Viewpoints with Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
Most Americans believe we should have a color-blind society. That was the direction the country was moving until a few anti-color-blind advocates promoted antiracism and critical race theory.
Professor Andre Archie has written about The Virtue of Color-Blindness. He reminds us that the Declaration and the Constitution rest upon the idea that all are created equal. That includes all Americans, regardless of race. In the 1850s, the Frederick Douglass wing of the abolition movement made their case for a color-blind reading of America’s founding documents.
Today there are advocates that highlight racial and cultural differences, which divide this country further. Andre Archie argues that this type of alienation has its roots in a hatred of this country. He uses a term coined by Roger Scruton that illustrates this alienation. It is oikophobia, which is a combination of two Greek words: oikos means home and phobia means fear.
People who suffer from this hate their host country. This attitude has been facilitated by the Left and by these so-called antiracists. The success of a white person is due to systemic racism. And the lack of achievement by a black person is due to discrimination and systemic racism. He explains that this view stokes racial consciousness and thus, resentment.
He also is surprised that his fellow African Americans aren’t more confident. They are some of the oldest Americans. They had a cultural presence in America since its colonial period and should feel proud and patriotic.
His book reminds us of the foundational principles of this republic and illustrates why we need to return to them.

Kerby Anderson
Yesterday while talking about the World Economic Forum and the gathering of global elites at Davos, Switzerland, I mentioned the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The term has been used to describe the remarkable changes in our world that have already taken place and will take place in the future. Here is how one article (Everything You Need to Know About the Fourth Industrial Revolution) describes the history.
The First Industrial Revolution started in Britain around 1760 and was powered by the steam engine. The Second Industrial Revolution came roughly one century later and was characterized by mass production in new industries like steel, oil, and electricity. The Third Industrial Revolution started in the 1960s and has given us personal computers and the Internet. It also opened the way to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which includes big data, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
Klaus Schwab is the head of the World Economic Forum. He believes that these technological changes will have a disruptive impact on the social, political, and economic areas of our lives. Their printed materials predict that the Fourth Industrial Revolution “represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work, and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second, and third industrial revolutions.”
Who is going to guide this new industrial revolution? The global elites who gather at Davos, Switzerland have an answer: they are. These leaders in government and business are discussing these important issues, while members of Congress, the Parliament, and other legislative bodies seem to be ignoring them.
It’s time for our elected leaders to get in the game, and it’s time for all of us to speak out.

Kerby Anderson
Earlier this month, leaders from all over the world descended on Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. Before the first speech was given, the perennial debate about its importance began.
Noah Rothman has noticed that people who tend to be paranoid believe this “international gathering of elites is a threat.” But he is convinced that “these masters of the universe make profound embarrassments of themselves.” He illustrates his lack of concern about these meetings by reminding us that “green-energy advocates have been pressuring the developing world to eschew fossil fuels for decades, only to be scrupulously ignored.”
On the other hand, Glenn Beck, in his book Dark Future, recognizes that “in the coming years, advancements in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain technologies, bioengineering, automation, the metaverse, and countless other areas will change the human race in unprecedented ways.”
Discussions about these important issues take place at the World Economic Forum and are too often absent in the legislatures of modern nations. The leaders who gather in Davos are talking about such concepts as the Great Reset and an emerging Fourth Industrial Revolution. We shouldn’t ignore their discussions
Dr. Kevin Roberts is the President of the Heritage Foundation and wrote about “Why I Am Going to Davos.” He told them that “trust must be earned” and that the “global elites have not merely failed on that score. They have squandered the vast reserves of credibility they inherited from their institutional predecessors.”
The current debate about the significance of Davos reminds us that we shouldn’t ignore these global elites and we shouldn’t assume they are unstoppable. It’s time for all of us to speak out against their global demands.

Penna Dexter
Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei delivered a warning to business and political leaders gathered last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Through a translator, he told an audience of global elites: “the Western world is in danger,” and he didn’t mean from climate change. He explained that those whose responsibility it is “to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty. “
He said free markets and entrepreneurs, not the state, are the “benefactors” of societies.
This was a courageous message delivered at an annual meeting where global planners favor top-down variants of socialism. But President Milei insists that socialism, wherever it’s tried, is impoverishing.
He pointed to the path his country has taken. Argentina’s economy fell from among the world’s largest at the beginning of the 20th century to one of the world’s worst, largely due to its embrace of socialism.  “We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world — rather they are the root cause.”
President Milei accepted his 11-point victory as a mandate to overhaul Argentina’s economy, including its 211-percent inflation that has devastated citizens’ purchasing power.
This was Javier Milei’s first trip overseas since taking office last month. He said he “came to invite the rest of the countries of the Western world to get back on the path of prosperity.”
He blasted radical feminism, which he says is “ridiculous and anti-natural” and stated that, once communism failed, climate alarmism became the tool global socialists use for control.  He decried their advocacy of “population control mechanisms and the bloody abortion agenda.” Though he lives a libertine lifestyle and calls himself a “radical libertarian,” he insists life begins at conception and abortion is murder.
President Milei must administer “shock therapy” in Argentina. It will hurt. Let’s watch it work.

Kerby Anderson
Thirty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a landmark essay “Defining Deviancy Down.” In case you are not familiar with him, Moynihan was an educator, counselor to the president, ambassador, diplomat, and four-term US senator from New York. He was a well-respected leader in the Democratic party but was also willing to challenge programs and policies he thought were detrimental.
When he wrote his essay, the rise in crime, the breakdown of the family, and even the rise in mental illness had reached significant levels. He argued that the only way the culture learned to deal with these social problems was to deny their existence. In other words, define deviance down.
Whenever I mention his essay during a speech, I immediately turn to Isaiah 5:20 where God says woe to those “who call evil good.” The values in Israel at that time were inverted. That was an apt description thirty years ago and a relevant description today.
But that was only part of the problem. Columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote an essay with the title, “Defining Deviancy Up.” He argued that in addition to making deviant social behavior seem normal, there were others in society making the normal seem deviant. Large areas of behavior we used to respect were now criticized.
Go back to Isaiah 5:20. The first part talks about those “who call evil good” and the second part of the verse condemns those “who call good evil.”
We live in a world with inverted values. Many in our secular culture call “evil good” and “good evil.” That’s why we should follow the command in Colossians 2:8 and “see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy.”

Kerby Anderson
You may have noticed when someone criticizes you, often they are criticizing you for their own behavior. Sigmund Freud described this as “projection.” Another person “projects” their own motives or behaviors on you as a way of coping with their own problems.
We also see this in the political world, which is why on radio I often attribute many of the political comments these days to projection. Politicians are often guilty of condemning their opponent’s behavior when they are just as guilty of it themselves.
Columnist Robert Knight recently wrote about how projection and denial have become the way this president and his administration engage the political process. Projection is used to blame problems on the other party and candidates.
Denial is another Freudian concept. That occurs when someone dismisses external reality and formulates his or her own “truth.” Robert Knight concludes, “Both disorders are not only rampant among America’s political left but have become tools in their war on common sense, truth, and decency.”
He goes on to explain that these two disorders have significant consequences in our political discourse. “By painting opponents as ‘threats to democracy,’ they issue a license to would-be tyrants at all levels of government to silence speech.” He goes on to provide lots of examples from speeches by the president along with actions by many within his administration.
I might mention he is not the only pundit talking about this. For example, Columnist Victor Davis Hanson writes about how the president is arguing that he is “saving democracy” while at the same time “destroying democracy.” Many of his examples can be found in the attempts to keep Donald Trump off the ballots of some states.
During this election year, a wise voter should be aware of projection and denial when listening to the candidates.

Kerby Anderson
I have suggested that this year might be the year of the “third party.” To understand the impact of third-party candidates, let’s review their history and talk about how they have affected presidential elections.
When John Quincy Adams ran against Andrew Jackson in 1824, America was still a multi-party system. The Reform candidate William Crawford and Southern Democrat Henry Clay cost Jackson electoral votes in key states.
Once in American history, a third party won the White House. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln led a new party (known as the Republican Party) to victory over three other candidates. He won (with less than 40 percent of the vote) simply because the two-party-system fell apart. Quickly this new third party became one of the two dominant parties.
Three elections in the last half century once again have shown how a third-party candidate can change an election. In a close election in 1968, Richard Nixon was able to defeat Hubert Humphrey with help from American independent George Wallace who took 46 electoral votes.
In 1992 Ross Perot received nearly 19 percent of the popular vote. Many believe he may have cost George Bush the election. A change of about 300,000 votes in 10 states would have handed Bush a second term.
In 2000, Ralph Nader received more than 97,000 votes in Florida. Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in that state by 537 votes. Most pollsters are convinced that Ralph Nader’s presence on the ballot affected the 2000 presidential election.
What will happen in the 2024 presidential election? It is difficult to assess, but the third-party candidates who have announced may have a significant impact.

Kerby Anderson
Anti-Israel demonstrators have blocked traffic and bridges in many major cities across the country. Climate activists in other countries have also blocked traffic and vandalized priceless paintings and public monuments. These actions have created a societal problem we can no longer ignore.
Tal Fortgang argues that “Blocking the Road is Civil Terrorism.” Whether or not you accept his characterization of these tactics, you will have to admit the problem is getting worse, and poses a threat to decent, law-abiding citizens.
A blocked road or highway can be more than just an inconvenience. Whoever is on the road is prevented from getting to work, picking up kids, delivering packages, etc. A blocked road can prevent an ambulance from getting to a victim or even prevent the ambulance from getting to an emergency for urgent, life-saving care.
The object of blocking roads or destroying paintings isn’t to convince you of the logic and morality of their position. It is to frustrate you so you will call on politicians to give them what they want so you can go back to normal daily life.
Of course, those activists blocking traffic assume that law-abiding citizens will put their cars in park and wait until law enforcement comes. That may not always be the case, if angry citizens decide to take the law into their own hands.
Of course, the activists know they may not even be arrested. Even if they are arrested, they will pay a fine because it is merely a misdemeanor. This election season, you need to ask candidates a question: Isn’t it time to increase the penalty for blocking traffic and bridges? If we don’t, this problem will get worse.

Kerby Anderson
Raising children in any generation is difficult, but the most challenging generation may be “Generation Z” (born between 1997 and 2012). Jason Jimenez writes about Parenting Gen Z: Guiding Your Child through a Hostile Culture. As a fellow parent, he understands that many parents are dealing with uncertainty and doubt as they are trying to raise spiritually healthy kids. This is most apparent with this young generation, who are the most non-Christian generation in American history.
He was on my radio program to offer biblical truths that would be helpful to parents trying to navigate the challenging conversations that influence their children in a secular and polarized culture. In many ways, they differ from previous generations due to the culture in which they live and due to the digital devices in their lives.
He wants parents to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses as they raise this young generation. He also highlights three flawed parenting styles. These are: control parenting which results in a failure to prepare, paranoid parenting which results in a failure to release, and detached parenting which results in a failure to provide.
He also supplies strategies to help parents build a home of love, discipline, and respect. He includes helpful chapters about challenging conversations about sex, gender, depression, suicide, abortion, and racism.
His book provides a helpful balance between the academic (his degrees in apologetics) and the practical. He is not only a worldview expert but the father of four Gen Z children. This is the book I want to put in the hands of parents raising the next generation.

Penna Dexter
There’s no satisfactory explanation for the recent actions of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in keeping his cancer surgery — and his subsequent, extended hospitalization — secret from his staff and the White House.  The Administration insists this was simply a lapse in judgment, but it’s an unforgivable breach of protocol.
Even more disturbing are the growing recruitment problems in the US military, the institution from which Secretary Austin retired as a 4-star general.
Political and military leaders are alarmed at severe declines in recruitment in all branches except the Marines.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Owen West, Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Trump administration, and Kevin Wallsten, Professor of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach, offer an explanation backed by research. They sum up the  “essential problem,” by stating that, “Young white Democrats have lost faith in their country and are rejecting military service.” They lament that “American patriotism is dissolving.”
Their op-ed cites “one of the oldest and most reliable youth polls, Monitoring the Future,” which, “has for decades shown only small differences in the propensity to serve.”  In 2015, the percentage of white Democrats who wanted to serve stood at 19%, with blacks, Latinos, and white Republicans at 20%.
But, by 2021, the Monitoring the Future poll shows only 3% of young white male Democrats were interested in serving in the military, about one-fourth as many as among black and Latino men, and one-eighth the level of white Republicans. The poll revealed a drop of 45,000 men who wanted to serve.
Young white Republican men are more inclined to join the military, but lately more of their parents don’t want them to. Roughly 80 percent of recruits come from extended military families. With widespread implementation of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion policies which disfavor white, heterosexual males — especially conservative, religious ones — many families are actively discouraging their young people from joining up.
A woke military discourages patriotism and recruitment.

Kerby Anderson
If you do an online search of the term “cultural Marxism,” you will see a Wikipedia entry that dismisses it as a “conspiracy theory” that is supposedly trying to take over Western culture. Actually, it is the dominant form of Marxism in America and in much of the West today.
Dr. Paul Kengor was on the Point of View radio talk show with me to talk about his recent article about cultural Marxism. He explained that cultural Marxism began about a century ago in Germany because the proponents felt that orthodox Marxism was too limiting and too narrow. They wanted revolutionary changes in marriage, sexuality, and family.
They looked to the universities as a place where their ideas would be launched. They could organize the students, the artists, and the media to transform Western society. Instead of focusing on an economic war, they wanted to bring a cultural war.
One of the key figures in cultural Marxism was Antonio Gramsci, who taught that they should seize the “cultural means of production.” That would be the media and the universities. He believed that the social transformation would be able to “march through the institutions.”
One place where cultural Marxism is evident today is in what is called “critical theory.” Paul Kengor reminded us that Barack Obama’s alma mater, Occidental College, has a Department of Critical Theory and Social Justice. It promises to instruct students in the principles of “Marxism, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, deconstruction, critical race studies, queer theory, feminist theory, and postcolonial theory.”
If you have been near a college campus lately, this should all sound very familiar. This is not a “conspiracy theory” but an accurate picture of the march of cultural Marxism through the institutions.

Kerby Anderson
America is a divided country. Os Guinness in his book, Last Call for Liberty, argues that the American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. He believes that the root of this disagreement is two different definitions of freedom.
One view of freedom is embodied in “1776 and the American Revolution.” The other view arose in “1789 and the French Revolution.” The first can be found in the Declaration of Independence that owes its formulation to the Protestant Reformation and even earlier in the ideas found in the book of Exodus in the Bible. The second can be found in France’s “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” that ended in the Reign of Terror. To that we can add Marx’s “triumph of the proletariat” and the policies of Stalin and Mao Zedong.
His book asks ten questions that make up the chapters in the book. When he was in studio with me talking about his book, I mentioned that few Americans could answer the questions in the affirmative. He asks, “Do you know where your freedom comes from?” Even fewer could offer good answers to questions like, “How do you plan to sustain freedom?”
He also addresses the question, “How will you make the world safe for diversity?” Here we have two starkly different visions of public life. On the one side are proponents of what Richard John Neuhaus called a naked public square that would exclude religion and religious expressions from public life. Proponents of a sacred public square would give preference to one religion. He advocates for a civil public square where citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage public life on the basis of their faith.
This book provides wise counsel on how Christians can be at the forefront of bringing America back to a proper understanding of freedom.

Kerby Anderson
Although the concept of a free enterprise system developed primarily in Europe, it has become the most successful in the United States. Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, has a possible explanation.
The founders promoted a free market where Americans were able to truly live their liberty. Thomas Jefferson famously said this in his first inaugural address: “A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
People from other countries began to realize how exceptional America’s culture of free enterprise was. French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville called Americans “the freest people in the world.” He was struck by the fact that Americans pursued their interests under the supervision of limited government and banded together in voluntary associations.
This is true to this day. According to Arthur Brooks, Europeans are half as likely as Americans to attribute success in their own life to their own efforts. He even suggests that some of this might even be genetic: it is part of the American DNA. We are a nation of immigrants. Immigrants tend to be entrepreneurs and willing to take risks for the possibility of prosperity.
Arthur Brooks contends that we live in a 70-30 nation. A Pew Research Center poll asked a broad range of Americans this question: “Generally, do you think people are better off in a free market economy?” Almost 70 percent of respondents agree that they are better off in a free market economy.
The good news is that 70 percent of Americans believe in free enterprise. The bad news is that the other 30 percent are in control of important arenas in our society such as the academy, media, and government. This will be our challenge for the years to come.

Kerby Anderson
The US Constitution reminds us that the responsibility for our government rests with “we the people.” In order for us to be effective, we need to know something about our government and our history. Citizens in countries ruled by dictators don’t need to know much since the major decisions are made for them. But we Americans should be educated and informed.
Unfortunately, we are not well educated and informed. A study done by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation discovered that only one in three (36%) Americans could actually pass the US citizenship test. And I might add that you only have to get 60 percent of the questions right in order to pass the test.
For example, a majority (57%) did not know how many justices serve on the Supreme Court. Nearly three-fourths (72%) could not accurately identify which states comprised the 13 colonies. And only a quarter (24%) even knew why the American colonists fought the British in the Revolutionary War.
Most disturbing was the fact that young people performed worst on the test. You might excuse an elderly person for forgetting some facts about government or history. But less than one in five (19%) under the age of 45 could pass this test.
In previous commentaries, I have proposed a solution that some states have considered. Require students to pass the citizenship test before they graduate from high school. Consider the fact that a naturalized citizen probably knows more about America’s history and structure of government than someone who was born in this country.
Young people in America cannot pass a citizenship test for one of two reasons: either they weren’t paying attention in class or they weren’t taught this material in the first place. Let’s require students to pass a citizenship test before graduation. We require it of people who want to be American citizens. Why not require it of students who are already citizens because they were born here?

Kerby Anderson
Boys are in crisis. That should be obvious, but Dr. Warren Farrell still has to spend his first six chapters documenting it. He was on my radio program to talk about the book, The Boy Crisis, which he wrote with Dr. John Gray.
First, there is the crisis of our sons’ mental health. For example, the increase in the suicide rate among white males led to as many white male deaths as were lost to AIDS. The rate of mass shootings has increased significantly, and they are done by boys. Our daughters live in the same homes and have the same access to guns, video games, and the media. They are not killing. Our sons are.
Second is the crisis of our sons’ economic health. They are entering an economy different from their grandparents that has moved from muscle to mental, or to put it another way, from muscle to microchip. The median annual earnings of boys have dropped significantly.
Third is the crisis of our sons’ education. Over the last fifty years, the percentage of college degrees received by gender completely reversed. Females rose from 39 percent to 61 percent. Males dropped from 61 percent to 39 percent.
Less educated boys are more likely to be unemployed. But this reversal in education also affects marriage. As our sons become less educated, our daughters increasingly desire partners who are more educated.
Finally, there is a crisis of fathering. Boys growing up with less involved or non-involved fathers are more likely to face more social problems. These include dropping out of school, drinking, doing drugs, becoming delinquent, and perhaps even ending up in prison.
Pastors and Christian leaders need to focus attention on this boy crisis. We have church programs and faith-based solutions that build strong marriages and instruct in biblical parenting. The first step is to realize we are facing a boy crisis.

Penna Dexter
In an election year, the economy takes on heightened importance in voters’ thinking. A good question to ask is: are my elected officials wasting my money? Are they using taxpayer dollars responsibly?
David Ditch at The Daily Signal, tries to answer that question at least as it pertains to the current administration’s “4 worst wastes of 2023.”
Waste #1:How can we forget the $1.9-trillion-dollar spending package passed — without a Republican vote – in 2021? It was the third massive stimulus done as “COVID response.” David Ditch writes that $350 billion of it went to state and local governments who spent “much of it on golf courses, tourism, food stamps for the rich, bonuses for government workers, a pickleball complex,” — in other words they didn’t really need it. The unspent funds, tens of billions of dollars, were supposed to expire this year. But the administration quietly issued a rule to give states more time to figure out how to spend this “hoarded” money that was slated to go back into the federal treasury.
Waste #2In June, the administration lost its attempt at the US Supreme Court to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt, which, of course, means taxpayers would have funded it. Mr. Ditch reports that the administration still found ways to “force taxpayers to cover the cost of other people’s degrees” to the tune of $132 billion, “more than $1000 for every household in the country.”
Waste #3This past September, the US Centers for Disease Control ordered 20 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for kids. David Ditch emphasizes the waste: This is “several times larger than the number of pediatric COVID-19 vaccines administered to date.”
Waste #4After Congress nixed a plan for an environmental jobs program called Climate Corps, the administration unilaterally revived 20,000 of those positions.
Thanks to The Daily Signal for alerting us to this waste. Americans should tell their leaders they’re sick of it.

Kerby Anderson
Students and others chanting in the streets to support Hamas often do not even understand what the slogans mean. Last month, I cited a survey done by a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who hired a survey team to poll 250 students.
He found that less than half (47%) of the students who chanted the slogan (From the River to the Sea) were able to name the river and the sea. Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea, and the Atlantic. These students obviously need an education, which apparently isn’t being provided in the public schools.
You might criticize the survey since it was a small sample and only focused on current politics and geography. That is why I wanted to devote the rest of my commentary to the most extensive survey done in recent years about the Holocaust.
A few years ago, the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany conducted a survey in all 50 states to document what younger Americans (under age 40) knew about the Holocaust. They found that two-thirds (63%) did not know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. In fact, over half of them thought the death toll was fewer than 2 million.
They also found that half (48%) of the younger generation could not name a single one of the more than 40,000 concentration camps or ghettos established by the Nazi government. Even more shocking was the fact that a small percentage (10%) did not recall ever having heard the word “holocaust” before. And if that is not shocking enough, they also found a small percentage (11%) who believed that Jews caused the Holocaust!
The obvious implication of all of this is that we need to teach history and geography in the public schools, including the horrible facts about the Holocaust.

Kerby Anderson
I’m not inclined to talk about legislation in other countries, but it is worth looking at proposed new hate speech legislation in Ireland so we can avoid the same mistake in this country. Kristen Waggoner of Alliance Defending Freedom wrote about this last month in Newsweek.
The context is something I’ve talked about on radio. The stabbing of children and others in Dublin by an Algerian resident sparked protests. Instead of addressing the issue of immigration, the government focused on the actions of the protesters as an excuse to criminalize free speech.
What is so surprising is the fact that this “hate speech” bill provides no definition of hate. In previous commentaries, I’ve documented that the word “hate” is a very difficult word to define in the law. We have seen this in previous attempts in this country to implement hate crime legislation.
This bill goes much further according to Kristen Waggoner. “As drafted, the law would allow police near-blanket authority to search and possibly find materials that are ‘hateful,’ rifling through text messages, emails, and personal effects to find prosecutable content.” She adds that the thought of police “raiding homes to seize devices and banned literature invokes thoughts of the novel 1984 and the darker moments of the last century.”
One of the supporters of the bill is a member of the Green Party. She defended the proposed legislation by arguing: “We are restricting freedom, but we’re doing it for the common good.” Yes, we have heard that before from totalitarians. It reminded me of the famous quote by C.S. Lewis: “Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
What is happening in Europe can come to America unless we work diligently to protect free speech.

Kerby Anderson
If you write or speak about controversial issues, it is likely you will be banned from social media. Big Tech employees accuse the offender of misinformation or disinformation, even when that may not be the case.
YouTube (owned by Alphabet/Google), Facebook and Instagram (both owned by Meta), Twitter (now called X), and other platforms have banned politicians, doctors, and scientists. This has given Big Tech the ability to censor speech and put them into a position of deciding what is true and what is false.
Carol Roth, in her new book, reminds us that these bans are often permanent, with no pathway to redemption. She contrasts that with people who break the law. After they have served their time in prison, they are released. But with social media, there rarely is a path to get back on a platform.
Some have been successful. Journalist Alex Berenson was critical of COVID responses and information. When he posted accurate information about vaccine clinical trials, he received an eleven-month “permanent ban”. It wasn’t permanent because he sued Twitter and finally received a statement from Twitter that acknowledged his tweets should not have led to his suspension.
Sometimes you are banned with no justification. Journalist Miles Cheong said he was permanently banned from PayPal without an explicit reason and told he could not withdraw the money in his account for months.
In the past, we didn’t allow the phone service to decide if you could make a phone call. Carol Roth points to the Communications Act of 1934 which guaranteed phone service for all potential customers. The legislation wasn’t necessary when other phone services were available, and it wasn’t a monopoly.
But isn’t Big Tech essentially a monopoly? That’s why Congress needs to address the issue of banning people from social media.

Kerby Anderson
As we enter this new year, we will be hearing more about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The First Industrial Revolution occurred in the 18th century. The Second Industrial Revolution began in the 19th century with the development of oil, electricity, and steel. The Third Industrial Revolution has been the digital era of computers and the internet.
The World Economic Forum claims that the Fourth Industrial Revolution “represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work, and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second, and third industrial revolutions.”
Glen Beck, in his book Dark Future, argues this revolution will change our world: “In the coming years, advancements in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain technologies, bioengineering, automation, the metaverse, and countless other areas will change the human race in unprecedented ways.”
This changing reality raises an important question, says Beck, “The question is not whether life is going to change; that unstoppable freight train has already left the station. The real question—the most important one of this century—is, Will the emerging technological revolution improve life and make mankind freer, or will it enslave, impoverish, or perhaps even destroy it?”
These social and technological changes are coming, and Christians need to be educated about these topics and apply biblical principles to analyze them. That is why over the last year I have been writing booklets on topics like the great reset, social media, digital surveillance, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering. We need to think biblically about these topics, especially during this election year.