Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Dr. Anne Bradley has been on my radio program and in one of her articles, she talks about her first trip to the Soviet Union. Even as a teenager she could see through the attempt to make Russia look more prosperous than it was. In fact, her visit was one of the reasons she became an economist. She ends her article by telling the true story of what happened when Boris Yeltsin visited the United States. He was…

Kerby Anderson Americans in general, and even evangelicals in particular, seem confused about important details of their faith. A study done by Lifeway Research found that Americans don’t know much about theology, and many evangelicals seem confused as well. Tyler O’Neil wrote about the “12 Lies American Evangelicals Believe.” Here are a few of them. Americans generally believe that their personal salvation depends on good works. The survey found that three-fourths (77%) agreed with the statement that people must contribute…

Kerby Anderson If you think about it, your life is the culmination of lots and lots of decisions. Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, argues that people make 10,000 to 20,000 small decisions every day. If you multiply this by the US population you end up with one quadrillion decisions. This is one of the points Jeff Myers makes in his book, Understanding the Culture. The legacy you leave is the sum of all of these decisions. Many are inconsequential. Others…

Kerby Anderson No doubt you have heard the phrase, “politics is downstream from culture.” It is a way of explaining that what is at stake in our world often begins upstream in the culture. Popular culture is all around us and delivered to us through broadcast media and social media. We perceive the world through news reports, through movies, through entertainment programs, and through music. Every form of communication has a message. Sometimes it is blatant and intentional. Often it…

Kerby Anderson I often say on my radio program that we spend millions of dollars each year in research studies to validate what most mothers already know. That is certainly the case with the studies attempting to explain why certain people procrastinate. Andrew Santella writes about this in his book, Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination, From Leonardo and Darwin to You and Me. He explains “The Real Reason You Procrastinate” in a recent article in Time magazine. People who…

Penna Dexter A consequential anniversary just passed. It has been fifty years since the nation’s first no-fault divorce law was enacted. No-fault divorce laws make it so one partner can end a marriage simply by citing “irreconcilable differences.” Governor Ronald Reagan signed California’s no-fault divorce bill in 1969. Forty-four states followed suit. Reagan later told his son Michael that this action, which unleashed a revolution, was his “greatest regret.” The intent of no-fault divorce was to reduce the false accusations…

Kerby Anderson Dennis Prager stirred up some controversy by saying something progressives would never let you say. As a Jew, he says that American Jews are the luckiest Jews in Jewish history. He also says that about many other ethnic groups. As I mentioned in a previous commentary, his father wrote his senior thesis on anti-Semitism in America. Nevertheless, he taught his two sons that they were the luckiest Jews in Jewish history. Dennis Prager still believes that, even though…

Kerby Anderson In my commentaries, I often refer to the millennial generation. But what does the term “millennial” really mean? According to John Quiggin, “millennial means nothing.” That is the title of his op-ed in the New York Times. He is on to something. Some social commentators make broad statements about a particular cohort of people: baby boomers, baby busters, or millennials. As we all know, for any general rule there are bound to be exceptions. That is why he…

Kerby Anderson Ryan Anderson responds to our transgender moment in his new book, When Harry Became Sally. He begins his discussion by comparing two movies. The classic film, When Harry Met Sally, explored the question of whether a man and a woman can really be “just friends.” More recently, the film, The Danish Girl, asked a different question: Can a man really become a woman? The film was based on the true story of the first known subject of “sex…

Kerby Anderson One of the more controversial features of the tax reform bill two years ago was the proposal to cap the deductibility of state and local taxes (SALT). This deduction is a benefit given to taxpayers, but it provided much more benefit to taxpayers who lived in high-tax states. They were able to deduct more from their taxes. During the debate, there was great pressure on the Congress and the Trump Administration to drop the idea of capping this…

Kerby Anderson Already 51 attorneys general have signed on to an antitrust investigation into the business practices of Google. Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General, recently wrote about why they were looking at Google’s dominance in the marketplace. He cited Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry who posed an interesting hypothetical question. Imagine America before the invention of radio or television, when print media (especially newspapers) were the source of content. Would we allow one person or one company to own all…