The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:13 - 13:39)Show Time: It’s Time for Kamala Harris to Tell Voters the Truth About Her Radical Policy PositionsJoe Manchin Has Some Unsolicited Advice for Kamala Harris and the Democrats by The New York TimesPart II (13:39 - 18:25)SCOTUS Hits Pause Button: SCOTUS Prevents Biden Administration’s Enforcement of Changes to Title IX in Schools24A78 Department of Education v. Louisiana by SCOTUSPart III (18:25 - 22:10)Tim Walz’s Specious Arguments: His Mind Your Own Business Motto Is False Advertising. Just Ask Parents in MinnesotaPart IV (22:10 - 25:47)The Left Hates the Words “Unborn Human Being” — Arizona Rules Political Pamphlets Can Tell the Truth About Abortion and the Left Freaks OutRuling: Fetus can be referred to as ‘unborn human being’ in Arizona abortion measure voter pamphlet by The Associated Press (Sejal Govindarao)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Tuesday, August 20, 2024. I'm Albert Moeller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Well, of course, the big story is the news unfolding in Chicago, Illinois, and highly orchestrated, but still somewhat unpredictable meeting of the Democratic National Convention. Now, my purpose today is not to look at the convention proper, but rather to some of the big ideas that are going to be crucial to the future of American politics. And so we look at issues such as abortion. other moral issues and understand that this is very much front and center of what's taking place there in Chicago. And that is because it's not just what has happened when Joe Biden withdrew from the race and the vice president was given his endorsement. No, it goes back to, especially 2022 when the Dobbs decision was handed down by the United States Supreme Court. And what took place

is that the Biden administration, and of course this came with the full endorsement of President Joe Biden, who was never really pro-life in any policy sense, but moved remarkably more pro-abortion when he ran for president in 2020. It was really an effort by President Biden in the administration to assign abortion repackaged, euphemistically, dishonestly enough as a woman's reproductive health, to the vice president, Kamala Harris. Now, the administration had assigned her previous issues in which she had, at least in political terms, bombed, especially her experience. as the so-called border czar. But when it came to the abortion issue, well, Kamala Harris was a true believer, and she took the issue with gusto. She became the first president or vice president to make an

appearance or a visitation at an abortion clinic that was sending a very clear signal. Now, here's where, headed into the 2024 election when everyone thought President Biden was going to be the Democratic candidate, here's where we need to remember that where the party was then, and that's just up to about a month ago. Where the party was then was in the dishonesty of saying that what the Biden-Harris ticket wanted was the legislation or codification of Roe v. Wade, which had been reversed by the Supreme Court in 2022. As I have said consistently, that's dishonest. There is no way that the Democratic Party would be satisfied with the codification, you might say, of Roe v. Wade. They were fighting for a way to overcome what was even allowed in restrictions on abortion in the third.

trimester in Roe v. Wade. And this is where, when you look at Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee, she has been spectacularly, stunningly, amazingly, amazingly silent on this issue. Other than to say she stands by the Democratic platform, but that is just a matter of evasion. The reality is that when you look at the man she chose to be her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Wals, he's the one who signed into law after the Dobbs decision, a law in Minnesota declaring abortion to be a fundamental right. There are absolutely no limitations on abortion in the state of Minnesota. So we know where Kamala Harris is on this. And even when she was running for president in 2019, she was considerably to the left of Joe Biden. She's one of the ones who basically forced Joe Biden to

come out against the Hyde Amendment, which he had supported for decades in the Senate, which prevents taxpayer money from being used even coercively to pay for abortion. So one of the big issues we're going to have to watch is what happens at the Democratic National Convention on the issue of abortion. And even if the Democrats want to talk about it solely in terms of their propaganda, they think it's a winning issue. We need to understand that vast cultural and moral change is at stake here. And the chasm between the Democrats and the Republicans is still amazingly deep, particularly because of where this is moved with a Kamala Harris and Tim Wall's ticket. Now, I have to come back again to the fact I'm very disappointed in the on the issue and frankly the lack of conviction on the issue that marked the Republican National

Convention, the current position of the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, and of Republicans when you look at the platform adopted by the party. But still there is a tremendous chasm. And this is where when you have some people coming out saying, look, both parties are effectively pro-choice, well, that doesn't mean there are not remarkable differences still between the two parties. And particularly, just to take one issue on whether or not, there should be federal legislation when it comes to the question of abortion. Now, the big thing right now is that Donald Trump is saying that he's against national legislation and wants to leave the issue to the states. I come back and say, you know, the Democrats are ardently, absolutely for national abortion rights legislated

that would prevent conservative pro-life states from restricting abortion in any way. And furthermore, I guarantee you the Democratic Party it's going to come out absolutely in favor of even coercing the American taxpayer, pay for abortion, and when it gets down to the specifics, it's going to be a pro-abortion policy beyond anything we've ever seen in American politics. There's still a big distinction between the parties. But in this case, it's actually the radical pro-abortion position of the Democrats, making that point clearly rather than a clear articulation on this issue, sadly to say, from the Republicans. It is interesting that you see headlines out there speculating about movement on the Democratic side. One headline, can Kamala Harris be moved further on abortion rights?

And let me just say the answer to that is assuredly so. As a matter of fact, she's already been there. Look at the 2019 race in the 2020 democratic cycle. And so it's going to be very, very interesting. And I come back to the fact that one of the things that then Senator Kamala Harris was clearly contending for is what's called preclearance. That is basically making any state that would want to have any restriction on abortion, have preclearance from the administrative state. And that would mean a now Harris-Walls administration. Just imagine how dangerous that would be. Okay, another very interesting development this week. And this comes down to Monday's edition, that is to say, yesterday's edition of the New York Times. On the opinion page, there was a half-page interview

with U.S. Senator Joe Manchin. Of course, he's not running for re-election. He had been a Democrat for years. He is now not affiliated with either party, although he still caucuses with the Democrats. So it's a little bit of a technicality here. Joe Manchin's been fuzzy as he can be on so many of these issues, which is one of the reasons why he had a pretty good idea. He could not get reelected to the Senate in his home state, very red home state of West Virginia. But he does point to something that basic honesty requires as you look at the Democratic Party. So in this half-page interview about the future of the Democratic party, Senator Manchin goes back to the fact that the Democrats tried to pass legislation, pro-abortion legislation over the course of the last several months that they billed as the

codification of Roe v. Wade. Well, here's what he said in the interview with Michelle Cottle of the New York Times. Quote, well, the Democrats were trying to pass a piece of legislation, and I was sitting in caucus one day, and they were trying to explain that we're codifying Roe v. Wade. When I read the bill, said Senator Manchin, quote, it went way further than codified. Roe v. Wade. I just asked the question in caucus. Are you trying to make people believe that what you're doing here is just codifying Roe v. Wade, which we talked about? I said, this does more, much more than that. I walked out like, this is crazy. You guys have lost your mind. Quote, they voted the bill anyway, and I voted against it. So those types of things, politics killed that. They just wanted to

play to the base, end quote. Well, the interesting question is now that the base is running the show there at the Chicago meeting of the Democratic National Convention, what are they going to say about an actual abortion policy that a Harris-Walls administration would push? That's the big question. And I think we know, we know even without getting an answer from the campaign, that it's going to be the most radical pro-abortion legislation and policy we could imagine. We just need to hope that somehow someone in the media or someone in the process can force them to say out loud what it is they would actually do. Now, you know, there's another aspect of national policy is getting a lot of attention with the Democrats meeting, and it's because the speech is given last week by Vice President Harris

on the campaign trail, and it's about economic policy. And there were basically two or three big things that the Vice President talked about. And remember, she's been basically trying to avoid answering questions about any specifics. And one of the reasons maybe is that when she gets into specifics, guess what, they look kind of specifically bad. One of the policies, she suggested as a way of addressing the economic concerns of Americans is what she called legislation that would outlaw price gouging. Gouging is one of the words she used. In other words, unfair price practices. And one of the interesting things is that she more or less said right out loud that a lot of this has to do the price of things found in the grocery store.

Now, here's what's really interesting. Even major newspapers that are not particularly conservative came back to say, you know, that's been tried before. It's an abject failure. Price control is coming from the government. And you could just posit that it's anti-gouging legislation. But the point is, if the federal government is going to set prices, it is going to set prices poorly. Furthermore, it's going to distort the economy. And one of the key insights about how free markets work is that if the government or anyone external to the economic process is setting the prices, you actually don't know the price of anything. And this is where, for the consumer, it turns out, that allowing the market to set the price is the best thing for the consumer you can do,

because it is likely to lead to the lowest prices. Or in the case when prices are going up, it must be tied to something which is quite genuine, as what happened in the shortages during COVID and what you see, frankly, in many businesses and the volatility of the price picture. But the fact is that when you are looking at a ban on gouging, that means that you know what the price of something should be. Now, in this case, it means that Kamala Harris,

the vice president of the United States, who wants to be president, evidently thinks that she can know herself what the price of something should be, for instance, you buy in the grocery store, or she could hire experts who would be able to set these prices and to declare they set them fairly. The problem is, again, when the government sets prices on anything, what you know is what the government thinks, you lose track of the price of anything. And furthermore, you also lose track of the other most important factor in terms of knowing true economics. And that is, what are people actually willing to pay for this? How much do they want this product? But there's something else that many people responded to, and I grew up in a family in the grocery business, if you're going to

pick on a business, and it's politically easy to pick on the grocery business because so many prices have gone up, and yes, we all notice it. And as much as the prices have gone up, you know, the quantities on so many products have gone down in order to mask the fact that so many things are now of increased price. But when it comes to the grocery business, the margin in the grocery industry in terms of, say, retail groceries, it is almost across the board less than 2 percent, and in some cases, a lot less than 2%, which is to say they make money in terms of selling mass quantities of things, and they also make more money in some items that really aren't grocery items, but you can find them in a grocery store. Just expect that in that situation, they're probably

there because they'll bring a higher margin than the groceries themselves. The other thing is that American history is really borne out the fact that this is an idea that goes very badly. Back in the 1970s, the Nixon administration and then the Ford administration under incredible pressure from inflation. It was President Ford who came up with a slogan W-I-N, WIP inflation now. Well, it's one thing to make the buttons. It's another thing to declare the slogan. It's another thing for the Ford administration to resolve the problem. He didn't really resolve the problem. And when you look at wage and price controls and you let the government say, we'll set how much people can be paid and will set the prices for things, then you have no idea that people are being paid a fair amount. You also have no idea that people

are paying a fair amount in prices. And when it comes to just managing the economy, you know what? It turns out the consumers in the marketplace manage the economy far better than bureaucrats. Go figure. You also need to recognize the honesty of the fact the federal government is not an honest broker in this in the first place. For one thing, you'll leave many commodity prices in which you have the federal government, such as the Department of Agriculture, just entering intentionally into situations which the government buys up certain commodities or what is declared to be the surpluses in certain commodities. Now, not all of that is illegitimate. For example, the government needs to have supplies of some commodities in case of some kind of national emergency. But trying to

control the market, you know, that just doesn't work. It doesn't work on either side of the economic situation. And that's why I'm glad to say that even many liberal newspapers have responded to Vice President Harris's suggestion with the reminder, you know, that's been tried before. It was a disaster. There's also the risk, by the way, that given the way a market economy works, when the government intervenes and either side say, we're going to set the price for this, it may not set the price too low. It may hurt consumers and citizens by setting the price too high. The fact is that if the setting the prices, you don't know what the price of anything really is. But all right, other big news we need to look at. And in this case, we need to go back to Friday and the Supreme Court of

the United States, where the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that for now, the crucial words here are for now, blocks the Biden administration's so-called expanded protections for transgender students. And this is going to cover the states which have sought to fight or restrict the Biden administration policies. This comes down to the federal legislation known as Title IX. That legislation goes back to the 1970s and to the fact that the federal government became very much involved in what was declared to be the need for equity when it came to men and women in the collegiate experience in particular. But Title IX is not just about colleges and universities. It is also about high schools and all the rest. But when it comes to sports, when it comes to so many other issues, and now when it comes to

transgender students, what the Biden administration sought to do. And we've talked about this before. We just need to come back to it. It's so important. What the Biden administration's trying to do is to put transgender identities, LGBTQ identities within the covered categories of the Title IX legislation. And what you have then is legislation that was intended to bring equity for women, for instance, in women's sports, this is like we're back at the Olympics all over again, undercutting the opportunity for women in women's sports. by trying simultaneously to affirm the transgender revolution and all of that it entails. And by the way, at least this much is clear.

The transgender revolution makes it impossible to use the categories male and female in any biological sense. Instead, you end up using those categories in a political sense, in a psychological sense, in a psychiatric sense, in a nonsense. Okay, so many in the media are reporting this as a divided court in which you had some justices, a conservative majority, and then you had others, which included the liberal justices. That's about three. And then at least a couple of conservatives as well, in one case, one conservative justice as well. The fact is that when you look at the unsigned order, it includes this, quote, importantly, all members of the court today, except that the plaintiffs were entitled to preliminary injunctive relief as to three provisions of the rule, including the central provision that newly defined sex discrimination to include

discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. End quote. So at least for now, at least in the states that were resisting the Biden administration policy, more liberal states, it's a different picture. But in some conservative states where the states were seeking to resist the Biden administration, I would simply say corruption and confusion of the gender equation when it comes to Title IX, that includes public schools, it includes tax-supported universities. Well, you have the fact that the Supreme Court is going to rule in a big way on this question and what they did in this case was simply to say, you know, we're going to stop the Biden administration from basically being able to go into conservative states and exercise this new Title IX definition.

That's going to have to wait until we are further along in the court's own decision-making process. And in particular in cases, the court has already agreed to take for the coming term. Now, something else to note is that the justices noted that there are already cases advancing, including cases related to the specifics in this case through different levels of the federal courts. And so it's going to be very interesting to see if the Supreme Court takes this specific question up itself, or if it's waiting for a lower court to hand down yet a different decision. But it is really interesting to note that the Biden administration education department or department of education is really seeking to press this. And it's another reminder of what's his stake in the 2024 presidential election of Kamala Harris

and Tim Wals are elected president and vice president respectively. And if you add to that, the danger that there would be the possibility of a Democratic majority in either or both houses of Congress. We really are looking at a looming challenge for America's families. And frankly, for all who resist the gender reformation and the transgender confusion, because when you look at, at the public schools and tax-supported universities, and by the way, that's the vast majority of college and universities in the United States. They participate in federal scholarship, student aid, financial aid programs. If indeed all of that turns in the direction of the intended Biden policy, then we need to understand Christian is going to be placed into an

adversarial situation in so many different contexts. And sadly enough, the vast majority of American Christians seem to be blissfully, if inexcusably, unaware of what is it A couple other quick issues for today. One of them has to do with the vice presidential nominee, who's going to be speaking tomorrow night in his acceptance. That's Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. And as we have often discussed, he presents himself as something like America's dad, but we're talking about an extremely liberal dad in this case. And we need to recognize that a lot of this is simply political advertising. And we also need to note that it's not the political advertising that the same man, the same candidate used when he was running for other office at other times.

But when he was elected the governor of Minnesota and when he was re-elected and had a clear Democratic majority, boy, did he swerve to the left. And it's as a leftist, basically, he's running. And as you think about the vice president's meaning to this ticket and the Harris Walls ticket, recognized of all the people that the vice president could have chosen as a running mate, she chose Governor Walls. That tells you a whole lot. Well, you may remember that in the early press attention to the Minnesota governor, there was the declaration, he just spoke plainly. It's plain speaking. And that's why he was often credited with being so honest. Okay, here's one of the things that he said. Speaking in a public way, as the choice of Kamala Harris as vice president,

speaking to Republicans, here's what he said, quote, I don't need you telling me what books to read. I don't need you telling me about what religion we worship. And I sure, I'm going to clean up his language, don't need you to tell me about my family, end quote. Well, you know, that sounds sensical. And I don't need you to tell me about this. Well, the problem is when he says, I don't need you telling me about what books to read, that's not what's at stake. We're not telling. No person I know is trying to tell the governor of Minnesota what he can and can't read. The issue is what books are and are not acceptable and appropriate for our children? Because those on the left, those in the LGBTQ activist community, those on the political left ideologically

in so many different ways, they are trying to force their agenda on our children, on your children, on our grandchildren, on our children's children, and children to come by means of controlling the reading list and pushing these books in the library and pushing them throughout the curriculum. So that's when you understand. He says, I don't need you telling me what books to read. Well, Governor, I really don't care what you read, and I'm not suggesting anything for you to read. but we're really talking about what school children are going to read. You know it and I know it. That makes this dishonest.

Well, then he says, I don't need you telling me about what religion we worship. Again, who in the world's tried that? That's just a specious argument. But the next thing he said is why I want to draw attention to this. He says, I sure, blank, don't need you to tell me about my family. End quote. In other words, he says, you can't tell me how to raise my kids. You can't tell me.

In other contexts, he's been more specific about that. But here's where we need to recognize that this governor, the governor of Minnesota, has actually been not only an advocate for, but he has signed into law provisions that seriously violate compromise and sometimes even deny the rights of parents in Minnesota to even know, much less to make the major decisions about their children when it comes to LGBTQ issues. So if you're going to talk about someone who is actually going to believe, I don't need you to tell me about my family. Well, the problem is, is governor he's trying to tell the families in Minnesota a great deal about the family. And it's coming from a very liberal, ideologically leftist perspective.

And that's one of the reasons, at least contributing to the fact that a good number of families are leaving Minnesota. You recognize that if he becomes a part of the national government, you're not going to be left with many places to go. The other thing I want to mention is that even as we discussed the fact that referenda and statewide votes on the question of abortion are going to happen in various states. And I previously went through this in some detail. I want to say that an interesting little news story with big importance emerged just over the last several days. This has to do with the voter question that's going to be presented in Arizona. And here's the thing. The headline, for example, in one major news source, this is AP. So as you know, big time national, international news source.

Here's the headline. Fetus can be referred to as unborn human being in Arizona abortion measure voter pamphlet. So the pro-abortion rights side went to take legal action to try to prevent the language there in the state of Arizona from referring to the unborn human being as an unborn human being. And again, you see the liberal effort to try to turn this entirely into choice, a woman's reproductive freedom, a woman's reproductive choice, just ignoring the baby. And this is not even what's going to be on the ballot, but in some of the literature, which is going to be published about the measure, the unborn human being is referred to as an unborn human being, which is exactly right. The big story here is the determination of the pro-abortion side to deny even the use of the words unborn human being. I want to point out that that is one of the most telling, one of the most revealing, one of the most tragic developments in the recent

accounts of what's going on in this country on the question of abortion. The AP story summarizes it this way, quote, the ruling drew swift criticism from the ballot measures backers, that's the pro-abortion sign, who argued the phrase unborn human being is neither impartial nor objective. They said they were concerned that Arizonaans would be subjected to biased and politically charged words. End quote, let's just stop there for a moment. You're talking about an unborn human being, and the accusation is that those are biased and politically charged words. That is just incredibly revealing. Then listen to this. Quote, we are deeply disappointed in this ruling, but will not be deterred from doing everything in our

power to communicate to voters the truth of the Arizona Abortion Access Act and why it's crucial to vote yes to restore and protect access to abortion care this fall, said the group, Arizona for abortion access, again from the Associated Press. So listen to what they're saying. They're saying they're disappointed in the ruling, which by the way just says you can speak the truth, but will not be deterred from doing everything in our power to communicate that it's critical, they argue, in the pro-abortion side, to vote yes, to restore and protect access to abortion care. I want you to note, they went in one sense against at least some of what they want to do and even using the word abortion. They try to use that euphemistic language, a woman's reproductive health, woman's reproductive rights, something like that,

family planning they sometimes use. But in this case, they did have to use the word abortion, but you notice what they just steadfastly are determined not to do. and that is ever to acknowledge we're talking about a baby, an unborn human being. The fact that they hate those words is perhaps the most revealing truth we can imagine, tragically enough. This is what we're up against. Thanks to listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on Twitter or X by going to Twitter.com forward slash Albert Moller.

For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsbts.org. edu. For information on voice college, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.