Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Over the last few weeks, the term “Marxism” has been used quite a bit to describe the philosophy of both individuals and organizations. But what does this term mean? Marxists come in different variations. I saw that when I took a graduate-level class on Marxism with students from different countries who were Marxist. If there is one central, unifying principle, it is the writings of Karl Marx that are best articulated in The Communist Manifesto. Jon Miltimore reminds…

Kerby Anderson The headlines for a New York Times article said it all: “Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are a Major Source of Coronavirus Cases.” It’s a scary headline, that isn’t even close to being accurate. Tim Challis, in a blog, started with the numbers in the story. It talks about 650 coronavirus cases from nearly 40 churches. That’s not many, especially when you realized that nearly half of the cases come from one church in Oregon, that…

Kerby Anderson How should the academic world respond when a research study published in a peer-reviewed journal comes to a conclusion you wouldn’t expect? In the past, some might have challenged the methodology or even considered doing a second study to see if the conclusions could be replicated. The latest tactic is to bring pressure on the researchers and their universities so they will disavow their own study. That is what happened to professors at Michigan State University and the…

Kerby Anderson “The online mob came for Harald Uhlig.” That is how a recent column by John Stossel begins. The University of Chicago professor is also the head of the Journal of Political Economy but found himself under investigation because he tweeted that Black Lives Matter “torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defund the police.” He was just another example of how the cancel culture movement tries to destroy the career of someone they dislike. Earlier this month I…

Kerby Anderson A dead cat in Atlanta, Georgia was sent a voter registration form in the mail. That is unfortunate since only live dogs and cats should be registered to vote. I’m joking, but just barely. One journalist has documented that, “Pets, some named Mozart and Scampers have also received voter applications in Florida, Colorado, and Washington state.” This is not a new phenomenon. Years ago, I had a commentary about all the false names used to register voters in…

Penna Dexter On Independence Day this year, some faculty members published a letter to the senior administration at Princeton University. Eventually hundreds signed on. But classics professor Joshua Katz did not. He posted his own “Declaration of Independence” at Quilette.com. The lengthy Faculty Letter opens with this sentence: “Anti-Blackness is foundational to America.” As Professor Katz points out, “the Princeton Letter demands a dizzying array of changes.” Here are some examples: “Reward the invisible work done by faculty of color…

Kerby Anderson Most of the debates we have in society are a war of words. It’s not surprising that liberals and progressives have redefined words and phrases to promote their agenda. Abortion is called choice. Homosexual marriage was recast as marriage equality. The list of redefined words and phrases has become quite long. But the latest phenomenon has been to ban certain words and phrases. David Harsanyi mentioned an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that describes four racists words that…

Kerby Anderson In the midst of the debates about which lives matter is a more important question as to why lives matter at all. This is not a commentary about “Black Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter.” There is a more fundamental question. If you start with an evolutionary view that all of life is the result of chance, then on what basis can you argue that any life is more important than any other? One of the guests on…

Kerby Anderson The list of statues that have been defaced or torn down increases each week. What started a few years ago as an attempt to remove a few statues after an extended political debate has obviously spun out of control. What do George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Cervantes, Voltaire, and guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn have in common? Not much. But that is just a small representation of statues that have been defaced or pulled…

Kerby Anderson The lockdowns during the pandemic may have been helpful for our physical health, but they have not been so helpful for our mental health. One example can be seen in the dramatic increase in drug overdose deaths. The database constructed by the Washington Post found a troubling correlation between the lockdowns and drug overdose deaths. Of course, a correlation doesn’t mean causation, but I think we can reasonably infer the connection between the two. Even if you assume…

Kerby Anderson Two weeks ago, schools were in the news for many different reasons. The Supreme Court ruled in a case involving schools and scholarships. The latest book by Thomas Sowell (Charter Schools and Their Enemies) was released. And Kevin Williamson wrote a commentary that asked the question, What Are Schools For? The Supreme Court ruled that if a state like Montana provided scholarship programs that allowed students to attend private schools of their family’s own choosing, it could not…