Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter After the horrific school shooting in Parkland, Florida, a meeting of surviving students was convened at the White House. Fifteen-year-old Justin Gruber reminded the president he wasn’t even alive 19 years ago when the Columbine High School shooting took place. The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan laments, “We’re in the second generation of public school terror.” Yet federal school discipline guidelines, complete with monetary incentives for districts, show we’ve learned nothing from these horrible massacres. The guidelines attempt…

Kerby Anderson Are boys in America broken? Many certainly are. We see them in our prisons, on the streets, and in news stories about domestic abuse or even school shootings. That is why Michael Ian Black wrote an op-ed with the title, “The Boys Are Not All Right.” His commentary surfaced lots of emotions, criticisms, and profanity from people who read what he had to say. At the outset, let me say that though I agree with much of his…

Kerby Anderson Ryan Anderson responds to our transgender moment in his new book, When Harry Became Sally. He begins his discussion by comparing two movies. The classic film, When Harry Met Sally, explored the question of whether a man and a woman can really be “just friends.” More recently, the film, The Danish Girl, asked a different question: Can a man really become a woman? The film was based on the true story of the first known subject of “sex…

Kerby Anderson The tax reform bill that Congress passed in December will remove the individual mandate to have a government-approved health insurance plan starting next year. Callers to my radio program wonder if that will allow them to buy a low-cost health insurance plan. That isn’t so easy to answer. Dr. Merrill Matthews was on my radio program a few weeks ago and suggested to members of Congress how they could provide a clear answer. His recent article in The…

Kerby Anderson Will divisive debates about public policy break America apart? David French fears that could happen with the current debate and dissension over gun control. He wrote about it after the CNN town hall on gun control, but it could just as easily be written about the controversy and conflict that has surfaced this last week. It might be easy to write off some of the hysterics and hyperbole as an outlier. Surely the American people will regain their…

Penna Dexter It’s good to periodically unpack the Lord’s Prayer so it’s never vain repetition. Two Christian apologists do this in a 2001 interview Lee Strobel conducted with Hank Hanegraaff on Hank’s book The Prayer of Jesus. The two men agree: In this prayer, no words are wasted. In beginning with “Our Father” Jesus taught His disciples to address God as Father. Only those adopted into the family of God could actually pray ‘Our Father.’ It’s plural, Hank says, because…

Kerby Anderson The news over the last year has been about the surveillance of the Trump campaign and administration. But there is another more personal issue. How much surveillance has the federal government done of your life? John Whitehead (Rutherford Institute) was on my radio program recently to talk about the threat we all face from government and business surveillance. We began by quoting from Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. In a case back in 1966, he warned, “We…

Kerby Anderson A generation ago, driving on American roads was much safer than in many other countries with lots of open roads (like Canada and Australia). That is not the case anymore. David Leonhardt reports that our vehicle fatality rate is about 40 percent higher than the fatality rates in Canada and Australia. He says he was unaware of this country’s outlier status until he began to report on the rise of driverless cars. As you might imagine, many people…

Kerby Anderson Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was criticized for using a term correctly and in the proper context. When he was speaking to the National Sheriffs’ Association, he reminded them that, “The office of sheriff is a crucial part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.” The outrage surfaced almost immediately because he used the term “Anglo-American.” Let me quote from one US Senator: “Do you know anyone who says ‘Anglo-American heritage’ in a sentence? What could…

Kerby Anderson Yesterday I talked about a few pieces of legislation that might actually stem gun violence. There is another issue that also deserves attention. How many criminals and potential mass shooters are getting their guns through online gun sales? One report from a number of years ago suggested that this was a potential problem. That is why two members of Congress (Representative Elijah Cummings and Senator Elizabeth Warren) asked the GAO to investigate. In November, they completed their two-and-a-half…

Kerby Anderson We have once again been hearing that we need to do something to stem gun violence. Even though most gun purchases are significantly regulated, are there any gun law reforms being proposed that make some sense? Benjamin Dierker, writing in The Federalist, proposes some reforms of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that would make a difference. The system is composed of three databases, but not all relevant data is listed. For example, the Air Force failed…