Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Freedom in this country depends upon three important foundations: morality, limits, and human rights. First, freedom depends on morality. John Adams observed, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” When the citizens have an internal moral compass, the size and scope of government can be small. There is no need for external laws and regulations from government. If people do what is right and…

Penna Dexter Historic Christianity celebrates May 31st as The Feast of the Visitation, which has also been described as the first meeting of Jesus and John the Baptist. Mary, early in her pregnancy, travels to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is much further along in her pregnancy with John the Baptist. The verse is Luke 1:44 where Elizabeth exclaims: “Behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” Such an…

Kerby Anderson The current debate about the federal budget centers on whether the government is too big and too inefficient. Most Republicans argue that the federal government is too big. Many Democrats ask: “Where is your evidence that government has grown too big?” John DiIulio is a co-author of a significant book about American government. He explains that government grows larger by using three types of what can be called “administrative proxies.” The first are state and local governments. The…

Kerby Anderson Today is Juneteenth. You may know it as a recently declared federal holiday, but I have found that most Americans (outside of those who live in Texas) don’t know much about it, which is why I am talking about it today. Here’s a summary of the history President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in 1863. But his action could not be enforced in many places in the South until the Civil War ended in 1865. That…

Kerby Anderson “To know only one country is to know none.” That insight by Seymour Martin Lipset is so important that Jonah Goldberg believes it should be pounded into the heads of every high school student. He suggests that: “Whenever you hear people talk about America as uniquely or exceptionally flawed—or superior—the first question you should ask is, “compared to whom?” He provides several examples. Yes, America has a murder problem. But it is worth putting that tragedy in perspective….

Kerby Anderson One of the common mistakes among Christians is to assume that the future will be merely an extension of the present. We might assume there will be some changes, but often we can’t imagine the world changing as much as it has. We need to understand some of the dynamic changes in our world. That is why I have written two booklets about “American Realignment” and “American Political Realignment.” The former looks at demographic and economic changes that…

Kerby Anderson You may remember the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” where the computer, HAL 9000, would not allow itself to be shut down by the astronauts. HAL begins to malfunction in subtle ways but becomes paranoid about being shut down. That was movie fiction. We now have historical fact. OpenAI’s latest model (o3 AI model) was given a simple script to shut off. In 79 out of 100 trials, it independently edited that script so the shutdown command would…

Penna Dexter It’s Pride Month again. It used to be called gay pride. Now — in an effort to force the concept on all of us — it’s just Pride.  There are Pride celebrations taking place across the country. The mayor of Washington DC proclaims her city “the gayest in the world.” DC has been hosting pride events for 50 years. And this year, DC is host of WorldPride, an honor in international LGBTQ circles. But most cities where Pride…

Kerby Anderson Many of the concerns about the impact of artificial intelligence focus on AI and should instead focus on the human using it. That is why Christians Schneider warns about “The Danger of Outsourcing Our Brains.” Apparently, many are lazy and quite willing to let AI manage their lives. He says the social media market “is now saturated with artificial-intelligence-powered social media ‘managers’ that will take care of the drudgery of posting content, liking other people’s photos, and commenting…

Kerby Anderson Last month, President Trump stirred up social media when he seemed to be proposing a two-doll limit. He recognized there might be some economic pain associated with his tariffs so he reasoned, “Maybe children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.” I’m not sure how dolls got into the discussion. But I understand part of his motivation. Americans own…

Kerby Anderson For decades, we have heard that the U.S. needs to be more like Europe. But as I have documented in previous commentaries, if we were more like Europe, we would have less liberal abortion policies and fewer transgender surgeries. We can learn some lessons from European countries like Denmark. The Danish government just raised its retirement age to 70 for Danes born in 1971 or later. This was due to a reform passed years ago that ties the…