Recent Viewpoints

Penna Dexter Not that long ago, majorities in both political parties believed that marriage was the union of one man and one woman. In 1996, when Congress passed DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, only one Republican voted against it. In 2013, the Supreme Court, in its Windsor decision, struck down DOMA’s definition of marriage. And in 2015, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court ruled that states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. The 5-4 Obergefell decision not…

Kerby Anderson Has Christianity made a positive impact on Western civilization? That was a question I posed a few months ago in a commentary, providing a short list of atheists who would agree with that statement. Now, there are more atheists coming to that conclusion. Jonathon Van Maren writes about a number of atheists whom he calls “King Agrippa Christians.” After the Apostle Paul gave his testimony and the gospel, the king said he was nearly persuaded. None of the…

Kerby Anderson What might change if Republicans retake the House and Senate in 2022? Dr. Merrill Matthews suggests that one change might be welfare reform. Back in the 1990s, a Republican Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, a welfare reform package. But some aspects (like the work requirement) have been removed by later administrations. He believes that Senator Rick Scott’s “Let’s Get Back to Work Act” could pass next year. Decades ago, one of the Republican leaders on welfare…

Kerby Anderson More than a year ago, I quoted a social commentator who argued that more and more employees would be working remotely. That is exactly what we are finding. In fact, employers are finding it difficult to get workers back to the office. Notice the difference in employment statistics. Life is returning to normal at restaurants, airlines, and sporting events. They aren’t exactly back to pre-pandemic levels but approaching them. By contrast, companies with offices (especially in major cities)…

Kerby Anderson You have probably heard the phrase, “History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes.” That observation is true, especially in economics. Investor Ray Dalio learned that lesson at a young age. In 1971, he was clerking on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. When President Nixon announced that paper currency could no longer be turned in for gold, he expected pandemonium on the floor as stocks took a dive. Instead, the stock market jumped 4 percent…

Kerby Anderson After a mass shooting, one question rarely asked is whether there is any connection to psychiatric drugs. As I have explained in previous commentaries, there are many factors and explanations for young men who decide to shoot innocent citizens. There is no “one size fits all” explanation. It’s worth a brief mention that many of these young men were on what are called SSRI drugs. That stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Correlation is not causation, but we…

Penna Dexter The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision restores the regulation of abortion to the states where it belongs. The abortion industry is pushing back with scare tactics as evidenced at a hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). In testimony before the HELP Committee, Kristyn Brandi, chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health, tried to convince senators that banning abortion would deprive women with ectopic pregnancies of lifesaving care. Ectopic pregnancy is any pregnancy that…

Kerby Anderson The attorney general of the state of New York would like to wipe pregnancy centers off the map, digitally. She (along with other progressive activists) is pressuring Google to remove “pregnancy centers that are not real clinics” from digital maps. This represents the latest in what could be called the digital cancel culture. Progressives aren’t very interested in engaging their opposition in debate when they can merely remove any opposition. Conservative or Christian speakers are prevented from speaking…

Kerby Anderson A few decades ago, Americans were increasingly concerned about privacy. Back then, we did several radio programs on the topic but now many of our privacy concerns have faded. Mark Zuckerberg put this in perspective. He said when he got to his dorm room at Harvard, the question many students asked was, “why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?” He then went on to…

Kerby Anderson “This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the US government closing the gold-exchange window and putting the world on a fiat monetary system.” That is how Saifedean Ammous begins his book, The Fiat Standard. His earlier book, The Bitcoin Standard, was a bestselling book that has been translated into more than 25 languages. He argues that by first understanding the operation of bitcoin, someone can then better understand the equivalent operations in fiat. “It is easier to explain…

Kerby Anderson Why do we write down our laws? I recently read an article providing a practical reason for writing down the laws of a nation, but I would also like to add one historical reason for why we write down our laws. This country is supposed to be a nation of laws and not men. We haven’t always lived up to the vision, but that is what we are to aspire to achieve. When you write down a law,…