Recent Viewpoints

by Kerby Anderson During this election year, we will be hearing lots of promises from the candidates especially when it comes to our taxes. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is promising tax credits to lots of people. But she isn’t the only one. Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio has been proposing a larger child tax credit. But it is instructive to look at the promises already made by Hillary Clinton since she wants to find major conduits in the tax…

For the last few weeks we have been hearing how many mass shootings have taken place in 2015. It is an alarming statistic. It is also a total exaggeration. Put another way, you could call it a lie. News organization after news organization has reported that the mass shooting in San Bernardino was the 355th mass shooting this year. Newspapers like The Washington Post, Boston Globe, New York Times along with news programs like PBS, CBS, and MSNBC all reported…

A few months ago presidential candidate, Ben Carson caused a furor when he suggested that people should fight back when a shooter enters a building. Now even some in law enforcement are essentially saying that may be a wise strategy. Recently the Police Chief of the District of Columbia was on 60 Minutes. She explained: “The fact of the matter is that most active shooters kill most of the victims in 10 minutes or less, and the best police department…

Since the shootings near a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, those who oppose abortion are being told to tone down their so-called “hateful rhetoric.” Not that the shooting is the fault of pro-lifers, say the more polite among the pro-abortion Left. They say it’s the atmosphere created by accurate descriptions of abortion and its accompanying practices that probably contributed to it. Vickie Cowart, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains stated, “We share the concerns of…

The student protests over the last few months have not only been about how a college administration responds to student demands, but it has been about changing the college curriculum. One example of that can be found at Columbia University. In a recent commentary, Dennis Prager reacts to some of these complaints. A young black undergraduate complained in an article in the Columbia Daily Spectator about having to sit in a history class. She complained that: “It’s traumatizing to sit…

Recently on my radio program, I told the story of Charles Napier to illustrate a principle about ethics. Many of my guests had never heard the story. It bears repeating since it also has application to a recent news story. General Charles Napier was the British commander in colonial India. He is perhaps best known for his response to Hindu priests. They came to him complaining about the British prohibition against Sati. That is the custom of burning a widow…

If you do an online search on the term “Christian terrorism” you will find that lots of people on the Left are using the term. It was already popular on many blogs and websites before the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado. Now the use of the term has exploded on the Internet. In the past, the examples usually cited for Christian terrorism were people like Timothy McVeigh. That really doesn’t work since he claimed to be an agnostic and never…

Yesterday I talked about student demands and campus commotion over issues ranging from political correctness to microaggressions. You might have wondered what college professors were doing about all of this. You wouldn’t be the only people wondering why the adults on campus have been so silent. Alan Dershowitz is a former Harvard Law professor. He served in that capacity for fifty years, and had some strong words for what he felt were cowardly professors. He proudly labels himself as a…

As the fall semester is beginning to wind down, let’s catalog some of the student demands and the university campus commotions. Leading the list was the University of Missouri. Racial tensions reached such a peak that University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe abruptly resigned. Apparently he didn’t act swiftly enough about two allegations of racial name-calling (which took place on a campus with over 35,000 students). Students at Princeton ended their 32-hour sit-in when the president of Princeton University signed…

This is the tale of two university presidents. First – at Yale – Peter Salovey responded to student mob demonstrations with efforts to make students feel more “valued” rather than “disrespected” and in “pain.” These students either have parents rich enough to pay the school’s $65,000-per-year tuition or are bright enough to benefit from the university’s massive endowment. But they’re offended, stating Yale is not an inclusive space for people of color and other minorities. This fall, a committee of…

Although America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations, it turns out that Americans in general don’t know very much about the world’s religions. Those are some of the conclusions of a survey done by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. An earlier study found that nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults say that religion is “very important” in their lives. But the more recent Pew survey found that they could only answer about half of the…