The World and Everything in It: September 5, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Brad Blakeman. I live in Owensboro, Kentucky, and I work as a controller at Specialty Foods Group. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Pro-lifers are fighting abortion measures on the ballot this fall. But they do not agree on how to do it.

KOHL: We could pass better laws if we don't pour concrete on the horrible situation we have right now.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, why are Israelis protesting in the streets of Tel Aviv? And harvesting fruit from neglected trees.

MATTHEW: The person who registered the tree was like, I’m just glad to see it going to some good use.

And why free speech should matter to Christians.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, September 5th. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Georgia school shooting » A 14-year-old student opened fire at a Georgia high school Wednesday, killing four people.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey:

HOSEY: Of those that are deceased, two were students and two were teachers here at the school.

At least nine others were injured at Apalachee High School in the town of Winder, about 30 minutes northeast of Atlanta.

The shooting sent students scrambling for shelter as officers swarmed the campus and parents raced to find out if their children were safe.

Layla Farrell is a junior at the high school.

FARRELL: Once we heard it was a shooting, all my classmates, we actually were scared and we barricaded the class. We put desks and chairs at our door and built it up … um, so nobody can get in. Then we all were just quiet, waiting.

The gunman surrendered to officers at the scene and is being charged as an adult with murder.

Ukraine latest » In Ukraine, Russia launched a new round of deadly airstrikes on Wednesday.

SOUND: [Cleanup in Lviv]

Rescuers fought to retrieve victims buried in the rubble after a Russian missile strike in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Officials say seven people died in that attack including a 9-year-old girl.

In Kyiv, the prime minister of Ireland Simon Harri spoke alongside President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a show of support.

HARRI:  I wanted to be here today to say very clearly, um, that Ireland will always stand with Ukraine, that Europe will always stand with Ukraine, and that both Ireland and the European Union will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. 

He said Europe will never allow attacks such as these to “fade into the background” or “become normalized.”

The attacks come amid an apparent shakeup in Ukraine’s senior leadership. Ukraine’s foreign minister and several other ministers have announced their resignations this week.

DOJ on Russian misinformation » The Biden administration has announced criminal charges, sanctions, and the seizure of internet domains over alleged Russian disinformation efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election.

Attorney General Merrick Garland:

GARLAND:  Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, two Russian based employees of RT, a Russian state controlled media outlet. They are charged with conspiring to commit money laundering and to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The Department of Justice cited alleged efforts to enlist unwitting American influencers to spread propaganda and disinformation.

The DOJ says tactics include using state media like RT to advance anti-U.S. messages and content, as well as networks of fake websites and social media accounts that amplify false claims.

Hochul on charges against former aide » New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is speaking out after federal prosecutors charged the governor’s former deputy chief of staff Linda Sun with acting as an undisclosed agent of the Chinese government.

HOCHUL: The moment we discovered the misconduct, we fired this individual. We reported immediately to law enforcement and in the meantime we've been helping the Department of Justice for many months and will continue to work with them.

Authorities arrested Sun along with her husband at their multimillion-dollar home on Long Island.

Prosecutors say Sun, among other things blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to high-level officials in New York state and shaped New York governmental messaging to align with China's priorities.

Mexico judicial overhaul » In Mexico …

SOUND: [Mexico protests]

Thousands of Mexican justice workers protested outside the nation’s congress holding signs that read “justia,” which translates to “justice.” That after lawmakers took another step toward a controversial overhaul of the country’s judicial system. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports:

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Members of the lower house of congress Wednesday approved contentious legislation that would launch the most sweeping judicial overhaul of the century.

Mexico’s ruling party says judges in the current court system are corrupt, and wants the country’s entire judicial branch — some 7,000 judges — stand for election. Critics say it is a power-grab by the ruling party and a blow to the independence of the judiciary.

But many have also demonstrated in favor of the change.

The overhaul would also cut the number of Supreme Court justices from 11 to nine.

The measure is not yet the law of the land. Another vote was still needed in the house before passing it on to the Senate.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Kamala accepts debate rules » Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted the rules set forth for next week’s debate with former President Donald Trump.

Harris’ campaign sent a letter to host network ABC News accepting the parameters for Tuesday’s face off in Philadelphia.

The campaigns had feuded over the policy of muting microphones except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak. Harris' team wanted both candidate’s microphones left on throughout the debate in what would have been a shift from Trump’s debate with President Biden back in June.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Protecting the unborn in Nebraska. Plus, gleaning orchards in Australia.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 5th of September.

And we’re glad you’re along 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: abortion on the ballot.

Voters in ten states will vote on measures this fall related to abortion. But Nebraska will have two conflicting abortion amendments: one backed by pro-life groups, another by pro-abortion groups.

REICHARD: Pro-lifers brought a legal challenge to keep the pro-abortion amendment off the ballots. If that fails and both amendments pass, state law says the one with the most votes will prevail.

But some pro-lifers refuse to support the amendment sponsored by the pro-life side. Some of them pushed for a third amendment that did not qualify for the ballots.

BROWN: WORLD Reporter Leah Savas has the story.

LEAH SAVAS: Nebraska Right to Life president Sandy Danek spoke with me on the phone on August 24, the day after the Nebraska secretary of state certified two abortion amendments for the November ballot. Danek was heading to the Right to Life booth at the Nebraska State Fair to drop off more informational material about the two amendments.

SANDY DANEK: My volunteers are calling me saying we're running out of stuff already.

One of the cards urges Nebraskans to “VOTE AGAINST” the Right to Abortion amendment, saying it would result in legal late-term abortions paid for by taxpayer dollars. Planned Parenthood is one of the sponsors.

Similar amendments have passed in states like Michigan and Ohio. So, to offer moderate voters a more pro-life alternative, Nebraska Right to Life and other state and national pro-life groups are backing the other amendment. It would preserve the state’s current protections for unborn babies after 12 weeks. Danek said so far, no other state has put a rival amendment on the ballot in a bid to defeat a pro-abortion amendment.

DANEK: And we're used to being first in the nation, because we were the first ones to pass the Pain Capable Informed Child Protection Act. …so I'm hoping that we will again be first in the nation to have an alternative that holds back what Planned Parenthood is attempting.

This proposed amendment from the pro-life Protect Women and Children campaign says unborn children are protected in the second and third trimesters—except for in cases of sexual assault, incest, or medical emergency.

DANEK: The climate of the state currently gives us the thought that a 12 week, a 12 week protection is a common sense approach.

But Danek said she already knows there are some pro-lifers in the state who won’t support the amendment because it doesn’t protect babies in the first trimester or in the exceptions.

DANEK: I understand it's not where we want to be. We all admit that. But it's a matter of an incremental approach, and some people just cannot reconcile an incremental approach.

Robert Smith is one of them.

ROBERT SMITH: There’s a legal principle that says anything that is not forbidden is allowed.

Smith points out that more than 90 percent of abortions in Nebraska have historically happened in the first trimester.

SMITH: Because the Protect Women and Children initiative is silent on first trimester abortion, one can construe the language so that it means first trimester abortions are permitted. Having it in the Constitution would then constitutionally protect first trimester abortions, which is something we don't want to be doing.

Smith worked with another group, Nebraskans Embracing Life, to promote a third abortion-related amendment effort: the Choose Life Now amendment. Its language would declare unborn children to be persons under the state constitution, allowing any protection for born persons to apply to unborn babies. But the supporters started the process of getting it on the ballot too late. They only had six weeks to gather signatures from citizens and didn’t get as many as they needed.

ROSE KOHL: If we had a robust response from the church, six weeks would have been enough time to get the signatures. 

That’s Rose Kohl, another sponsor of the personhood amendment.

KOHL: What surprised me was like how hostile the churches were and how many turned us away.

She and Smith say many churches instead committed to supporting the Protect Women and Children amendment effort. Smith said he got chased out of the parking lots of Baptist and Roman Catholic churches alike that had chosen to prioritize that amendment in a bid to keep the pro-abortion amendment from passing.

But Kohl thinks the concern about the pro-abortion amendment passing is overblown.

KOHL: And honestly, I don't think that one has a chance at passing in Nebraska, because Nebraska is a very conservative state that loves life.

If the amendment protecting only second and third trimester babies passes, Kohl thinks it will hinder future efforts to protect the unborn earlier in gestation.

KOHL: We could pass better laws if we don't pour concrete on the horrible situation we have right now.

To Danek with Nebraska Right to Life, the focus is on maintaining the status quo… but just for now.

SANDY DANEK: We made the determination that if we could keep the laws that we have currently in place, protecting the laws that we worked for more than 40 years to pass, then we would would at one point, or some point, we would be able to go back to the legislature and seek, perhaps, a heartbeat act.

Regardless of the outcome in November, Smith and Kohl said they intend to refile the personhood amendment as soon as possible after the November election, giving themselves plenty of time to gather signatures.

KOHL: But it's time for the church to rise up and say, hey, enough's enough. We're done with this.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Up next on The World and Everything in It: freeing Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

On Sunday, the Israeli military retrieved the bodies of four men and two women Hamas took nearly a year ago on October 7th. The hostages had been shot by Hamas.

AUDIO: [Protests in Tel Aviv]

Protestors have filled the streets of Tel Aviv ever since, demanding the Israeli government do more to secure the release of remaining hostages.

REICHARD: Joining us now to talk about what’s happening is Daniel Gordis. He’s an historian and a Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem.

Daniel, good morning.

DANIEL GORDIS: Good morning. Good to be with you.

REICHARD: Well, we're about a month shy of a year since October 7. Daniel, how many men women and children kidnapped by Hamas are still unaccounted for?

GORDIS: One hundred and, 100 and a few. I forget if it's 101 or 105 but basically, there are 100 and something. We know that many of them are dead. We know that Hamas is holding many of them as just as bodies. But there is some likelihood that some 30-40, may be even 50 are still alive. There are lists being discussed about the 20 or 30 who would be released. So, we know that there's at least a few dozen alive.

REICHARD: There are many in the West that say if Israel would just make enough concessions that Hamas would agree to a cease-fire deal and release the hostages, but these wanton murders seem to disprove that. Wouldn't you say?

GORDIS: Yeah, look, I think that the negotiations are not being handled well by the government, but that does not mean that I think that if we did handle them well, we would get the hostages back. I have become very pessimistic about getting these hostages back. Then we have to try. I think it's a Jewish value, and I think it's an Israeli value. You know, Bibi Netanyahu, who is now the much beleaguered Prime Minister, he was the one who wanted to trade, or was willing to trade 1,020 something people for one soldier, Gilad Shalit. And included in those people were some very, very bad Hamas guys, including Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar who's now, of course, running Hamas. Why did Netanyahu trade more than 1000 very bad guys to get back one hapless soldier? He did it because, as his biographer Ari Harow wrote and said in a podcast with me a few months ago, he understood that if he's going to ever send Israeli soldiers to Iran to try to take out Iran's nuclear capacity, those soldiers need to know that we are going to get them home. It's just a supreme Israeli value. Personally, though, I don't see what Sinwar has to gain by ever giving up the hostages. He knows that no matter what Israel says, of course, we're going to track him down and kill him, and right now, his only guarantee for life is to be surrounded by some group of hostages, wherever in the dark tunnels he might be. That said, many Israelis, me included, believe that we have to try everything, and we should be more forthcoming in the negotiation deal with him to get a temporary cease-fire and prosecute the war afterwards. This war cannot be over until Hamas is destroyed, but try to get some hostages home, then prosecute the war.

REICHARD: Well, let's talk now about the protests going on in Tel Aviv. Many say that Israel has overreached in this war against Hamas, with many thousands of civilians in Gaza displaced or killed, and yet the war continues, and the hostages have not yet come home. So why is it that Israelis are protesting their own government when it's Hamas that's responsible for the deaths of these men and women?

GORDIS: The protesting in the streets is not about whether or not to destroy Hamas. Hamas needs to be destroyed. I don't know what the exact number in the polls is, but it's got to be over 80% maybe 90% of Israelis who say that. Israelis are protesting: A. The lack of what they believe to be good faith negotiations on Israel's part to get the hostages out because of Benjamin Netanyahu's personal, short-term, political, judicial considerations, and B. There is a larger issue here. We are almost a year into this war, and the people on the political side and the military side who got us into this mess are still running the political and military side of this. I want to remind you, speaking to an American audience here, I don't know how many days it was after the failed assassination attempt on former President Trump, that the head of the Secret Service was just gone. She was out. There were congressional hearings, and she was out. Israelis watched that, and it made the Israeli front page news, and they said, that's how it works, actually – when you completely screw up whether or not it's exactly your particular fault that day or not, it doesn't really matter. And I think a lot of Israelis are saying we have no confidence in the government or the military leadership that's sending our daughters and our sons off to the front. And this is a people's army where everybody, in theory, everybody's kids goes to the army. This is not a volunteer army. It's not a professional army. And so the population needs to feel, yeah, our husbands, our sons, our fathers, our daughters, our neighbors, they're going to war. We hope and pray they'll be okay, but we, at least we know for sure somebody's got their interests in mind. And when you don't have that, you get massive protests on the streets.

REICHARD: You attended the funeral of Hersch Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli American and one of those six hostages whose bodies were recovered earlier this week. In your newsletter, Daniel, you wrote that someone started singing part of the Jewish liturgy, and thousands of people joined in. Now let's listen to a clip from that.

SOUND: Singing in Hebrew…translates to “Our Father, our King: favor us and answer us for we are undeserving; deal with us charitably and kindly and save us.”

What were they singing? And why did that stand out to you?

GORDIS: Music in Israel plays a very formidable role that it does not play in American society. One should understand that Israelis sing. So, my wife and I got there very, very early which we were standing in the hot, blazing sun for an hour and a half with nowhere to go, and we were with hundreds and then thousands of other people doing exactly the same thing. What are you going to do? I mean, an Israeli, Israelis sing, and it was very moving. It was very powerful. One of the songs that was sung, which is the one that I believe you're referring to, is called Avinu Malkeinu, "Our father, our King." It's a line from the Yom Kippur liturgy, the day of Yom Kippur being the holiest day of the Jewish year, when we engage in deep self reflection and we request forgiveness from God for all of our unsatisfactory qualities and so on and so forth. And there's a list of things that begin "Our father, Our King," and the very last line of the 20 or 30 of them is "Our father, our King, look upon us kindly, and because we are we are without merit, we are undeserving. Please look upon us kindly and save us." There was a feeling in Israeli society that we need to be saved. We are not saving ourselves. We're doing okay in the war, but this is not a victory. We're not getting the hostages back. 75,000 people in the North are still unable to go home. It's impossible to describe the heartbreak of this country at this moment. And I think this notion of calling out to the heavens, “Look down kindly on us and save us,” was just very, very heartfelt. We really feel somebody's got to save us here.

REICHARD: Daniel Gordis is an historian and a Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem. Daniel, thank you so much.

GORDIS: Always an honor, and thank you so much for having me.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Well, young Evan Schmela was enjoying some kettle corn sitting around a fire pit in Aspen, Colorado on a family vacation over the long weekend.

They’d seen a bear or two rummaging around at night, but never during the day. Until Saturday, when Evan’s mom Rachel looked up and saw a huge black bear sniffing that kettle corn mere inches behind her boy’s head!

SCHMELA: I was like frozen for a couple seconds. I didn't know what to do.

Video shows Evan completely unaware of the danger until his dad and uncle sprang into action:

SCHMELA: And they knew just to make some loud noise and then that would scare the bear.

It worked and the bear scurried off and nobody got hurt.

But Colorado Parks and Wildlife give fair warning: we’re now in “fat bear fall,” when bears start eating more to fatten up for winter hibernation.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Something to bear in mind.

BROWN: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 5th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: gleaning, with a g.

Maybe you’ve seen numbers about food not used for human consumption. That might include produce grown on backyard trees or just left in forgotten orchards somewhere.

BROWN: The Bible has stories about gleaning that lets people in need collect unharvested produce from the edges of a field. These days, gleaning is rarely practiced, what with property rights and lawsuits. Still, there’s food to be collected and people willing to collect it.

WORLD reporter Amy Lewis brings us the story from Victoria, Australia.

COURTNEY MATHEW: Just this week, we had our first harvest—77 kilograms of lemons. So it's been a raging success.

AMY LEWIS: Courtney Mathew doesn’t usually harvest 170 pounds of lemons in one go. In fact, this was her first time. But she had a team of volunteers to help her.

MATHEW: I was sort of a bit of a newbie, but I think that's the beauty of the program. It's not rocket science, so anyone can come along and have a great time together in the sunshine.

A homeowner in Mathew’s town registered their fruit tree with her Fruit Rescue group—granting her permission to pick as much fruit as possible.

In theory, a third of the picked fruit goes to the volunteers, if they take it…

MATHEW: One came and said no, no, I don't want any fruit I just came along to help.

A third goes to the tree owner, if they want it…

MATHEW: The person who registered the tree was like, I’m just glad to see it going to some good use.

And the rest goes to local charities who distribute it to people in need.

MATHEW: And then when I dropped it off to our FoodShare, they just went, ‘This is so amazing.’ They rely on donations. And so we're just filling a gap that something was going to waste. It's now serving this purpose for our community. I think that is the best part. The, the harvesting is the fun part. But the feeling afterwards is, it goes on for days.

This win-win-win situation all stems from a real problem—lots of under-utilized fruit.

ELLEN BURNS: And it's a very simple concept. We have unused and unwanted fruit from people's backyards, and public land, and some private land as well and redistribute it through the community.

That’s Ellen Burns. In 2017 she started The Hidden Orchard, a nonprofit in Ballarat, Victoria. She’s orienting a group of new volunteers for the upcoming harvest season.

BURNS: You know, Ballarat is a very old, old wealth town. So there's a lot of fruit trees that are 100 plus years old, and a lot of fruit going to waste.

At the height of the 1850s gold rush in Ballarat, six thousand people a week streamed into this hilly area west of Melbourne, Australia. Some people found gold. Others just settled down. They built houses and planted fruit trees. Lots of fruit trees.

BURNS: The actual season can be quite intense. Because you know, fruit doesn't wait for anyone. When it's ripe, it’s ripe, and we've got to go and harvest it.

At any time, the group could simply ignore the languishing fruit. After all, it’s not in their backyard. But there are all kinds of motivations for helping. One volunteer, Kara Rysava says she wants to use resources more effectively, eat seasonally, and buck the system of big grocery stores.

KARA RYSAVA: But also, it's about meeting people. For me, it's about community.

The relationships formed stretch beyond the gleaners to include the homeowners. There are all kinds of reasons someone’s backyard fruit trees get neglected, like someone’s health for instance.

MICHAEL RINGROSE: Emphysema, which we kind of reached a stalemate, okay, doesn't get better. I did have other things that messed me around for a while. Yeah, anyway, got past that. Now, I just can't breathe very well.

Michael Ringrose made his living as a gardener. His corner lot boasts about 20 fruit trees including three kinds of limes and espaliered apple trees. His compromised health means he depends on others to care for his yard. That includes picking the fruit.

TAMARA GOLDSMITH: And you've got lots of lemons now. Yep, so I was, I was sharing just a little bit, and I said that you can trade them with a restaurant. Yeah, a favorite place. Yes.

Tamara Goldsmith is part of Hidden Orchard and became a harvest leader this past year. She organizes groups to pick ripe fruit in her assigned quadrant of Ballarat. Today it’s lemons at Ringrose’s house.

Another day, it’s grapefruit, apples, and elderberries in the backyard of a rental house. The renters already picked all the fruit they want. They want the rest gone.

AUDIO: [Clipping, whistling, “I think that’s about all the big clusters,” tumble of apples into box]

The settlers even planted fruit trees in the cemetery. Bright red crabapples overhang the final resting place of settlers—and make delicious jelly.

COLLINS: Here we go. Oh, it's 5.1 kilos of crabapples. Awesome.

Fruit that needs processing gets turned into jams and marmalades. Their sale at local markets helps pay for ladders and picking bags.

There is one more group that benefits.

COLLINS: So we're just collecting damaged, fallen fruit down here that will just take to the wildlife.

Emus, cassowaries, and kangaroos at the wildlife park get the damaged fruit.

In the end, the challenge of the harvest builds relationships between the gleaners…

NATASHA: Thank you for doing the hard stuff up top.

CHRISTINA: That's alright. Thanks for spotting the bottom. Make sure I don't die.

…ensuring they’ll be back for next season.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 5th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. WORLD Opinions Managing Editor Andrew Walker now on why Christians should care about free speech.

ANDREW WALKER: For the last 15 years, challenges to religious freedom have been unceasing. Too many controversies—and Supreme Court cases—could be listed to make this point. In response, advocacy for religious liberty has been an urgent priority for Christians.

Religious freedom is inextricably linked, though, with freedom of speech. In fact, as someone who studies religious freedom academically, I believe religious liberty grounds freedom of speech, since the need to speak freely stems ultimately from an encounter with religious truth. Of course, non-religious speech has freedoms as well. The moral and organizing logic of the First Amendment connects religious freedom with free speech.

And yet, while nothing less than bold advocacy for religious freedom must continue, Christians must make anti-censorship a priority, too. Attacks on freedom of speech are accelerating to the point that it is hard not to conclude that powerful forces within the government and government-backed media are working overtime to suppress it.

In the last few weeks, we have learned of the government’s pressure on Facebook to censor views deviating from government orthodoxy on COVID-19. French authorities arrested the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, for letting illicit material roam free. Rather than go after the creators who used Telegram illegally, authorities are going after the owner of the service. Durov has since been released, though the charges remain. Meanwhile, a Brazilian judge has banned X within that nation, thereby cutting its citizens off from the world’s largest public square. And in the United Kingdom, the government warns its citizens to “Think before you post,” while in Ireland, a teacher was arrested for refusing to honor a student’s pronouns.

None of this is to suggest that freedom of speech is absolute. There are limits, usually called “time, place, manner” restrictions. For example, you cannot incite violence with your speech or defame. However, the sheer volume of attacks on free speech makes it unlikely that this is all a mere coincidence. Governments seeking to “crack down” on viewpoints challenging official narratives will always put those viewpoint holders in their crosshairs.

So what makes the defense of free speech a worthwhile cause for Christians? In my understanding of the Bible’s portrayal of human nature and government authority, a public theology of free speech is grounded in two realities.

First, speech is fundamental to our self-constitution. Truth-seeking and truth-speaking require freedom and, therefore, political rights for each natural right to be secured. When we defend freedom of speech, we are not defending the inherent good of misusing one’s speech (for example, profanity, or misinformation). No, we are defending the right of someone to search after the truth and then speak in defense of it should they conclude they have come to experience the truth. The exercises of citizenship and capacities of human nature that free speech reflects are valuable not simply because we are citizens in a democracy. They are valuable because we are rational creatures made in God’s image who is Himself the ground for truth.

Second, all humans and human institutions are fallible and need to be reminded of their fallibility. Otherwise, unchecked infallibility turns into authoritarianism. There is a place for government to prohibit some forms of expression, like pornography. But we should constantly force the government to make its case about why it has the right to censor speech. The burden should not be on citizens to prove their right to free speech. The burden should be on the government to prove under what conditions it ever could censor speech.

Famed writer Walter Kirn—not a conservative—recently said this on X: “The last few days have seen an almost symphonic surge of attacks on our most fundamental rights, by officials, newspapers, politicians, celebrities, & academics. It’s not rhetoric anymore, it’s an organized massing of institutional forces prior to big moves which seem imminent.”

This seems self-evidently true. Be on the lookout for busybodies in the government and media who think restricting access to speech and information is for your good. It is not.

I’m Andrew Walker.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday. And, a review of an anime version of Anne of Green Gables from 1979. 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.

Jesus said: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” —Luke 18:14

Go now in grace and peace.

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