Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter The prominent role played by drag queens in the opening ceremonies for the Paris Olympics, was created to display France’s inclusivity and showcase the French LGBTQ+ community. James Leperlier, president of a group called Inter-LGBT, says the transgender community “has difficulty being heard.” He told ABC news, “we are far from what the ceremony showed. There’s much progress to do in society regarding transgender people.” Is it progress to offend Christians all over the world who are watching…

Kerby Anderson Yesterday, I talked about robots and wanted to follow up with some perspective on how artificial intelligence represents independent thinking and autonomous actions. There are reasons to believe that AI and robots will be learning and thinking in ways we might not predict. Let me illustrate this with the game Go. Go is an ancient East Asian game played on a nineteen-by-nineteen grid with black and white stones. The goal is to surround your opponent’s stones with yours….

Kerby Anderson If you mention the term “killer robots,” people are likely to think of the Terminator movies. But these are real and will change the nature of warfare. Mustafa Suleyman devotes a section to “robots with guns” in his book, The Coming Wave. He tells the story of an attack on a heavily guarded Iranian convoy that came from a nearby empty pickup truck outfitted with a gun. It was fired by a “high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with…

Kerby Anderson The Wall Street Journal editorial board begins with this observation: “The laws of economics continue to exist even when politicians ignore them.” What they are talking about is the decision in California to increase the fast-food minimum wage to $20 an hour. When the editors predicted the inevitable outcome, the governor’s office claimed they were “pushing a false narrative.” Now reality has set in, and the predictions have come true. Over the years, I have written commentaries about…

Kerby Anderson One of my recent in-studio guests had a rags-to-riches story that was one more example of achieving the American dream, like the one we heard recently for J.D. Vance. My guest attributed his success to education and is a strong proponent of the American educational system. But he also acknowledged that education in America faces many challenges. Earlier this year, I wrote a commentary about the 1983 assessment of American education from the National Commission on Excellence in…

Kerby Anderson Over a week ago, I talked about the dangers of alcohol. We know so much more about its dangers than we did just a few decades ago. This is also true of cannabis. A few months ago, I quoted from a psychobiology professor at Harvard Medical School who put together a detailed review of cannabis and its medical uses for the World Health Organization. There are several US government organizations and experts who also document the dangers of…

Penna Dexter Normal Americans are repulsed by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. This was a bridge too far even for people who buy in to careless “threat to democracy” rhetoric from Trump’s opposition. Their recoil reminds us that we must take care to preserve our constitutional republic. Our system of government is meant to help our nation avoid political violence. Under constitutionalism, we have systems that allow differences of opinion on government policy to be handled by…

Kerby Anderson We can see some cycles in history. Yesterday, I talked about a political/cultural cycle. Today I want to talk about a technological cycle and a financial cycle. There appears to be about a fifty-year technological cycle, in which we see important technological revolutions. In the 18th century, we saw the beginnings of what today we refer to as the industrial revolution. Fifty years later was the age of steam and railways that changed the world significantly. Up until…

Kerby Anderson Are there cycles in history? Yes, even though there is a linear trajectory in history, there are generational cycles we can observe. No doubt you have heard the phrase: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” Or you may have heard: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” And you may have heard the phrase “the fourth turning” that predicts a crisis at the…

Kerby Anderson Wilfred Reilly has written a book about how American history is taught today. It has the provocative title, Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me. In some ways, it can be seen as a response to the book by James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me. You can read his opinion column that provides a summary of his book. What is his concern? “We often, bizarrely, hear the claim that American history is taught mostly from the political right…

Kerby Anderson There are many reasons why politicians talk about “draining the swamp.” The federal bureaucracy is bloated. Our taxes don’t even cover all the costs of the executive branch in the federal government. Economist Stephen Moore argues that “The Case for Draining the Swamp Is Stronger Than Ever.” He reminds us that the latest official employment report finds once again that “the federal government and state-local hiring spree is still in full gear.” Government and health care are hiring…