Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter After an interview promoting his new film, Cold Pursuit, actor Liam Neeson was hit with an onslaught of Hollywood shaming. The character Neeson plays in this movie is a man consumed by his desire for vengeance at all costs, similar to the father in his Taken films. In the interview, he described an episode in his life that helped him relate. He reacted to the rape of someone dear to him with rage which he admits was impulsive…

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 Here’s a question for you. What country is leading the world in reducing CO2 emissions? Germany? France? Japan? No, the country reducing greenhouse gas emissions more than any other country is . . . the United States of America. Your ability or inability to provide the right answer to that question probably says quite a bit about the news sources you consume. Much of the mainstream media made a big deal out of the fact that the US withdrew…

Kerby Anderson The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal asked a good question the other day. They wondered, “Who’s Afraid of Socialism?” Their argument was that the new progressive agenda looks like government control over the means of production. Isn’t that the textbook definition of socialism? The president has been criticized for saying there are “new calls to adopt socialism in this country.” Democrats in Congress and pundits in the media have protested that the socialist label doesn’t apply to…

Kerby Anderson There is a new term in our political lexicon: ballot harvesting. It is political jargon for allowing volunteers to collect absentee ballots from voters and then drop them off at an election office or polling place. The term was coined by Republicans in California as a way to suggest that this could lead to election fraud. Ballot harvesting is legal in states like California. Proponents argue that it will make it easier and more convenient for people to…

Kerby Anderson The political drama in Virginia might just be a preview of a wild, contentious Democratic primary. In fact, Rich Lowry believes we might be seeing the beginning of the first “woke” primary. To be “woke” is to be alert and sensitive to any injustice, whether real or perceived. A governor had an image of someone in “blackface” in his medical-school yearbook. That apparently was enough to call for his resignation. Democrats in Virginia faced a growing problem. The…

Penna Dexter The United States Supreme Court recently blocked enforcement of a Louisiana law requiring that abortion doctors have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facilities where they perform abortions. The stay applies while the justices decide whether to hear an abortion clinic’s challenge to this law. If the justices decide to hear the case and ultimately uphold the legislation, one more commonsense protection for women undergoing abortion will be secured. The law passed overwhelmingly in…

Kerby Anderson If the younger generation wants to know the keys to success, they need to follow the success sequence published by Bradford Wilcox and Wendy Wang. They say that the millennial generation is “more likely to flourish financially if they follow the “success sequence.” They say, you need to get at least a high school degree, work full-time, and marry before having any children, in that order. Their recent study at the American Enterprise Institute has the title, The…

Kerby Anderson It was a grand experiment. Declare a “War on Poverty” and years later celebrate a victory. Unfortunately, poverty won the war. The percentage of people in poverty today is just slightly lower than the percentage in the 1960s when the war to end poverty began. People living in poverty now are doing better than decades ago, but we certainly have not eliminated poverty. Peter Cove has a bold vision. The title of his book is, “Poor No More:…

Kerby Anderson Nicholas Phillips recently wrote about what he called “The Sham of American Centrism.” He tried to explain why former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz would fail as a presidential candidate. While doing that, he cites a report for the Voter Study Group that helps explain the 2016 presidential election and may even predict the 2020 election. The study plotted a public opinion survey of the 2016 electorate along an X-Y graph. The X-axis represents economic views and the Y-axis…

Kerby Anderson Last year was a significant year in the field of biblical archaeology. One article in Christianity Today detailed “Biblical Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries.” Some were recent finds. Others were finds that new technology has helped read, inscriptions not previously visible. Here are a few examples. When ISIS terrorists captured Mosul, they blew up the tomb of the prophet Jonah. This uncovered the remains of a palace of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon. As one article put it, “ISIS Accidentally Corroborates…