Author: Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
Two weeks ago, I talked about President Trump’s countermarch through the institutions. Progressive activists have been marching through the institutions of this country, and Trump is engaged in a countermarch.
Victor Davis Hanson provides a different perspective on what is happening. He is asking, “Who Caused the Counter Revolution?” He observed that at some point, “some president was going to have to stop the unsustainable spending and borrowing.” He then looks at the crisis at the border and concluded that “to have any country left, some president would eventually have had to restore a nonexistent border and stop the influx of 3 million illegal aliens a year.” He also added, “Some commander-in-chief finally would have to try to stop the theater wars abroad.”
Eventually, someone in authority would have to deal with these issues. President Trump is leading a counter revolution because he is convinced there is a need to restore common sense. Yes, some may be disturbed at the speed or the breadth of action, but most would agree that some changes needed to be made.
Most Americans believe there are two genders. Most Americans don’t think biological men (with greater size and strength) should compete with women in sports. Most Americans believe too many people crossed the border and fear a percentage of migrants who are criminals, believing they should be removed.
We may not like it when a federal employee is fired or when a government program is terminated. Getting to a balanced budget, at times, might seem heartless. We may not agree with every decision being made to deport people here illegally. But Americans voted for a change from the previous four years. That is why there is a Trump counter revolution.

Kerby Anderson
Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order that establishes a strategic bitcoin reserve. It will capitalize the bitcoin already owned by the Department of Treasury that was taken from criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. It will not sell any bitcoin. And the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce have been given the task of developing budget-neutral strategies for acquiring more.
At the same time, the executive order also establishes a digital asset stockpile that would consist of other digital assets owned by the Department of Treasury. There are no plans to acquire any more, and it is likely those will be sold off.
As you might imagine, there are proponents and opponents to the strategic bitcoin reserve. Many members of Trump’s cabinet are proponents of bitcoin and have bitcoin within their own financial portfolios. The executive order reminds voters of the pledge by candidate Trump to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world.”
The opponents can be divided into two groups. One group opposes a bitcoin strategic reserve because they believe it won’t work. I first discussed bitcoin on the radio in 2017. For the last eight years, I have read and heard what is often called FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. We will no doubt hear all those erroneous claims once again.
The other opponents are those who believe the strategic reserve will work, and don’t want to reward bad behavior. This asset with a fixed supply of 21 million coins will increase in value and can be used to offset our current and future national debt. The debt came from politicians who ran up massive deficits and the Federal Reserve that printed the money to fund that fiscal irresponsibility.
Some people in the past feared the government might ban bitcoin. Instead, the government will be acquiring bitcoin.

Kerby Anderson
A recent educational report illustrates that our public schools are politically skewed. It concluded that the Marxist Howard Zinn’s book is used in a fourth (25%) of all American classrooms.
Educator Larry Sand explains that Zinn’s best-selling book, A People’s History of the United States, approaches history from a Marxist perspective. “Zinn maintained that the teaching of history should serve society in some way and that objectivity is impossible, and it is also undesirable.” Zinn even admitted that he wrote his book to create a revolution.
If you want to know more about Howard Zinn and his education project, you can follow the link to this commentary. Even better, you might want to obtain the book, Debunking Howard Zinn, written by Mary Grabar. I did an hour interview with her about the book a few years ago.
Larry Sand concludes that students may be becoming an experts in Marxist dogma, but they aren’t learning U.S. history. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni conducted a national survey of college students. It tested them about their basic knowledge of American history and government and found that significant numbers of college students graduate without a basic grasp of the nation’s history and political system. He also cites other surveys that come to the same discouraging conclusion.
In many cases, foreigners who come to the U.S. to become citizens learn more about our history and governmental structure than young people who attend our public schools. Why not require high school students to pass the citizenship test? Recently, the governor of Iowa announced a bill that would require high school students to pass the citizenship test to graduate. If the bill passes, Iowa will become the 14th state to adopt such a measure.
Our schools aren’t teaching history, and what they do teach is often politically skewed.

Kerby Anderson
Natasha Crain warns Christians in her new book, When Culture Hates You: Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square. She begins by talking about the hostility Christians often face when they articulate a biblical perspective on cultural issues. We shouldn’t be surprised since Jesus warned us, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18).
One of the significant criticisms from non-Christians, and even from Christians, is the claim that Christians should not impose their views on others. We also hear that Christians should not seek power. We are told that getting involved in politics harms our witness and can disrupt unity in the church. And we are told that Christians should not be partisans.
To evaluate those objections, she proposes slavery as a test case. Here are her five key statements using those objections: (1) Christians shouldn’t have worked to end slavery because we shouldn’t have imposed our views on others. (2) Christians shouldn’t have worked to end slavery because that involved seeking power to do it. (3) Christians shouldn’t have worked to end slavery because getting involved with a political issue harmed our witness. (4) Christians shouldn’t have worked to end slavery because it disrupted unity in the church. (5) Christians shouldn’t have worked to end slavery because Christians shouldn’t have been partisans.
Would we accept those objections today? We would reject such reasoning and can see how we shouldn’t have applied such arguments two centuries ago. We were called to speak truth then and are called to speak truth today.

Kerby Anderson
Health care officials warn that “vaccine hesitancy” is one of the top health challenges of this decade. It appears that both sides of the vaccine debate seem to be painting with too broad of a brush.
Most parents routinely have their physician give their children the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella. At the same time, those same parents may express concern about giving their children the COVID-19 vaccine. Unfortunately, they are often labeled anti-vax and blamed for the latest measle outbreak in the US.
It is true that the percentage of children receiving the two doses of MMR vaccine dropped a bit (from 95% five years ago to 93% recently). But there are other factors, such as the measles spread from unvaccinated travelers or even undocumented immigrants.
Parents who vaccinate their children but express concerns about the COVID vaccine should not be called anti-vax. Likewise, parents shouldn’t refuse all vaccines simply because of legitimate concerns about the COVID vaccine.
By now, you may be wondering why I say there are legitimate concerns with the COVID vaccine. A recent Yale study has confirmed what many suspected and has been referred to as “post-vaccination syndrome.”
The COVID vaccine in a small number of people may have led to a constellation of side effects. These include fatigue, exercise intolerance, brain fog, and dizziness. Some people show distinct biological changes in immune cells, reawakening of a dormant Epstein-Barr virus, and the persistence of a coronavirus protein in their blood.
While this is just a small study, it highlights potential health concerns and calls into question the efficacy of the COVID vaccine. That is why many parents are concerned about the vaccine and why some states have banned vaccine mandates.

Kerby Anderson
A significant number of young people have a positive view of socialism. In my booklet on A Biblical Point of View on Socialism, I suggest this is because of what they hear on college campuses and what they hear from politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
John Stossel now provides another reason for socialism’s popularity: social media. He documents the “Dumb Things Socialists Promise.”
For example, one TikTok social influencer has a video proclaiming: “Socialism is working better than capitalism 93% of the time!” That misleading statistic is drawn from a study by self-described Marxists in the Journal of Health Services from nearly four decades ago.
Another social media influencer proclaims, “Socialism worked in China” because it “lifted over 800 million people from poverty.” Yes, the per capita income in China has increased, but much of that increase came after China gave up on socialism and created a hybrid capitalism-communism society. Hong Kong, which adopted true capitalism, increased personal income much more and much faster than mainland China.
And another social media influencer tells his YouTube subscribers: “The central idea that unites all socialists is maximizing freedom … democratization of power.” The reality in most socialist countries is less freedom and only one political party.
Perhaps you have a friend or family member that is promoting socialism. Let me offer my booklet on socialism (either in digital form or printed form). We need to be prepared to answer these socialist claims and promises.

Kerby Anderson
Here’s a phrase I sometimes use on radio: “It is difficult to solve a problem when politicians won’t even admit there is a problem.” This is true about our national debt, but it is also true about America’s health. We can’t solve America’s health problems if we won’t admit that Americans are unhealthy. The confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. may be changing our mindset. But we still need to understand the depth of the health care problem in America.
We have heard that “America is a first-world country facing third-world health issues.” When you hear that, it sounds too extreme. Is that true? You can read an article in the Annual Review of Public Health that attempts to answer: “Why do Americans have shorter life expectancy and worse health than people in other high-income countries?”
It is even worse for poor Americans. One research paper on “Life Expectancy in the United States” says this: “The poorest men in the US have life expectancies comparable to men in Sudan and Pakistan; the richest men in the US live longer than the average man in any country.”
A CDC research paper documents that: “Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and 4 in 10 have two or more chronic diseases.” It is worth mentioning that chronic disease may account for as much as three-quarters of America’s health care spending.
Another study in the New England Journal of Medicine on the “Prevalence of Adult Obesity and Severe Obesity,” made this ominous prediction. The researchers estimated that by 2030 nearly half of US adults will be obese.
These statistics, and many others, illustrate the need to address the health of Americans. There are solutions to this problem, but the first step is to admit there is a problem and understand the depth of our health care problem.

Kerby Anderson
At a time when politicians are talking about threats to democracy, it might be worthwhile to consider what democracy really is. But first a disclaimer: America is a republic, not a democracy.
Professor Allen Guelzo recently wrote about “Lincoln’s Vision of Democracy.” After the battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln was asked to participate in the dedication of a national cemetery in that town. The featured orator was Edward Everett, but the short 272-word speech by Abraham Lincoln is the message we remember.
Lincoln laid out the story of the American republic in three stages: the past (“four score and seven years ago”), then the present (“now we are engaged in a great civil war”), and then the future (“we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain”).
The least examined words of the address are the triplet: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” This was more than a rhetorical flourish. Lincoln essentially laid out the three foundations of our government.
The first is consent. We are a government “of the people.” In a previous speech, he explained that “the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed.”
The second distinctive feature is the people’s voice in the affairs of governing. We are a government “by the people.” Lincoln argued that government by the people was through their laws and through elections and not by mobs.
The third element is a government that serves the interests of the people. We are a government “for the people.” Government is not for a king or an aristocracy or even for a few elites.
What is the form of government in America? It is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Kerby Anderson
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan may be best known for a seminal essay he wrote three decades ago. The Democratic Senator from New York said that the country back then was Defining Deviancy Down.
His concern was that deviant behavior had become so pervasive even in the 1980s and 1990s that commentators were beginning to redefine it to cope with it. He began by acknowledging that there was “always a certain amount of deviancy in society. But when you get too much, you begin to think that it’s not really that bad. Pretty soon you become accustomed to very destructive behavior.”
Anyone who has read the book of Isaiah will recognize this tendency. In Isaiah 5:20 we read, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”
Scott Hogenson referred to the Moynihan description of deviancy as he listed the numerous examples of what “used to be defined as medical malpractice, criminal molestation, voyeurism, and rape.” He concludes that we have defined deviancy “so downward, it’s positively subterranean.”
He reminds us that our laws are written by humans, but they are also written on the human heart. You may disagree with your neighbor, but you don’t vandalize his home. You may not like the guy who stole your parking place, but you don’t key his car.
Jeremiah wrote that the Lord declared, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” The writer of Hebrews explains that God says, “I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.”
That is why Christians need to speak out against evil and not let a secular society call “evil good.” The deviancy today is even worse than in the 1980s and 1990s when Senator Moynihan lamented that we were defining deviancy down.

Kerby Anderson
Homelessness not only affects big cities but can be found in small towns as well. Scott Morefield tells a story about Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia that illustrates the impact that public policy can have on a social problem like homelessness.
First, let’s explain the geography. Bristol is really two cities with two governments that are right next to each other. They are divided by a state line that runs down the main street. This division provides a perfect test for the impact of laws and policies.
One past example of the differences came during the pandemic and lockdowns. The Democratic Virginia state mandates were much different than the Tennessee policies. It created a “weird time when half of the main street was essentially shuttered while the other half prospered.”
More recently, Tennessee passed a law that made camping on public property a felony. As you might expect, the homeless problem gravitated toward the Virginia side. The kitchen director at the local shelter said he heard numerous people at the evening meal, say “I’m going to get this meal and then I’m going to go over to Virginia, so I don’t have to worry about getting thrown in jail and have a felony on my record.”
The principle is simple. Remove the incentives and create disincentives for homeless people, and they will go elsewhere. In this case, they migrated to the other side of town. It wasn’t long before Bristol, Virginia passed a camping ban, though it was merely a misdemeanor offense.
Three months ago, I talked about the book by Michael Shellenberger with the arresting title: San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities. He documents various reasons why the homeless problem has become worse. But one of the most important reasons is lax enforcement. The two cities of Bristol illustrate how policies do affect homeless behavior.

Kerby Anderson

Television host Mike Rowe has been an advocate for blue-collar workers who have kept this country running. He explains that opportunities have never been better for anyone willing to work and willing to learn a skill in demand.
Unfortunately, we have seven million men (ages 25-54) who not only are not working but are not looking for work. Economist Nicholas Eberstadt refers to that in a recent Washington Post op-ed as the “flight from work.” The U.S. currently has 11 million unfilled jobs. Businesses in every sector nationwide are desperate for workers, including positions that do not require high school diplomas.
Mike Rowe has provided more than a thousand scholarships to young people through his mikeroweWORKS foundation. They get trained for skills that are in demand (welders, steam fitters, pipe fitters, mechanics). None require a four-year degree. He says there has never been a greater need for skilled workers like right now. “If you are inclined to think that way and work that way,” he explains, “the world is your oyster.” Unfortunately, if you are not and are a man, “you are probably sitting home spending 2,000 hours sitting in front of a screen.”
A recent Fox News Poll asked this open-ended question: “What message would you send to government?” A majority (52%) said “lend me a hand.” The only other time a majority said that was during the pandemic. But we are two years past the pandemic and lockdowns.
Mike Rowe argues that two things could be true at the same time. First, there are people who need a hand who are well intended and willing to work. Second, many others have been given a hand and have done nothing with what they have been given.
I’m always willing to give someone a “hand up” to better themselves. But I think it is time to question whether we should be giving a “hand out” to millions who won’t work.

Kerby Anderson
Sean McDowell observes that “In a culture that glamorizes sex, chases fame, and shames those who don’t fall in line, it takes a rebel to be a Christian.” That is why the title of his new book is, A Rebel’s Manifesto.
His book for young Christians focuses on the challenges of the culture, relationships, sexuality, ethics, and cultural engagement. He published much of this in a previous book Ethix: Being Bold in a Whatever World. When I did a radio interview with him, we talked about the fact that he needed to both update chapters and add new chapters. The section on relationships was added because of current problems with loneliness, bullying, and suicide. And a chapter on transgender ideology also needed to be added.
We talked about the fact that Sean McDowell will often role-play as an atheist and take questions from Christian students. After he finishes, he asks them to describe how they treated the “atheist” guest. They often use words like rude, aggressive, and disrespectful. He then concludes that if this is how they treated a fellow Christian role-playing as an atheist, perhaps they have a lot to learn about better loving their neighbors.
We also spent some time talking about the influence of smartphones and social media. He lists five ways smartphones influence you. It affects how we access truth and affects us emotionally and spiritually. It also affects our identities and relationships.
This is a book you should give to your children or grandchildren. But I would also encourage you to give a copy to your youth leader. At the end of each chapter are questions that could be used to guide a small group discussion with young people. These are issues they confront, and they need the sound, biblical perspective this book provides.

Kerby Anderson
On one of our radio programs, one of the guests argued that the government had grown so big that it’s unrealistic for anyone to manage it. His comment reminded me of a commentary I did six years ago that compared the government to some of the largest companies in America.
First, let’s look at the federal government. The federal budget six years ago was $4 trillion dollars. Today, the federal budget is $7 trillion. By the way, federal tax revenues are only $5 trillion, which is why we have $2 trillion deficit this year. How many federal employees? That number is 2.4 million (but it you count military, civilian, and contract employees, it is twice that).
No one in history has ever managed such a large organization. The current president has managed a large company, but it pales in comparison to these numbers. And remember that the two other presidents were both U.S. Senators who had never managed a company.
Let’s compare this to the largest U.S. companies. Walmart employs 2.1 million people worldwide, and about 1.6 million of them are in the United States with annual revenue of $680 billion. Amazon employs 1.6 million worldwide with 1.1 million in the U.S. with annual revenue around $637 billion.
I know that is a lot of numbers, so here is the bottom line: if Walmart or Amazon were part of the federal government, they wouldn’t even be the largest federal programs.
During the confirmation hearings, some of the nominees were asked about their experience in running a large bureaucracy. Even some of the nominees who were governors had never managed something as large as a federal department. Perhaps that is a good reason why the Department of Government Efficiency should be looking for ways to cut spending.

Kerby Anderson
The future of TikTok is uncertain. ByteDance was given a 75-day extension to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner. But Melissa Henson (Parents Television and Media Council) believes parents should pay attention right now to the dangers on this platform.
She explains, “Social media platforms aren’t innocent. The reality is that predators target children online to sexually exploit or extort them. Social platforms have harmed teens’ mental health and exposed teens to sexual harassment. Children and teens have been targeted by powerful algorithms with eating disorder and other harmful content.”
Parents should be aware that their children are being targeted by a powerful algorithm that is designed to keep them hooked on the platforms. This isn’t merely speculation. There are internal memos and documents that reveal the goal of attracting and keeping young children on the platform.
Children are falling into patterns of addiction, depression, and sexual exploitation. That is why 14 state Attorneys General have filed lawsuits against TikTok. You might want to read the article by Melissa Henson or even follow the link to the lawsuits that have been filed to see how graphic and deviant some of the content is on this social media platform.
At this point you might be tempted to argue that TikTok has some redeeming value. If it was merely junk, it probably wouldn’t exist. My adult daughters sometimes find a good TikTok video and forward it to me. But that doesn’t negate all the negative influences found on this social media platform.
TikTok is a mixture of good and bad or light and darkness. Parents and grandparents need to be aware of the dangers of this social media platform.

Kerby Anderson
Perhaps you have heard the call for leftists to engage in “the long march through institutions.” The phrase was popularized by the radical German activist Herbert Marcuse who was quoting another activist. It came up in my radio interview with Stanley Ridgley on his book, Brutal Minds. In his book, America’s Cultural Revolution, Christopher Rufo not only quotes him, but devotes an entire chapter on Marcuse.
The plan was simple. Instead of encouraging students to protest the university and government, have them march into the institutions and take them over. By taking over faculty lounges, Hollywood studios, and government offices, they could bring about revolutionary change.
Rich Lowry writes about “Trump’s Countermarch Through the Institutions.” He says it is a new way of thinking for conservatives. It is such a strange reversal that many on the left and progressives in Congress don’t quite know what to do.
One example he cites was the Trump executive order that decreed that federal funding would be withdrawn from educational institutions that permit males to compete in females’ sports. “The NCAA instantly changed its policy to say that only athletes who were female at birth can compete against females.”
If this tactic sounds familiar, we saw it used by President Obama. He threatened to cut off federal funds to impose his views on college campus investigations and even school bathroom policies.
The Trump executive order on DEI had a similar effect. Funding was pulled, federal contractors changed their policies, and West Point disbanded its identity-based clubs.
You could say that Trump’s countermarch is a case of what is good for the liberal goose is also good for the conservative gander.

Kerby Anderson
Yesterday I talked about some of the political challenges that President Trump, his administration, and Congress face this year. Today, I want to talk about the economic challenges.
As I write this, the U.S. debt clock shows that the country is currently $36.5 trillion in debt. As you probably know, the national debt has increased under Republican and Democratic presidents and increased no matter whether Democrats or Republicans controlled Congress.
But it is also fair to say that the country’s economic circumstances are much worse four years after Trump left office. Federal spending under President Biden and Congress increased dramatically.
Congress passed a $900 billion so-called “Covid-Relief” bill just after Christmas 2020, as Trump was leaving office. At the time, you could make a case that this was more than enough. But by March 2021, President Biden and Congress passed his $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan.”
Did the country need a stimulus of that size? Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers explained that the spending amount was much more than was needed to address any of the economic issues and warned that such spending would lead to inflation.
Even that much spending was not enough for Biden and Congress. Later that year, they passed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. He then proposed a $2.2 trillion “Build Back Better Act.” But by the end of 2021, inflation had reached almost seven percent. Some in Congress were nervous about the price tag so they downsized the bill and President Biden decided to rename it the “Inflation Reduction Act.”
This is what the Trump administration has inherited and explains why the Department of Government Efficiency is looking for ways to cut spending.

Kerby Anderson
During the 2024 presidential campaign, I did several commentaries on the challenges the next president would face in 2025. Donald Trump is now the president, and his administration and Congress face some significant political challenges.
Karl Rove recently listed them as “The Five Trials of Trump 47.” One of those challenges is the need to approve a funding bill for the balance of the 2025 fiscal year or face a shutdown on March 14. The added challenges are getting both the House and Senate to approve budget resolutions, then going to conference committee, and finally taking up the difficult issues associated with budget reconciliation.
In the background is a desire by the president and members of Congress to extend the Trump 2017 tax cuts. This requires some coordination since Senate Republicans prefer two reconciliation measures, while the House Republicans favor one reconciliation.
Another challenge is the need for Congress to raise the debt ceiling. It hit its $36.1 trillion limit the day Donald Trump was sworn into office. We are a month past that limit. So far, the Treasury Department has been using what are called “extraordinary measures” to keep the government working.
Speaker Mike Johnson faces the challenge of trying to move legislation through the House with the narrowest of margins. Representative Matt Gaetz already resigned. Representative Mike Waltz left to become national security advisor, and Representative Elise Stefanik is leaving to become UN ambassador.
These are just a few of the political challenges Trump, his administration, and Congress will face over the next few months. But there are more challenges on the horizon. Tomorrow, I will talk about many of the economic challenges ahead.

Kerby Anderson
Eight months ago, I wrote about the book, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, written by Victor Davis Hanson. In his book, he provides four historical examples: the city-state of Thebes, ancient Carthage, Byzantine Constantinople, and Aztec Tenochtitlan. The leaders believed their illustrious pasts would be enough to prevent their destruction. Alexander the Great, Roman Scipio, Muslim Mehmet, and the Spanish conquistador Cortés proved them wrong.
The book is a warning to us today, but I also realize that few people will read his book. That is why I would encourage you to watch his five-minute video summary produced by Hillsdale College, just click “Watch More.”
He says his book “is about the existential destruction of the losing side in a war. This is very rare in history. It doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, it should enlighten us how it does, why it does, and can it happen again?”
He explains that he wrote his book “not just as a historical journey to document the rare cases of a targeted nation being completely destroyed, but as a warning that human nature doesn’t change.” We naively assumed that globalization would create a common humanity and bring an end to global conflict. Instead, he “noticed that there were more and more existential threats coming from autocratic regimes.”
He wants us to be aware that what happened in the past could happen in the future. We need to learn from the past and protect ourselves in the future. As I mentioned in a previous commentary, the world needs a strong America so that we can prevent “the end of everything.”

Kerby Anderson
Earlier this month, I talked about the three hardest words for people to say. They are: “I don’t know.” It is especially hard for so-called experts to say those words. Often what we think we know is influenced by our bias. Good science and good research should always work to eliminate as much bias as possible.
Professor Philip Tetlock (University of Pennsylvania) has been systematically tracking the predictions of pundits, politicians, stock market gurus, and sportscasters. One of his more significant studies looked at politics. He evaluated government officials, political science teachers, and economists over a period of twenty years.
I might also mention that nearly all (96%) had postgraduate credentials. He quickly discovered that they thought they knew more than they knew. How accurate were their predictions? He said their predictions were no better than “dart-throwing chimps.”
He has acknowledged that the “monkey-with-a-dartboard comparisons come back to haunt me all the time.” He has developed a computer algorithm for all these failed predictions. But I can make it much simpler. What he has found is that most experts should really say, “I don’t know.”
Does that mean we should ignore any prediction from an expert? No, but it does suggest that we understand that many of these predictions are, at best, informed opinions. We should take them with a grain of salt.
We have been subjected to pundits telling us to “believe the science” when the science isn’t settled, and they lack scientific credentials. We have been told that a particular candidate or political party is a “threat to democracy” when that isn’t true. Some government officials warning about “misinformation” are guilty of spreading misinformation.
It is time to exercise discernment, especially when most experts aren’t any more accurate than “dart-throwing chimps.”

Kerby Anderson
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In a recent column, he asks, “Are Schools Really Politicized?” Most of us know that the answer to that question is yes. But many progressive writers don’t agree.
One of those writers is James Traub who has a book coming out next year on civil education. In an article in New Republic that he wrote previewing his book, he declared: “I Visited Dozens of Civics Classrooms. The Right’s Attacks Are Wrong.”
Who is right? Stanley Kurtz believes left-wing partisanship is a serious problem and has put out model legislation to take partisanship out of civics education. James Traub visited many classrooms and found them to be viewpoint neutral.
Both individuals concede that much of the civic curriculum today is written from a liberal viewpoint. Traub, for example, “acknowledges that the academic literature on teaching, statements from educational administrators, and social-studies standards in blue states are all pervasively leftist.” But then we are to suppose that none of that makes its way into the classroom.
Stanley Kurtz doubts whether “putting a famed reporter in a classroom is the best way to expose politicization. Teachers facing a reporter are bound to be on their best behavior. And highly politicized teachers are unlikely to host such an observer at all.”
By contrast, Stanley Kurtz provides numerous examples of what he describes as K-12 politicization. It may be difficult to detect because many teachers work to hide it from parents and administrators.
There surely are teachers who try to be politically neutral in civics classes. But you aren’t going to find those who are politically biased by sending in a notable author.