Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson This election year is certain the bring some significant surprises, and one of those is the possibility of a presidential tie. Dr. Merrill Matthews was on my radio program recently to talk about his article in The Hill. A presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win. Most people believe that much of the electoral map is already determined. That means that President Joe Biden can be expected to win 226 electoral votes, while former president Donald Trump…

Kerby Anderson Perhaps you have heard of the white high school principal in Baltimore who was removed from his position for allegedly making racist and antisemitic comments. I say “allegedly” since he didn’t make any of those comments. The audio was an AI-generated attempt to mimic his voice so that the school’s former black athletic director could get him fired. As one commentator quipped, “Jessie Smollett must be devastated he didn’t think of this first!” Anyone who wants to perpetrate…

Kerby Anderson The Pro-Hamas campus protests could only last so long before some people in charge exercised some common sense. One of my cliches on radio is “common sense is breaking out all over.” We are seeing that in the words and actions of people who understand what is happening. Even at Columbia University, police were called and arrested 108 protesters last month, but not much has happened. The President at the University of Texas at Austin took stronger action…

Penna Dexter Five years ago, in a one-hour radio interview, Jeff Younger told me the story of his battle to save his then-six-year-old son, James. When he was 3, his mother, Jeff’s ex-wife Anne Georgulas, began dressing and treating James as a girl. She began taking him to a transgender-affirming therapist. She obtained a court order enjoining Jeff from dressing James as a boy for school, from teaching him that he is a boy, and from providing religious teachings about…

Kerby Anderson Government gets bigger every year, but how government gets bigger isn’t so easy to understand. There seems to be about the same number of federal employees, but the size and scope of government continues to grow. John DiIulio writes about this in his book and scholarly paper at the Brookings Institution. Government grows larger by using three types of “administrative proxies.” The first are state and local governments. The EPA, for example, has fewer than 20,000 employees. But…

Kerby Anderson Today is the National Day of Prayer. It is a vital part of our American heritage. The first call to prayer happened before the American Revolution. In 1775, the Continental Congress called on the colonists to pray for wisdom as they considered how they would respond to the King of England. Perhaps one of the most powerful calls to prayer came from President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. In 1863, he issued a proclamation for a day…

Kerby Anderson What impact will robots and artificial intelligence have on jobs? In previous commentaries, I have discussed some of these questions and concerns. If you don’t want to be replaced by a robot, we are told, choose a service job, like cutting hair or serving food. A recent article about fast-food robots dismantles that advice. Ryan Mills begins with a story of a restaurant providing high-quality, affordable Mediterranean dishes at a food truck park in San Francisco. It was…

Kerby Anderson Jonathan Haidt has been on the Point of View radio talk show to discuss his previous book, The Coddling of the American Mind. He has now compiled his research in his new book: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. He begins his book by having us imagine that a visionary billionaire wants to establish the first permanent human settlement on Mars and chose your ten-year-old daughter for the…

Kerby Anderson George Barna has written a book to help parents discipline their children into spiritual champions. Raising children is a privilege, but also a daunting assignment. Parents have a God-given responsibility to guide their children, but it is often difficult to understand how to do that effectively and biblically. One significant problem is the stark reality that so many Christian parents do not have a biblical worldview, as determined by the decades of surveys conducted by George Barna. As…

Penna Dexter A rule has been added to the federal register that will make it nearly impossible for an incoming president to fire certain federal employees. The Office of Personnel Management issued the new rule which will shield employees appointed by the executive branch from being terminated for opposing the policies and agenda of a president. The rule is to go into effect next month. It concerns employment protections in place for career civil servants that do not apply to…

Kerby Anderson Summer is months away but there is already news of an energy shortage on the Texas power grid. Most people would not think Texas would have an energy scare. But officials asked power generators to postpone scheduled maintenance “to help alleviate potential tight conditions.” Usually the grid has excess power-generation capacity in the Spring, especially given that the temperatures are in the 80s. One reason for the shortage is population growth, but others have to do with the…