Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter In a recent sermon, my pastor declared: “The most significant decision we make every week is whether we will go to church.” Church attendance is declining as the culture secularizes. Our pastor, Paul Donison, told us that during the pandemic, 40 million Americans stopped going to church and the numbers have continued dropping. Dr. Ryan Burge is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University. He researches religiosity and political behavior in the United States and publishes a…

Kerby Anderson On one of our radio programs, one of the guests argued that the government had grown so big that it’s unrealistic for anyone to manage it. His comment reminded me of a commentary I did six years ago that compared the government to some of the largest companies in America. First, let’s look at the federal government. The federal budget six years ago was $4 trillion dollars. Today, the federal budget is $7 trillion. By the way, federal…

Kerby Anderson The future of TikTok is uncertain. ByteDance was given a 75-day extension to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner. But Melissa Henson (Parents Television and Media Council) believes parents should pay attention right now to the dangers on this platform. She explains, “Social media platforms aren’t innocent. The reality is that predators target children online to sexually exploit or extort them. Social platforms have harmed teens’ mental health and exposed teens to sexual harassment. Children and teens have…

Kerby Anderson Perhaps you have heard the call for leftists to engage in “the long march through institutions.” The phrase was popularized by the radical German activist Herbert Marcuse who was quoting another activist. It came up in my radio interview with Stanley Ridgley on his book, Brutal Minds. In his book, America’s Cultural Revolution, Christopher Rufo not only quotes him, but devotes an entire chapter on Marcuse. The plan was simple. Instead of encouraging students to protest the university…

Kerby Anderson Yesterday I talked about some of the political challenges that President Trump, his administration, and Congress face this year. Today, I want to talk about the economic challenges. As I write this, the U.S. debt clock shows that the country is currently $36.5 trillion in debt. As you probably know, the national debt has increased under Republican and Democratic presidents and increased no matter whether Democrats or Republicans controlled Congress. But it is also fair to say that…

Kerby Anderson During the 2024 presidential campaign, I did several commentaries on the challenges the next president would face in 2025. Donald Trump is now the president, and his administration and Congress face some significant political challenges. Karl Rove recently listed them as “The Five Trials of Trump 47.” One of those challenges is the need to approve a funding bill for the balance of the 2025 fiscal year or face a shutdown on March 14. The added challenges are…

Penna Dexter Who or what is to blame for the scale of the wildfires that destroyed massive swaths of Los Angeles this winter?  Some politicians point to climate change and fossil fuels. Two California legislators have filed a bill to allow insurers and homeowners impacted by the fires to sue oil companies for their losses. Lawmakers hope to cover damages the state is liable for through its underfunded insurance, the last resort for millions of Californians as state-imposed price controls…

Kerby Anderson Eight months ago, I wrote about the book, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, written by Victor Davis Hanson. In his book, he provides four historical examples: the city-state of Thebes, ancient Carthage, Byzantine Constantinople, and Aztec Tenochtitlan. The leaders believed their illustrious pasts would be enough to prevent their destruction. Alexander the Great, Roman Scipio, Muslim Mehmet, and the Spanish conquistador Cortés proved them wrong. The book is a warning to us today, but…

Kerby Anderson Earlier this month, I talked about the three hardest words for people to say. They are: “I don’t know.” It is especially hard for so-called experts to say those words. Often what we think we know is influenced by our bias. Good science and good research should always work to eliminate as much bias as possible. Professor Philip Tetlock (University of Pennsylvania) has been systematically tracking the predictions of pundits, politicians, stock market gurus, and sportscasters. One of…

Kerby Anderson Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In a recent column, he asks, “Are Schools Really Politicized?” Most of us know that the answer to that question is yes. But many progressive writers don’t agree. One of those writers is James Traub who has a book coming out next year on civil education. In an article in New Republic that he wrote previewing his book, he declared: “I Visited Dozens of Civics…

Kerby Anderson President Trump is always full of surprises, but the biggest surprise so far was his bombshell announcement that the U.S. would take over the rebuilding of Gaza. This is not going to happen for many reasons. You can’t just evacuate two million resident Palestinians. First, because nearby countries don’t want them. And second, a forced evacuation would likely be a violation of international law. The U.S. won’t implement Trump’s suggestion, but the proposed policy provides an important teaching…