Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter Common Core is the latest iteration of the failed idea that the federal government should control education.  Implementation of Common Core was begun under the Obama Administration. It was supposed to increase American students’ “college and career readiness.” The results are in on Common Core and they’re pretty discouraging. Common Core was fully phased in three years ago and, for three years, scores on the nation’s broadest and most respected test have been dropping.  The National Assessment of…

Kerby Anderson One of the many themes being debated during this campaign season is income inequality. It is often the justification used for raising taxes and redistributing income. We can certainly have a moral debate about what we should do (if anything) about the differences in income, but first we need to have accurate numbers. Former Senator Phil Gramm and former commissioner John Early took the time to provide “The Truth About Income Inequality.” Census Bureau data fails to account…

Kerby Anderson Strong families are the foundation of a strong nation. That is the obvious conclusion stated by everyone from Michael Novak to Senator Ben Sasse. In a short commentary on America, Senator Marco Rubio joins the discussion He laments that for many Americans, marriage now resembles a luxury good, which he says keeps stable families from forming in the first place. “An economic gap has emerged in which working-class Americans are marrying less and less frequently.” Charles Murray documented…

Kerby Anderson In a normal world, it would be newsworthy when the Attorney General of the United States gives an impassioned speech about religious liberty. But we don’t live in that world, so the speech by William Barr has been either ignored or ridiculed. When he spoke at Notre Dame, he reminded the audience that the founders of this country had a “supreme test as a free society.” That test was “whether the citizens in such a free society [could]…

Kerby Anderson Should the federal government start pulling the tax-exempt status of religious organizations? Most Americans reject the idea, even though it was floated by a former presidential candidate who argued that “no reward, no benefit, no tax break” should be given to certain religious institutions. Unfortunately, you can find a significant number of other Americans who agree with his sentiment. That is why I think it is time to have a discussion about the tax-exemption given to churches and…

Kerby Anderson David Limbaugh was on my radio program last week to talk about his new book, Guilty by Reason of Insanity. He devotes a significant portion of the book and a recent column to socialism. He is as concerned as I have been about the trend in young people to prefer socialism over capitalism. A 2015 YouGov poll found that 43 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 years of age had a favorable opinion of socialism and preferred…

Penna Dexter The Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order that serves the elderly and impoverished, were again in court recently asking for protection from the ObamaCare mandate that tells them they must include contraceptive coverage in their employee health plan. In 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services, plus the Labor and Treasury Departments, adopted rules which allowed exceptions to ObamaCare’s mandate that employers provide birth control to their employees as part of their health coverage. Many…

Kerby Anderson When the Apostle Paul made it to Athens, he was able to present the Gospel to the Greek philosophers in a place known as the Areopagus. The Romans referred to it as “Mars Hill.” It was a place where various perspectives and ideas could be expressed. Today we call it the marketplace of ideas. When I was in Athens, I was struck by the fact that you could see the Parthenon from this adjacent hill where Paul spoke…

Kerby Anderson A significant percentage of Americans have little or no retirement savings. That means that future debates about Social Security may become even more contentious than they have been in the past. As I have discussed in previous commentaries, the only thing in the Social Security trust fund are IOUs. Sometime in the future, the government may not have the necessary funds for all the Baby Boomers who are currently retiring. A report from Northwestern Mutual found that one…

Kerby Anderson We love our smartphones, but many of us wonder if they are controlling our lives in ways that may not be healthy. Markham Reid responds to this question in his commentary in Time magazine: “You Asked: Should I Ditch My Smartphone?” He rehearses much of the evidence I have discussed in previous commentaries. Dr. Brian Primack, professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh explains how “the little wobble of the emoticon, or the A-flat ding that stimulated the…

Kerby Anderson Whenever I speak to an audience about the influence of the media on children, I quote from a survey done by the Kaiser Family Foundation concerning electronic media. When you add together the amount of time children spend with television, cell phones, iPads, video games, and computers, it essentially becomes a full-time job of more than 53 hours. This is a dramatic increase from over a decade ago. The findings of the survey of over 2,000 young people…