Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson When President Trump published his proposed budget cuts, many media outlets focused on cuts to public broadcasting. Writers for USA Today newspaper wondered if the proposed budget would kill Big Bird. Others wondered if this might be the end of programs like Sesame Street. Frankly, I don’t think members of Congress will actually cut funds to public broadcasting. So I want to talk about a more important issue: media manipulation. For the last two years, Sesame Street has…

Kerby Anderson President Trump wants Congress to tackle tax reform. He and they are likely to encounter some significant obstacles in order to get this passed by both houses. Tax reform is long overdue so its likelihood of passing may be fairly good. Trump’s plan would condense the current seven tax brackets into just three brackets. That will certainly make it simpler. The income threshold for single taxpayers will be exactly half of the threshold for married joint filers. That…

Kerby Anderson When members of Congress once again decide to tackle the difficult issue of health care, they need to look at the reasons health care costs are rising. John Stossel reminds us in a recent column that 7 in 8 health care dollars are paid by Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance companies. There is no really free market in health care. That is why costs rose 467 percent over the last three decades. Health insurance costs will continue to…

Penna Dexter The Associated Press announced updates to its Stylebook, providing journalists with direction for referring to transgender and gender fluid people. The 2017 AP Stylebook approves the use of “they,” “them,” and “their” to refer to individual transgender people and also to people who do not identify with either gender. Paula Foke, lead editor of the AP Stylebook elaborated, saying, “We offer new advice for two reasons; recognition that the spoken language uses ‘they’ as singular and we also…

Kerby Anderson Khaldoun Sweis admits that reaching your secular friends with the gospel is difficult, but there are things we can do to be more effective. He and I have worked together at the International Society of Christian Apologetics, so I was excited to see many commentators like Ed Stetzer and Eric Metaxas quoting him. Khaldoun says we make a mistake “when we ignore the trends and zeitgeist of the times, and we make grave mistakes when we try to…

Kerby Anderson Should Christians engage in a “strategic withdrawal” from society? That is the question Rod Dreher asks in his new book, The Benedict Option. He was on my radio program last month to talk about his vision for Christians. I have waited a few weeks to think about his book and to consider whether to write a commentary about it. You may not have heard about the book, but you likely have heard the conversations that Christians have been…

Kerby Anderson I think most of us understand that if you want to prevent some human action, the most effective way to accomplish that is through deterrence. We can put up signs designating the speed limit, but we know that people are much more likely to stay within the speed limit if they have some expectation of being pulled over by law enforcement. We can post signs at our border telling potential immigrants that they must come into this country…

Kerby Anderson Yesterday I talked about entitlement addiction. Today I want to focus on how hard it is to wean Americans off other government programs. Joe Messina begins a column by citing some of the recommendations given by pediatricians about when to wean a young child off of breast milk. For example, “a 2-year-old toddler may be more attached and less flexible about giving up breastfeeding than a 12-month-old baby.” Joe than asks, “Sound familiar? Government programs work like this.”…

Kerby Anderson Addiction is hard to escape. Whether we are talking about drugs and alcohol or gambling or a variety of other addictions. Dennis Prager says one of the hardest addictions to escape is the addiction of getting something for nothing. The addiction he is talking about is the entitlement addiction. He reminds us that we have lots of examples of people voluntarily giving up drugs, alcohol, or gambling. We don’t have many examples of people giving up their addiction…

Penna Dexter As the Senate Judiciary Committee began confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch, columnist Dahlia Lithwick wrote a piece in SLATE complaining about the judge’s deference toward religious liberty in his rulings. Ms. Lithwick, an attorney by training, wrote that, “His record reflects a pattern of systematically privileging the rights of religious believers over those of religious minorities and nonbelievers.” She cited his opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th…

Kerby Anderson America is turning more into a secular society. But this post-Christian nation has not turned into a kinder, more tolerant place to live. Peter Beinart, writing in The Atlantic, reminds us that a vast majority of Americans still believe in God, but they are fleeing organized religion in increasing numbers. The percentage of people with no religious affiliation jumped from 6 percent in 1992 to 22 percent in 2014. Among Millennials, the figure is 35 percent. Many secular…