Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson In my Viewpoint commentary last week, I mentioned an article that profoundly influenced John Stossel. The title of the article was Rinkonomics: A window on Spontaneous Order by Daniel Klein. He used the idea of a skating rink to illustrate some important economic principles. If we’d never seen a roller rink or skating rink, we would assume that you would need lots of organization. Imagine a 100 people skating around. It would seem that you would need smart…

Kerby Anderson Now that Congress is in session and most state legislatures are in session, it would be a good time for some soul searching. At least that is what Representative Marcy Kaptur is saying. She is a Democrat with a district in Toledo, Ohio. She says “the Democratic Party has some soul searching to do. On the economic front it fell short.” In order to get the attention of her Democratic House colleagues, she sent them a packet of…

Kerby Anderson Graeme Wood gives us a chilling picture of what Islamic jihadists are really like. His new book, The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State, is the result of years of interviewing ISIS members. It is amazing that he was allowed to interview them and that they didn’t consider killing him or holding him for ransom. Those who he interviewed were called “The Strangers.” When he asked them why they called themselves that, they said it…

Kerby Anderson Freedom of association has been the issue in so many of the religious liberty cases over the last few years. Should a baker, florist, or photographer be required to perform their artistic services for an event that is contrary to their moral stance? In most of these cases, government officials say that a person’s moral objections to same sex marriage cannot be a justification. If someone disagrees with what a homosexual or lesbian couple believes and wants to…

Kerby Anderson As 2016 came to a conclusion, I wanted to cover some of the important stories of the year. One of the top stories, of course, was terrorism and the terrorist attacks both in this country and abroad. The problem is that there are so many any more that is hard to keep track of all of them. In a recent column, Cal Thomas expressed the same frustration. You have the recent terrorist attacks in Turkey and Germany, but…

Kerby Anderson As this year is winding down, it is time to start a new year. As we begin a new year, I wanted to pass on some advice. In previous Viewpoints, I have talked about the value of using this time of year to change something in your life. There is nothing magical about using January 1 as a start date, but why not use it to improve yourself? First, I would recommend you pick just one thing to…

Penna Dexter Author and radio host Eric Metaxes told an important story in his column that appeared in the Wall Street Journal Christmas weekend. He wrote of a Christmas Eve, 48 years ago, when three astronauts spent Christmas Eve inside the Apollo 8 capsule orbiting the moon. The astronauts did something that should not be surprising, but seems extraordinary to us today. They took turns reading from the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis. Their voices were broadcast…

Kerby Anderson This Christmas season we probably ate too much candy. Walter Williams in a recent column reminds us why so much candy is now produced in other countries. It is another example of why many American companies decide to leave the United States. Chicago, he reminds us, used to be America’s candy capital. It isn’t anymore. Brach’s used to employ about 2,300 Americans. Most of their jobs now can be found in Mexico. Ferrara Candy Company also moved much…

Kerby Anderson Throughout the years, John Stossel has been trying to find ways to simplify economics and illustrate the benefits of free markets. He has found that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is often invisible to his viewers. Friedrich Hayek’s “spontaneous order” is clearer but still hard to show. That is why he began to use some of the ideas found in the article, Rinkonomics: A Window on Spontaneous Order. The article inspired him to rent a skating rink in order…

Kerby Anderson On more than one occasion, Joseph Pearce has written an essay based on a bumper sticker he has seen. Sitting in traffic he saw one that declared: “What you call the Liberal Elite, we call being well educated.” The woman in the car in front of him obviously wanted to teach him and us a lesson. She is well educated, and we presumably are poorly educated if we don’t agree with her politics and perspective. After all, we…

Kerby Anderson As 2016 is winding to an end, I think it is time for some humility from many of the so-called “experts.” That is something that Stephen Moore writes about in a recent Investor’s Business Daily column. He reminds us the on election night around 6 PM, a Hillary Clinton political operative went on television to say she believed they had a 95% change of winning. That is a high level of certainty. But a few hours later, “the…