Recent Viewpoints

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…

Kerby Anderson The budget bill that Congress considered had a provision requiring states to enforce a work requirement for able-bodied individuals on Medicaid between the ages of 19 and 64. Dr. Merrill Matthews makes a case for that provision in a recent commentary. He was on my radio program recently to explain why he believes it is a good requirement. Let me first explain there are exceptions made for those who are disabled, pregnant women, incarcerated or in a rehabilitation…

Kerby Anderson I think most Americans believe we have too many government regulations. But I suspect most don’t have the faintest idea of the extent of these government regulations. Last month, President Trump issued an executive order with this introduction. “The United States is drastically overregulated. The Code of Federal Regulations contains over 48,000 sections, stretching over 175,000 pages — far more than any citizen can possibly read, let alone fully understand.” This should be a problem for a Christian…

Penna Dexter Reuters reports that the Chinese government, which — not-so-long ago — forced a one-child-per family policy on its population, is considering a monthly subsidy to encourage families to have second and third children. Enforcement of the one-child policy was brutal. It included forced abortion and sterilization. A preference for boys led to the practice of sex selective abortion and even abandonment of baby girls. Now China’s population is dangerously skewed in favor of men. The policy was meant…

Kerby Anderson Why do young people have short attention spans? That is a question the editors of the Wall Street Journal asked college students to address. Here are some of the best answers. One student at the University of British Columbia observed that “we live in a civilization of instant pleasure. Anyone who has used TikTok knows this.” Therefore, students are being raised in a culture of instant pleasure and low attention spans. Another student at Harvard University said he was shocked at…

Kerby Anderson Teresa Mull wrote a fascinating article with an intriguing title: “Why lumberjacks are happy and you’re not.” A Bureau of Labor Statistics survey reported that lumberjacks and farmers are the happiest, least stressed, and most fulfilled workers.” The reason is simple: they work outside. It also illustrates that what provides the most joy and satisfaction isn’t manmade. This is one of the reasons I am such a supporter of Christian camps and any outdoor activity that connects God’s…

Kerby Anderson Yesterday I talked about social media and the teen brain. Today I want to talk about social media and its impact on teenagers’ mental health. An article in Axios reminds the reader that experts have been “increasingly warning of a connection between heavy social media use and mental health issues in children.” Apparently, there are lawsuits against social media producers that accuse them of contributing to a youth mental health crisis. One of the experts quoted is Jean…

Kerby Anderson What is the effect of social media on the brain? Nicholas Carr made this observation fourteen years ago in an article in Atlantic. “Over the past few years, I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory.” In a book he later wrote, he blamed the internet and social media. We now have studies that seem to confirm what most of us suspected. Neuroscientists at…

Kerby Anderson Two decades ago, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead was on my radio program. At the time, she was one of the co-authors of a study done by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University that came to this conclusion: “Cohabitation is replacing marriage as the first living together experience for young men and women.” What was true then is true today, but there is even more evidence of changing attitudes as well as additional social research on cohabitation. A survey…

Penna Dexter It was once a given that a young person would graduate from high school, get a job, marry and then — and only then — have children. No longer. Today, half of American babies are born to unmarried mothers. Economist Melissa Kearney, author of The Two Parent Privilege says, “Roughly 30 percent of kids in the U.S. live outside a two-parent home.” The results are devastating. She says, “kids growing up in single-mother homes are five times more likely…

Kerby Anderson One phrase I frequently use on my radio program is this, “Each year researchers spend millions of dollars to discover what most moms already know.” This comment certainly applies to a study reported a few weeks ago in Fortune. Here’s the headline: “Women are more empathetic than men, study of hundreds of thousands of people finds.” Women are more empathetic than men. Who knew? Just about everyone with a little common sense. But we live in a world…