Author: Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
 
For some time, political commentators have lamented the end of “Pax Americana.” Noah Rothman believes that the Hamas attack on Israel reflects dangerous changes in the international world. In case you are wondering, Pax Americana has been a term used to describe the influence of the US and its military after World War II.
“More than 1,500 Hamas terrorists participated in this savage attack, the scale of which demonstrates the level of planning involved.” The Wall Street Journal, for example, revealed that “officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard” had been working with Hamas for months.
We also know that Iran provides hundreds of millions of dollars to Muslim groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Noah Rothman reminds us, “When Hamas terrorists, Hezbollah mercenaries, and Iranian theocrats chant “Death to America” after murdering Israelis, they’re not confused.”
But the global conflict involves other countries. “Moscow has received hundreds of attack drones from Iran over the course of the war.” It appears to have received ballistic missiles, helicopters, and radar systems from Iran. He adds that “China is Iran’s largest trading partner and the source of nearly a quarter of its weapons imports. Beijing and Tehran have reportedly agreed to conduct joint military exercises and training, just as China and Russia have increased their joint military activity.”
The Hamas attack on Israel shows that this post-American world will become even more dangerous. Our enemies are joining forces. We need to pray for our leaders and find more astute ones soon.

Kerby Anderson
Columnist Charles Cooke is blunt in his assessment: “Hamas Apologists Are Freaks.” I might not have used that description, but his assessment is correct. Well-adjusted people do not look at the bloodshed by Hamas terrorists and use woke, intersectional words to justify this evil act.
Some of the people who have tried to justify the Hamas butchery are backing away from those statements. They argue they never made those statements, or else they were misinterpreted. Before these apologists are successful in rewriting history, it’s worth thinking about the mind games you must use to justify such horrific acts.
“It is simply not within the normal bounds of human behavior to look at what has happened in Israel and to filter one’s instinctive moral reaction through whatever goofy, specious, ugly ideology one might have picked up in an overpriced seminar hall.” Yes, words like “colonialism” and “imperialism” have a place in some discussions when properly defined. But well-adjusted people don’t read about machine-gunning concertgoers and beheading babies and use woke language to justify something that would repulse any normal person.
“Well-adjusted people do not learn of the largest single instance of antisemitic butchery since the Holocaust and muse about how intersectional the dead might have been.” And they don’t write open letters holding the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all the violence used against it.
But we cannot just shake our heads at such comments. Unfortunately, we learn from history that the first step in the road to barbarism is any attempt to dehumanize other human beings and justify their elimination with adjectives and phrases meant to lessen their value. We should never justify evil.

Kerby Anderson
A framed copy of a March 1993 Wall Street Journal editorial can be seen in the Midtown Manhattan conference room. “No Guardrails” is the title of this Daniel Henninger piece and has become a phrase often used by Journal opinion writers.
This editorial written three decades ago is like a time capsule. It laments the loss of “a time in the United States when life seemed more settled, when emotions, both private and public, didn’t seem to run so continuously at breakneck speed.” Ten years ago, he revisited the concept of “No Guardrails” by suggesting “we would be better off if our intellectual, political and cultural elites rediscovered—and publicly revered—the protective virtues of self-control and self-restraint.”
If only he could have predicted the world we live in today. We are barraged by angry public statements from presidents, pundits, and members of Congress. Woke ideas, once located on a few universities, have made their way into classrooms, boardrooms, and courtrooms. A cancel culture has been institutionalized and used as a weapon against anyone who disagrees with what the cultural elite propose.
As we have discussed in previous commentaries, life in many cities is becoming more difficult every day. Essential guardrails have been pulled down. Prosecutors are no longer prosecuting criminals. Major drug store chains and big box stores are leaving cities. Politicians are complaining about food deserts because grocery stores can’t even make enough to pay their employees.
That framed copy of his editorial is a reminder that the current chaos did not happen overnight. It has been coming for a long time. It may take a long time to return to a society of order and civility.

Kerby Anderson
When Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, much of the world was shocked and horrified, while other parts of our world celebrated. Everyone, it seemed, needed to make a comment. Some were insightful, many more were forgettable and even regrettable.
Some important insights came from Mark Penn, who was a chief strategist for Hillary Clinton and author of the book, Microtrends. He listed several lessons that we learned from the Hamas attack and the subsequent reactions.
“First, we learned that Hamas and much of the Palestinian movement is drenched in antisemitism, has no interest in Middle East peace, and openly preaches the annihilation of Israel and its people.” Most of us already believed that, but it is reassuring that many more Americans are now coming to that conclusion.
“Second, we learned that many of our institutions of higher learning and their leaders are the root of our society’s problems instead of the solution.” He points to university presidents unwilling to condemn the killing of children in Israel. He then asks us to “imagine how long it would have taken for these university presidents to issue statements if Israeli settlers had murdered 1,000 Palestinian families during a Muslim holiday.”
“Third, we learned that much of the political left in America lacks a moral compass.” Once again, I think many people knew this, but I am encouraged that a liberal once again is acknowledging the extremism and immorality of leftist activists.
In the rest of his commentary, he takes some obligatory shots at Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump. That is to be expected. I am, however, encouraged that what happened in Israel earlier this month has been a teachable moment for many in this country.

Kerby Anderson
We live in an age of fear. Often at the top of the list, is fear of climate change. Bjorn Lomborg says one picture summarizes this age of fear. It is a girl holding a sign that says, “You’ll die of old age. I’ll die of climate change.”
The message from environmental activists and much of the media is that climate change is destroying the planet. And using the language of the apocalypse, the warning is that we have few years left before humanity will come to an end.
Bjorn Lomborg has been writing about climate change for decades. His 2001 book was The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. His current book is False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. He reminds us that, “Over the past 20 years, climate scientists have painstakingly increased knowledge about climate change, and we have more — and more reliable — data than ever before. But at the same time, the rhetoric that comes from commentators and the media has become increasingly irrational.”
He agrees that: “Global warming is real, but it is not the end of the world. It is a manageable problem. Yet we now live in a world where almost half the population believes that climate change will extinguish humanity.” Instead, he recommends that we “dial back on the panic, look at the science, face the economics, and address the issue rationally.”
We are told that humans are on the brink of extinction. The opposite is true. “In almost every way we can measure, life on earth is better now than it was at any time in history.” Life expectancy has more than doubled. The world is more literate. And even the planet is getting healthier.
He is convinced we have the power to make a better world. But the first thing we need to do is calm down.

Kerby Anderson
George Barna has been doing an extensive inventory of the worldviews of Americans through the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. He was on my radio program recently to talk about two of his most recent surveys dealing with truth and morality.
Past generations of Americans viewed God as the basis for truth. Not only has that changed for the general population, it has also changed significantly within the church. He found that there were certain groups that rejected the idea of absolute truth. That would be members of the LGBTQ community, political liberals, spiritual skeptics, Democrats, and young people under the age of 50.
By contrast, those most likely to see God as the basis of truth are the group called SAGECons. That stands for Spiritually Active Governance Engaged Conservative Christians. Nearly nine out of ten (87%) point to God as the source of truth and more than six in ten (62%) recognize the existence of absolute moral standards.
In his next report, he decided to see how we apply moral principles in real-life situations. The questions ranged from telling a “white lie” to failing to pay back a loan to speeding to abortion. It was troubling to see what percentage of Americans felt that some of these behaviors were not even a moral issue. In some cases, a significant percentage might have believed it was a moral issue but that it was morally acceptable in today’s society.
Another troubling finding was what Barna calls a “seismic shift” in Christian views about morality. For example, born-again Christians in the survey were three times as likely to say they rely on the Bible for primary moral guidance. But less than half (48%) actually do so.
The latest Barna surveys are a reminder to pastors and other Christian teachers that we need to make the case for moral absolutes based on God’s Word.

Kerby Anderson
In the 21st century, warfare doesn’t always happen on the battlefield. Cyberwarfare is becoming an important tool for many countries. That is why we have been seeing warnings about cyberattacks against the West and the US.
With US sanctions being used against Russia, Professor Ryan Wright (University of Virginia) predicts that “it is only a matter of time until the US is targeted more directly. This may mean attacks on your personal device through ransomware but also attacks on the infrastructure such as your internet access or even the power grid.”
We have seen such attacks in the past on the SolarWinds on the Colonial Pipeline. These were state-sponsored actors using increasingly sophisticated cyberwarfare. Russia might try to disrupt financial systems and crucial infrastructure such as the power grid or oil production to put pressure on the US to relent on sanctions.
Dr. Amy Zegart (Hoover Institution at Stanford) is the author of Spies, Lies, and Algorithms. In a recent conversation she noted this paradox: “In cyberspace, the most powerful countries, including the United States, are simultaneously the most vulnerable countries because we are so digitally connected. And that’s especially true of democracies because our freedom of speech enables the possibility of deception at scale. And, of course, the good neighborhoods and the bad neighborhoods in cyberspace are all connected, as we find out when our information is stolen or hacked.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been taking place more than 5,000 miles away. While the military battlefield is far away, a cyberattack could be as close as your computer and cell phone. And I’m not sure we are ready for those attacks.

Kerby Anderson
When you say the word “invasion,” you will likely think of the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army. But Graham Cunningham talks about another invasion. That would be the “Invasion of the Virtue Signalers.”
The group he talks about goes by various names. They might be called “social justice warriors” or “virtue-signaling liberals” or merely called “the woke.” Whatever name you give to these groups, they have been successful in influencing nearly every institution in America and much of the Western world.
Unlike the Russian invasion, they don’t use guns or bombs. They use rhetoric and what he calls “ex-cathedra incantations of pseudo-values so absurd that only a few years ago it would have seemed like they must be kidding.” That’s a fancy way of saying that you can’t believe people are completely serious when they are saying crazy things about race, gender, and science.
He rightly focuses his attention on what has taking place on university campuses across the nation. Professors are the “academy’s pied-pipers” influencing the “ambitious young minds of the future opinion-forming elite.” But he also focuses on the “feedback loop between an overwhelmingly left-wing academy and a largely left-wing MSM (mainstream media).”
This is an important principle. In the past, many people used to argue that the nutty ideas in the heads of college students would fade away as they had to earn a living and deal with the realities of the world of business. Instead, they found previous graduates in some of these corporations who were woke soul mates. And the media continued to reinforce those crazy woke ideas.
That is why we must challenge these ideas being presented on university campuses and being promoted by much of the media. We should be “destroying arguments and all arrogance raised up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Kerby Anderson
The financial system in this country, and in the world, is based on trust. When you write a check, the shopkeeper must trust that you have money in the bank. When a major corporation sends ten million dollars to another company in another country, it assumes that the money being sent exists. Of course, there are checks in the system to make sure that the funds are transferred correctly.
But some of the trust we have had is beginning to break down. For example, we assume that when we put money in the bank, it will be there when we need it. But the truckers in Canada (and some of their supporters) discovered that Justin Trudeau and his administration could freeze their accounts and even seize their financial assets.
I am starting to see commentators express their concern that you could lose your finances simply because a politician decided your views were unacceptable. We have seen that in third world dictatorships, but this happened in one of the most advanced democracies in the world.
More recently, we have seen how the US and EU seized assets in Russia. The governments seized gold and Russian central bank assets. Even if you are the head of a country, you could have another country freeze and seize your assets. Not only are other countries concerned about what could happen to them, but companies in these countries are also beginning to wonder what could happen to their assets.
How confident can you be in your property rights? Every person, every company, and every country must now consider what could happen to them in the future. Add to that rising inflation and currencies that are declining in value. It’s been years since we boasted that the dollar is as good as gold.
We used to trust in the government. We used to trust in the banking system. We used to trust in our currency. Not any longer. So much of that has disappeared in just the last few months.

Kerby Anderson
Over the last few years, we have heard more pundits and futurists talk about transhumanism. It is an intellectual and cultural movement that seeks to transform the human condition. The leaders of this movement want to use the developing technologies to eliminate aging and enhance human potential.
Two primary ways they want to do this is through genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. They want to genetically create “the new man,” and they want to use technology to merge humans with machines. My previous booklets on A Biblical Point of View on Genetic Engineering and A Biblical Point of View on Artificial Intelligence can provide some helpful background.
One part of the equation concerns technology. The leaders of transhumanism believe we are on the cusp of a technological threshold in both artificial intelligence and human-machine technology.
The leaders of transhumanism also see genetic engineering as a tool to be used to speed up the process of evolution. We can use genetics to enhance and improve humans. If we believe that humans are merely the product of the undirected forces of evolution, then certainly intelligent scientists can “improve on nature.”
Evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley looked forward to the day in which scientists could fill the “position of business manager for the cosmic process of evolution.” Transhumanists believe that possibility is within our grasp. One proponent explained that transhumanism is “humanity taking control of its evolutionary destiny.”
But if humans are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), then we can and should use genetic technology to treat and cure the physical effects of the Fall (Genesis 3). That does not mean we should usurp the role of the Creator and breed a superhuman race.

Kerby Anderson
The First Amendment has 45 words that provide free speech, a free press, and religious liberty. Most Americans say they approve of the First Amendment free speech protections, but there are some concerning issues once you start asking additional questions.
Nearly all Americans (91%) think First Amendment protection for freedom of speech is a good thing. But it becomes clear that Democrats and younger voters are more likely to support governmental regulation of speech, especially on social media.
For example, just over one-third (34%) of Democratic voters say Americans have “too much freedom.” A much smaller percentage (14.6%) of Republicans agree with this assumption. In fact, Republicans are quite likely (46%) to say Americans have “too little freedom.”
Age is another factor. Those under age 30 are more open to censorship by the government. More than four in ten (42%) feel it is more important for the government to censor to protect national security. A much smaller percentage (26%) of Americans over age 65 felt that way.
Poll respondents were read this famous statement: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Less than a third (31%) of Democratic voters “strongly agreed” with the statement, compared to a majority (51%) of Republicans that approved that sentiment.
Poll respondents were shown headlines and then told they were false. Even when Republicans knew the content was false, they were half as likely as Democrats to say that the content should be removed. And they were more than twice as likely to consider removal as censorship.
This survey shows a significant partisan divide and age divide that makes it easier for the mainstream press and social media to censor unpopular ideas. It is time to go back to the foundation of the First Amendment.

Kerby Anderson
Since the founding of this country, we have had public officials quote Bible verses. But apparently that tradition can no longer exist in some areas of the country. An Arizona school board member is under fire because she recited a verse of Scripture.
Heather Rooks is a member of the Peoria Unified School District and was about to respond to questions and concerns from parents. She decided to quote an inspirational verse from the Bible. Her hope was that it would encourage her and provide strength during the meeting.
A few days later, she received a “cease-and-desist” letter demanding that she stop quoting the Bible. In case you are wondering, the offensive verse was Isaiah 41:10 – “Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look around you, for I am your God.”
Andy Gould serves as senior counsel with First Liberty Institute. Previously, he served as a Justice on the Arizona Supreme Court. He is now representing Heather Rooks in a lawsuit against the Peoria Unified School District. He argues that her actions are protected under the free speech and free exercises clauses of the Constitution.
He also argues that many presidents and other political officials have quoted religious texts in their official capacity. He asks, why can a president quote the Bible but not a member of the school board?
In the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District case, Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch said, “Nor does . . .  a proper understanding of the Amendment’s Establishment Clause require the government to single out private religious speech for special disfavor. The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.”
Recent Supreme Court rulings provide more religious freedom than we have had in decades. It is time for each of us to claim our religious liberty.

Kerby Anderson
You have probably heard about the mass baptisms that took place at Auburn University. I heard about it when I was out of the country. While I was baptizing people in the Sea of Galilee, Auburn Coach Hugh Freeze was baptizing some of his players. Who could possibly be opposed to that?
As you might have guessed, the Freedom from Religion Foundation sent a letter to the university warning that the baptisms in September were a clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. They had a problem with a coach expressing his Christian convictions while on campus.
The first thought in my mind was: Didn’t we just have a Supreme Court case that ruled that a coach does have a right to express his Christian convictions while on campus? Why yes, we did. And Coach Kennedy was doing so while in his capacity as coach when he went to pray at the 50-yard-line after the game. By contrast, Coach Freeze was doing this after hours.
First Liberty Institute Attorney Jeremy Dys has been on numerous programs to talk about this group “upset that Christian people are doing Christian things at a Christian organized event.” He reminded the hosts of these programs that their recent Supreme Court victory shows that coaches do not “shed their constitutional rights when they walk to the schoolhouse gate.”
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey responded to the letter from the atheist group and called their interpretation of the Constitution misleading. “As governor, I can assure you that we will not be intimidated by out-of-state interest groups dedicated to destroying our nation’s religious heritage.”
The many Supreme Court rulings in favor of the cases by First Liberty Institute and Alliance Defending Freedom have given us more religious freedom than we have had in decades.

Kerby Anderson
Inflation and high interest rates are making it harder for Americans to navigate the current economy and still be able to pay their bills. At a time when the administration keeps promoting the benefits of Bidenomics, most Americans aren’t having a positive experience.
Here are some economic facts and figures that illustrate why Americans are facing difficult economic decisions. These are available on the Internet, but I have provided a link to an article by Jim Geraghty who provides most of these economic statistics.
The chief economist at Moody’s Analytics says that buying a home or car right now is “completely unaffordable for the typical American household because you’re mixing the higher borrowing costs with the high prices.” He estimates that the typical American household would need to use 42 weeks of income to buy a new car.
The National Association of Realtors calculates that the typical American family can’t afford to buy a median-priced home. The latest economic research discovered that Americans are applying for mortgages at the lowest rate in 28 years.
Similar economic calculations found that it now costs $734 more each month to buy the same goods and services as two years ago (for households who earn the median income). Paying an additional $734 more each month adds up to $8,808 more per year for the same purchases.
How many Americans have an additional $9,000 lying around? Perhaps that is why the Federal Reserve reports that household debt and credit card debt are continuing to climb even higher.
Although politicians may try to tell you the economy is doing well, you’re personal experience and these number suggest otherwise. Numbers don’t lie, even if politicians do.

Kerby Anderson
As we get closer to the election season with primaries and a general election, we should once again consider how to prevent election fraud. The goal should always be to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Yet whenever the discussion turns toward preventing election fraud, it is often met with the response that this is a solution in search of a problem. We are told there is very little voter fraud, and when it exists it doesn’t affect the final vote in any significant way.
My response has been to ask a question: “Since you do admit there is voter fraud, how much voter fraud do you think is acceptable?” We wouldn’t accept that argument from a bank president if there were problems with the daily reconciling of bank accounts.
Recently Rachel Alexander made the same argument by asking, “What If We Excused Other Crimes the Way We Do Election Fraud?” Many polling places don’t provide a paper trail of the vote. Imagine telling an IRS agent during an audit that “you have no receipts or records for the last few years, so agents need to believe you.” I think you know the answer to that question.
She reminds us that in the banking industry “employees are fired and can be prosecuted if the numbers merely seem off. As with cashiers at stores, a typical amount of money is expected to come in daily. If that number starts being low, security measures like cameras and keystroking devices are put in place to try and discover the theft.”
She then points to various anomalies in several states from the last two elections that always seem to benefit one party. She also documents the fight in courts to prevent video surveillance of ballots being dropped off.
I think we should expect the same professionalism from our elections that we expect from other areas of our society.

Kerby Anderson
Whenever there is a discussion about immigration and border security, proponents of open borders assure us that the vast majority of migrants are just coming for a better life. That is probably true. But when you point out that many may be coming for nefarious reasons, they may reluctantly admit that a few that have been caught at the border were on a terrorist watch list. But those are very few compared to the millions who have crossed the border.
My perspective is that even one illegal alien in this country on a terrorist watch list is one too many. But the argument also ignores the substantial number of migrants who are listed as “got aways.” A terrorist is less likely than other migrants to be caught.
The argument also ignores what are called “special interest aliens,” also called SIA. Customs and Border Enforcement flagged 74,904 SIA between October 2022 and August of this year. An SIA is a foreign person who is identified by travel patterns that suggest a potential risk to the US or its interests.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that a special interest alien is a terrorist. But it does mean that person has traveled to countries known for terrorist activity. At the very least, it suggests the need for heightened screening and further investigation by the government.
So how are we treating these SIA? Mark Morgan is the former acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. He announced the other day that federal authorities chose to release illegal migrants who were known to be SIA. Add to that the fact that customs authorities are seeing a surge of individuals on the terror watchlist.
The border is not secure, and dangerous and potentially dangerous individuals are crossing our border into this country.

Kerby Anderson
Although there have been numerous attempts by this administration and certain members of Congress to assure us that our border is secure, most Americans can see that is not true. At least 7 million-8 million illegal immigrants have come into this country since the beginning of the Biden administration.
The American people can see the numbers and the strain the mass of immigrants is having on social services around the country. Even the New York mayor, who used to brag about being a sanctuary city, is now complaining about the billions of dollars his city government must spend to feed and house these new arrivals.
Yet the flow of illegal immigrants continues as costs continue to rise. Who is benefitting from illegal immigration? The typical answer to that question is businesses looking for cheap labor and politicians hoping these new immigrants will become a new political force.
There is another group that benefits. Columnist Katie Pavlich refers to the “Illegal Immigration Industrial Complex.” Various non-profit groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) receive billions of dollars in federal grants to deal with the influx of immigrants.
A Heritage Foundation report puts it this way: “For more than two years now, the Biden administration has been encouraging and mass-releasing millions of illegal aliens into the country. To accomplish its goal of unlimited illegal immigration, the administration relies heavily on NGOs to receive, process, transport, lodge, and counsel the illegal aliens.”
One group estimates that the Biden administration released 100,000 people onto the streets since September 1. The flow of immigrants isn’t likely to stop when federal funds continue to flow to NGOs that are bussing and flying immigrants around the country.

Kerby Anderson
If you are familiar with the World Economic Forum, you are probably also familiar with the slogan: “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.” The phrase comes from a 2016 article by Ida Auken that was published on their website.
The article was her attempt to describe the world of a fictional citizen living in 2030 where people do things differently. Private ownership of homes and cars is a thing of the past. What we now consider a product has become a service. No need to own a house when you can rent. No need to own a car when you can use public transportation or even have a self-driving car pick you up and then go back to a parking lot waiting for the next consumer.
Although previous presidents pursued policies designed to increase home ownership, the current trend is going in the opposite direction. Inflation and higher interest rates have made it difficult for the younger generation to own a home. Meanwhile, major companies are buying many of the homes coming on the market as investments. We are becoming a nation of renters.
When someone else owns your house, your car, or your appliances, they make the decisions about what you can do with them. The corporation or the government can implement ESG regulations along with social credit scores.
That last point brings us back to the original article that had the title: “I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy, and Life Has Never Been Better.” Big Tech, corporations, and the government are collecting massive amounts of information on you. That makes sense if the goal is to provide goods and services to you that they own. Supercomputers and artificial intelligence make it easier to crunch Big Data, and that makes it easier for corporations and the government to control you.
This was supposed to be a utopian vision, but I doubt many Americans think this will be a positive step toward the future.

Kerby Anderson
Michael Brown predicts “The Coming Collapse of Our Secular Universities.” While it is true that the major universities with hefty endowments will survive, he makes the same prediction I have been making for many years and adds some other reasons for a future decline in the numbers and influence of universities.
“First, there has been a serious dip in enrollment in our colleges and universities across the nation.” Even before the pandemic, there was a plunge in enrollment at certain universities (especially those that made the news because of their woke policies or protests). The current decline in enrollment is the worst ever recorded.
When I talked about this decline in enrollment on my radio program, I reminded my listeners that a decline in freshman enrollment is not a mere one-year economic blip. Fewer freshmen mean fewer sophomores, juniors, and seniors. A one-year decline is felt for many years.
“Second, declining birth rates are contributing to lower enrollments.” The demographic downturn is affecting universities but also many other aspects of our society.
Michael Brown also reminds us of something I have discussed in previous commentaries: Christians and conservatives have more children than secularists and liberals. While secular universities are seeing enrollment declines, Christian colleges are seeing an increase in enrollment.
Finally, he explains that “the more these schools embrace radical Marxism, the less students will receive a practical education and the less equipped they will be for the real world.” Parents and prospective students are already questioning whether a college education is essential given sky-high tuition and the growing hostility toward a biblical perspective.
These factors suggest a major shift in higher education in America.

Kerby Anderson
We are a divided country, but it may be worse than we imagined. An article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discussed what is called “motive attribution asymmetry.” That’s a technical term for the assumption that your ideology is based on love and your opponent’s is based on hate. Put another way: we are the good guys, and they are the bad guys.
They discovered that the average Republican and the average Democrat today are as divided as the Palestinians and Israelis. In his op-ed in the New York Times, Arthur Brooks says we see the other side as “an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise.”
He comes to this startling conclusion. “People often say that our problem in America is incivility or intolerance. That is incorrect. Motive attribution asymmetry leads to something far worse: contempt, which is a noxious brew of anger and disgust.” And it is made worse by what he calls the “outrage industrial complex” that caters to one side and criticizes the other.
When people hear about political conflicts, they often prescribe the wrong solutions. Just because we disagree, doesn’t mean we should put aside our disagreements. Arthur Brooks says we need not disagree less. Instead, we need to disagree better. Whether we are discussing politics, economics, or philosophy, we should engage in a robust “competition of ideas.” We can disagree without being so disagreeable.
He suggests two steps. First, turn away from what he calls the “rhetorical dope peddlers.” These are powerful people on your side who are profiting from the culture of contempt. Second, make a commitment never to treat others with contempt. Christians should be civil and gracious.