This is the Daily Article podcast, published by the Denison Forum for Culture-Changing Christians.

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thedailyarticle.com. Now here's today's news, discerned differently.

Dictionary.com has selected its word of the year for 2019. Existential. According to the site,

existential is often used when the fact of someone or something's being, its very existence,

is at stake. An existential threat to a species, for example, puts its continued

existence in real concrete peril. Dictionary.com chose the word because it has come up so often

in internet searches this year, especially after news of mass shootings and natural disasters.

Dictionary.com is right. Much of the world is facing an existential crisis.

A recent article by Washington Post columnist James Homan illustrates this fact powerfully.

Looking back over the decade now ending, Homan reveals a striking international pattern of

discontent with authoritarian regimes. He begins with a resignation

last Sunday of embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Madhi amid sustained protests for sweeping reform.

More than 430 demonstrators have reportedly been killed in Iraq during two months of unrest.

Thousands of protesters are still camped out in Baghdad's Tahrir Square.

Homan calls this the biggest challenge to Iraq's political order

since the U.S.-led Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Next, he cites the Iranian regime's use of more violence than at any time since

the Islamist revolution four decades ago to repress protests. As many as 450 people, and possibly

hundreds more, have reportedly been killed. Another 2,000 have been wounded, and 7,000 have been detained.

An opposition leader is comparing this crackdown to the demonstration in 1978 that ignited

the Islamic Revolution. In Lebanon, members of the military formed a human chain on Sunday

...