Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson If you are on any social media, you have probably seen the many memes people have produced about Denmark. Some claim that Denmark has free healthcare and free college. All of them remind us that Denmark is the happiest country in the world. All sorts of articles and blog post challenge many of these claims. In fact, I feel sorry for people from Denmark because some of criticisms are very harsh. Let me say that if you live…

Kerby Anderson All the talk about possible collusion with Russia sometimes obscures the need for us to think clearly about Russia. In particular, I am talking about the leadership in Russia not the Russian people. The Russian people may be very nice, but their leader (Vladimir Putin) is another story. Colonel Allen West asks a good question. When did Russia become a threat? Most everyone considers it a threat now, but where were these critics just a few years ago?…

Kerby Anderson If you want to understand why the debate over Obamacare isn’t going well, all you need to do is look at the debate about Medicaid. In a recent commentary, Michael Tanner says: “Democrats have dug in over any change to the current program, solemnly declaring that changing so much as a comma or semicolon in the ACA’s expansion of the program would immediately sentence millions of children to death.” Obviously, we can’t have a productive debate if we…

Kerby Anderson When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, everyone wondered what the ruling would mean to bakers, florists, photographers, and others who choose not to participate in a same-sex ceremony. Next year we will find out. The high court decided to take the case of Christian baker Jack Phillips. When two men visited his Masterpiece Cakes bakery in 2012 and asked for a same-sex wedding cake, he refused. The men filed a complaint with the Colorado…

Penna Dexter As school ended this year, one northwest Washington DC educator commenced a summer project to try to pry students away from screen technology. She knows that, when school’s out, many of them have full access to cellphones, which are off limits during class time when school is in session. She worries that, rather than playing sports with friends or doing something like going to a museum, they’ll stay buried in screens all summer. The Washington Post reported that…

Kerby Anderson Is Christianity really as bad as atheists say that it is? For decades we have heard the charges from the new atheists. So we shouldn’t be surprised that many of those criticisms showed up at the 17th annual “White Privilege Conference” held last month in Philadelphia. Paul Kivel (founder of the Challenging Christian Hegemony Project) blamed Christianity for “almost every dysfunction in society, from racism and sexism to global warming and a weak economy.” He warns that the…

Kerby Anderson You have probably heard someone say that “if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.” It is attributed to Joseph Goebbels but we have all seen it in action. Say something long enough, and people start to believe it is true. I thought of that when I read the latest issue of Imprimis, which is published by Hillsdale College. It was a summary of a speech by former Sports Illustrated editor, Charles Leerhsen about the…

Kerby Anderson Most people would expect liberals to be open-minded, and yet they find that they are often the most intolerant. Kim Holmes explores the reasons for this transformation in his new book, The Closing of the Liberal Mind. He was on Point of View to talk about the history of the radical change in mindset and attitude. Classic American liberalism in this country was based on a belief in liberty. Citizens were to be free from government coercion and…

Kerby Anderson One of the cases rendered by the Supreme Court before the justices left town has great significance in terms of government programs and religious freedom. As I said in a commentary two months ago, tires and religious liberty don’t seem like topics that would go together. But a religious dispute over playground surfaces made its way to the Supreme Court and established a very important precedent. Trinity Lutheran Church in Missouri applied to a state grant program to…

Kerby Anderson One place where donors often go to check out a charity is GuideStar. Although it has been described as a “neutral” aggregator of tax data on charities, its latest actions call that designation into question. It originally placed “hate group” labels on certain groups so designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Southern Poverty Law Center at one time was respected for their work. But it has chosen to label many Christian and other conservative groups as…

Penna Dexter Right around the time we celebrate Independence Day, Canada celebrates Canada Day. July 1st marked 150 years since Canada became a self-governing dominion within the British Empire. The US has a longer history of independence. But when it comes to implementing radical social policy, Canada is outpacing the United States. Wisely, the US Defense Department decided last week to take a step back for a moment — actually six months — to look at whether it’s really a…