Viewpoints with Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
Now that the 2024 election is in the rearview mirror, there are some steps we need to take to improve our future elections. Much of this needed to be done four years ago, but anytime you talked about improving our electoral process, you were usually accused of trying to change the election. Now that this election was more decisive, it provides an opportunity to make some needed changes.
That’s why I invited Hans von Spakovsky to come on my radio program. He was a member of the Federal Election Commission, is the senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and is the manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative.
When he is asked about the state of election integrity, he responds that we are in better shape nationally than we were last time, but much depends on what state you live in and vote in. Sadly, he also pointed out there is also a problem with state attorneys general and secretaries of state who are unwilling to enforce good state election laws.
On my program, he talked about the fact that he often is tasked with briefing European election observers. They are shocked and astounded to find out that two states with some of the nation’s largest populations do NOT require ID to vote.
Every state has work to do. He has put together an “Election Integrity Scorecard” that analyzed all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It provided an assessment of laws, regulations, and administrative practices of each state. He reported that no state scored 100 when he launched the Scorecard, and that is still the case.
Our goal for elections in this country should be “to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.” Before the next important election, let’s get to work.

Kerby Anderson
The election of Donald Trump will advance the cause of religious liberty. That is the conclusion of First Liberty President Kelly Shackelford. On my radio program he talked about Trump policies in his first term that offer hope for the future of religious liberty and then quoted from the speech Trump gave at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention.
We’ve provided a link to an article with a complete list of policies, along with a link to a video by Kelly Shackelford. Here are just a few reasons why the future of religious liberty in this country looks bright.
Former President Trump’s executive orders on religious liberty made a difference when he was in office. His 2017 Executive Order on Protecting Religious Liberty was able to advance religious freedom across all federal executive agencies. His 2019 Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism prohibited discrimination against Jewish communities and believers.
Kelly Shackelford also talked about the establishment of the HHS Conscience and Religious Freedom division. One of his former employees was able to direct the agency’s efforts to protect religious freedom and people of faith in the healthcare industry.
What will a Trump administration do in the future? Trump’s speech at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention delineated seven major actions.
One was the development of a Religious Liberty Task Force. Trump explained that he would “create a new federal task force [to fight] anti-Christian bias” and it would “investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America.” He also promised he would protect Christians, religious symbols, and religious expression and speech.
The election of Donald Trump is good news for those of us concerned about the future of religious liberty in America.

Kerby Anderson
Donald Trump won, and Kamala Harris lost, for many reasons. Certainly, the economy was one of the major reasons. Pundits and economists tried to tell the voters that the economy was doing just fine. The voters didn’t agree. Neither did the financial markets. Stocks rose immediately the moment it was obvious that Trump won.
The editors of The Wall Street Journal argued that the stock market rally suggested “a groundswell of growth optimism. Voters have taken off the table a big tax increase and continued regulatory barrage.” Voters and investors were fearful of looming higher taxes and had already seen enough of a regulatory assault that took place under Biden-Harris.
The editors do warn that stocks could fall in the future if the Trump policies turn out to be a disappointment. Concern over tariffs might be the next concern on Wall Street and on main street. But those concerns pale in comparison to the last few years of the highest inflation in 40 years and lower real wages. If you run the numbers, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings remain lower than when President Biden took office.
Inflation wasn’t the only issue; so were interest rates. High interest rates made it even more difficult to buy a home or to afford a new car. The average mortgage payment doubled over the last four years. “The bottom 40 percent of earners accounted for 6 percent of new auto purchases last year, compared to 18 percent in 2019.”
Millions of voters who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020 voted for him this time. A significant percentage of them “never voted for a Republican for President in their lives.” They were ready to say bye to Bidenomics.

Penna Dexter
It’s been a long time since conservatives expected fair and balanced coverage of elections by the legacy media. But the Left counts on traditional news outlets to tip the scales with favorable coverage of its candidates and issues.
True to form, major outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS covered the 2024 campaigns and handled debates and interviews in the biased way they always do. But in this election, the media’s failure to provide truthful and fair coverage hurt the Left.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel writes, “So long as the left is pointing fingers, let it direct a big, fat digit at the outfit that played the biggest role in losing it the election: the U.S. media.”
We cannot place the media in one overarching category. The Journal itself is legacy media, but its editorial page skews right. Today, Americans have numerous media outlets to choose from.
And so do candidates.
Even The Washington Post points out that “Trump and his surrogates saw incredible value in tapping into a podcast ecosystem that has large numbers of young male listeners who otherwise might have skipped casting ballots.“
Meanwhile much of the media ignored, and expected voters to ignore, border chaos, higher prices, and especially President Biden’s decline. As Kim Strassel points out: “In a world with a competent press, Mr. Biden’s failing constitution would have been front page news.” Instead, the legacy media cooperated with the Democrats in covering it up. If they had done a better job reporting on it, there would have been time to hold a primary which “would have produced a tested nominee.”
Big shock: Americans didn’t buy narratives like “we’re experiencing one of the strongest economies ever” or “crime is falling.”
First Amendment freedoms include the press because the press is meant to provide politicians with “gut checks as to how their policies sit with the nation.” Traditional news outlets face a reckoning.

Kerby Anderson
Ned Ryun begins his article with these questions: What if I told you that the President of the United States doesn’t really run our government? Or that most people in Washington, D.C., don’t really believe in representative democracy? Or that a government of, by, and for the people is just an illusion?
His article and his book, American Leviathan: The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism, explains that we have moved from a republic to an un-American administrative state. He calls it a slow regime change or a gradual coup that is undermining our Constitution and our Constitutional Republic. It has undercut the original intent of the Constitution. It has eroded our freedoms. It has undermined our civil liberties.
Back to his original questions. The administrative state calls into question who is governing our country. We have seen this in the last few years of the Biden administration. So many of us wondered who was making the important decisions, since it seemed obvious to most of us that the president wasn’t up to the task mentally.
Ned Ryun provides the history that goes back to the Progressive movement led by Woodrow Wilson. The goal was to build a massive bureaucracy filled with unelected bureaucrats who were separated from political accountability. These elites would govern our country. They rejected the idea of a rights-based government because it was too limited in size and scope. That is why today we have a sprawling federal bureaucracy.
He argues that the president and Congress need to break apart the Administrative State and return legislative powers back to the Article I branch of government. To put it in simple terms, it is time to “drain the swamp.” If this is to happen, we need more than slogans. We need action.

Kerby Anderson
Elon Musk noted on X that giving more money to homelessness charities in California did not seem to reduce the number of homeless people. In response, Konstantin Kisin reminded him about the Cobra Effect and was surprised to discover how many people hadn’t heard of it.
The Cobra Effect is based on a story which may or may not have taken place during British colonial rule in India. According to the story, the British wanted to reduce the cobra population and offered a bounty for every dead cobra. But the cobra problem got worse because people realized they could profit from this bounty and began raising cobras in farms. When the government became aware of this practice, they discontinued the bounty program. The cobra breeders released their now worthless snakes into the wild making the problem worse.
In the past, I’ve talked about how the Cobra Effect surfaced in the attempt to combat racism. Anti-racist groups and organizations formed to combat racism. But they soon faced a problem. The demand to find racism was much larger than the supply. Soon we were hearing about microaggressions, and the charge of racism was thrown around indiscriminately.
The problem of homelessness in California, Kisin argues, came not only from the “attempts to deal with it failing, but was also the result of well-intentioned policies, the deinstitutionalization movement, whose goal was to free people of the tyranny of mental asylums.” The mentally ill people released into the streets fell through the cracks. Today cities are littered with tents and drug addicts on the streets.
These are just two examples of many others that remind us that good intentions don’t always solve social problems.

Kerby Anderson
The U.S. dollar has lost half of its purchasing power in just the last 30 years. Put another way, that means that one dollar today can only buy 50 cents worth of goods and services compared to the 1990s. In less than a single generation, the dollars in your wallet or purse can only buy half as much.
Once you understand that depressing statistic, you can also begin to see why the wealth gap in this country is increasing. If you have your wealth sitting in cash (bank accounts, checking accounts, etc.), you are losing ground. However, if you have your wealth in investments (stocks, housing, land, etc.), you are doing much better.
Thirty years ago, a dollar would allow you to buy two apples. Today, a dollar will only allow you to buy one apple. By contrast, if you use that dollar (and many others with it) to buy stock, the value of the stock is worth twice as much because it takes twice as many dollars to purchase it.
This problem isn’t just affecting young Americans who would like to buy a house. It is also affecting seniors who put their savings in pensions and retirement plans. They are becoming aware that the money they set aside in their retirement plans has not kept up with inflation and there won’t be enough for them because of the dollar’s declining value.
This simple illustration helps focus on the real problem facing America in the future. The dollar is broken simply because more and more of it is being printed each year. Yes, we can lower the cost of living some by increasing energy production. Yes, protecting American markets will provide more jobs for the American people.
But we need to fix the money. Until we do so, the problem I just illustrated will be worse for the American consumer.

Kerby Anderson
Last week, six states voted on pot initiatives, and more are certain to come in the next election. In previous commentaries, I have noted that the push for legalization of marijuana has come at a time when we know more about the dangers of cannabis than we knew a few decades ago. In a recent Breakpoint commentary, John Stonestreet concludes that “The Pot Experiment Has Been a Disaster.” It has been a disaster, for many reasons.
The first reason is potency. Ann Colter’s recent column reminds us that “It’s Not Your Father’s Pot Anymore.” When I was growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the kids around me were using marijuana that had about 2-3 percent THC. Today the marijuana sold at cannabis dispensaries can have 15-25 percent THC. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that about 30 percent of cannabis users will become addicted, especially if they start before age 18.
Health and safety are another reason. Just look at the statistics from states that have participated in this rushed social experiment to legalize marijuana. Increases in car crashes along with property crimes and violent crimes followed legalization. In Colorado (the first state to legalize recreational marijuana), marijuana DUIs increased. And 40 percent of stoned drivers were under the age of 18.
A third reason is mental health. I received lots of pushback the first time I did a radio program with a guest documenting the link between marijuana use and schizophrenia. That shouldn’t even be controversial now, since there is a new study from Denmark that found that 30 percent of schizophrenia cases could be linked to marijuana use.
Each year more states are legalizing marijuana. But just because cannabis is becoming legal doesn’t mean it is a good policy for individuals or for society.

Kerby Anderson
While most Americans were focused on the election, the BRICS nations had a conference in Russia that we should not ignore. In case you are wondering, BRICS is an acronym for some of the world’s leading emerging market economies. BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
At the conference, there were 9 members and 13 new “partner nations” who were accepted. That means that the GDP of the BRICS nations is now greater than the GDP of the G7 nations. The population of the BRICS nations is more than 3 billion.
Some pundits have wondered if a BRICS currency would threaten the status of the dollar. Until recently, the assumption has been that would be unlikely since the diversity of the various foreign economies. They wouldn’t likely settle on one currency.
But Matthew Sigel (Head of Digital Assets Research, VanEck) reminds us that three of the new members are now mining bitcoin with government resources. He explained that there is an urgency in the BRICS nations to find some way to circumvent the irresponsible US fiscal policy. Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund is going to invest in a regional initiative to build bitcoin mining and to build AI infrastructure throughout the BRICS nations with the goal of being able to settle global trade in bitcoin.
Sigel predicts that when President Putin dies, some of these countries may reintegrate into the world’s financial system. He says these BRICS countries will be trading with bitcoin and then wonders what the US will be doing at that time.
The US dollar has been the world’s primary reserve currency for over 60 years. Now, these countries are pursuing a policy of de-dollarization that will reduce the use of dollars in world trade and financial transactions. Congress and the incoming president need to take note.

Penna Dexter
Election day was almost upon us — the editorial endorsing Kamala Harris had already been written — when William Lewis, CEO and Publisher of The Washington Post announced the paper would not be endorsing a presidential candidate, ending a 50-year tradition of doing so.
Immediately after the announcement, The Post began bleeding subscribers — 250,000 of them within four days. Several staff members resigned in protest. Longtime opinion writer Ruth Marcus titled her column, “The Post, the wrong choice at the worst possible time.”
Owner Jeff Bezos wrote his own column explaining that The Post can no longer ignore polling that reveals falling public trust in journalists and the media. “What presidential endorsements do,” he wrote, “is create a perception of bias.” He said, “Ending them is a principled decision.” Other newspapers — The LA Times and USA Today – took the same action citing awareness of their own “lack of credibility.”
The Washington Post is not profitable and is becoming less so. Subscribers are turning to smaller, independent news outlets and social media. But, to do good investigative reporting, a news organization needs a large infrastructure. Covering the U.S. government takes a huge staff. The Post has these things. But, Mr. Bezos wrote, his paper and The New York Times “talk only to a certain elite” and increasingly “only to ourselves.” It would be good to have a centrist DC-based paper. If The Washington Post took serious steps away from its role as purveyor of leftist propaganda, it would be better for all of us.
Mr. Bezos also reportedly told The Post’s management it needs to hire more conservative columnists. Radio host Erick Erickson suggested that, if Mr. Bezos is serious about creating a balance, the paper should also add conservative editors and reporters “to break the leftwing worldview infused into the news product they produce.”
It would take deep structural and ideological shifts for The Washington Post to shed its reputation for extreme bias.

Kerby Anderson
The crisis of men and boys is well known and well documented. My radio interviews with Dr. Warren Farrell about his book, The Boy Crisis is but one example. Jordan Peterson has been speaking and writing about his concerns for many years. The latest warning comes from a David Brooks op-ed in the New York Times and the publication of a new book by Richard Reeves, Of Boys and Men.
For example, boys are struggling in the classroom. “American girls are 14 percentage points more likely to be ‘school ready’ than boys at age 5, controlling for parental characteristics.”
“Men are struggling in the workplace. One in three American men with only a high school diploma — 10 million men — is now out of the labor force.” And men are also struggling physically. They account for nearly three out of four “deaths of despair” (suicide and drug overdoses) in our country.
The new book by Richard Reeves provides more concerning documentation of a crisis of men and boys. One surprising finding was the boys are much more hindered by challenging environments like poverty or broken homes. He also explains that the many policies and programs designed to promote social mobility work for women, but not for men. For example, government programs like early childhood education produced significant gains for women but did not for men.
When we had a roundtable discussion of these issues, we concluded that these authors did a good job of identifying the problems but could not offer a solution to a society still searching for a “modern masculine ideal.” Therefore, pastors and men in the church need to provide a biblical foundation for manhood and must teach it to the boys and men in the church. We need a biblical answer to a major crisis in our culture.

Kerby Anderson
Twenty years ago, I did an interview with Bernard Goldberg on his book, Bias. I bring it up because his analysis has stood the test of time. At the time, he was the first media insider to reveal what many of us suspected about the background and attitudes of the people who determine what you read, see, and hear in the media. There were other studies (like the Lichter-Rothman studies) that also provided insight. But Bernard Goldberg’s book provided lots of information and an important perspective.
His perspective was helpful because it set aside the idea that media bias was part of some liberal conspiracy. He said: “There isn’t a well-orchestrated, vast left-wing conspiracy in America’s newsrooms.” Instead, he said that “the bitter truth” is worse. Essentially what we have in “the mainstream media” is a common worldview that is promoted in the newsrooms and promoted in the way news stories are covered.
Various studies of the media elite conclude that the people who determine what is newsworthy and how it is covered are very different from the rest of the American public. Let’s look at some examples.
Polling data of political parties shows that the United States is about evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. But when you ask journalists to identify their political party, you only find that 4 percent of them identify themselves as Republican.
One study found that members of the media when compared to the public at large are less likely to get married and have children. They are less likely to own homes. And they are less likely to go to church or synagogue. How many of the journalists polled belonged to the American Legion or service organizations like the Rotary Club? The answer was zero.
Twenty years later, Bernard Goldberg’s book still reminds us that the media elite views the world differently than the average American.

Kerby Anderson
Many colleges and universities have speech codes and other policies that narrow the realms of permissible speech. And what started on campus has made its way to the broader society.
This was a topic on my radio program when one day I was interviewing the president of a Christian college and the next day I was interviewing Nadine Strossen (former president of the ACLU). Both were against the suppression of speech even though they come from different political perspectives.
Erwin Lutzer, in his new book No Reason to Hide, devotes part of a chapter to how words and policies suppress speech. He believes that word control will lead to thought control. It puts parameters around what people can say.
One university posted a list of offensive words. Students and faculty must stop using words and phrases like picnic, trigger warning, and even rule of thumb. Other words that have been flagged in society include freshman, victim, survivor, addict, disabled person, policeman, and many others.
I believe we should be sensitive to words that could be harmful to another person. But I would also agree with Erwin Lutzer that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) goes too far because it wants baseball to ban the word “bullpen” out of a consideration for the bovine species.
Word suppression leads to verbal suppression and self-censorship. One survey discovered that nearly two-thirds (62%) of Americans said that “the political climate today keeps them from expressing their beliefs.” An even higher percentage (77%) of conservatives “feel compelled to keep their beliefs to themselves.”
We should support free speech and criticize attempts to suppress speech through speech codes or social intimidation.

Kerby Anderson
Today is Election Day, and two important questions might or might not be resolved tonight. The first question is: Who will win the election? Given our experience four years ago, the answer might not be obvious. The second question is: How peaceful will be our transition of power? Again, our experience four years ago is reason to be concerned about that.
In 1960, there were questions about whether John F. Kennedy won the presidency fairly. Rumors quickly spread that voting in Illinois and Texas had been manipulated. Perhaps the narrow margin of victory (112,000 votes) indicated that the vote total should be challenged. Richard Nixon conceded the election because he said, “our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.”

In 2000, George W. Bush led Al Gore in Florida after the first results were tallied. Because the vote was so close, a statewide recount was implemented. The machine count was even closer, so a legal battle developed.
Those of you who are older probably remember the debate over the “hanging chads.” The case finally reached the Supreme Court which ruled the hand recounts unconstitutional and essentially declared Bush the winner. Al Gore then conceded by saying, “While I strongly disagree with the Court’s decision, I accept it.”
In 2016, Donald Trump won three swing states by a mere 77,744 votes. In 2020, Joe Biden won three swing states by 42,844 votes. Controversy surrounded both elections. If the voting is close again, the election results may go into overtime.
Will we have a clear winner, or will we have to wait days or even weeks to find out? And will there be controversy over this election? We will know in a few hours.

Kerby Anderson
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment practices have been in the news for some time. But there is growing evidence that the popularity of ESG mandates is fading.
Alison Schrager writes that “The ESG Bubble is Bursting.” Sure, individuals would like to invest in corporations that reflect their values, but she says, “what counts as virtuous is rarely cut and dried.”
Vivek Ramaswamy warns “How Woke Capital Politicizes Your Retirement.” He explains that politics have quickly come to dominate index funds. When you buy an index fund that is managed by these big fund managers, “you’re promoting ESG objectives whether you want to or not.”
Mark Joffe argues in his op-ed that ESG investment practices “distract investors and corporate management from maximizing long-term profitability.” It diverts from priorities that align with increased productivity and focuses on a “shifting array of inconsistently defined social-impact criteria.” That is why he concludes that “ESG is Bad for the Economy.”
Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld and Former US Attorney General William Barr argue that “ESG Can’t Square with Fiduciary Duty.” They cite a letter written by nineteen state attorneys general warning that the ESG used by one of the fund managers appears to involve “rampant violations of the sole interest rule a well-established legal principle.”
Focusing our attention and investments on companies that are concerned about the environment and their social responsibility may sound like a good idea. But the number of articles coming out is a reminder to all of us that often the details in a policy matter.

Penna Dexter
A false abortion narrative lives in our presidential politics.
The narrative is that state restrictions on abortion passed since the Dobbs decision in 2022 are placing women in serious danger. Supposedly hospitals, fearing they’ll run afoul of state law, are refusing to treat women for miscarriages or abortion complications.
Abortion advocates, including our vice president, blame the Supreme Court for the death of Amber Thurman, age 28, following a medication abortion. She was 9 weeks pregnant with twins.
Medication abortions accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in 2023. The sustained growth in the use of the abortion pill since it was approved in 2000 is due, in large part, to the FDA’s progressive easing of restrictions on its use. (Many medical experts contend the FDA did not adequately study its safety.) The FDA approved the 2-drug regimen to be used during the first seven weeks of pregnancy and, in 2016, extended the requirement to 10 weeks’ gestation and allowed non-physicians to prescribe the drugs. In 2021 the Biden administration eliminated the requirement that women seeking a medical abortion be evaluated in person by a medical professional.
A Wall Street Journal editorial states the obvious:

“Thurman’s death affirms what antiabortion activists have argued: that the two-pill abortion regimen is far more dangerous than its advocates claim.”

Since Georgia’s abortion law bans abortions after six weeks gestation, Amber Thurman, made an appointment at a North Carolina clinic for a surgical abortion. She arrived too late for the appointment. Rather than reschedule the surgical abortion, Amber opted to begin a medical abortion. She took the first pill and drove back to Georgia. At home, days later, she vomited and passed out. She was taken to a Stockbridge, Georgia hospital. The babies had no heartbeat. Standard treatment involves an antibiotic and a DNC, but it was hours before Amber received either. She died of sepsis.
No court decision or law prevented her timely treatment.

Kerby Anderson
For centuries, marriage was defined as one man and one woman. But various states and then the Supreme Court in its controversial 5-4 decision ruled that every state must recognize same-sex marriage. That was not the end of the debate. The House of Representatives recently passed the deceptively named Respect for Marriage Act to codify the Supreme Court decision.
There are many good reasons to reject the concept of same-sex marriage, which I recount in our Point of View booklet on a Biblical Point of View on Same Sex Marriage. Many of those arguments that were cited before the 2015 Supreme Court decision are now coming to fruition. And we don’t have to guess how the redefinition of marriage will affect religious liberty. We have seen it play out in the courts.
Nevertheless, a greater percentage of Americans now support same-sex marriage. When Gallup first began tracking support for same-sex marriage in 1996 a quarter of Americans (27%) backed legalization. The most recent poll found that seven in ten (71%) believe same-sex marriage should be recognized by law as valid.
This significant shift illustrates three important points. First, activists presented same-sex marriage as “marriage equality” as illustrated by the bumper sticker that merely had an “equals” sign. Second, Americans tend to take their cues from what is legal. Third, most pastors need to explain the importance of the biblical definition of marriage.
One group of Americans that does still oppose legalized same-sex marriage are weekly churchgoers. In fact, approval for same-sex marriage in this group has fallen a few percentage points in the last few years. By contrast, Americans who seldom or never attend church are much more likely to support same-sex marriage.
That is why pastors must remind their congregation of what the Bible says about marriage, and why it is still important in the 21st century.

Kerby Anderson
Erwin Lutzer calls for Christians to take a bold stand for Christ in a collapsing culture in his new book No Reason to Hide. He says we should not be complicit with the culture, nor should we be complacent in the culture. Instead, we should be courageous.
He identifies all sorts of threats coming at Christians from the culture. Most of them are from outside the church, though some have made their way inside the church. One chapter was surprising to me. He focused our attention on the issue of self-worship.
Erwin Lutzer uses an illustration he heard from John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center, that illustrated the modern self-movement. Suppose that you are lost and have a compass that points to true north. That means you can figure the direction in which you are walking. But let’s now suppose you have a magnet in your backpack that causes the compass to always point to you. Without a point of reference, you have no idea of which direction you are heading. This is an apt metaphor for self-worship today.
He also quotes Carl Trueman and his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. I did an interview with him when the book came out and have been encouraged to see how many Christians are reading his book. He explains how Sigmund Freud’s drive for sexuality was combined with Karl Marx’s quest for political power.
Sex is now politics. Our modern society now associates sexual freedom with political freedom. Therefore, the great sin in our culture is repression of our sexual desires. That is why Christianity, the church, and the Bible are seen as enemies that must be overthrown. That is why we Christians find ourselves in a society of self-worship promoting sexual freedom.

Kerby Anderson
Once students were back in school, Jeremy Adams decided to write a five-part series that proposed ideas for fixing American education. What I found so surprising was how many of his ideas had less to do with teachers and the classroom. For example, his first idea was to “ban cell phones in class once and for all.”
When he was a guest on a radio program recently, he described what he called “one of the seismic changes to classroom life since the birth of the cell phone era.” Notice what happens when students are given a few minutes of free time at the end of the class period. In the past, the classroom was filled with juvenile chatter, nervous movement, or youthful gossip. Instead, the class is transformed into a silent void with everyone looking at their phone.
More and more teachers have arrived at the conclusion that cell phones in the hands of teens (and pre-teens) is nothing less than a metastasizing generational cancer. He reports that “teachers are fed up. They are tired of students playing video games and watching TikTok videos in the middle of class. They are sick of the incessant cheating. They are sick of students who feign engagement but still have earbuds playing music throughout the entire class period. They are exhausted from having to repeat themselves multiple times because attention spans have been hijacked.”
Fortunately, school districts are setting policies that will make a difference. One school district he mentions requires students to lock up their devices in a magnetically sealed pouch during the school day. One state is considering a bill to ban phones on buses and inside classrooms.
These are all positive steps. In previous commentaries, I’ve talked about the impact these digital devices are having in schools, businesses, and at home. This is one positive step toward fixing American education.

Kerby Anderson
At a time when we are experiencing significant inflation, Jeff Booth argues in his book, The Price of Tomorrow, that we should be seeing deflation. His argument is simple: Technology is deflationary. That is the nature of technology.
Think of how much a flat-screen TV cost when it first hit the market. What does it cost today? One example he uses is his first cell phone (which was a Motorola 8000). “It had thirty minutes of talk time before it needed to be charged for ten to twelve hours, and it cost about $2,000.”
“Our economic systems were not built for a world driven by technology where prices keep falling. They were built for a pre-technology era where labor and capital were inextricably linked, an era that counted on growth and inflation, an era where we made money from scarcity and inefficiency.” We should be experiencing deflation, which is a world where you get more for your money. But we have inflation due to money printing and the declining value of the dollar.
He also documents the ever-changing world due to technology. Blockbuster, at the height of its popularity, had more than 84,000 employees and more than 9,000 stores. But the leadership didn’t see the rate of technological advancement that provided instantaneous digital delivery. No longer did consumers have to walk in the door to rent a video.
He wrote the book to start a conversation. His numerous examples remind us that technology is moving quickly and changing our world. We may be enjoying the benefits of the digital technological revolution, but we certainly aren’t seeing deflation. Sadly, we live in a present world of rising costs and inflation.