Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson Starbucks recently announced that it would be closing 16 locations in cities across the country. These stores aren’t being closed for lack of business. The problem is crime and homelessness: two topics I have addressed recently in my commentaries. Starbucks is closing stores in Los Angeles, Portland, Philadelphia, and Seattle. They have much in common. Each of these stores is being closed for safety reasons. Each of these cities has a radical prosecutor who is unwilling to prosecute…

Penna Dexter As I drove around town doing errands on May 24, radio news reports and interruptions to regular programming alerted me to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. After about the fourth or fifth report stating the situation was “ongoing” I began to wonder why. Surely we’d be hearing the results of a police confrontation with the shooter, numbers of casualties, and reunions of frightened children with relieved parents. Three officers tried to confront the shooter…

Kerby Anderson A book (Live Not by Lies) by Rod Dreher warns Christians about the coming “soft totalitarianism.” He explains that this is different from what we read in novels like Brave New World or in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The old, hard totalitarianism came from the state (Germany, Russia) and was dedicated to the eradication of Christianity. This new totalitarianism usually comes from the left in society but is also dedicated to the eradication of Christianity. The soft totalitarianism of today…

Kerby Anderson Many Americans are concerned about the impact that social media and Big Tech are having on society. Therefore, it is not surprising that a number of documentaries have been focusing on problems from this technology. One of the most important documentaries to come along is “The Social Dilemma.” It features an interesting blend of talking-head interviews with various Big Tech figures, with a fictional dramatization of what happens when children in one family become addicted to social media….

Kerby Anderson Dennis Prager had to admit that he had been wrong. All of his life, he has said that the left’s moral compass is broken. He has concluded that “in order to have a broken moral compass, you need to have a moral compass to begin with. But the left doesn’t have one.” He doesn’t mean that conclusion as an attack. It is merely an observation that the left doesn’t really think in terms of good and evil. We…

Kerby Anderson Charles Mizrahi was on my radio program recently to talk about his article, “Prosperity and Generosity: The Biblical Roots of Capitalism.” Although we often talk about the Bible and capitalism, this interview was a bit different because he is Jewish and used Old Testament passages to promote the idea of free enterprise. He wrote his article because he was so disturbed by politicians and young people bemoaning our economic system. Instead, they were calling for more government programs…

Kerby Anderson Professor Paul Kengor has a book on The Devil and Karl Marx that reminds us how much Marx hated God and Christianity. In his book and on my radio program, he cited Marx and many of the biographies that showed how scary he was. His own family and friends were frightened by his demonic fits of rage and his bizarre focus on violence. Marx wrote, “When our turn comes, we shall make no excuses for the terror. There…

Penna Dexter In a recent Gallup poll, just 16 percent of those surveyed said they “have a great deal [or] quite a lot of confidence in newspapers” — an all-time low. No big shock here. The Left is fomenting a wholesale rejection of truth and accuracy with the full cooperation of the legacy media. The Daily Signal’s Jared Stepman reports that even the Associated Press Stylebook, the media’s trusted manual for the rules of grammar and style, has gone woke….

Kerby Anderson One striking difference between Europe and America has been the temptation of many European countries to fall into totalitarianism. Dennis Prager reminds us that after World War I, many of these countries embraced communism, fascism, or Nazism. There is a very good reason why. The primary beliefs that gave rise to meaning in life were patriotism and the Judeo-Christian religion. The senseless slaughter during the Great War (as it was called) challenged both of those foundations. National identity…

Kerby Anderson Theologian Keith Mathison recently decided to delete his Facebook account. Years ago, he deleted his Twitter account. While there is nothing unusual about what he did, I appreciated his blog post that provided a thoughtful explanation for why he did. He talked about a phenomenon he called a “Jekyll & Hyde Effect” and then apologized if someone else already coined this term for this phenomenon. He said he hadn’t seen it used anywhere else. But he also acknowledged…

Kerby Anderson Stephen McBride is predicting the end of college as we know it. The key to his prediction is the last four words: as we know it. The prestigious universities will survive because they will always attract elite students and command huge tuitions. But what about the rest of the colleges that seem bent on teaching classes online? Cost will be a big issue. He reminds us that as recently as 1980, you could get a four-year bachelor’s degree…