It’s Tuesday, October 25th, 2022.
I’m Albert Mohler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
Part I
Revenge of the Political Establishment and the Financial Markets: Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak Set to Become Britain’s Newest Prime Minister
The revenge of the political establishment, the revenge of the financial markets, in Britain, that means basically the same thing, and it means Rishi Sunak is going to be Britain’s new prime minister starting today. Rishi Sunak was one of the contenders the last time the Conservative Party had a contest for leadership and thus the leader to become the prime minister and to form a government. But recall that it was Liz Truss who until today was prime minister serving the briefest term as British Prime Minister in that nation’s long constitutional history.
But as we’re thinking of worldview significance, there’s just a lot here to which we need to pay a bit of attention. First of all, as you look at Rishi Sunak, he’s the former Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Tory government, and the chancellor is the chief financial officer of the British government. That’s a very old and venerable position, and as you’re thinking about the Chancellor of the Exchequer, think about a supercharged United States Secretary of the Treasury, because it’s actually a role that is larger than that in Britain’s constitutional order and having a very long British history behind it.
But Rishi Sunak is a product of the elite in the United Kingdom. He went to the Winchester School, one of the most elite and one of the oldest of the British so-called public schools. And in the sense, public means the opposite of what you think it means. It actually means private school. There’s a long history behind that vocabulary, but just trust me, Winchester is one of the most expensive private schools. And then Rishi Sunak went to Oxford. He graduated there and then went to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California where he earned a master of Business Administration, an MBA degree. He is a representation of the British elite.
He is at the same time also the first, and this is the British terminology, so-called person of color to serve as Britain’s Prime Minister. Now, you would think that would be the leading news, not only in Britain but around the world. It isn’t for a couple of reasons. First of all, most importantly, it’s not big news in Britain because the Conservative Party given, by the way, Britain’s very long colonial history and involvement in empire, there have been many people representing many ethnicities related to different parts of the British Empire who have served in the British government, not only in Parliament, but also as ministers or what we would call secretaries, department heads. But this is a big first when you’re looking at Britain’s Prime Minister, and you could just see this as a very, very interesting development in Britain’s history. You really can’t imagine going back and explaining to someone like Queen Victoria how someone with a background in the colonies would now be the monarch’s first minister.
But Rishi Sunak represents something else, and that is both a meritocracy and the power of money, and the power of money in more than one way. Because when Rishi Sunak was at Stanford University, he met the young woman whom he would marry, and she comes from another family with ties to the past and to the colonial experience, and his wife coming from an extremely wealthy family. Well, let’s just say you put Rishi Sunak and his wife and his wife’s family together, and as the British press have noted, this is probably the first time a British monarch will ask a wealthier individual to head the British government. That’s right. Rishi Sunak is by most estimates actually wealthier than the King of England.
But yesterday on The Briefing, when we were expecting actually a more elongated British leadership contest, it turned out that the power of the markets is another lesson. It’s not just this individual or his family’s wealth, it is the fact that Rishi Sunak is basically a product of the markets. It was the markets, it was the financial elites who basically saw to the removal of Liz Truss as the British Prime Minister. They did not like her economic policies. And this is a warning on both sides of the Atlantic. When you’re looking at the zone of political reality, we need to recognize that the power of the financial markets is so great that it can bring down a government, it can bring down a British government that’s perhaps easier to accomplish constitutionally, but it can also destroy American governments. I want to give you an example of what we’re talking about.
When Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States in 1980, he was the Republican candidate. The Republican candidate, of course, was assumed to be more pro-business than the Democratic candidate. But at the same time, Ronald Reagan pushed through economic reforms that were opposed by many in the markets and certainly by the political opposition, mostly the Democratic party. But over the course of years, President Reagan seeking to cut taxes and to stimulate the economy by at least restricting the growth of regulations and the regulatory state, he was opposed by so many. So how did he win? He won by going over the heads of the media class, over the heads of the political class, over the heads of the mainstream media and talking directly to the American people. He persuaded the American people that his course of economic reform was right and necessary. That is exactly what Liz Truss lacked either the ambition or the ability to do.
Now, she also lacked time in the British system. But the fact is she did not appear to have the political skill to stare down her political enemies and say, “I’m going to take this to the British people and the British people will support me.” It’s a different time, it’s a different context. It is, in this case, a different nation, but it does show the liabilities of weak political leadership. But when you look at Rishi Sunak, he is a product of the meritocracy. He’s a product of Winchester, of Oxford, and yes, in the United States, of Stanford. He is a creature of the markets having been a financial executive himself and the market’s fine security in their own.
But here’s where Christians need to understand that there are times at which, and indeed there may be many points at which the interests of the market and the interests of the nation are not the same. And governments on both sides of the Atlantic have put themselves in financial peril by having to borrow so many trillions of dollars that in one sense, the government is dependent upon the financial markets. That’s a fundamentally unhealthy place to be. It is a danger to our constitutional form of government, and it is something that has been at least relatively bipartisan. It’s not bipartisan in the sense that both parties are willing to spend the same amount of money and to borrow vast quantities of money. It is to say that the Republicans have been rather ineffective in limiting the expansion of the government spending and government debt over a course of generations. But when you look at how the Democrats would unhindered spend that money, just consider some of the recent proposals by President Biden. You come to understand that in some sense, a little bit of difference can still add up to a lot.
The revenge of the political establishment, the revenge of the financial markets, in Britain, that means basically the same thing, and it means Rishi Sunak is going to be Britain’s new prime minister starting today. Rishi Sunak was one of the contenders the last time the Conservative Party had a contest for leadership and thus the leader to become the prime minister and to form a government. But recall that it was Liz Truss who until today was prime minister serving the briefest term as British Prime Minister in that nation’s long constitutional history.
But as we’re thinking of worldview significance, there’s just a lot here to which we need to pay a bit of attention. First of all, as you look at Rishi Sunak, he’s the former Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Tory government, and the chancellor is the chief financial officer of the British government. That’s a very old and venerable position, and as you’re thinking about the Chancellor of the Exchequer, think about a supercharged United States Secretary of the Treasury, because it’s actually a role that is larger than that in Britain’s constitutional order and having a very long British history behind it.
But Rishi Sunak is a product of the elite in the United Kingdom. He went to the Winchester School, one of the most elite and one of the oldest of the British so-called public schools. And in the sense, public means the opposite of what you think it means. It actually means private school. There’s a long history behind that vocabulary, but just trust me, Winchester is one of the most expensive private schools. And then Rishi Sunak went to Oxford. He graduated there and then went to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California where he earned a master of Business Administration, an MBA degree. He is a representation of the British elite.
He is at the same time also the first, and this is the British terminology, so-called person of color to serve as Britain’s Prime Minister. Now, you would think that would be the leading news, not only in Britain but around the world. It isn’t for a couple of reasons. First of all, most importantly, it’s not big news in Britain because the Conservative Party given, by the way, Britain’s very long colonial history and involvement in empire, there have been many people representing many ethnicities related to different parts of the British Empire who have served in the British government, not only in Parliament, but also as ministers or what we would call secretaries, department heads. But this is a big first when you’re looking at Britain’s Prime Minister, and you could just see this as a very, very interesting development in Britain’s history. You really can’t imagine going back and explaining to someone like Queen Victoria how someone with a background in the colonies would now be the monarch’s first minister.
But Rishi Sunak represents something else, and that is both a meritocracy and the power of money, and the power of money in more than one way. Because when Rishi Sunak was at Stanford University, he met the young woman whom he would marry, and she comes from another family with ties to the past and to the colonial experience, and his wife coming from an extremely wealthy family. Well, let’s just say you put Rishi Sunak and his wife and his wife’s family together, and as the British press have noted, this is probably the first time a British monarch will ask a wealthier individual to head the British government. That’s right. Rishi Sunak is by most estimates actually wealthier than the King of England.
But yesterday on The Briefing, when we were expecting actually a more elongated British leadership contest, it turned out that the power of the markets is another lesson. It’s not just this individual or his family’s wealth, it is the fact that Rishi Sunak is basically a product of the markets. It was the markets, it was the financial elites who basically saw to the removal of Liz Truss as the British Prime Minister. They did not like her economic policies. And this is a warning on both sides of the Atlantic. When you’re looking at the zone of political reality, we need to recognize that the power of the financial markets is so great that it can bring down a government, it can bring down a British government that’s perhaps easier to accomplish constitutionally, but it can also destroy American governments. I want to give you an example of what we’re talking about.
When Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States in 1980, he was the Republican candidate. The Republican candidate, of course, was assumed to be more pro-business than the Democratic candidate. But at the same time, Ronald Reagan pushed through economic reforms that were opposed by many in the markets and certainly by the political opposition, mostly the Democratic party. But over the course of years, President Reagan seeking to cut taxes and to stimulate the economy by at least restricting the growth of regulations and the regulatory state, he was opposed by so many. So how did he win? He won by going over the heads of the media class, over the heads of the political class, over the heads of the mainstream media and talking directly to the American people. He persuaded the American people that his course of economic reform was right and necessary. That is exactly what Liz Truss lacked either the ambition or the ability to do.
Now, she also lacked time in the British system. But the fact is she did not appear to have the political skill to stare down her political enemies and say, “I’m going to take this to the British people and the British people will support me.” It’s a different time, it’s a different context. It is, in this case, a different nation, but it does show the liabilities of weak political leadership. But when you look at Rishi Sunak, he is a product of the meritocracy. He’s a product of Winchester, of Oxford, and yes, in the United States, of Stanford. He is a creature of the markets having been a financial executive himself and the market’s fine security in their own.
But here’s where Christians need to understand that there are times at which, and indeed there may be many points at which the interests of the market and the interests of the nation are not the same. And governments on both sides of the Atlantic have put themselves in financial peril by having to borrow so many trillions of dollars that in one sense, the government is dependent upon the financial markets. That’s a fundamentally unhealthy place to be. It is a danger to our constitutional form of government, and it is something that has been at least relatively bipartisan. It’s not bipartisan in the sense that both parties are willing to spend the same amount of money and to borrow vast quantities of money. It is to say that the Republicans have been rather ineffective in limiting the expansion of the government spending and government debt over a course of generations.
But when you look at how the Democrats would unhindered spend that money, just consider some of the recent proposals by President Biden. You come to understand that in some sense, a little bit of difference can still add up to a lot.
Part II
Just Ask Napoleon or Hitler: In Russia and Ukraine, Winter is More Powerful Than Any Army
But next we’re going to shift to the war in Ukraine and Russia’s invasion of that country. It’s taken a new turn and there are a couple of issues with vast worldview significance I think you’re going to find very interesting. First of all, we need to understand that even as Russia has been on its heels and even as its armed forces have been basically humiliated none by being absolutely defeated, but by being unabsolutely victorious to the point that they have been on the run now for a matter of weeks. And there is no doubt that Ukraine right now has the upper hand. But as you’re looking at Russia’s predicament right now, of course, there have been threats for the use of so-called tactical nuclear weapons. But what’s more clear right now is that Russia is trying to use drones and to use different forms of rockets and strategic attacks against the power infrastructure in Ukraine to make the winter it’s ally.
That’s a very interesting thing, and often we don’t understand how much winter and weather in particular, but winter specifically plays into world history. Just ask Napoleon. When Napoleon sought to invade Russia, he was spectacularly successful until of course he wasn’t successful anymore. And one of his major enemies was the Russian winter. And that’s why a fleeing Napoleon had to pass his own retreating troops to get back in order to avoid capture within Russia. Winter was his enemy. That same message would come from Adolph Hitler. Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht was incredibly effective in crushing the Russian armed forces, even getting like Napoleon almost within sight of Moscow only to have the Russian winter set in. And the Russian winter is a near invincible enemy.
But the winter in Ukraine is basically the same as Russia. And Russia is trying to knock out power, and that means no heat. And so Ukraine is looking at the fact that it’s not just the knocking out a power for computers and lights and all the rest, it is also the threat of having no heat in a very bitter Ukrainian winter. Now, the Russians know what they’re doing, they’re strategically targeting that infrastructure, but it is a reminder to us of just how horrifying war can be, because now you’re looking at entire civilian populations threatened with an extreme winter and absolutely no heat.
Part III
Russia’s Taking of Children and the Strategy of Russification: A War Crime Takes Shape
There are a couple of other issues related to Ukraine and Russia, and let’s first look at the fact that a headline news story over the weekend tells us that Russian forces are now strategically taking Ukrainian children and children from the contested areas. They are taking children from hospitals, they’re taking children from orphanages, they’re taking children, and they’re seeking to make them Russian. Now again, this isn’t new. As you look at the history of military efforts, this has been something that has been undertaken by many armies in the past. And you could go back to the classical age, you could look at Athens and Sparta. The kidnapping of children has been something that has often accompanied war, and this is something that is now being reported in the mainstream media. It was the front page of Sunday’s edition of the New York Times.
Now, there’s another factor behind that, and that is that Russia is in many ways right in the front rank of nations leading the world into mass infertility. The birth rate in Russia is so low that not only is Russia’s population not growing, it is absolutely shrinking. The report by Emma Bubola in the New York Times includes this. “Transferring people out of an occupied territory can be a war crime. And experts say that practice is especially thorny when it involves children who may not be able to consent. Ukrainian officials accuse Russia of perpetrating a genocide. The forced transfer of children when intended to destroy a national group is an act of genocide under international law.”
And then come these words. “Russian officials have made clear that their goal is to replace any childhood attachment to home with a love for Russia.” The Times report also states this. “Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February, Russian authorities have announced with patriotic fanfare the transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia to be adopted and become citizens. On state run television, officials offer teddy bears to new arrivals who are portrayed as abandoned children being rescued from war. In fact,” writes the times, “this mass transfer of children is a potential war crime regardless of whether they were orphans. And while many of the children did come from orphanage in group homes, the authorities also took children whose relatives or guardians want them back.”
And as the time says, “that according to members of the children’s own family. One of the children interviewed for the article was a teenager, a 16-year-old named Ivan, who had been a boarding school student and was basically taken to Russia. He had the means to contact his headmaster at the boarding school back in Ukraine.” And according to the New York Times, he was being repatriated, but even as he was waiting, there were other children from Ukraine being delivered. That’s a very sad story. It’s just a reminder to us that war is always more awful and more complex than most people would understand, and most people might even imagine.
Candor also demands that I mention a controversy having to do with Russia today. That’s a state-sponsored, state supported broadcaster in Moscow, Anton Krasovsky, whose host of a talk show called The Antonyms, actually called for Ukrainian children who would see the Russian forces as occupiers should be killed. The language was shocking. I’m not going to repeat it on The Briefing. It’s just indicative of the strength of the feeling there in Russia and in Ukraine and of the fact that Russia fully intends basically to eliminate any notion of Ukraineness. And that’s a part of Vladimir Putin’s ambition here. And just in case we had any doubt, the Russian president has made statements that make that point emphatically clear.
But evidently, when it came to Anton Krasovsky who has been suspended, there are some limits. But the very fact that he said what he said and was suspended speaks for itself.
Part IV
A City Without Men: The Consequences of War Show Up on Russian Streets
Now this week, we’re going to be talking a lot about the upcoming midterm elections and what is at stake, but there are just so many issues of massive worldview significance coming at us from the world scene. I want us to look at a couple of others. Another comes from a headline story that also ran in the New York Times, and this actually tells us a great deal that I don’t think the New York Times really wants to tell us. You’ll understand what I mean when I explain the headline is Erie Quiet Settles on a Moscow Drained of Men. Valerie Hopkins is the reporter here, and she’s writing about the fact that as you look at Moscow today, younger men who would be of military service age and certainly draftable age or status, they’ve tended to disappear from public places, from gathering places and from the streets of Moscow. Now, this article in the New York Times makes clear they disappeared for two reasons. Number one, some of them have indeed been forcibly drafted into the Russian armed services and the dramatic need for that was made very clear even when the Russian government announced the forced conscription, simply because Russia has been cast so far back on its heels after its invasion of Ukraine.
The other issue which is candidly addressed in the article is that a good number of men have fled Moscow because they don’t want to be conscripted. They don’t want to be drafted and taken by force into the Russian army. And some of those statements were amazingly candid with many of these men saying, “Look, the Russian army right now is cannon fodder. We do not want to be cannon fodder.” Well, the other point I want to make is something the New York Times doesn’t seem even to acknowledge, and that is that a society will look strange if the men are gone. That indeed there is a difference between men and women. And in Russia, it is not young women who are in danger of being snatched off the street and being put into military service, it’s young men. Now, one of the things that marks Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the fact that it is having problems adequately staffing its army and its armed services simply because so many men are, A, getting too old to serve, or B, are sidelined by pernicious habits, particularly in Russia such as vodka drinking or are just not by education or physical ability capable of the aptitude of serving in the Russian Army. They are disqualified.
Now, an army under certain conditions begins to take people it said it wouldn’t take, but nonetheless, that is the picture in Russia. But there’s another issue here we’ll simply look at, which is that the American military is also facing a shortage of young men in particular who are even physically qualified or are qualified by not having used or abused different kinds of substances and especially alcohol and drugs and other addictions. The American military is facing a parallel challenge, but the American military did not invade Ukraine. Russia did. Thus, the main problem right now is seen on the streets of Moscow. But it’s interesting when you look at that headline, eerie quiet settles on a Moscow drained of men. The subhead in the article, capital empties out as many flee draft or are swept up in it. This article basically assumes there’s a distinction between men and women, and when it comes to service in the armed forces, there is still a distinction. There’s still a distinction in the United States.
We should be thankful for every woman who volunteers to serve in the American military and serves nobly. But even as you look at the selective service registration in the United States, it’s the registration of young men when they turn 18. And when you look at any picture of a marching army, well, the gender distinction becomes pretty clear. There are nations such as Israel that have sought to in some ways deny that distinction, but not actually when it comes to military service. There are no young women conscripted into the Israeli army who are on the front forces when it comes to military active duty. They are generally assigned other responsibilities.
All that to say, the New York Times seems to think it’s strange that there are so many men missing from the streets of Moscow, but it doesn’t seem to acknowledge that there is a natural order to the world in which when you’re looking at an armed conflict like this, it actually is quite explicable why it is so many men rather than women who are missing.
Part V
‘Exploitative, Ethically and Logistically Complex, Even in Peacetime’: Ukraine Revives Surrogacy Industry
But finally, on this issue, let’s turn to Ukraine. A very, very interesting story out of Ukraine, and it’s one I talked about long before this war, and that has to do with the fact that Ukraine and Russia are two different nations in so many different ways. But Ukraine has identified more with Europe as a project, and in moral and cultural terms is far more liberal than Russia. Not just far more liberal than Russia is now, is far more liberal than Russia ever was. You can see distinctions between Ukraine and Russia over LGBTQ issues. We discussed that. But there is one big issue that I’ve talked about on The Briefing, as I said long before this war that simply must be addressed. And that is the fact that Ukraine is in so many ways, the world capital of the business, the industry of surrogacy. That means surrogate mothers.
That means that Ukraine is where over the course of the last decade or so, you go, if you want to hire a woman to carry your baby to term for one reason or the other, and even the phrase your baby becomes quite complex in the high money, high stakes, big industry model of the fertility surrogacy complex. And again, Ukraine is ground zero and Kyiv is its capital. And once again, reports are coming out that the surrogacy business is surviving in Ukraine even under the conditions of war.
Another article in the Times begins, “After months huddled in a basement to escape shelling, a surrogate mother named Victoria was able to get her family and the newborn child she carried for foreign clients away from the fighting in northeastern Ukraine. She could do so, she said because her employer, a surrogacy agency, had offered financial aid and an apartment in the capital Kyiv to ensure her safety and the babies.”
Then the article continues later, “Before Russia invaded in February, Ukraine was a major provider of surrogacy, one of the few countries that allows it for foreign clients. After a pause in the spring, surrogacy agencies are resuming their work reviving an industry that many childless people rely on, but the critics have called exploitative and that in peace time was already ethically and logistically complex.” Ethically complex. Well, here’s a basic principle of the Christian worldview. It is one that Christians, including many conservative evangelical Christians, don’t think about very often. We should. Let’s just remember that creation is where we start the Christian worldview. We start in creation, and of course, we have the creation not only the entire cosmos, but of men and women, human beings made in the image of God, male and female created, he them, and then comes the mandate, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Now, the promise is, and remember this is before the fall, but nonetheless it is the enduring command. The promise was that the man and the woman in the conjugal relationship of marriage would actually be given the gift of children. And the thing to note here is that there’s an organic principle to the Christian worldview, which is the more you abstract any human endeavor from the organic context, the more moral risk you bring into the situation. Now, that’s not to say that the only way that children come into a family is by biological relations between the husband and the wife, but that is the normal way. But in a fallen world, there is also the need for other measures. So one of the first issues you see in scripture is the glory of God and the grace that is revealed in adoption. And adoption is the adoption of a baby or of a child that exists. And that means that as we’re thinking about abstraction, the further or the more complex, the greater the distance from what is given to us in creation to what we’re talking about now, the greater the moral risk. Let’s look at it this way.
It’s one thing, a glorious thing to talk about adopting a child. It’s another thing to talk about arranging for a child to be born. And even as the media coverage talks about Ukraine as being one of the few countries that allows for an industry like this, and remember this is something like arranging for a contract to use a woman’s womb to bring about a successful pregnancy to produce a child, but the child is not hers. The child is produced by in vitro fertilization. There’s enough complexity there that I’ve written two book projects about it. You’re looking at something that entails massive moral risk, including the creation of human embryos, many of whom are actually destroyed.
But you’re also talking about the commodification of the human being here. You’re talking about hiring a woman for her womb in order to gain the product of a child, and the child does take on the context of a product. And furthermore, the language about say a couple having a child, well, we can understand that the moral risk would be lower here. Now, I didn’t say it disappears. It doesn’t, but the moral risk would be lower here if you’re talking about, say, a married heterosexual couple, a man and a woman who’ve been unable to have children. We can understand that as one context, but we also need to understand that that would not produce the industry. No, the industry is produced by a very different phenomenon, and one of the main drivers here is the LGBTQ revolution.
Now, as we look at this news coming from Ukraine, we need to recognize that at least a part of what’s raised here is just the basic moral issue of surrogate parenting, of surrogate motherhood. There is no analogy, of course, for biological males. But again, this also reminds us of the fact that even as so many in the West want to confuse the issue by talking about pregnant people, well, let’s just point out the biological fact that a pregnant person is a woman. They seem still to have that pretty much clear in their minds in Ukraine.
But something else for us to consider is that even in the context of war, even in the context of invasion, you’ll notice that there are industries, there are endeavors, there are practices and patterns such as surrogate parenting in Ukraine that means there are still people predominantly in the West, including in the United States, whose actual main interest in Ukraine is in hiring a woman with a womb to carry a child. The law at least says is not her own.
Think about it. The fact that this industry has restarted even in the context of war, tells us a very great deal. At least in part, it tells us about the desperation of the women who are involved in this so-called industry. There are more victims of war that are hit by missiles or bullets.
Thanks for listening to The Briefing.
For more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can find me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com.
Today, I’ll be speaking in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
