aztecs. There’s a reason you don’t hear about them anymore. They were wiped out. But before they were, they thought they were powerful. They thought they had allies that had their backs. Internally, they had deep divisions. They were self-deceived and they misunderstood their enemies.

HANSON: They’re not thugs. They’re systematic, deliberate, scientific minds, and they’ve come to a conclusion and a cost-benefit analysis, it’s time for these civilizations to disappear and stop this rivalry or this problem.

These are lessons Hanson says are much needed. As he looks at the world today, Hanson’s concerned about two big themes: first, weapons of mass destruction in so many hands and so many rogues, including NATO member Turkey—what Hanson calls the anti-NATO NATO member. Second, dangerous new axes of evil.

The late Henry Kissinger once said U.S. security rested on the idea that Russia was no closer to China than it was to America and China was no closer to Russia than it was to America. But now, the U.S. is on the outside and Russia and China are in the same camp: the one with the largest population and second largest economy in the world and the other with the largest number of nuclear weapons and largest territory. Here’s Victor Davis Hanson:

HANSON: There’s a perception, whether it’s legitimate or not, that we either can’t or won’t react—and that means that our friends basically say, ‘it’s too dangerous to be a friend of yours when we have this rising axis that we don’t particularly like, but we’d rather cut a deal with them and survive, than be loyal and join you and die.’ And so we’re starting to see that and we’ve got to stop that. We’ve got to rearm and we’ve got to restore deterrence and we have to have a coherent, bipartisan foreign policy.

There’s a yawning gap between what we need and what we have. Military recruiting, for one thing. Hanson the military historian says there’s a particular demographic from which we’ve drawn our warrior class. We’re talking rural and suburban white men. Hanson says their fathers fought in the Gulf War, in Afghanistan; their grandfathers fought in Vietnam; their great grandfathers in World War II. Three-quarters of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan came from this group, roughly 35 percent of the overall population. These are your warriors, Hanson says, and the current military brass has tagged them as possibly dangerous extremists.

HANSON: You’ve so demonized this group that when you look at the actual data of who is not joining the military, it turns out that this is the specific group that accounts for 90 percent of the 50-thousand that are not joining. So it’s not just that 50-thousand are not joining, it’s 50-thousand that if you get in a war over Taiwan or you get in a war—who knows?—with Iran or you get in a war with the cartels, these are the type of people who will step up and say, ‘I want to fight.’ And yet we have alienated them for a generation.

This is not lost on America’s enemies. They notice. They also notice a college campus culture rooting for Hamas in the Israeli war in Gaza. It makes our enemies think they have an opportunity to exploit. Hanson doesn’t believe America would right now lose what he calls an existential war, but he’s worried we’re not strong enough to deter one by projecting confidence and strength: financial, cultural, social, economic, not just military.

Hanson says look at the 36 trillion dollar debt with interest costs exceeding the military budget. Look at the border and the unknown millions who’ve been pouring over it.

HANSON: When you get to a situation when a civilization’s perceived medicine is seen as worse than the disease, that was a famous formulation of the historian Livy about Rome, who said we can’t live with our sins and we can’t live with our medicine. The medicine is deemed worse than the disease. I think that applies to things like social security, the budget, the border and we know what we have to do, but we’re paralyzed. And I think our enemies say, ‘this is not the United States of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and Belleau Wood and Gettysburg. It just isn’t. That’s what they think.

Whether America’s enemies are right or wrong is almost beside the point. The point is the deterrence is fraying.

Is there a happy ending? Well, of course, there is, we read the same book. But maybe the best news of all the bad news is that the end is not yet here. Special thanks to historian and author Victor Davis Hanson.

HANSON: Well, thank you.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 19th. 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.

The UK’s National Health Service ought to serve as a warning to those promoting socialized medicine in the U.S., says WORLD commentator Cal Thomas.

CAL THOMAS IN BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND: Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently commented on a report he commissioned that found the UK’s National Health Service is in deplorable condition. It’s nothing new. The report’s findings echo media investigations of the past: unacceptably long waits for treatment, crumbling hospital structures, patients dying unnecessarily, patients on trolleys in hallways because rooms are unavailable, and fewer MRI scanners than in countries of similar size.

Fixing the NHS has had widespread support across party lines since its creation in 1948. Starmer’s campaign promises to finally do it brought Labour back to power. Starmer announced a 10-year plan to “fix” the system which will doubtless include more spending and probably even higher taxes. Though Starmer has promised no new funding for the NHS without reforms.

He mentioned three areas that need immediate attention: transition to a digital NHS, moving more care from hospitals to communities, and focusing efforts on prevention over sickness.

That last one – prevention over sickness – is key not only in the UK, but also the U.S. and everywhere else. For too long politicians have focused more on care rather than cures.

I am old enough—just barely—to remember when President John F. Kennedy launched The President’s Council on Physical Fitness. Famous football player and coach Bud Wilkinson directed the program. Kennedy and Wilkinson sought to lead by example. They created a curriculum for public schools that supplemented Physical Education programs already in place. Beginning in the 1961-1962 school year, the Kennedy council began a national publicity campaign to promote its directives on fitness. It included the Marine Corps inspired fifty-mile-hike-in-twenty-hour challenge. Other initiatives promoted eating the right foods, and exercise. Even cartoonist Charles Schulz contributed to one memorable popular culture tie-in: “Snoopy’s Daily Dozen” … an exercise manual featuring Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang.

Suddenly it was cool and fun to be fit. That message is needed more than ever today.

Starmer’s goal for prevention is good, but it’s not enough. There needs to be a companion goal and that’s curing diseases.

One example: according to the Alzheimer’s Association nearly 7 million American seniors are living with Alzheimer’s dementia. By 2050, this number is projected to rise to nearly 13 million. In the UK, current estimates report nearly one million people living with dementia now…projected to rise to 1.4 million in 2040.

A cure for this horrible and debilitating ailment would also create economic benefits, in addition to relief for patients, family members and caregivers. According to ScienceDirect.com: a cure would save Medicare and Medicaid nearly $200 billion dollars annually. Life insurance companies and unpaid caregivers would also benefit financially. Research into the causes should also be an important budgetary priority.

I’m guessing people in the UK and the U.S. would be willing to pay a little more in taxes if they could be sure reforms were forthcoming in their respective health care systems and the money was spent wisely. Research and cures might cost more upfront but the backend savings in money and pain would be enormous and more than worth it.

The sooner Prime Minister Starmer’s proposed reforms are fully known the quicker improvements might be made. If Starmer’s reforms work, a new NHS could be the model for the world. But if past performance is any indication of future results, it’s not promising.

Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders has frequently proposed: “Medicare for all, a type of NHS for the U.S.” But if it isn’t working here, what makes Sanders and his fellow advocates think it would work in a country with a population far larger than the UK?

I’m Cal Thomas.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday. And, a new prequel in the Transformers movie franchise. We’ll have a review. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Myrna Brown.

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: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear.” —Proverbs 25:11, 12

Go now in grace and peace.

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