The World and Everything in It: September 29, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST:  Good morning! 

Two justices, two worldviews on precedent, originalism, and pressures on the Supreme Court.

ALITO: How are we going to hold together if we don't regard each other simply as fellow Americans and judge people based on individual characteristics?

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

Also today the Monday Moneybeat with economist David Bahnsen.

And the WORLD History Book, part two on Nazi eugenics.

KOMRAD: This was considered compassionate, a moral pioneering effort to relieve … suffering.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, September 29th. 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: Shutdown standoff » It appears Democrats will get their chance this week to negotiate with the president today in hopes of avoiding a government shutdown.  House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said good news came out of a talk this weekend with Speaker Mike Johnson.

JEFFRIES: There had been a conversation between Republican leaders and the president. And as a result, the meeting is back on.

That comes days after President Trump said he had called off the planned meeting.

But Jeffries says Democrats won't support a partisan Republican spending bill that “continues to gut the healthcare of the American people.”

Republicans, meantime, say they need to keep cutting fraud, abuse, and government overspending.

And Speaker Johnson said Sunday:

JOHNSON:  The purpose of the meeting is so that the president can assemble the four leaders, you know, the two top leaders in both chambers, to come in and have this discussion. And I talked with him at length yesterday about this and, and he's gonna tell Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to stop playing political games.

Republicans say that Democrats need to help them pass a simple extension of government funding by tomorrow night to avoid a shutdown to allow more time for negotiations.

Democrats say they want immediate talks on health care and that they are willing to shut down the government if they don’t get concessions.

Church shooting » Police are investigating a deadly attack against a Mormon church in Michigan on Sunday that killed at least two people and injured eight others.

Grand Blanc Township Police Department Chief William Renye:

RENYE:  He drove his vehicle through the front doors of the church. He then exited his vehicle firing, uh, several rounds at individuals within the church.

Renye said one of the wounded people was in critical condition Sunday evening and seven others were stable

Police killed the 40-year-old suspect in a shootout.

Authorities are working to determine a motive.

RENYE: We're gonna do search warrants on the suspect's residence. We're gonna go through cell phone records, things like that.

He is also believed to have deliberately set fire to the church building. Flames and smoke were visible for hours before the blaze was extinguished.

New sanctions against Iran » United Nations sanctions are back in place against Iran over its nuclear program.

The UN reimposed those sanctions under the “snapback” mechanism. France, Germany, and the UK triggered the snapback after declaring Iran out of compliance.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday claimed that Iran is being unfairly targeted.

PEZESHKIAN (Speaking in Farsi): Unfounded accusations that they’re blowing out of proportion is unacceptable. We have never sought nuclear weapons. We never will seek nuclear weapons.

Experts note that Iran has for years enriched uranium at levels close to weapons-grade … Well beyond what is needed for peaceful purposes.

Iran’s allies, China and Russia tried, unsuccessfully, to block the sanctions.

The “snapback” provision of the 2015 nuclear deal, freezes assets, halts arms sales, and penalizes missile development.

Comey indictment reaction » Democrats are sparring with the Justice Department over the indictment last week of former FBI Director James Comey.

 Comey is charged with lying to Congress and obstructing a government proceeding.

Democrats charge that President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department and seeking political retribution. Hakeem Jeffries:

JEFFRIES:  These charges are gonna be dismissed, James Comey will win in court, but what it reflects is a broader attack on the rule of law that should frighten every single American, whether you're a Democrat and independent or a Republican.

But Vice President JD Vance shot back on Sunday …

VANCE:  The idea that this is driven by politics, I think it's preposterous when you actually read the details of the indictment and the obvious fact that James Comey did lie under oath to Congress multiple times.

Comey is scheduled to be arraigned on October 9th.

Eric Adams drops out » New York City Mayor Eric Adams is dropping out of the mayoral race.

The incumbent pulled the plug on his struggling reelection campaign in a video message Sunday.

He blamed a campaign finance board decision that he said undermined his ability to raise the needed funds.

ADAMS:  Despite all we've achieved, I cannot continue my reelection campaign.

Adams was elected as a Democrat in 2021 but amid controversies and growing disapproval within his own party, Adams decided to mount his reelection bid as an independent.

Former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo also mounted an independent campaign. He’s still in the race. But recent polls show Democratic nominee, self-proclaimed socialist Zoran Mamdani leading a crowded field by nearly 20 points.

I'm Kent Covington.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for September 29th, 2025. Glad you’ve joined us. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Next week, the Supreme Court gavels in a new term, with a docket packed with disputes that could shape American life for decades. But before that, we hear from two justices who capture the Court’s fault line: Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan. This summer, Alito sat for an interview at the Hoover Institution; Kagan spoke at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. Between them, you hear the tug-of-war that defines the Court: Is the Constitution locked to its original meaning, or is it a living framework?

EICHER: In the end, it’s not about pure theory—it’s about whose reasoning can bring a majority of colleagues along. That tug-of-war starts with a word you’ve heard in confirmation hearings and debates alike: the word is originalism.

MONTAGE: You are a self professed originalist. / The point of / originalism / is strive to understand what the words on the page mean. / The doctrine of originalism. / Well, here's what I would say about originalism. / Now originalism, it's very careful when you talk about originalism, to understand that people are hearing different things, sometimes, / as if originalism belonged to a party. It doesn’t. / Either way we apply what they meant to do. So in that sense, we are all originalists.

The idea that the Constitution’s meaning is fixed at the time it was written. Justice Alito wears that label proudly—though, as he explains, it’s not a mechanical formula but a disciplined way of reading the text.

ALITO: ….the Constitution is a text and it should be read basically the way other texts are read. We read the words. They’re understandable. The English language hasn’t changed that much since the late 18th century. We can figure out what it means where it refers to legal concepts, established legal principles, we can explore what they were understood to mean at the time, and that’s the way it should be interpreted. So It was an effort to provide a structured, disciplined and restrained way of reading the Constitution.

REICHARD: Even though Justice Kagan has said “we’re all originalists now”, she isn’t really. What she values is the same thing the chief justice values: the High Court’s institutional voice.

KAGAN: If you’re writing for the Court, you have to sound sort of court-like. And that’s partly a matter of style. And everybody in your majority has to be comfortable with it. And that imposes constraints both of style and of substance….and you have to give them something understandable and clear to apply.

Different roads toward one similar end: Rulings the public can follow.

EICHER: If “originalism” is about the starting point of the Constitution, we turn to a Latin phrase to talk about its staying power.

MONTAGE: Stare decisis. / Stare decisis is a very important consideration. / Stare decisis, / which is a shorthand for longer Latin phrase that means, “stand by the thing decided” and “do not disturb the calm.” / Stare decisis the background rule of judicial maintenance of precedence. / The principles of stare decisis look at a number of factors, settled expectations, whether or not precedents have proven to be unworkable, is another consideration. / People like Blackstone would be astonished that when you have written law, that we are applying stare decisis the way we are.

Stare decisis, respect for precedent. The idea is that the Court shouldn’t toss out its past rulings lightly, because stability in the law matters, without being a straightjacket:

ALITO: If it’s egregiously wrong, if it has made a big practical difference—has it settled things, or has it left things in an unsettled state?—those are certainly all considerations that we have to take into account.

That’s the logic behind reversals like Dobbs that overturned the abortion decision Roe v Wade. It also informed the court’s rejection of race-based college admissions, the line of cases that began with Regents of the University of California v Bakke.

ALITO: I think that our constitution is color blind. I find it hard to see how we're going to hold together as a country and a country with people of every race and every ethnicity. How are we going to hold together if we don't regard each other simply as fellow human beings, as fellow Americans and judge people based on their individual characteristics?

Justice Alito frames that conviction in moral terms. To hold the country together, he says, requires fortitude—especially when decisions are politically unpopular.

Justices have to be courageous … and Justice Alito points to an institutional safeguard that allows the court to stand firm. 

ALITO: And to be honest, it's a lot easier for me to do that than it is for those college students that I was talking to, because I have life tenure. I've had life tenure for the past 35 years. So in my opinions, I can say what I think is right, and I'm not going to get fired for doing it, and I'm not going to get my pay docked. There may be other unhappy consequences that follow, but for those college students, they're, you know they're going to have to try to hold down jobs, and they may be pressured in exactly the way that I mentioned, to endorse things, accept things, say things that they know are wrong. And I hope they will have courage. I hope they will have fortitude.

REICHARD: Life tenure is meant to insulate justices from politics. But it can also inadvertently raise the stakes: because when a seat is meant to be for life, unstable people sometimes imagine the only answer is violence. Justice Kagan recalled that very danger in the aftermath of Dobbs.

KAGAN: And that's something that my court dealt with, actually a few years ago, when Dobbs came down, when some of my colleagues, that my colleagues on the majority side, were confronted with protests outside their houses, including houses with children in them, and a gunman appeared at one of my colleagues houses, and, and that is scary stuff.

Justice Alito does not downplay the danger—but for him, the weight of the office tips the scales: Justices are not conscripts but conservators of our constitutional order.

ALITO: There is no Supreme Court aptitude test that everybody takes, and so the person who gets the highest score gets the nomination. It's like being struck by lightning. It's a great privilege. Nobody forces us to take the job or keep the job, but if you really love the Constitution and our system of government and want to preserve it, then I do think you have to stand firm.

Another phrase you’ve likely heard tossed around: “shadow docket.” That’s shorthand for those cases the court needs to decide quickly, regrettably, in the shadows, without full briefing and oral argument of the regular legal docket.

You’ll hear senators and commentators using the phrase, frequently pejoratively.

Justice Kagan once used that phrase, but now prefers one less loaded, “emergency docket.”

KAGAN: There are some times that there are emergencies and we have to do something without all the briefing and the argument and the consultation and so forth…. I think we should be cautious about acting on the emergency docket…..And so one should be hesitant about making decisions without any of those things in a way that does disrupt what’s going on in the lower courts unless we really have to.

EICHER: As for Justice Alito, he agrees fast action can’t be avoided at times. But he traces the surge in emergency cases to a deeper cause: congressional gridlock. And as presidents become more assertive, challenges pile up.

ALITO: So as the difficulty of getting legislation passed has increased, presidents have increasingly looked to see what they can do on their own. If you go back to 2014 President Obama famously said, “Well, you know, I may not, I'm not going to depend on trying to get legislation through Congress. I have my phone and I have a pen.” So the pen was what he could do, executive orders, rules, other executive director directives.

Under President Biden that increased, and we had a number of cases here involving the unilateral exercise of executive power by the Biden administration. Forgiving up to $500 billion of student loans, requiring all the participants in Medicare and Medicaid to require their employees to be to be vaccinated, directing Texas to take down the barbed wire it had strung across the border, requiring imposing a moratorium on evictions in areas that were hard hit by COVID. By my count, we had 14 emergency applications filed by the Solicitor General during the Biden years, and now during the first what is it, four months of the Trump administration, I mean, the graph keeps going up and up.

So the President's exercise their executive power, in an assertive way, and that's immediately challenged in district court, sometimes by coalitions of attorneys general from states where the majority is not favorable to whatever the to what the President is doing…..And that's what we’re getting.

Here’s another challenge: the constitution was written in the 18th century. But today’s cases involve things like drones and smartphones, even thermal imaging guns. Yet, Justice Alito doesn’t see “originalism” as a museum piece. It works by drawing analogies from old principles to solve new problems.

ALITO: The meaning of the Constitution does not change, but the world changes, and the issues that come before the court change. And so it's important to understand that originalism is not a scientific formula that yields a result mechanically, if you just feed in the variables, you sit back and and it produces, it produces a result….

I'll give you an example. In 1791 when the Fourth Amendment was adopted, there were no thermal imaging devices. 2001 the court had a case called Kyllo, and the question was whether a police officer seated in a car on a public street where he had every right to be, was searching a house if the officer focused a thermal imaging device on the house, could see through the walls and detect heat emitting objects inside the house.

So you can't look at the world as it existed in 1791 to see what people thought about thermal imaging devices, they didn't exist. So you have to draw an analogy. Was that situation more like a police officer on a public street looking through an open window, not blocked by shades or drapes, and seeing what goes on inside. That is not a search. Is it more like that? Or is it like a full blown search, where officers go inside the house and they can see things that are not visible through a window that the homeowner has left unshaded…

In the end, a bare 5-4 majority ruled that aiming a thermal scanner at a house is a search—meaning police needed a warrant before doing it. The decision reinforced the Fourth Amendment shield around the home … even against technologies the Founders could never have imagined.

Where modern justices need imagination is to discern foundational principles. Which is why Justice Alito calls himself a “modified originalist.” The meaning of the Constitution doesn’t shift with the times. But applying it to today’s facts demands judgment, care, and sometimes creative analogies.

REICHARD: For all the clashes over method and meaning, Justice Kagan pulls the focus back to the institution itself—reminding us that justices, whatever their philosophy, must still work together.

KAGAN: I've noticed that there is some disagreement on the court. (laughter) And you know the disagreement, you know there are different ways in which we disagree, and sometimes the divisions are one thing, and sometimes the divisions are another….And you know that there are some number of cases which are six-three cases on this court. They used to be sort of five-four cases and and I, you know, I don't enjoy that.

I find it frustrating, I find it disappointing, I find it sometimes even maddening….I mean, it's just, it's just a fact of the matter that this sometimes happens on cases that I care strongly about. You know, on the other hand, and you know, I, like all my colleagues on one side of the court, if you want to talk sides, no less than on the other, I respect them. I think that they are all operating in good faith.

Alito agrees. On a court made up of many members, principle meets pragmatism: persuasion, compromise, and precedent are all part of the work.

ALITO: …if you're on a multi member court, and you're trying to produce an opinion that at least four of your colleagues will agree with, you have to make compromises. And scholars, you know, sometimes they jointly write a book or an article, but much of the time, they write on their own, and they don't have to worry about pleasing anybody else, and so that that is a big, a big difference in a system of precedent after a case is decided against you.

Let's say the court makes a decision and I'm in dissent, And now another case comes along that is similar, so the earlier decision is cited as a precedent. I have to make a decision. Do I say I'm sticking to my guns? You were wrong before...Or do I say, Well, I thought you were wrong. I still think you were wrong, but I'll accept, for present purposes, that that is the governing decision, and then try to make the best of that prior precedent.

So those are two examples of ways in which being an originalist judge is quite a bit different from being an originalist law review article, right?...It is tricky. It involves judgment.

Different paths, but both bound to the same oath—and to the same rule of law.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm the Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning to you.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, David, you highlight something in this week’s Dividend Café that I think should shock all of us—that in the United States today, nearly 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 … these are the prime working years … these men are out of work and are no longer looking for work. That number is stark, and it doesn’t hit you in the same way that a percentage might—at least for me.

Seven million young men. That clobbers me when I hear it. It’s one in 10 of the entire male workforce in that key age bracket.

Historically, that group has been fully employed. About 98 percent, as you say. Now it’s down to 89.

And this is no data blip—this is a secular trend, a generational shift. Let’s talk about what’s driving that and what it might mean for our economy and culture.

So let me ask this way: we hear policymakers talking about jobs, and you’ve pointed out that they frame it as a demand-side issue—“not enough opportunities,” etc. But you say the real problem is not demand but supply, that millions of men are simply opting out … or just giving up. If we took that seriously, starting with a policy question, what would a truly supply-side labor policy even look like?

BAHNSEN: I think that the problem in answering the supply issue from a policy standpoint is that it’s a combination of what is public policy, and then let’s call it cultural policy. In other words, I think that this is never going to be fixed only with public policy.

Churches play a role here, the families and what kind of device management they have. You know, I make the point that the amount of non physical leisure that is just basically staring at a screen that single men without kids do. And I put a chart and a study from the University of Maryland that came out last year on it. It’s startling.

You know, there’s issues of concern here in trajectory across all sorts of demographics, but I highlight this issue with prime working age men, because the data highlights it. It’s 65 point 2 million men in our country that are between 25 and 54.

And you have a certain amount of people that are removed because of severe disability or whatnot. But basically, when you get to the labor participation force, that inactivity is 10.9% that’s where we’re getting the 7 million. And it’s a trajectory over time.

What we’re talking about here is non recessionary, isolating just men who are able bodied, and seeing this trend, and I don’t know how anybody can deny that it’s become a systemic, secular problem.

And when we look at public policy, I would suggest that one of the things that is screaming in our face is reform of the social safety net, the access to disability when people are healthier, they’re living longer, the percentage of people taking disability claims in white collar jobs is just as high as blue collar so this isn’t related to a physical injury from the workforce.

Now, do those things happen? Of course they do. They’ve always happened. And I think society needs to have solutions for people that have some sort of physical inability to work. And I understand that.

But do I believe that we’ve had that kind of an increase in mental infirmity? I do not. And yet the very, very liberal access to disability benefits is a massive problem, and I think a lot of people are afraid to talk about it.

I would add other forms of transfer payments. So how are they able to get by being removed from the workforce and answering a question on a survey, do you want to work? No, I do not. That inactivity, I think, is a major problem. It does not speak to 100% of the gap, but it speaks to a very, very high percentage.

And leads me to believe that we face the possibility of a worker shortage across varying degrees of skilled and lower skilled professions that would have a tremendous impact on our economy.

EICHER: I’m really amazed—we talked about this before we went on the air—that you pulled these statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the thing we always look at each month to get the unemployment rate. Publicly reported, publicly available.

I wonder if that’s why Charlie Kirk had the success he had. He resonated so much with young men he said were purposeless, drifting. And when you heard his widow Erika Kirk forgive that young man, she emphasized that young man, she described the kinds of guys Charlie was trying to build into.

It’s fascinating that this manifests itself in this way. Yet it’s such an unreported story.

BAHNSEN: Well, I think that one of the reasons it isn’t talked about more when the data is also readily available is because believing we have a demand side issue is constantly begging for government intervention. That’s the Keynesian approach. Is we need to stimulate aggregate demand that creates more jobs.

So let’s go do a public works project. Let’s do a chips act, let’s do an infrastructure bill. Let’s do government spending. These things all drive some form of demand, and we want to always make sure we don’t have a job shortage.

And certainly I’m all for having a robust economy that doesn’t lack for jobs. I happen to believe that when our country has traditionally had those moments, they prove to be very short lived, because we have so much anti fragility in our robust free enterprise system.

But see, the thing I’m talking about calls it a cultural and spiritual epidemic that doesn’t allow for an easy fix of Let’s pass this law.

You know, Charlie Kirk is a really good example in the more recent years, but I would argue, Nick, you could go back, some of us old enough to remember Mark Driscoll’s popularity 20 to 25 years ago. It was very similar an appeal to somewhat disenfranchised young men.

And so the church has been aware of this for a long time now. Is the church promoting earlier marriages, work habits, self reliance, self discipline, a robust ambition. I don’t know that we are not to the degree we ought to be.

EICHER: Coming back to this: the idea that 37 percent of inactive men are married compared to 58 percent of men overall—that’s something to take note of. I want to ask whether you see family breakdown as the cause. This is kind of a chicken-or-egg question: is family breakdown the cause of men leaving the workforce, or is it a withdrawal from work that causes the family decline?

BAHNSEN: Yes! And it’s not an evasive answer, but this is part of my economic worldview that I find ingrained in Scripture, that all things are either negative or positive feedback loops.

We are constantly and forever when it comes to our productive activity, either creating virtuous or vicious cycles, and it is irrelevant what exactly happened. First, like in 1968 men adopted a bad attitude towards family, and then the work thing came next. The point is, these things are feeding on each other and self reinforcing in the worst possible ways.

And I’ve used this line many, many times that employable men are marryable and marryable men are employable. Look, there’s going to be issues that come up sometimes even a married man, there’s going to be incredibly productive guys that are single, of course.

But what I’m looking for is this anti fragility, where you build robustness. When a man tragically, sadly, unfortunately, loses his job and is married, there is an embedded incentive to go replace the work.

I mean, I often say I didn’t become a man until I got married, because even though I was a pretty responsible worker, pre married and had been through a lot in my life already, I didn’t know the degree of responsibility that came with caring for another whom you love unconditionally.

That provides a whole different approach to life, and it motivates you in your work. It motivates you in your calling. It causes you to think about more serious, important things.

But I can understand, even as a very driven, focused guy I’ve been in my life, I can understand why a pre married man loses his job and becomes disgruntled, disenfranchised, and can find solace with video games.

And I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of other repercussions that are outside of my portfolio here, besides the culture and the economic side that just getting into the health of it, people talk about, well, mental health.

How could someone be mentally healthy? Sleeping until noon, smoking pot, playing video games, laying on a couch, not getting sunshine, not eating healthy, not having this spiritual call to go do something, serve others, build something, and then we say, well, everyone’s self esteem is bad. Yeah. No kidding.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner and Chief Investment Officer at The Bahnsen Group. He writes regularly for WORLD Opinions, and at dividend-cafe.com. David, thanks, have a great week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, good to be with you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, September 29th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

EICHER: Before we begin, a warning: this story contains disturbing details and may not be suitable for younger listeners.

REICHARD: We began last week with sterilization programs both in the U.S. and Germany. Today, the story darkens: how Nazi Germany moved from sterilization to killing its own disabled children and adults. Here’s Caleb Welde.

CALEB WELDE: It begins with a registry. Two weeks before Germany invades Poland, doctors, nurses, and midwives are told they must register all children under three. Then, the registration requirements expand.

GRIECH-POLELLE: Old age homes, asylums, sanitariums, hospitals, clinics…

Beth Griech-Polelle for the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.

GRIECH-POLELLE: And the directors of these institutions are instructed you are to take a questionnaire and fill it out for every single individual in your care.

There’s no explanation given. Caregivers can see the forms are going to the “Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Severe Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses.”

GRIECH-POLELLE: And I will tell you that the bureaucrats are amazed at how easy they can find willing participants.

When people are interviewed, they’re told specifically what their job will be. Some are wary of the legal implications. There’s no law in Germany that allows the government to kill people they deem disabled. Hitler pens a short statement– the full text is one sentence long– saying “incurable” patients “may be granted a mercy death.”

KOMRAD: This was considered compassionate

Doctor Mark Komrad is a medical ethicist and teaches at Johns Hopkins. He’s served two terms on the Ethics Committee of the American Psychiatric Association.

KOMRAD: A moral pioneering effort to relieve people who were impaired and therefore suffering.

But according to the Nazi’s, not everyone deserves mercy.

KOMRAD: Jews were excluded because Jews were not considered worthy of compassionate relief of suffering.

Doctors begin reaching out to parents of children with “incurable” diseases and disabilities. They tell them about new, cutting-edge care facilities.

GRIECH-POLELLE: Of course they’re lying to the parents, because there isn’t going to be any care for those children.

As registrations pour in, doctors begin experimenting on the most effective way to kill them:

KOMRAD: So first they tried narcotics and barbiturate injections, and they didn't work very well. …They tried starvation and freezing, that was too slow. Then they tried firing squads, but that caused a problem, because the soldiers were getting PTSD.

Having just blitzkrieged through Poland, the Nazis begin experimenting with gas chambers using Polish patients. They bring what they learn back to Germany and begin gassing their own citizens. Families receive fake cause-of-death letters. But things aren’t adding up.

GRIECH-POLELLE: Well, now wait a minute. I had just been to visit my mother two days ago. How can she be dead?

It becomes an open secret.

GRIECH-POLELLE: Children sang songs about “hide when you see the gray bus.”

Patients are always taken away in grey buses with blacked out windows. 

On July 13th, 1941 a Catholic Bishop named von Galen has had enough. Von Galen is the Bishop of Munster a city of about a hundred thousand. He gets up in front of his congregation and says he’s changed the topic of today’s message. He begins to air his grievances – specifically calling out the Gestapo more than ten times. He knows there are Gestapo informants in the room.

When the next Sunday arrives. He preaches a second sermon against the Nazis, more stirring than the first. He quotes an 18th century dissident who put it like this: “My head is at your Majesty's disposal. But not my conscience.” A week later, Von Galen spends his entire third sermon talking about the open secret.

GRIECH-POLELLE: You do not need a law that it is wrong to murder. …He says that is engraved on the human heart.

Copies of the sermon quickly spread through Germany…and beyond.

GRIECH-POLELLE: The British Psychological Warfare division picks up the speech, and they translate excerpts of the speech into every major European language, and then they leaflet it from airplanes all over Europe.

Von Galen isn’t the only one speaking out. Fritz Bodelschwingh runs a large hospital for disabled kids. When he refuses to hand over kids, the hospital is bombed. The Nazis issue a warrant for his arrest. But then the regional Nazi manager refuses to actually arrest him sending it up the chain that Bodelschwingh is extremely popular in his province. Paul Braune directs the Hoffnungstal Institute for the handicappedHe sends a letter to Hitler personally also refusing to hand over kids. He sends copies of his letter to pastors across Germany.

Three weeks after von Galen gives his third “political sermon” Hitler officially cancels the Euthansia program. Though individuals had spoken out against the killingsthere were never large-scale protests.

GRIECH-POLELLE: Hitler really learned from that– if German people would not rise up and take to the streets to protest the murder of people they professed to love If you would not protest that, then are you really going to take to the streets to protest social outcasts and pariahs like the Jews?

The Nazi’s so-called “compassionate euthanasia” program killed more than 250,000 people. It laid the groundwork for the most well-known atrocities of the Third Reich. In 1942 alone, the year after the Hitler canceled the program, more than a million Jews are ushered into gas chambers. Zyklon B pellets fall from vents in the ceiling causing vomiting, convulsions, and foaming at the mouth as the chemical simultaneously attacked the heart, brain, and nervous system.

And the Nazi’s don’t forget those who stood up against their “hygiene program.” In 1943, they behead three priests and a protestant pastor who had circulated von Galen’s sermons. The Nazi’s then send the pastor’s wife bills for her husband’s court costs, prison costs, and execution costs.

For WORLD, I’m Caleb Welde

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: the James Comey indictment, what is the legal substance?

And, the national suicide prevention hotline is changing. We’ll explain what’s new and why it matters.

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: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!” Isaiah 5:20, 21

Go now in grace and peace.

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