Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson During this campaign season, many have been talking about the narrow (5-4) Supreme Court cases to illustrate how important the presidential election will be to the future of America. Let’s first look at some of the key First Amendment cases. The Hobby Lobby case was decided by the high court in 2014. The Department of Health and Human Services under the Affordable Care Act required employers to cover certain contraceptives (including abortifacients) for their female employees. The Supreme…

Kerby Anderson During the election of 1994, leaders in the Republican Party put together something they called the Contract with America. It was written by Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey and included many policy ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation. It included a list of eight reforms the Republicans promised to enact, and ten bills they promised to introduce and vote on if they were made the majority following the election. They were successful. Republicans won 54 House seats and…

Once the elections are over momentous decisions will need to be made regarding our health care system.  The prevailing law is the Affordable Care Act, which has got to either be fixed, or repealed and replaced. Any fix would eventually take us to a single-payer, national system. Phil Gramm was a 3-term United States senator from Texas. He served 14 years on the Senate Budget Committee and chaired the Senate Banking Committee. His recent opinion piece in the Wall Street…

Kerby Anderson In a thought-provoking new e-book, Christian Overman addresses the important issue of The Lost Purpose for Learning. He begin with a 19th century quote from Princeton theologian A.A. Hodge: “It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of natural popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of Atheism which the world has ever seen.” This…

Kerby Anderson More and more Americans believe in pluralism and many believe in universalism. First, let me define the terms. Universalism would be the belief that everyone will be saved after death and go to heaven. Pluralism is the belief that all faith positions and belief systems are equally true or essentially true. According to a Barna survey, Americans are still not embracing universalism. A majority of Americans still believe in exclusive views rather than inclusive views concerning heaven. Those…

Kerby Anderson Often during these political campaigns, candidates talk about the cost of government regulations. It is hard to get a good estimate, but one report from the Heritage Foundation, provides an estimate of the costs. It seems that while politicians are reaching into your pocket to tax you, they are using the other hand to impose heavy costs through regulation. You may think that you are exempt from federal regulations, unless you run a corporation or own a business….

Kerby Anderson The Environmental Protection Agency recently unveiled an online tool that is supposed to help local officials see the dangers of climate change in their community. The Climate Change Adaptation Resource Center provides a map that warns of the danger of climate change to each of the eight regions of the United States. These dire warnings were too much for Dr. William M. Briggs who has been questioning many of the claims of climate change activists. In his column,…

Kerby Anderson Over the years, I have talked about how social media like Facebook and YouTube have sometimes censored conservative and Christian content. Facebook, for example, a few years ago pulled a page by former Governor Mike Huckabee that called for a “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.” Later it was added back to Facebook. Lila Rose had her investigative reports on Planned Parenthood pulled from YouTube. And I might mention that the Apple store sometimes has pulled iPhone apps for groups like…

Penna Dexter An important book landed at #1 this summer on the non-fiction New York Times bestseller list. It’s currently #3. Its title is  Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Culture and Family in Crisis. This book is important right now because it helps us understand the lives of a people, a whole culture in Appalachia whose circumstances and problems weigh heavily in this election cycle. The author, J.D. Vance, is 31 years old. He was born and grew up…

Twenty years ago, no nation on earth endorsed legal same-sex marriage. Now same-sex marriage is everywhere. How did this happen? That is what Dr. Albert Mohler attempts to answer in his new book, We Cannot Be Silent. He was on my radio program to talk about his book. He explains that this didn’t start with same-sex marriage. First, we had a sexual revolution. Initially some of the legal and cultural battles were over issues like birth control and contraception. America…

The editorial drumbeat against guns continues while the evidence mounts that gun deaths are decreasing. Two articles from last week illustrated these contradictory claims. The editorial board of the New York Times attacked what is called the “fantasy” that carrying a concealed weapon makes you safer. Meanwhile, Pew Research reported that the “nation’s overall gun death rate has decline 30% since 1993.” The New York Times editorial cited statistics from the Violence Policy Center that “since 2007, at least 763…