Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson We are often told to “trust the experts.” And that is good advice when you are dealing with a true expert. I want a plumbing expert in my house if I have a water leak. I want a doctor with medical expertise doing surgery on me. I want a trained pilot flying the plane I am taking from one city to another. No, I am talking about “experts” who don’t really know the real world but often have…

Penna Dexter Though it’s taking a while to know the true outcomes of this year’s elections, we do know some important things: We know that, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the last four years have been characterized less by governance than by theater. In her post-election column, The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel says, “Americans elect lawmakers to pass budgets, confirm judges, develop considered legislation.” What we’ve gotten, she writes is “day after painful day of faux scandals, gotcha…

Kerby Anderson Anyone looking at charitable giving can see that individuals and voluntary associations are very effective. Don Eberly talks about this in his book. The Rise of Global Civil Society. He points out that during recent disasters around the world, private voluntary organizations had the capacity to raise more funds than government. They were also able to mobilize resources and manpower with a speed and efficiency that matches (if not exceeds) the best government aid agencies could do. Private,…

Kerby Anderson Why are suicides surging in America? There is no easy answer to that question, but there are some important clues. Some of the answers have been put forth by the latest CDC reports. We do have a number of deaths of despair that result from intended suicides as well as from opioid overdoses. And we also see suicides that have increased among our veterans that show the relationship between military combat and PTSD. But there are social, intellectual,…

Kerby Anderson The mainstream media nearly always think alike. And the best example of that came two weeks ago when Glen Greenwald resigned from The Intercept. Now I am sure you probably haven’t heard about that news outlet, so let me explain why this provides such a great example of media groupthink. Glen Greenwald was one of the founders of The Intercept. He created it because he wanted to have a news outlet that was insulated from partisan pressures and…

Kerby Anderson Yesterday I talked about a commentary by Dr. Jeff Myers that raised a significant concern about Christian young people who unfortunately embrace anti-religious views and socialist policies. He also compared the amount spent on the last elections to what colleges and worldview ministries spend to prepare young adults to apply a biblical worldview. He therefore concludes that “spending $100 to fix a problem that could have been prevented for $1 is crazy.” We need to rearrange our priorities…

Kerby Anderson Now that the 2020 election is behind us, Christians need to think strategically about how to have a more significant impact on culture, and especially on Christian youth who often embrace anti-religious views and socialist politics. A commentary by Dr. Jeff Myers (Summit Ministries) in the Washington Times addresses this issue. He is concerned that his fellow evangelicals are only focused on winning the next election and blind to the fact they will lose future elections. Meanwhile, leftists…

Penna Dexter The election came and went without passage of a fourth coronavirus relief/stimulus bill. Negotiations between the White House and the House of Representatives started last spring, ramped up as the election approached, and then stalled out. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged caution, preferring that Congress assess the effects of the first three massive relief packages before passing another one. The original stated purpose for passing more stimulus was to try to keep the coronavirus crisis from turning into…

Kerby Anderson Yesterday I talked about critical race theory and summarized some of the analysis by Dr. Doug Groothuis in his article on “America, Critical Theory, and Social Crisis.” One of the key points he makes is that the claims of critical race theory are unfalsifiable. “It becomes impervious to counter-evidence and thus cannot be rationally defended.” In a recent article by James Lindsay, he argues that “For Racial Healing, Reject Critical Race Theory.” He starts with a thought experiment…

Kerby Anderson Many Americans probably never even heard of critical race theory until the Trump administration ordered the federal agencies to stop teaching programs based on it in the federal government. If you read articles about it, you might conclude that it is merely an anti-discrimination program. But the president went so far as to describe some of the government programs as “toxic propaganda.” Since there is so much confusion about critical race theory, I invited Dr. Doug Groothuis on…

Kerby Anderson The authors of a new book remind us that for the first time in history, the world shut itself down—by choice—because of a virus that was spreading. We did not understand the nature and danger of the coronavirus, but we understand much more now. I had Dr. Jay Richards on my radio program to talk about the book, The Price of Panic, written by him and two other authors. The subtitle of the book expresses some of their…