Recent Viewpoints

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…

Penna Dexter After some depressing rulings, it was great to get a win for religious liberty and school choice at the U.S. Supreme Court. The 5-4 decision means states that provide assistance to private schools may not exclude some solely because they are religious. In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the Court affirmed, by a slim margin, that the Constitution prohibits explicit religious discrimination. In 2015, the state of Montana established a program in which businesses could receive tax…

Kerby Anderson For decades most people knew Bono as a musician with the group U2 and a social activist. But today many of his fans would be surprised to hear him promote some of the benefits of capitalism. At a World Economic Forum, he made this observation. “Capitalism is not immoral—it’s amoral. It requires our instruction. Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than any other ‘ism.’ But it is a wild beast and, if not tamed, it can…

Kerby Anderson Antifa is a group that is supposed to be “anti-fascist” but actually shows the very characteristics of some fascist groups as well as anarchist groups. As a recent editorial in the Washington Examiner explained, Russians used a similar tactic many years ago. The Soviets coined the term “anti-fascism” as a way to distinguish themselves from Bolshevism. That way they could gain the approval of many credulous Western democracies. It conveyed the idea that Stalinism was not opposed to…

Kerby Anderson Stephen Moore is an economics columnist who has written for the Wall Street Journal and National Review. His recent Washington Examiner column talked about how the pandemic and the lockdown highlighted the differences between the Right and the Left. He discussed eleven differences, but let’s just look at three. “The Right believes that stay-at-home orders and social distancing requirements are counterproductive and should be repealed safely and immediately. The Left believes that those orders must stay in place…

Kerby Anderson Should we play the national anthem before every sporting event in America? We all know the arguments for doing so. But the arguments against are increasing. Even before the protests, we often had sports (like hockey and soccer) where a majority of the players were from countries other than the US. And even the players from America often seemed bored and focused instead on the upcoming game. Even now coaches and owners are considering what they might do…

Kerby Anderson Proponents of expanding mail-in balloting argue that most of the concerns being raised are hypothetical and might not even take place. Well, now we have an example out of New Jersey that is so significant that nearly one in five ballots had to be rejected as fraudulent. Patterson is the third-largest city in New Jersey. In their City Council election, 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but only 13,557 votes were counted. More than 3,190 votes were disqualified by…