2017
September
22
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 22, 2017
Loading the player...
Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

Assuming that some final formalities are completed, the United States Marine Corps will have its first female infantry officer – a future platoon leader – after a ceremony on Monday.

The marine, whose identity is being shielded for now, completed the notoriously tough training at Twentynine Palms, Calif., on Thursday.

That’s a milestone on a very long march. More than 30 women tried and fell short during a test period that began in 2012. (Overall, about 1 in 4 trainees washes out.)

The halting integration of women into the military’s male bastions – including the Army Rangers – is a story that the Monitor has followed closely in recent years. That this latest surge involves the Marine Corps marks a particularly significant shift: 2017 is also the year in which a large number of marines were implicated in an online, photo-sharing scandal that was roundly scorned as an example of deeply ingrained misogyny.

Is this shift in thought real and enduring? “Officials shared few details about the lieutenant Thursday,” read a report in The Washington Post, “saying it is unlikely she will agree to do any media interviews, preferring instead to be a ‘quiet professional’ and just do her job.”

That’s the remarkable becoming more routine.

And now to our five stories for your Friday, ones that highlight fairness, collaboration, and understanding. 


You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.

Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

The widely held perception of Germany as an economic juggernaut is not unfounded. But we took a closer look, and found out why some Germans see social injustice even in a boom time. 

Jose Luis Magana/AP
'Dreamers' holding childhood pictures listened to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Charles Schumer on Capitol Hill in Washington after President Trump's decision to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative.

Division among Republicans – most recently over an 'Obamacare' replacement – has drawn more attention. But the Democratic Party has shown cracks, too. Some members view dealing with President Trump as an act of selling out.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Members of an antifa (short for anti-fascist) group attended a 'free speech' rally on Boston Common Aug. 19. Boston Police kept rally attendees and counter-protesters separated with barricades and police personnel.

Another “free speech” event is scheduled to begin Sunday at UC Berkeley, and we’ll have a writer there. Will prominent acts of extremism darken the softer shades of resistance?

The US president’s dismissal of his predecessor’s ‘embarrassing’ Iran nuclear deal might lead you to believe that he’s poised to scrap it. This piece looks at a more likely path: tough talk around the edges, and a jolt to international partners to try a short-term fix.   

Understanding how technology affects the way we experience – and express – moral emotions may be the key to keeping profit-driven persuaders in check.


The Monitor's View

Reuters
U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts (seated C) leads Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (front row, L-R), Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Elena Kagan (back row, L-R), Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch in taking a photo including Gorsuch, their most recent addition, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, on June 1.

Polls of Americans consistently show they put more trust in the Supreme Court than in the two elected branches of government (Congress and the presidency). Now a new poll may explain why the high court still enjoys legitimacy as the nation’s final arbiter of constitutional principles.

When asked what they would do if the court were to make many unpopular decisions, Americans show no consensus over how to change the court or even whether to change it. The poll, conducted for Penn State’s McCourtney Institute of Democracy, found 44 percent of people would favor imposing term limits on justices. Yet a third would do nothing with the court. A fifth would restrict the type of controversial cases that the court considers.

Perhaps most striking was that there seems little correlation between these different opinions and whether someone is a Republican, Democrat, or neither. The nation’s traditional political polarization seems to break down when it comes to judging those selected to judge for us.

This lack of consensus about how or whether to change the court’s independence is important because the nine justices keep being asked to issue rulings that would impinge on the authority of the legislative and executive branches – rulings that might prove unpopular. In the court’s coming term, for example, which starts in October, it will take up the issue of whether state lawmakers can alter the boundaries of voting districts that appear to favor one political party (partisan gerrymandering, as opposed to racial gerrymandering). In another case, the court will consider whether President Trump had the authority to impose a travel ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Justices, like the rest of us, pay attention to the latest polls, especially if they show the courts losing popularity. At times, the courts might feel inclined to defer to public opinion or, as they increasingly do, defer to the authority of the other two branches. Yet by the very nature of their job, justices must rise above their personal preferences or political inclinations to decide a case. They must interpret the Constitution with humility and wisdom because its ideas define the principles for the whole country.

Political parties compete over the particular principles that each stands for, such as achieving equality at the expense of liberty, or putting social order above freedom of assembly and speech. Parties help organize public opinion into broad purposes, which are then presented in elections or contested in the courts. But any legal contest over each party’s specific principles stops when the high court applies the Constitution’s most basic principles to a case or tries to balance competing principles. 

Public respect for this duty of the court is really a respect for the understanding that the highest ideals must guide and protect both individuals and their society. In a republic, only a few individuals are granted the authority – through a supreme court – to interpret the transcendent norms embedded in founding documents and case law. No wonder there is little consensus today about changing the high court if its decisions go against popular opinion.

A good example of this unique role is playing out in Kenya. On Sept. 1, that country’s high court voided the results of a presidential election because of unusual anomalies in the voting process and the refusal of the electoral commission to cooperate with the court. The court’s decision to order a new election sent shock waves across Africa, where most people only hope for an independent judiciary that applies universal ideals.

On Sept. 17, the United States celebrated the 230th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution. Few Americans may have noticed. Perhaps they simply assume that its principles, and the court assigned to interpret them, are in working order.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

As with other recent natural disasters around the world, one outcome of the devastating earthquakes in Mexico has been an outpouring of courage and caring. At the same time, many have been left reeling. One writer shares how inspiration from a favorite Bible story brought her comfort and peace when a Los Angeles earthquake left her overwhelmed with fear. As the creation of God, divine Life, our real identity can’t be touched by an earthquake. Despite what we see in news reports, each individual is infinitely loved and cared for by God. God is Life, which is eternal, unchanging, perfect, and spiritual. And God’s creation reflects Life. So the true identity of all that divine Spirit created is spiritual, and an earthquake cannot touch the real you or the real me. We coexist with God. Therefore, everyone has the innate ability to feel and experience the deep, lasting peace and care that God has bestowed on us all.


A message of love

Carlos Giusti/AP
People assembled at a water-distribution point in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, Sept. 21. As of that evening, hurricane Maria – which knocked out power on the entire island – was moving off the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, with winds of 120 miles per hour, toward the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for being here today. Come back Monday. We’re working on a report from Bangladesh, a vulnerable country that has also shown how adaptation can help mitigate the effects of flooding. (We’ll also continue our coverage of the Rohingya influx there.)

And here’s a final offering for your weekend: Mexico City correspondent Whitney Eulich reported earlier this week about that city’s response to its latest earthquake. She has also written a more personal account. It is very much worth reading (find it here). 

More issues

2017
September
22
Friday

Give us your feedback

We want to hear, did we miss an angle we should have covered? Should we come back to this topic? Or just give us a rating for this story. We want to hear from you.