Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Yesterday I talked about the Declaration of Independence. Since we are in the 4th of July weekend, I thought we could talk about the Constitution. The summer issue of the magazine for Williamsburg had an interesting article by Mitchell Reiss on “An Exercise in Revisionism.” He invited his readers to make suggestions on how they might amend this country’s founding document. As you might expect, many of the respondents wrote about the Electoral College. One respondent, for example, felt…

Kerby Anderson Today 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 Yesterday, I talked about the progress of religious liberty in this country due to a recent Supreme Court ruling. Today I would like to put all of this in a larger context of the religious culture war. Fortunately, David French has already done much of the hard work on this in his commentary on this subject. Early on he explains his mission. Although the federal government should protect religious liberty and seek the common good, we Christians have…

Kerby Anderson When the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the memorial cross in Maryland, the lawyers with First Liberty Institute hoped that they would also dismiss what has been known as “the Lemon test.” Back in 1971, the justices created a three-part test in Lemon v. Kurzman that made it too easy to declare any religious symbol or action unconstitutional. The recent court ruling didn’t eliminate the test but essentially set it aside. In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence…

Kerby Anderson The current showdown with Iran brought lots of commentary. At times like this, lots of people become instant foreign policy experts. I don’t claim to be one of them, but I do know that some of the comments being made are off track. I have read pundits trying to argue that Iran is not our enemy and isn’t a threat to us. Some have argued that the principle reason for Iranian belligerence is due to the fact that…

Penna Dexter Proposals for single-payer healthcare depend upon deriving more productivity from a system that is already stretched thin. Medicare-for-All, which would nationalize the practice of medicine, already has 106 House co-sponsors. Under Medicare-for-All, doctors would be salaried government employees. Hospitals and other medical facilities would be expected to provide care for all their patients within an allotted budgeted dollar amount to be determined annually and capped to keep costs down. This pot of money will also have to cover…

Kerby Anderson Could it be that nearly everything we have been told about sexual orientation and gender identity is wrong? A report published in the journal, The New Atlantis, seems to challenge conventional secular perspectives on these issues. The paper by Dr. Lawrence Mayer and Dr. Paul McHugh surveys over 200 peer-reviewed studies done in various social science disciplines. Ryan Anderson, of the Heritage Foundation, summarizes the paper’s results. He says the major takeaway is that “some of the most…

Kerby Anderson Leave it to progressive corporate leaders to suggest that laws promoting abortion are the same as “equality.” After all, the use of the term “equality” worked to promote same-sex marriage. Why not bend the term to apply to abortion and reproductive rights? Executives from 180 corporations signed a joint statement with the deceptive title, “Don’t Ban Equality.” In a commentary by John Hirschauer, he aptly describes it as “a gratuitous assault on the English language.” Who exactly is…

Kerby Anderson Dennis Prager asks parents a very important question. He wants to know, “Did Your Child Return From College a Better Person?” I think many of us sadly know the answer to that haunting question. When I first joined Probe Ministries, they had a brochure with the title “Will Your Children Lose Their Faith in College?” His question attempts to dig even deeper into the current college environment. For example, he looks at the percentage of college students who…

Kerby Anderson A year ago, the FCC commissioners implemented the “Restoring Internet Freedom Order.” At the time, critics were making apocalyptic predictions that this attempt to roll back net neutrality rules would destroy the Internet. That’s why it is worth taking a moment to see the effect of this FCC action. At the time, I suggested that these dire predictions didn’t make any sense. After all, the net neutrality rules were only implemented near the end of the Obama administration….

Kerby Anderson Earlier this month, Jon Stewart appeared before a congressional subcommittee in full beard and full rant. The members of Congress were there to consider the reauthorization of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. He criticized those who were not at the hearing and accused them of “callous indifference and rank hypocrisy.” Let me explain why this tirade was unnecessary and inappropriate. But before I do that, let me make clear that I support the reauthorization of the fund, and…