Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Congress has lots of unfinished business. One important item is prison and sentencing reform. The House of Representatives has already passed the First Step Act. It is time for the Senate to do the same. Recently I had Rebecca Hagelin on the Point of View radio program to talk about her commentary on “Our Failing Prisons and Faulty War on Drugs.” A few months ago, I had Star Parker on to talk about the same legislation. These women will…

Kerby Anderson In this world of social media, we have come to expect to see outrageous and irresponsible comments on various websites. But we don’t expect to read them in the New York Times. I am talking about the headline, “Transgender Could be Defined Out of Existence By Trump Administration.” This isn’t even close to true. Let me explain. What started this was the news that the Trump administration was considering returning the understanding of a civil rights statute to its…

Kerby Anderson Today is Election Day. Normally midterm elections don’t generate as much interest as presidential election years. That is not the case this year. Americans seem to understand that much is at stake in these elections. How will they turn out? I wrote an article months ago looking at various electoral possibilities and still feel it is a good overview of what will happen today and be reported on tonight. Consider these three scenarios. Scenario number one is where…

Kerby Anderson Tomorrow is the election. You may have already voted, like tens of millions of Americans. But if you haven’t voted, I encourage you to vote because your vote might make the difference. In the past, many groups circulated articles and e-mails talking about the importance of one vote. In the last few elections, we haven’t needed these reminders because some of the elections in the last few decades provide numerous illustrations. For example, George W. Bush won the…

Kerby Anderson Most people would expect liberals to be open-minded, and yet they find that they are often the most intolerant. Kim Holmes explores the reasons for this transformation in his new book, The Closing of the Liberal Mind. He was on Point of View to talk about the history of the radical change in mindset and attitude. Classic American liberalism in this country was based on a belief in liberty. Citizens were to be free from government coercion and…

Penna Dexter A really bad idea is bubbling up from the left. It stems partly from the idea that Artificial Intelligence and the resulting automation of jobs, from driving to technology, will displace so many workers, we’ve just gotta do something. The Universal Basic Income has been floated by Barack Obama and certain Silicon Valley titans, among them Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Mark Zuckerberg. They see UBI as an efficient way to prevent poverty in our hyper-automated and globalized…

Kerby Anderson You have probably heard comments about certain people living in a bubble. They live in affluent communities cut off from some of the realities that most Americans face. Due to the research by Charles Murray, we can now identify where these bubble communities are located. In his book, Coming Apart, he argued that a high-IQ, highly educated upper class was formed over the last half century that is disconnected from the culture of mainstream America. Charles Murray put…

Kerby Anderson What does it take for normal people to start slaughtering others? A commentary in the Jerusalem Postwith the title “The Genocide Mechanism” showed how demonization could lead to genocide. The writer talked about “a very specific kind of demonization.” The example he used was Rwanda. In 1994, the majority of the Hutu population was able to massacre some 800,000 Tutsis. The violence was unimaginable: neighbors slaughtering neighbors, mostly with machetes. The estimates are about 9,000 men, women, and…

Kerby Anderson Senator Ben Sasse writes in his new book about, The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance. He recently took some material from the book and wrote about “What Happens When We Don’t Raise Kids to Become Adults.” He tells the story of being tapped to become president of Midland University at the age of 37-years-old. The board of directors did so because Ben Sasse had the reputation as a “turnaround”…

Kerby Anderson In a speech at Hillsdale College, Andrew McCarthy told the story of leading the prosecution in 1993 of the terrorist cell that bombed the World Trade Center. At the time, other government officials told him that he “should read nothing into the fact that all the men in this terrorist cell were Muslims.” These officials explained that the terrorist actions weren’t representative of Islam, because it is a religion that encourages peace. The government also portrayed the leader…

Penna Dexter Cecile Richards stepped down last spring after more than a decade at the helm of Planned Parenthood. But she’s still speaking out for abortion rights. After the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, she urged pro-abortion activists to “stay angry” because “you will need all your anger now.” Under Ms. Richards, Planned Parenthood managed to hold on to half a billion dollars in federal funding. For the midterm elections, its political action arm has sunk tens of…