Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson In his latest American Worldview Inventory, George Barna concludes that only six percent of American adults have a biblical worldview. This leads to the obvious question: What do the rest of American adults believe? Most of them (88%) hold to a worldview that could best be described as syncretism. Syncretism is a cut-and-paste approach to life. It is not an internally consistent and philosophically coherent perspective. Americans apparently are picking and choosing what they believe based upon their…

Kerby Anderson The three branches of our constitutionalist government are the executive, legislative, and judicial. Over the years, you may have written these names on a school test. You may have shouted them out as answers in a trivia game. But the three branches of government are much more than a school lesson or trivia game answer. They’re a big reason our freedoms have been protected so well for nearly 250 years. We enjoy such liberty and government continuity because…

Kerby Anderson The Democratic party has a God gap that will likely affect them in coming years. David French wrote about this in his recent book, but then decided to delete this chapter before it was published. Fortunately, he wrote about it earlier this month and joined me on radio to explain it. He begins by reminding us how close the last presidential election was. Donald Trump’s base shrank, yet Joe Biden nearly lost anyway. Roughly 44,000 votes in three…

Kerby Anderson This last year of the pandemic and lockdown have put so many middle-class families in a position of financial fragility. A few years ago, the Federal Reserve Board conducted a survey of Americans. They found that nearly half (47%) of the respondents said that the only way they could cover an unexpected expense of $400 would be by borrowing or selling something. They could not come up with the money any other way. Five years ago, writing in…

Penna Dexter In a study of 10th and 12th graders conducted during peak Covid-19 school lockdown months, fewer respondents reported feeling depressed than in a study conducted two years earlier. The study’s lead author, academic psychologist Jean Twenge, says spending more time with their families was good for these teenagers’ mental health. The baseline for Gen-Z happiness is low. Their extensive social media use and often minimal in-person social interaction makes healthy family life crucial for them. Yet there are…

Kerby Anderson Three scientific discoveries point to the existence of God. Dr. Stephen Meyer makes that claim in his book, Return of the God Hypothesis. A week ago, he was on my radio program to make the case for God. Arguments for the existence of God were compelling but began to be challenged in the 19th century. For example, we had Darwin telling us where we came from. Marx, with a secular eschatology, was telling us where we are going….

Kerby Anderson If you pay people for not working, then people aren’t likely to go out and look for work. Most of us would think that is basic common sense. But apparently that eluded many in Congress except for a few US senators like Ben Sasse and Lindsey Graham. Months ago, they warned that providing high unemployment benefits to those out of work would create a disincentive. Two weeks ago, the April jobs report lamented that only 266,000 jobs were…

Kerby Anderson Yesterday, I talked about inflation and increasing prices. Economists can debate whether inflation is on the horizon, but all of us can see that many prices are rising. And those percentage increases are greater than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Common sense and the ways we count our cents demonstrate that the CPI is not an adequate measure of inflation. Ten years ago, I wrote a commentary about the ways in which the government statistic varies from our…

Kerby Anderson Is inflation on the horizon? The chairman of the Federal Reserve (Jerome Powell) doesn’t think so. He concluded that, “Inflation is not a problem for this time as near as I can figure. Right now, M2 does not really have important implications.” What he is talking about is the M2 money supply, which measures cash, checks, money market, mutual funds, etc. If you type the words “M2 Money Stock” on a computer, you will see two things. First,…

Kerby Anderson I doubt that the CEOs of major corporations travel in the same circles as I travel. If they did, they would hear the phrase “get woke, go broke.” It appears that a majority of Americans have had enough from the woke corporate culture. But even if they don’t pay attention to what many of their consumers are saying to each other and on social media, you would think they would pay some attention to prominent political figures. Senator…

Penna Dexter There’s a proposal on the table to dramatically expand the government role in daycare.  President Biden says he wants to spend $225 billion on childcare on top of the programs that already exist. Do we really want America to be a society where the state assumes the care of young children? The spending is massive. Giving government this role in family life is unwise.  In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, investor and author J.D. Vance and Wheatley Institution…