Recent Viewpoints

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…

The New Atheists contend that religion is not just false, but it’s dangerous. Sam Harris believes it should be treated like slavery and eradicated. Richard Dawkins is even more specific: “I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been invented.” Much of the criticism against religion revolves around violence. We do live in a violent world, and religion has often been the reason (or at least the justification) for violent acts. But the…

Many of us have warned that the health insurance industry may soon head into an insurance death spiral. The announcement the other day that the biggest health insurer may pull out of Obamacare is an indication of what may be ahead. A death spiral occurs when the pool of insured people fills up with more and more people who are very sick. This drives the premiums higher. Younger and healthier people begin dropping out of the pool. The pool is…

During the current climate change conference, we will hear how the nations of the world have to act now to prevent a global disaster. What we won’t hear much about is the cost of implementing these draconian policies. Fortunately, people like Bjorn Lomborg have run the numbers. He reminds us that the solution put forward by a very vocal minority is that the only “lasting solution” for climate change is: “We must destroy capitalism.” He also reminds us of the…

I know that many Americans suffer from addictions, but I never ran the numbers and so was shocked by what I read in David Kupelian’s new book, The Snapping of the American Mind. In the midst of his discussion of social problems in America are some sobering chapters about our addictions. Nearly 25 million Americans are current illicit drug users. Marijuana is the most commonly used drug. Cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and other drugs also are part of that statistic. Add…

Let’s pause before the busy Christmas season to reflect on Thanksgiving. We think of the Pilgrims, who founded the Plymouth Colony, the first permanent settlement in New England. Of 103 Pilgrims who arrived there from England in 1620, 51 died the first winter. After the first harvest, Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving and prayer. This is an account of a people who followed God and of God’s faithfulness to them. It’s also the story of how God…