Author: Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
President Trump is always full of surprises, but the biggest surprise so far was his bombshell announcement that the U.S. would take over the rebuilding of Gaza. This is not going to happen for many reasons. You can’t just evacuate two million resident Palestinians. First, because nearby countries don’t want them. And second, a forced evacuation would likely be a violation of international law.
The U.S. won’t implement Trump’s suggestion, but the proposed policy provides an important teaching opportunity. This policy rests upon a flawed view of human nature. It is an “outer-inner theory” of human behavior. If I can improve the environment around someone, I can improve their behavior. Build nice public housing, and the crime rate will go down. Rebuild Gaza, and problems in the Middle East will be solved.
By contrast, the gospel is an “inner-outer theory.” You change human behavior from the inside out. And we also understand that changing a person’s environment doesn’t change their sin nature.
The problem is even worse in Gaza because we are dealing with radical Muslims. Andrew McCarthy refers to their view as “sharia supremacist Islam.” This view has been around for 1,400 years. It is also worth mentioning that the people of Gaza voted to have Hamas rule them. They didn’t do that so their leaders could turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Nearly every American president naively believes that Muslims share “our common humanity” and just want a better life for themselves and their children. Most Muslims have a different goal: eradicate Israel from the region and implement sharia law in the land.
You would think we would have learned that “nation building” in the Middle East hasn’t worked. It is very difficult to grow a democracy on Muslim soil.

Kerby Anderson
Progressive activists often talk about the “long march through institutions.” For the last few weeks, we have seen a “fast sprint through institutions” by President Trump, followed by Elon Musk. The flurry of activity by the president and his administration has raised an important question. What are the limits to presidential authority?
Yuval Levin provides “A Rule of Thumb for the Executive Power Debates.” Of course, we can find the limits to executive power in the Constitution, in the Federalist Papers, and in various court decisions. But he breaks Trump’s power down to two contexts: “in relation to the executive branch over which he presides, and in relation to the larger constitutional system in which he plays a part.”
When it comes to the president’s authority over the executive branch, his power is supreme. The Constitution says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Of course, there are some limitations to that power, as illustrated by the confirmation hearings in Congress that have been taking place.
However, when it comes to the government as a whole, “the president’s role is constrained and is in many respects overshadowed by Congress. His core function is to take care that the laws Congress has passed are faithfully executed.”
The Constitution (and subsequent court decisions) deal with both sets of presidential powers. It allows the president to have expansive powers in dealing with his executive branch but constrains those powers when dealing with the whole government.
Although many Supreme Court judges would hold to this same view found in the Constitution, we are seeing some federal judges rule against some of President Trump’s presidential actions. I predict that many of those judges decisions will later be overruled.

Kerby Anderson
Mexico has been in the news because of issues ranging from immigration to tariffs. Victor Davis Hanson wonders whether Mexico is a friend or enemy or something else. He raises some good questions that often are ignored when the media talks about our neighbor to the south.
Immigration and border security are the first issue. He argues that “Mexico seems to assume that it has a sovereign right to encourage the flight of millions of its own impoverished citizens illegally into the US and further assumes that it can fast-track millions of Latin Americans through its territory and across our border.”
Drugs are a second issue. He observes that “Mexico either cannot or will not address the billions of dollars of raw fentanyl products shipped in—mostly from China—and then processed for export to the U.S. by its cartels across a nonexistent border.”
He reminds us that some 75,000 Americans on average die of fentanyl each year. This is more deaths in just the last decade than all the Americans killed in action during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined.
Finally, he reports that “Mexico encourages its expatriate illegal aliens to send back some $63 billion per year in remittances. That huge sum constitutes one of Mexico’s largest sources of foreign exchange, surpassing even its tourist and oil revenues.”
You can read his column in its entirety and learn more about the past president of Mexico and the current one. Some of these issues explain why the leadership in Mexico has been unwilling and perhaps unable to deal with the border issues between the US and Mexico.
Perhaps now you can see why President Trump believed he had to resort to other means to get compliance.

Kerby Anderson
America keeps spending more and more money on public education. And all those tax dollars don’t seem to make a difference. Schools keep flunking.
The National Assessment for Educational Progress is often referred to as “America’s Report Card.” But this isn’t a report card you would want to show anyone. The latest report shows that fourth and eighth grade reading scores declined by two points on average since 2022. Even more concerning is the fact that a third (33%) of eighth graders scored below “basic” on the reading exam. That is a record low. Math scores for eighth graders were eight points lower than in 2019.
Also, concerning was evidence that the achievement gap has increased. High math performers in both grades scored better last year while low performers did worse or the same. Test scores for students scoring in the upper percentiles in reading improved since 1992, but they declined for students in the lower percentiles.
The reasons for this decline don’t take an expert. But the Wall Street Journal editors quoted an education expert at Harvard who talked about three problems: “student mental-health problems, less test-based accountability and increasing screen time.”
The head of a teacher’s union suggested that schools need smaller class sizes, good ventilation, and 21st-century technology. The editors responded, “Sorry, children aren’t doing worse because of bad air filters or old computers. They scored better without 21st-century technology.”
Public schools are flunking. That’s why educational choice is a hot topic today in many states so that parents can take their tax dollars to better schools. And that’s why more parents are looking at private schools, Christian schools, and homeschooling.

Kerby Anderson
Tech CEO Chamath Palihapitiya on a recent interview reminded us why the world needs a strong America and what it takes to have a strong America. He began by saying that it was important for “Americans to take a step back and acknowledge this one truth. We are the single most important country in existence in the world.”
He went on to argue that “there are two things that underpin that. We are the single most vibrant economy in the world, and we are the single strongest military in the world. If you can agree to those two things, which I think should be non-controversial,” then we will be the strongest country in the world.
He believes those two key elements are why America is the most important country. It doesn’t matter if we make the best oranges or burritos or make the best shoes. Those products don’t equate to being the most powerful country.
America has “the strongest and most vibrant economy and the strongest and most powerful military.” He then argues that “there is only one thing that gives you both of those two things, which is technological supremacy.”
Next comes his concern. He believes “we are in an existential risk of losing our place in the world.” The reason, he believes is simple. We have had “people from the inside trying to sabotage our economy effectively and trying to sabotage our military capability.” And he adds that we have had too many in leadership who don’t know what they’re doing.
I would add that the last election was about this, at least in part. But much more reform needs to take place. We need people with economic judgment and military judgment.
Earlier this week, my commentaries have touched on the problem with DEI. We need to return to a meritocracy, and we need to put the right people in the right positions to have a strong America.

Kerby Anderson
Once President Trump was back in office, he ordered a pause on federal grants so that the incoming cabinet could evaluate what was being pushed through in the last few months of the Biden administration. As you might expect, the reaction from Democrats and the legacy press was over the top.
Fortunately, the editors of The Wall Street Journal decided to address what they called “The Spending Freeze Panic” explaining that the “pause on federal grants wasn’t illegal and didn’t even affect most spending.” They remind us, “It’s well within Mr. Trump’s executive authority to pause disbursement of discretionary funds to ensure they comply with the law and his priorities.”
The editors did add that “the White House didn’t help itself with a lack of clarity on the details.” And they pointed to a follow-up memo from the Trump administration that the pause would not affect financial assistance to individuals (such as food stamps, small business grants, aid to farmers) or even entitlement programs (like Medicaid and children’s nutrition).
There is a good reason for this pause. Yesterday I mentioned Trump’s executive order on DEI programs. There were federal grants heading out the door that required “diversity statements” for government funding, even though the Supreme Court ruled against racial preferences in education. The editors of The Wall Street Journal also remind us of the EPA grant that went for “climate justice” to leftist groups who were calling for the abolition of Israel and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A spending pause is constitutional. The Impoundment Control Act (which might someday be declared unconstitutional by the current court) would only apply if the president refuses to ever spend funds. The spending freeze panic was “much ado about nothing.”

Kerby Anderson
On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order with the title: “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” The goal, of course, was to eliminate DEI requirements and thus end what often has become racially preferential treatment in the federal government.
As we began to discuss it on my radio program, those around the table began to see the overall significance of this action. Essentially, the president’s executive order removed most of the affirmative action and DEI protocols that have been added to the federal government going all the way back to the 1965 executive order by President Lyndon Johnson that first established affirmative action.
Trump’s executive order should also streamline the current government contracting process that has become so cumbersome because of the various DEI compliance requirements. They are not only cumbersome but discriminatory.
At this point in our roundtable discussion, a lawyer with First Liberty Institute talked about how many of their Christian clients are discriminated against because they must agree to DEI requirements inserted in contracts. They could not in good conscience affirm statements about sexuality that are contrary to biblical principles.
Trump’s order also tries to bring some pressure on the private sector. The order directs federal agencies to compile lists of companies, universities, and foundations still using DEI practices. Universities will likely be the first target because of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that struck down racial discrimination in colleges.
Now you might see why we concluded that this executive order might have been the most significant one he signed that first day.

Kerby Anderson
Should parents be allowed to opt their children out of readings of LGBTQ-themed storybooks? This is the question before the Supreme Court. The case comes from Maryland, where a coalition of parents from Montgomery County contend that requiring their children to participate in instruction that violates their religious beliefs violates their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.
Activists have been working for decades to promote gay and lesbian views to young children in the public school system. Some of these materials have the obvious goal of indoctrinating students into this ideology. That is why the Becket Fund is representing families of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faiths in this case.
Eric Baxter (Becket) explained, “Cramming down controversial gender ideology on three-year-olds without their parents’ permission is an affront to our nation’s traditions, parental rights, and basic human decency.” He argued, “The court must make clear: parents, not the state, should be the ones deciding how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues about gender and sexuality.”
This case, once again, puts the high court in the center of the culture wars. The justices earlier heard oral arguments in a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on transgender surgery for minors.
Critics argue that the Supreme Court should stay out of the culture wars. My response is that they would be more than glad to avoid such cases, if it weren’t for activists trying to inject their gay and transexual ideologies into grade school classrooms.
We can hope and pray that the Supreme Court will prevent these attempts to indoctrinate young minds and allow parents to raise their children without such interference. The justices need to bring some common sense back into the public schools of America.

Kerby Anderson
It didn’t take long before the media launched what John Nolte referred to as the Hoax Machine. He was referring to the way many in the media portrayed Elon Musk’s arm movement as a Nazi salute.
But later in his article, he provided a hoax list that included nearly 40 examples promoted by the mainstream media. Each hoax on the list has a link so you can check it out for yourself.
Many of them were about false claims about Donald Trump. A few examples are the “Very Fine People Hoax” and “Trump Trashes Troops Hoax.” Each of those have been debunked by knowledgeable people who were present at the time. Of course, we cannot forget many others associated with Trump’s first term, like the “Russia Collusion Hoax”
The pandemic brought many hoaxes. A few examples were the “COVID Lab Leak Theory is Racist Hoax” and “COVID Deaths are Overcounted is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax.”
Many hoaxes involved media correspondents rushing to false conclusions or repeating false allegations. A few examples were the “Covington KKKids Hoax” and the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax.”
And there was the prominent hoax involving Jussie Smollett. Of course, his hoax gained national attention because of who he was and what he claimed happened to him. In previous commentaries, I have listed, on a regular basis, the increasing number of fake hate crimes that misrepresent how Americans treat each other and waste law enforcement’s time and money investigating them.
The lesson here is to be skeptical and discerning when you hear or read something reported in the news or repeated on social media. The story, and the subsequent claims, may merely be another hoax.

Kerby Anderson
As I mentioned a week ago, President Joe Biden warned of the rise of oligarchs in one of his farewell speeches before leaving office. Apparently, the issue of oligarchs and Big Tech leaders is a theme that some in Congress plan to use this year.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Michael Bennet sent a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. They criticized him for contributing to President Donald Trump’s inauguration fund. The Senators reminded him that, “Big Tech companies have come under increased scrutiny from federal regulators.” They expressed to him their concern “that your company and other Big Tech donors are using your massive contributions to the inaugural fund to cozy up to the incoming Trump administration.”
Sam Altman was quick to reply on X, “Funny, they never sent me one of these for contributing to Democrats.” He went on to explain that his “was a personal contribution as you state,” which is why he was “confused about the questions given that my company did not make a decision.”
Both points are relevant. He didn’t remember that any of his contributions to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris triggered such a letter. In fact, the editors of The Wall Street Journal reminded us that President Biden’s 2020 inaugural brought in $62 million. And the presidential campaign for Kamala Harris raised over $1 billion.
Second, he was making a personal contribution to the inauguration, and it had nothing to do with his company. Of course, the senators knew that but wanted to bully a Big Tech leader who has changed some of his giving habits.
When most of Big Tech lined up behind democrats, the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress were thrilled. Now that some are reconsidering their previous support, they are likely to get similar letters.

Kerby Anderson
What are the three hardest words in the English language? Perhaps you have heard that the three hardest words to say in the English language are: I love you. I have also heard some say that the three hardest words are: I was wrong.
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner devote a chapter to this question in one of their books. They argue that the three hardest words are: I don’t know. They lament that this is the case because it is impossible to learn everything.
Apparently, our inability to say we don’t know starts at an early age. There is the classic study of British schoolchildren who were given a story and then asked four questions about the story. Two of the questions were unanswerable. There wasn’t any information given in the story. Nevertheless, three-fourths (76%) of the students answered these questions anyway.
It becomes ever more difficult to say you don’t know as you get older. Children expect their parents to know everything, at least until they get to be teenagers. Then their parents are considered very stupid.
Government leaders and recognized experts are not expected to say they don’t know. And we have lived through a pandemic and then a political season where many of our leaders should have merely said: I don’t know.
Instead, they were confident about the value of masks and vaccines. They were confident that inflation was under control. They were confident about their proposed solutions to everything from rising crime rates to rising global temperatures.
Often these were merely opinions. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed, “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.”
That is why we need some skepticism and biblical discernment, especially when the so-called experts make such confident statements and predictions. Sometimes the best answer is merely: I don’t know.

Kerby Anderson
The term “equity” has caused great confusion, perhaps because many social justice warriors intend it to be ambiguous. Sometimes I have been told by my fellow Christians to stop criticizing DEI and equity because Christians should be for equality. Of course, that is not how the term is used.
We began to see its meaning during the pandemic. Noah Rothman reminds us that some public health experts talked about the notion of “grounding” vaccination access “in equity.” What that meant was to provide vaccinations first to the disadvantaged along with providing it to public servants.
Further back in line would be white people, which would include the elderly, who were at the greatest risk. According to one University of Pennsylvania ethicist, that was fine. “Older populations are whiter” because society “enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.”
The wildfires in Southern California provided another example. One newspaper editorial criticized the fact that some wealthy residents were able to hire their own firefighters but complained they didn’t suffer the same consequence of others. The real problem was the shortage of fire fighters, water, and common-sense fire management.
Heather Mac Donald addresses the use and misuse of equity in her book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. The subtitle of her book might seem like hyperbole until you dig into some of the stories she tells. The word equity shows up in science, medicine, music, and the criminal justice system.
We have seen this dangerous drift to equity. It is time for it to end.

Kerby Anderson
Here is a social statistic that should concern all Americans, and deserves attention from leaders in government, pastors in churches, and parents in the home. Young men are falling further behind. That is the title of a Wall Street Journal article by Rachel Wolfe.
“More women ages 25 to 34 have entered the workforce in recent years than ever. The share of young men in the labor market, meanwhile, hasn’t grown in a decade.” Place her statistics with another that I cited just a few months ago. America has 7 million young men (ages 25-54) who are not working and not looking for work.
One reason is attitude. Richard Reeves (president of American Institute for Boys and Men) explains, “The sense a lot of young men have is not being sure that they are needed or that they are going to be needed by their families, by their communities, by society.”
This leads to the phenomenon known as a failure to launch. “In Spanish, parents call it encaminado: making sure your children are on the path to an independent adulthood.” One in three young adults live with their parents. And young men are more likely to live with their parents than young women. Former Senator Ben Sasse wrote about this in his book, The Vanishing Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance.
Steven Malanga argues in his essay Unemployable that “a growing number of Americans aren’t simply out of a job. There are no longer fit for work.” Many young men do not have a good work ethic and haven’t been prepared by the schools for the labor market.
The crisis of young men in America deserves our attention. Government leaders and church leaders need to take note.

Kerby Anderson
Senator Rand Paul was on a TV interview with Larry Kudlow to talk about government spending. They began by acknowledging that we have a national debt of $36 trillion and a fiscal budget that needs to be brought under control.
Senator Paul believes the best benchmark is to only spend what comes into the federal treasury, but that hasn’t happened in decades. But he suggested that the first place to start would be to cut the hundreds of thousands of dollars allocated to study whether lonely rats use more cocaine than well-adjusted socialized rats. Or Senator Paul suggested we might cut the money allocated to study whether Japanese quail on cocaine are more sexually promiscuous. With a bit of sarcasm, he suggested there are a “few things we might be able to cut.”
Of course, these aren’t large cuts, which is why Larry Kudlow wanted to know if it were possible to save the money by not spending funds allocated but never used for COVID, or the Inflation Reduction Act, or even the CHIPS bill.
Senator Paul responded that there is a way to do this. It’s called recission. It was tried once in the Trump administration to send back $15 billion in unspent funds, but there were two Republicans who did not vote for it. He is convinced that perhaps now you could get 50 Republicans to vote for recission and cut $500 billion.
The other idea they discussed was impounding funds, but the Supreme Court ruled against President Nixon doing that. This current court might be willing to consider that process of impounding funds since it was done for more than a hundred years until the court ruled against Nixon in 1975.
There are ways to cut federal spending.

Kerby Anderson
In his last two presidential addresses, Joe Biden warned of the rise of oligarchs and the development of a tech-industrial complex. He reminded the nation of the farewell address of President Eisenhower, who spoke of a military industrial complex.
Noah Rothman observed that Democrats invented this “new bogeyman” only when some billionaires and Big Tech titans started to “support Republican politicians and their policy preferences.” He reminds us that Democrat leaders weren’t “all that vexed by ‘misinformation and disinformation’ when they were the ones improperly wielding the coercive power of the state.”
Victor Davis Hanson concluded that Biden’s attempt to copycat the warnings of Eisenhower failed because “to paraphrase a famous quip from 1988 Democratic vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, ‘President Biden, you’re no Dwight Eisenhower.’”
He also reminds us that “until November 2024, Biden had no problems with oligarchs. In fact, he courted and used them. And they, in turn, eagerly donated lavishly to his agenda.” Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did the bidding of the Biden campaign team in 2020 by pouring millions “into Biden-related PACs and voting groups to change voting laws.” In one of his last acts as president, Biden awarded George Soros with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Only now are these oligarchs dangerous because some voted for Trump, and a few will be working with the new administration. Big Tech has been guilty of censoring speech and promoting disinformation, but the former president and his party only noticed the problem when they were no longer in charge.

Kerby Anderson
Pornography and porn sites were the topic of the Supreme Court earlier this month. The key question was whether requiring age verification on a porn site violates the First Amendment.
Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is the case currently before the high court. Texas passed a law requiring porn purveyors to start using “reasonable age verification methods.” Other states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, Utah) have passed similar porn site age laws.
The Texas brief explains that the law “does not prevent adults from viewing pornography.” Instead, the law “requires online pornographers to take commercially reasonable steps to ensure that their customers are not children.”
The lead challenger in the case is the Free Speech Coalition. It is described as an “adult entertainment” industry group that argued that age verification is too great a burden on First Amendment rights. They also raised concerns about privacy and security risks.
Having a 21st century Supreme Court ruling on pornography is important. The court’s ruling in pornography and obscenity in Miller v. California came in 1973. Texas cites the case Ginsberg v. New York that dealt with selling magazines to minors, but that decision came down in 1968.
Technology has changed the world in the last two decades. Young people have access to pornography through computers and smartphones. The most recent survey found that a clear majority of children have a smartphone by age 11.
Here are two points I believe the justices should consider. First, children should be protected from the scourge of pornography. We know the dangers. Second, digital age verification is becoming common place. It places no significant burden on First Amendment rights.

Kerby Anderson
Charles Cooke recently asked, “Are Californians Near the Tipping Point?” He asked that question because of the reaction from many in Southern California to how politicians handled the devastating wildfires.
He begins by saying that he loves California and explains that he isn’t just saying that because he is about to criticize many of the political leaders in California. He devotes many sentences to list the many positives about the state and its citizens.
He then focuses on how California is badly run. He also says that isn’t just because he disagrees politically with California politicians. He explains that he doesn’t agree with the politics of Massachusetts, but he acknowledges that Massachusetts is “pretty solidly governed.”
With those two disclaimers out of the way, he concentrates on what California does poorly. The state “is run by people who are incompetent at the tasks of taxing and spending, passing and enforcing laws, representing their constituents, and dealing with emergencies.”
Put another way, “its politicians have forgotten how to do the basics. One can get away with a great deal of ideology, wastefulness, and self-indulgence if the schools are good, the roads are smooth, the police are allowed to do their jobs, the housing is affordable, and the natural disasters are addressed swiftly and sanely.”
Charles Cooke isn’t the only person wondering if California voters are at a tipping point. Of course, it is too early to tell if a disaster in 2025 will affect an election in 2026 or 2028. But we have seen how a poor performance in a presidential debate last year changed everything in the 2024 elections.
I predict that a big issue in future elections will be competence. Voters might be willing to get rid of incompetent politicians.

Kerby Anderson
Although Congress needs to reevaluate various programs like Social Security, it is unlikely it will do so for two reasons. First, it would be politically unwise to even modify any of the so-called “entitlement programs.” It is the third rail of American politics. Touch it and you die.
But the other reason isn’t political; it’s cultural. Americans have an expectation of retiring at age 65. Morgan Housel has a chart in his book The Psychology of Money that illustrates this. The labor force participation rate for men age 65+ was 78 percent in 1880 and only dropped to 58 percent by 1930. But Social Security changed all that. Today the labor force participation for men 65+ is 27 percent.
Social Security wasn’t intended to provide a pension for retirement. When Ida May Fuller cashed in the first Social Security check in 1940, it was for $22.54 (that would be $416 when adjusted for inflation).
Even before Social Security was implemented, many in the Western world began to believe retirement begins at age 65. Germany was the first nation to adopt an old-age insurance program. This was 70 years before President Roosevelt proposed the Social Security system we have today.
Some brave politicians have suggested we might at least raise the age of retirement. As Morgan Housel reminds us that “It was not until the 1980s that the idea that everyone deserves, and should have, a dignified retirement took hold.” But also reminds us that the 401(k) didn’t exist until 1978, and the Roth IRA was not implemented until 1998.
Congress needs to address the financial concerns about the future of Social Security, but politics and cultural expectations make it hard to do so.

Kerby Anderson
Yesterday, I talked about some of the transformations in 1776 that Andrew Wilson discussed in his book, Remaking the World. They are identified by the acronym WEIRDER. W stands for “western” and globalization while E stands for “educated” and the Enlightenment.
I stands for “industrialized” and focuses on the industrial revolution. One event was James Watt’s invention of the steam engine. Western society no longer depended upon muscle power or horsepower.
R stands for “rich” and focuses on the “great enrichment.” Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations in 1776. The industrial revolution and capitalism led to a significant increase in life expectancy and the rise of social development.
D stands for “democratic” and focuses on the American Revolution. Of course, the Declaration of Independence was ratified in 1776, and the Constitution starts with “We the people.” This Spirit of 76 has spread throughout the world.
E stands for “ex-Christian” and focuses on the rejection of Christianity. During this time, we see the rise of deism, agnosticism, and atheism. Although some believed the Bible, many others rejected the biblical view of God and the authority of the Bible.
R stands for “romantic” and focuses on the romantic revolution. This is when Rousseau developed the concept of self and expressive individualism. And the seeds of the sexual revolution in the 20th century were first sown in 1776.
Andrew Wilson catalogues these transformations but also believes there are many opportunities for Christians and the church in what is becoming a post-secular world. We need to speak truth into this post-Christian culture.

Kerby Anderson
The year 1776 changed the western world in significant ways. That is the conclusion of Andrew Wilson (pastor at King’s Church in London) in his book, Remaking the World. He was on my radio program to discuss his book.
He explains, “The big idea of this book is that 1776, more than any other year in the last millennium, is the year that made us who we are.” He describes it as “a year that witnessed seven transformations taking place—globalization, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enrichment, the American Revolution, the rise of post-Christianity, and the dawn of Romanticism.”
He describes this society as one that, “relative to others past and present, is WEIRDER. Each letter is an acronym (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, and Romantic). He concludes that “The vast majority of people in human history have not shared our views of work, family, government, religion, sex, identity, or morality.”
W stands for “western” and focuses on the issue of globalization. One key event is the voyage of Captain James Cook. His travels generated certain questions like: Why were some natives more advanced than others? Western society began to get to the deep roots of culture and wondered why Western society developed before other cultures.
E stands for “educated” and focuses on the impact of the Enlightenment. Obviously, the Enlightenment started nearly a century before, but one high point was 1776. That was the year that Immanuel Kant drafted his Critique of Pure Reason and the year that Edward Gibbon published his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Tomorrow we will look at other events in 1776 that led to the remaking our of world.