Recent Viewpoints

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…

Penna Dexter The foundation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 lies in providing important political and economic protections for blacks. It’s a sweeping law. The Supreme Court tinkered with it recently and not in a good way. Title VII of the law provides powerful protections for women in the workplace. But the High Court’s 6-3 decision, in Bostock v. Clayton County, reinterpreted — really redefined — the phrase “on the basis of sex”, stuffing “gender identity” and “sexual orientation’…

Kerby Anderson Tomorrow is the 4th of July, and I thought I would take a moment to talk about the origin of the ideas in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson said that many of the ideas in the Declaration came from John Locke. Jefferson also gave credit to the writer Algernon Sidney, who in turn cites most prominently Aristotle, Plato, Roman republican writers, and the Old Testament. Legal scholar Gary Amos argues that Locke’s Two Treatises on Government is simply Samuel…

Kerby Anderson As we approach the traditional time in America in which we celebrate its independence, it’s worth considering the two types of political society that we can find in the world. The first is what we celebrate. We begin with the idea that government is instituted by human beings to provide liberty and security. We need enough government to ensure that we are safe. But we don’t want so much government that we lose our freedom. Ben Shapiro talks…

Kerby Anderson It’s easy to make it onto a liberal blacklist. I discovered that years ago. Disagree with even one plank of the latest politically correct platform, and you make the liberal blacklist. But even liberal people with progressive ideas are finding that you can make the blacklist even if your disagreement should be considered minor. Just ask JK Rowling, famous author of the Harry Potter book series. She ended up on the blacklist for taking issue with an article…

Kerby Anderson Recently the president of iVoterGuide explained on my radio program how COVID shows how elections matter. Debbie Wuthnow said that COVID reminds us that elected officials can make life and death decisions. It may be tempting to think that elections are “just politics.” We learned from the various orders and pronouncements by our elected officials that they have significant power over our lives. She also argued that COVID revealed how vulnerable our religious liberties are. Some elected officials…

Kerby Anderson Perhaps you have heard the phrase that people follow their basic principles, until they don’t. As much as most of us try to follow key principles in our life (whether they be principles of leadership, family, or morality), sometimes an issue arises that changes our behavior. That is certainly true of judicial interpretation. While on the Supreme Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch has staked out his belief that legislatures (not the judiciary) should make law. And he has on…

Penna Dexter The extensive looting and rioting piggybacking on the peaceful protests in response to the death of George Floyd are disastrously counterproductive. Criminals and extremists are piling up damages that will result in costs to minority communities — communities they claim to represent — for years to come. Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley provides some history to show that peaceful civil rights demonstrations get better results. He points out that two consequential laws affecting African Americans, the Civil…

Kerby Anderson We are a divided country, but it may be worse than we imagined. An article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discussed what is called “motive attribution asymmetry.” That’s a technical term for the assumption that your ideology is based on love and your opponent’s is based on hate. Put another way: we are the good guys, and they are the bad guys. They discovered that the average Republican and the average Democrat today are as…

Kerby Anderson You have heard most of them before. They are little phrases and one-liners that Christians (and even non-Christians) say in order to encourage you. You might be going through some tough struggles, and they remind you, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” At a funeral for a child, someone will likely explain, “God gained another angel.” And of course, there are the millions of people who believe that “God just wants you to be happy”…