Recent Viewpoints

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…

Kerby Anderson In a recent PragerU video, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper talked about two different types of people. He described these two groups in order to explain why Donald Trump won in 2016. I will ignore his explanation and conclusion in this short commentary in order to focus on the impact of two people groups. He says there are many people who “can live anywhere” and many more people who have to “live somewhere.” David Goodhart makes this…

Penna Dexter Certain states have been seeking to pass legislation shoring up a woman’s right to obtain a late term abortion — up to the moment of birth. This — if we’re honest — reminds us, as a nation, that we’re killing children. Pastor John Piper has a way of demonstrating the obvious to make it even more obvious. He once took an abortionist to lunch armed with a ten-point spiel to convince him that “the unborn are human beings.”…

Kerby Anderson In the field of psychology, there is what has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Most of us have observed this in people who don’t actually know a great deal but have this ignorant superiority. They either don’t have the ability or lack the self-awareness to know they are incompetent. The phenomenon was named by researchers who described a bank robber who covered his face in lemon juice thinking it would make him invisible to surveillance…