Recent Viewpoints

July 23, 2018
Empty Chair on SCOTUS

Kerby Anderson There has been lots of fear mongering from the Left about how the newly constituted Supreme Court would rule on various social issues. Justices that attempt to apply the original intent of the Constitution to legal issues are called originalists. Here are a few suggestions about how an originalist court might rule on cases before it. Abortion – Despite the fears being spread that the next court would overturn Roe v. Wade, there isn’t any likelihood it will…

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July 20, 2018
ACLU_vs_Trump

Penna Dexter Prominent abortion-rights advocate, Cecille Richards, recently stepped down from the helm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Having served as the organization’s president for 12 years, she’s now pouring herself into electoral politics, especially the midterm elections. Ms. Richards solidified Planned Parenthood’s role as a political powerhouse. This year Planned Parenthood’s political action sub-groups are conducting their biggest-ever push to elect abortion-rights supporters in Congress and in key states. The American Civil Liberties Union, which recently honored Richards…

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July 20, 2018
Intelligence-Gathering-Processing-Open-Source-Threat-

Kerby Anderson Our nation’s intelligence gathering is in the news, so I read with interest a transcript of a speech Herbert Meyer did for a Hillsdale College leadership seminar. He served as a special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and was the Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. Meyer reminds us that “From the end of World War II until 1982, every president’s objective had been not to lose the Cold War.” When President Ronald Reagan…

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July 19, 2018
no cursing

Kerby Anderson Your children are facing an onslaught of profanity through the media. Movies are one place where profanity reigns. One survey has been tracking profanity in movies from the first swear word on film (1939’s Gone With the Wind) to The Wolf of Wall Street, which holds the record with 798 swear words. There has been a 500 percent increase over these many decades. The Parents Television Council has documented the fact that the number of expletives on television…

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July 18, 2018
Adulting is Hard

Kerby Anderson A library in Oregon is providing a six-part course called “Adulting 101.” If it becomes popular, I suspect we will be seeing more of these courses nationwide. Maybe I need to back up and define the term “adulting.” Last year, the term began to be used more frequently. It means to “behave in an adult manner” or it can also describe the attempt to “make someone behave as an adult.” It gained some attention because millennials often go…

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July 17, 2018
Biblical Worldview

Kerby Anderson More than 100 million American adults claim to have a biblical worldview, but actually a much smaller percentage of adults do. That is one of the striking conclusions of George Barna’s survey with the American Culture & Faith Institute. It is important to know how many people have a biblical worldview because belief drives behavior. And it was important for George Barna to get an accurate baseline to use in future comparisons. His survey asked 20 questions about…

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July 16, 2018
Stop Fake Crime Hoaxes

Kerby Anderson Let me give you some advice. The next time you hear a media report of a hate crime by a conservative or Trump supporter, wait a day and see if it is a hoax. John Hawkins lists “10 Examples of Hate Crimes that Turned Out to be Scams.” Elizabeth Nolan Brown documents in Reason that “There Is No Violent Hate-Crime Wave in Trump’s America.” Kevin Williamson, writing in National Review, talks about both “Fake Hate Crimes” and “Fake Hate.”…

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July 13, 2018
Mom & Dad - blocks - iStock

Penna Dexter Remember the PBS television show Barney and Friends?  It premiered in 1992 and ceased production in 2009. The title character Barney was a purple tyrannosaurus rex who conveyed optimistic and educational messages through songs and little dance routines. The show was popular during an era when it was not politically correct to elevate the nuclear family — a mom, a dad, and their biological or adopted kids —as preferable to any other type of family. The children on Barney…

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July 13, 2018
Periscope - Cultural Captives

Kerby Anderson Christian young people are not spiritually thriving. That is the conclusion by Stephen Cable in his book, Cultural Captives: The Beliefs and Behavior of American Young Adults. Stephen Cable serves as Senior Vice-President of Probe Ministries. His book not only analyzes the survey Probe Ministries did with the Barna Group of emerging adults but also analyzes all of the other major surveys (National Study of Youth and Religion, Baylor Religion Survey, General Social Survey). He discovered that even…

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July 12, 2018
Fake ID's

Kerby Anderson An interesting aspect of the immigration debate is how forgiving many Americans can be toward illegal aliens, while never extending that same measure of grace to American citizens. One example can be found in the use of the term “false documents.” The discussion started with a Wall Street Journal editorial that expressed concern that the Department of Homeland Security policy might be “so sweeping that it could capture law-abiding immigrants whose only crime is using false documents to work.”…

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July 11, 2018
danger-big-government

Kerby Anderson The debate about the federal budget centers on whether the government is too big and too inefficient. Most Republicans argue that government is too big. Many Democrats ask, ‘Where is your evidence that government has grown too big? There are about the same number of federal employees today as in the past.’ George Will in a column writes about how “Big Government Sneakily Get Bigger.” He quotes from John Dilulio and his book and recent paper at the…

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