Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Just about anyone who sets out to defend Western civilization will be criticized and vilified. Jonah Goldberg wrote about Western civilization in his book, the Suicide of the West. Ben Shapiro has recently written about The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great. In a future commentary, I plan to discuss Shapiro’s book but for now will merely look at two incidents that prove my point. First, when his book came out,…

Kerby Anderson While I was doing a radio program, news outlets were reporting that the Cathedral of Notre Dame was burning. My producer asked if we wanted to start covering it. Since I already had guests on the program, I suggested we wait and see if it was an accident or an attack. His response was that never occurred to him. So, you may wonder, what is wrong with me that I would consider the possibility that the fire might…

Penna Dexter The Washington Post reported this:  “A procession of clergy dressed in white carried a simple black cross through the streets of Île St. Louis on Friday, continuing a Good Friday ritual even while the charred hulk of Notre Dame Cathedral loomed behind them. Thousands of Parisians and visitors gathered for the “stations of the cross” devotion, a symbolic reenactment of Christ’s passion that commemorates the trajectory from his sentencing to his burial in 14 stops.” Human beings are moved by…

Kerby Anderson Funerals are starting to look very different. An article in the Washington Post predicts that “the funeral as we know it is becoming a relic.” Many of our time-honored rituals are being set aside. One of the first books I wrote was on the subject of death and dying. I noted then that we were a death-denying culture. The elderly used to die in our homes, but now we’re dying in hospitals and care facilities. And we tried to…

Kerby Anderson We often hear the campaign slogan “Defund Planned Parenthood.” But we don’t always hear why government should defund this organization. Alexandra DeSanctis has put together four arguments for defunding Planned Parenthood because she is concerned that pro-life politicians need to learn how to articulate them. The first argument is that Planned Parenthood performs the most abortions in the US, even as our abortion rate steadily drops. Organizations like the Guttmacher Institute report that the number of abortions performed…

Kerby Anderson Executives from Facebook and Twitter testified on Capitol Hill two weeks ago. All the big tech companies deny they are engaged in any censorship, but the members of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee provided a number of examples. The executive from Twitter stressed that his platform “does not use political viewpoints, perspective, or party affiliation” in making decisions about content or rankings. The other executive wanted to “state unequivocally that Facebook does not favor one political viewpoint over another,…

Kerby Anderson Last year I wrote about how the state of Connecticut’s vote brought the nation one step closer to dismantling the Electoral College. More than a decade ago, states started passing the National Popular Vote compact. Each state agrees to ignore the votes of its citizens and cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote. The compact only goes into effect when enough states holding 270 electoral votes approve the plan. This attempt to dismantle the…

Kerby Anderson Consider this scenario. Your organization (it could be a business or ministry) has as its leader someone who shows what looks like early signs of dementia. He has a family history of Alzheimer’s disease and gets key facts confused and has language skills that are starting to deteriorate. It’s not so hypothetical. I had to face it with my own father and later with a leader of a Christian ministry. What if that leader is the president of…

Penna Dexter US Senator Ted Cruz is opening an investigation into Yale Law School. No — this is not misplaced Ivy League rivalry. (Senator Cruz is a Harvard Law grad.) The Senator says Yale is discriminating against students with “traditional Christian views.” As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Senator Cruz sent a letter to Yale Law School’s Dean Heather Gerken. The letter inquires about the school’s new policy denying financial assistance to students who participate…

Kerby Anderson Today is Good Friday. On this day, believers around the world commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. We all understand that. What most of us don’t understand is why this dark day in which Jesus suffered and died is called “Good Friday.” Why isn’t it called Bad Friday or Dark Friday? Over the years, people have put forward various theories. Some argue that it is called Good Friday because something good came about because of the death, burial,…

Kerby Anderson This month is when feminists in America have declared an unofficial holiday known as “Equal Pay Day.” They argue that women earn less than men. Therefore, in order to catch up with a man’s pay from 2018, a woman must work until April. The editors of the Wall Street Journal remind us that the comparison between men’s wages and women’s wages isn’t really accurate when you consider other factors. “Women on average go into lower-paying fields, such as education….