Viewpoints with Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
Christians have always needed to know how to defend the Christian faith ever since Peter admonished us to “always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” That is even more true with so many people skeptical about God, Jesus, and the Bible.
Douglas Groothuis and Andrew Shepardson are the co-authors of an introduction into classical apologetics with the title, The Knowledge of God in the World and the Word. The primary focus is to put forth various arguments for the existence of God and then finish with a defense of the Bible and a presentation of the truth about Jesus and His resurrection. Here is a summary of just three of the chapters in their book.
The cosmological argument recognizes the relationship between cause and effect. This then points to a First Cause of the cosmos that is transcendent to the cosmos. This argument is even more powerful now that scientists believe the universe had a beginning.
The moral argument derives from the realization there must be objective morality. If God did not exist, then objective moral values and duties would not exist. But they do exist and point to God’s existence.
The design argument claims that God’s fingerprints can be found all over creation. William Paley proposed this argument, but scientists in the 19th century and early 20th century dismissed it. However, we now see what has been called the “return of the God hypothesis” because of the discovery of the fine-tuning of the universe.
In my interview with the two authors, I mentioned that more and more scientific evidence has accumulated to bolster some of these arguments. No wonder some have described us as living in the golden age of apologetics.

Classical Apologetics Read More

Kerby Anderson
John Whitehead has been warning us about the growing surveillance state in America for decades. The increase in surveillance has taken place under both Republican and Democratic presidents. But he is seeing another element that concerns him even more.
To illustrate it, he reminds us of the Steven Spielberg movie, Minority Report. This dystopian film is set in the future “where police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, [and] precognitive technology.” The goal is to stop a crime before it takes place.
He reports that we have more than 123 real-time crime centers in the country. This is where local police agencies can upload and share massive amounts of surveillance data along with other data and intelligence gathered from state and federal agencies. This comes not only from surveillance cameras but includes facial recognition technology, gunshot sensors, and social media monitoring.
The natural reaction from some people is that we shouldn’t be concerned about all this surveillance if we have nothing to hide. In fact, I heard that very comment last week in a meeting I attended.
Yes, you should be concerned because even saying the wrong word or attending the wrong meeting can turn you into a suspect. He mentions a few harmless words that can be trigger words for certain algorithms. Attend a political rally and you might be listed as a potential threat. Leaked materials have shown these centers tracking people at rallies for racial justice, environmental issues, conservative issues, and third-party candidates.
Authors like George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Phillip K. Dick warned about a future police state. This election you need to ask candidates what they plan to do about this growing surveillance state in America.

Targeted for Tyranny Read More

Kerby Anderson
Victor Davis Hanson argues that the “end of affirmative action was inevitable.” He provided ten reasons why it died. Here are five of them.
First, “supporters of racial preferences always pushed back the goalposts for the program’s success.” How long was this reverse bias supposed to last? We never heard a clear answer.
Second, “the true barometer of privilege was rendered meaningless.” He talks about “truly privileged” people (like Barack and Michelle Obama) lecturing the country about its unfairness, “as if they had it far rougher than the impoverished deplorable of East Palestine, Ohio.”
Third, affirmative action supporters were never able to explain why the racial sins of prior generations fell on individuals today. And why should “those who had never experienced institutionalized racism, much less Jim Crow,” be collectively compensated today?
He also argues that there was never a “rainbow” coalition of shared non-white victimhood. For example, Asians have been subjected to “coerced internment, immigration restrictions, and zoning exclusions.” Yet they as a racial group do better economically and have longer life expectancies than any other racial group.
Finally, intermarriage and mass migration made it more and more difficult to adjudicate affirmative action standards. Tiger Woods is half Asian-American, a quarter Anglo-American, an eighth African-American and an eighth Native-American. Then you have Senator Elizabeth Warren claiming to be Harvard’s first Native-American law professor.
These are just a few reasons why the end of affirmative action was inevitable. Although the media failed to report it, most Americans agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision and were ready for affirmative action to end.

Affirmative Action Read More

Kerby Anderson
On Independence Day, Federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a national injunction preventing federal bureaucracies from corresponding with social-media firms. It sent shock waves through the Biden administration and Silicon Valley. James Bovard asked, “When did the Biden administration become infallible with a divine right to nullify the free speech of conservatives?”
The federal judge described the evidence he saw as “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” He argued that the Biden administration pressured social-media companies “to censor misinformation regarding climate change, gender discussions, abortion, and economic policy.”
Censorship began at the very start of the Biden era. Less than two weeks after the inauguration, the White House Digital Director demanded that Twitter “immediately” remove a parody of Biden’s relatives. “Twitter officials suspended the account within 45 minutes but complained they were already bombarded by White House censorship requests at that point.”
A federal agency, tasked with countering foreign influence, was renamed the Mis-, Dis-, and Mal-information task force. It led the way in shutting down any discussion about concerns about the 2020 and 2022 elections.
The FBI convinced companies to change their policies and ban posts based on “hacked materials.” Then it became easy to censor any comments about Hunter Biden’s laptop arguing it was hacked material or else Russian disinformation.
The federal judge imposed a sweeping injunction banning federal agencies from contacting social-media companies. Considering all this evidence, it is easy to see why he did this.

Disinformation and Free Speech Read More

Penna Dexter
In the bellwether state of Ohio, it’s easy to pass a constitutional amendment. It only takes 50 percent of a vote of the people. That’s why the state constitution has nearly 70,000 words. (The U.S. Constitution has 7000.)
Buckeye conservatives have seen the ease of amending Ohio’s constitution as a vulnerability for years. Aaron Baer, President of Ohio’s Center for Christian Virtue says, “it’s led to so many different issues and so many different problems that we’ve wanted to fix it.”
They’ve got their chance. A proposed amendment to enshrine abortion rights in Ohio’s constitution provides some urgency.
The Right to Make Reproductive Decisions Including Abortion Initiative — would wipe out abortion restrictions on the books in Ohio, including parental consent legislation. The amendment contains loopholes for transgender surgeries. According to The Washington Stand’s Susanne Bowdey, “If it passes, Ohio moms and dads will have zero say over their children’s abortions or bodily mutilation.”  
Ohio is a pro-life state. Lawmakers there passed and the governor signed a six-week heartbeat law that is currently being blocked by the courts. But, in recent weeks, U-Haul trucks arrived at the state capital bearing 710,000 petition signatures, 300,000 more than required to get the amendment on the November ballot. Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are pouring tens of millions of dollars into the signature-gathering effort.
The idea here is to undermine the work of Ohio’s pro-life legislature.
Conservatives in Ohio’s general assembly launched a counterattack. They set a vote to take place August 8, a special election in which voters will decide whether to raise the threshold for altering the state constitution from a simple majority to a 60 percent “supermajority.”
The pro-abortion left cannot rely on grassroots support. So special interests paid out-of-state signature-gatherers to get a radical pro-abortion amendment on the ballot in Ohio. They will spend heavily, and use manipulative messaging, to get the vote out. Passing Issue 1 makes that harder.

Ohio Abortion Battle Read More

Kerby Anderson
A recent op-ed by Allen Mashburn reminds us that, “Societies That Surrender Moral Foundation Historically Self-Destruct.” This is not a new idea. Decades ago, I did a week of radio programs on the “Decline of a Nation.” A decade later, I did another week on “When Nations Die” because of a book that was published with that title. And more recently I even did a week of programs based on a book that compared America to Rome.
The reason for Mashburn’s article was a series events that took place during Pride Month. He “never envisioned a day where transvestites would lecture us on human biology, or sterilizers would pose as health professionals advocating for human rights. It seems that our nation has descended into a state of utter madness, where men can now claim pregnancy and the number of genders rivals the alphabet.”
Those issues are just a few of the many legitimate concerns which point to the well-documented decline and fall of other civilizations. Greece tolerated and even celebrated immoral behavior. And “the decline of the Roman Empire can be attributed to the abandonment of strong familial bonds and moral values in favor of weakness and laxity.” He observes that the similarity between Rome and America is alarming.
Of course, the pattern we recognize in Greece and Rome can be seen in other civilizations in the past. This includes the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and even the nation of Israel. In Isaiah 5 we read that God pronounced judgement on Israel. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
The only way to reverse this downward moral spiral is for a spiritual revival and spiritual repentance to take place in this country.

Decline of a Nation Read More

Kerby Anderson
Ben & Jerry’s creates flavors of ice cream, but they also create controversy. The latest has been their belief that “it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen land and commit to returning it.” Unilever is the company that now owns Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. So far, it has lost $2 billion in market capitalization.
The first step, according to Ben & Jerry’s, would be to return the Black Hills of South Dakota, including Mount Rushmore, to the Lakota. Rich Lowry says that raises another question. “Once this transfer takes place, will the Lakota turn around and give the Black Hills back to the tribes they took them from?”
He warns that it isn’t wise to get your history lessons from people making ice cream. In his op-ed on “The Myth of Native American Innocence,” he reminds us that the history of North America is complex. Yes, the way this country treated several Indian tribes is a sad, dark chapter of American history. But that should be placed alongside the hatred, greed, and violence of the Indian tribes that engaged in intertribal warfare.
My response to so many of the claims by leftists these days is, “You first.” If you are concerned that your white privilege got you into college, then give up your scholarship and your place at the university. If you believe we should give back stolen land: “You first.”
The Ben and Jerry’s facility and corporate office sits on the land once occupied by the Coosuk Abenaki Nation. The chief of one of the tribes that descended from the Abenaki said his tribe is “always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our lands.”
If it is time to give back stolen land, then my message to Ben & Jerry’s is, “You first.”

Stolen Land Read More

Kerby Anderson
In his video, John Stossel asked people on the street, “If you could spend $30 billion trying to solve the world’s problems, how would you spend it?” As you might imagine, the most common answer was to “fight climate change.”
Bjorn Lomborg (Copenhagen Consensus Center) has much better answers. In the past, we have talked about his several books on the environment and climate change. He says he was not surprised at the answers since we live in a rich world. But when he has put together experts from the UN, NGOs, and the university to address the world’s biggest problems, they give very different answers.
In his new book, Best Things First, Lomborg says that spending $35 billion in the poorest part of the earth could save 4.2 million lives every year. That would include screening for tuberculosis and getting medicine to people who need it. Hundreds of thousands die from malaria. Buying bed nets with insecticides that kill mosquitos would also save lives.
In a speech he gave at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar, he showed a graph of deaths from climate. These climate-related deaths (from floods, drought, storms, wildfires, and extreme temperatures) dropped from 500,000 a year in the 1920s to 11,000 today. A major reason for the decline is the fact that we have become wealthier. We have better technology and better predictive capabilities.
His latest writing and speeches are a reminder that we should be thinking smarter about how to spend our scarce economic resources. Thinking smartly also requires a recognition that the earth is not teetering on the edge of an environmental apocalypse. We need to focus on the best things first to make this planet an even better place to live.

Best Solutions for Earth Read More

Kerby Anderson
Why do we still have lingering inflation? President Biden took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to explain and defend his economic record. He claimed that “as supply chains continue to unsnarl, company profit margins fall from historically high levels, and rents continue to moderate, inflation should decline further, creating more breathing room for working families.”
The president appears to believe that rising prices create inflation. Instead, the reverse is true. Dollar depreciation is why prices are rising. Alexander William Salter explains that and evaluates the three parts of the president’s explanation.
First, the president argued that supply chains are causing inflation. That might have been partially true during the lockdowns and the supply chain bottlenecks. But what goes up must come down. The COVID-induced bottlenecks have largely passed, but prices are still high.
Next, the president blames corporate profits. That he focuses on what has become known as “greedflation” is not surprising. Blaming the rich and corporations is a frequent mantra for Democrats during an election year. Mr. Salter points to research by economics professor Josh Hendrickson that shows reduced profit margins. That is just the opposite of what the president argues.
What about the president’s comments about rent? Rent is an important part of consumer spending. But from 2020 to 2022, rent rarely rose faster than inflation. You would expect it to be rising faster if it was pulling inflation up.
These three issues are not the major factor for inflation. The increased money supply is the reason. Both the monetary base and the money supply rose dramatically in the last few years. Also, the government ran massive deficits during those years. That’s why we still have inflation today.

Inflation Malarkey Read More

Kerby Anderson
The Pottery Barn rule is an expression that was used by Colin Powell when cautioning President Bush about invading Iraq. He said, “You break it, you own it.” Of course, the “you break it, you own it” rule has been used to warn others about a political action they may later come to regret.
Several commentators have proposed a corollary expression: “You chant it, you own it.” Bring a tape recorder to any protest or even to a parade. You will probably hear lots of extreme statements and chants. This has especially been true of the many environmental protests, along with the many race protests after the death of George Floyd.
In the past, we have been told to ignore the shouting and hyperbole. Protestors may call for us to “defund the police,” but they didn’t really mean that governments were supposed to defund the police. Then we saw certain cities and states do just that.
Environmental activists chant: “No more coal, no more oil, keep your carbon in the soil.” But we were told they really didn’t mean we should decarbonize the country. Then we found out they were serious.
Last month was Pride Month. The pride parade marchers in New York City chanted: “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.” News commentators tried to assure us that “it’s all just words” and that such chants have been used for years in pride parades.
 Frankly, that is a very poor excuse. If you want people to take you seriously, then don’t say things you don’t mean. I can’t imagine a news commentator brushing off chants and slogans used at an alt-right event. But we are supposed to ignore all the provocative things said by leftist groups.
I have a better suggestion: “If you chant it, you own it.”

You Own It Read More

Penna Dexter
Why aren’t our 20 and 30-year-olds having more children? One reason is economic. Should the U.S. government consider subsidizing childbearing?
Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest University suggests some less expensive and non-taxpayer-funded ways to convince Americans to have more kids. He lists these ideas in an article in National Review entitled, “We Need More Babies.”

First, transporting kids is expensive.  One shocker to families expecting a third child is learning that the back seat in many cars and SUVs is not wide enough for three car seats. Transporting a third or  fourth child could necessitate a minivan or something larger.Robert Whaples points to research by economist Steve Levitt showing “that child safety seats are no better than seat belts in reducing fatalities among children ages two to six.” Yet, in many states, six-year-olds, who are under a certain weight, are required by law to ride in car seats. Dr. Whaples recommends relaxing those laws.

Secondly, and importantly, the cost of housing can deter couples from planning a family. Many localities have zoning laws that prevent affordable homes from being built. Dr. Whaples says relaxing these restrictions would be “pro-natal.”
Student debt is another reason couples delay having children. As a university economics department chair, Dr. Whaples has some solutions that could be implemented at the college level. One is for “middle-tier colleges” to shift resources from research to teaching. Another is to “mainstream the idea of having students graduate in three years, which would cut their debt and give them an extra year to achieve career goals before starting a family.”
Another idea involves potential grandparents. Dr. Whaples suggests scaling down the posh wedding and, instead saving to help the newlyweds afford a future grandchild.

The birth rate is dropping partially because many young people no longer see marriage as a given. Parents, churches, and governments should do what they can to fix that situation.

Need More Babies Read More

Kerby Anderson
Now that most of the 2022 midterm elections have been certified, it’s worth looking at some important electoral trends. They will give us some idea of what may take place in the 2024 elections. Lest you think this is premature, consider that next month the first presidential debate will take place.
The most surprising trend is the number of close elections. In previous commentaries, I’ve talked about close elections. But the latest results are worth discussing. The bipartisan portal Ballotpedia reports that 103 legislative races around the country were decided by under 100 votes.
This research result underscores the reality of the phrase “every vote counts.” If you don’t think so, just ask the person who lost their race by less than 100 votes. As one commentator put it, these races were decided by the number of people you could find inside a Walmart any weekend.
Rarely is there a close race for governor or congress. But close elections do occur in state legislative races, where 98 seats were decided by such a narrow margin. And that narrow margin also could determine which party has majority control of the legislature. Many of the other close races occurred in rural districts with small populations.
Two implications come from these results from the 2022 midterm elections. First, there is great value in a political party developing sophisticated “get out the vote” strategies. When a tiny minority can determine the outcome of an election, there is great motivation to get people to the polls. Second, it illustrates the importance of you going to vote and bringing like-minded people with you to the polls.
Each election, we remind people that “every vote counts.” This latest research proves that is true.

Every Vote Counts Read More

Kerby Anderson
In previous commentaries, I have talked about the dollar’s loss of value. We often provide a chart that was generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It shows that the dollar has lost 95 percent of its purchasing power.
In a recent keynote speech in Prague, Michael Saylor (MicroStrategy) put together a presentation with numerous graphs. They show even more accurately the decline of the dollar as well as the decline of other currencies around the world. His YouTube presentation makes a powerful statement.
For example, he has one slide that shows that the US dollar loses 99 percent of its value when compared to gold (1923-2023). Gold is not scarce. More of it is pulled from the ground each year. He then shows another graph of something even more scarce. The US dollar loses 99.8 percent of its value compared to the 50 most valuable companies in the S&P (1923-2023).
This is worse for other countries because foreign currencies are collapsing against the dollar. The Argentine Peso (ARS) loses 99.9 percent versus the dollar (2001-2023) in the last twenty years. His chart shows that the Turkish Lira loses 95 percent versus the dollar, but its latest loss is probably 97 percent. And the Indian Rupee loses 90 percent versus the dollar since 1980.
This puts our current financial circumstances in some perspective. The dollar is like a melting ice cube. The value is declining every year. But imagine what it is like to live in many of these other countries with even more inflation and currency declining in value.
He concludes by showing a chart of asset performance since August 2020. Those percentages show how to preserve your wealth in a world where currency is declining in value.

Currency Declining in Value Read More

Kerby Anderson
When you make an investment, it is important to know if there is any counterparty risk. Any business involves a cooperation of many entities and individuals. How likely is it that one of them may default on their financial obligations?
Here’s a scary question: what if the counterparty is your bank or the government? That may be less likely here in the US, but is becoming a reality ever since the 2013 banking crisis in Cyprus created the concept of the bail-in.
A recent article in Fortune describes that as a form of financial relief for banks that are in danger of collapsing or going bankrupt. “The relief comes from canceling some or all of the bank’s debt by reducing the value of bank shares, bonds, and uninsured deposits.” In case you are wondering, this has been made possible in Europe under a new framework and in the US under 2010 the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
But even if the bank isn’t failing, the government still has the power to freeze a bank account or any other financial account. The best example comes from Canada. Last February, the Canadian government began freezing the accounts and canceling credit cards of anyone involved in the trucker protests.
One commentator explained what it takes to freeze an asset. Stocks-press a button. Bonds-press a button. Mutual funds-press a button. Cash in the bank-press a button. Of course, that is just a short list.
Decades ago, someone said that you only think you own your house, until you don’t pay your taxes. We could add that you only think you own your stocks, bonds, or cash until the government says you don’t. Citizens in other countries are learning this. Let’s hope we don’t ever see that here in America.

Counterparty Risk Read More

Kerby Anderson
Americans are starting to realize how much privacy they are losing. It isn’t just the government through surveillance that is invading our privacy. Major corporations are collecting information on us, even when we aren’t sharing it online. Here is a classic example of that.
Twenty years ago, the Target Corporation was able to conclude that a shopper was pregnant and even estimate her due date. The story was written up in the New York Times and has become a classic example of targeted marketing. The article had the arresting title, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets.”
A data scientist at Target began to analyze the massive database Target stores were amassing from the purchases of their customers. He began to mine the data and discovered a few interesting things about Target customers.
He discovered, for example, that pregnant women are more likely to buy unscented lotion, and that they start doing this at the beginning of their second trimester. This correlation between pregnancy and changes in shopping behavior was one of about two-dozen data points he and the other analysts were able to identify.
When they combined all these correlations together, they were able to establish a “pregnancy prediction” score. This score told them two things. First, the female consumer was pregnant. Second, it also gave them a good estimate of her due date.
The value to Target was considerable. They were able to send coupons to the woman during different times in her pregnancy so that they would arrive when she was most likely to need them. The timing of the coupons brought more pregnant women into Target stores to use them.
This marketing success story illustrates how big data and sophisticated data analysis can invade your privacy without you providing any information. Whether you click on a link online or buy a product in the store, someone is watching.

Privacy and Marketing Read More

Kerby Anderson
Why is it that the left so frequently promotes censorship? Dennis Prager provides some insights in his article, “Why the Left Has to Suppress Free Speech.”
He begins by stating a fact from history. The left always suppresses speech, going all the way back to Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. He explains that there is an important difference between liberals and the left. Liberals and conservatives believe in free speech. The left does not.
Think of some of our major institutions. The left controls universities and allows no dissent. The left controls nearly every news medium. There is little or no dissent in the mainstream media. The left controls Hollywood. No dissent is allowed there. In these and other venues, we see the cancel culture at work.
Prager argues that the left fears debate and dissent because it is a threat to their ideas. He observes that “no matter how big the balloon — the Democratic Party, The New York Times, Yale University — all it takes is a mere pin to burst it.” He has seen how one articulate conservative on a college campus can undo years of left-wing indoctrination.
I have seen this as well because I have participated in or moderated several forums with Christian ministries in which lectures or debates take place. Students are often surprised to hear good reasons to believe in the Bible and a Christian perspective. They discover that their professors and the media have presented a caricature of Christianity and presented history and information in a very biased way.
Nearly a century ago, one Supreme Court justice argued that the best way to counter “falsehoods and fallacies” was “more speech, not enforced silence.” Those were wise words then and are wise words now.

Speech and Censorship Read More

Penna Dexter
Does it seem to you that things that should be working well are not. Not everything. And not all the time. Just certain things don’t work the way we used to expect in America. Electrical grids. Supply chains. Our medical system. Airlines and airports. The service in some retail stores.
Am I crazy for thinking this? Not according to institutional investor and writer Harold Robertson, who says, “America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.”  But why? He explains in an extensive article for Palladium Magazine entitled “Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis.”
“The core issue,” he writes, “is that changing political mores have established the systemic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent.” By the early 20th century, it had become the norm to emphasize the evaluation and selection of people based on ability and merit rather than on wealth, class, or political connections. We saw the rise of the SAT and other aptitude tests which “revolutionized college admissions” by allowing universities to find the best and brightest.
“By the 1960’s,” he continues, “the systematic selection for competence came into direct conflict with the political imperatives of the civil rights movement.”  Diversity for protected groups became a key priority. In fact, diversity began to trump meritocracy when the two came into conflict. Mr. Robertson says an erosion in “institutional competency” ensued.  He points to “several high-profile enforcement actions against employers” that resulted in their abandoning certain tests and methods of screening potential hires for ability.
Employers turned to degrees from top universities to help them in choosing who to hire. But diversity requirements soon ushered in differing entrance standards for different groups and, increasingly, a lower reliance on standardized tests. Even standards for selecting doctors “have been weakened to promote diversity.”
Diversity requirements are causing America’s interdependent systems, which have brought us history’s highest standard of living, to deteriorate.  We must protect what Harold Robertson describes as the “competency that made those systems possible.”

Competence Crisis Read More

Kerby Anderson
I believe it is important for Christians to understand the liberal mind. That is why I have written a booklet on “A Biblical View on the Liberal Mind.” Once you examine the assumptions of liberals and leftists you can see how their views are very different from a biblical perspective.
If you do not have a proper view of truth and the world, you will probably also find yourself dissatisfied with life. That is the conclusion of Michael McKenna at the Washington Times. He reminds us that academics have found that Americans who identify as politically liberal are less happy. “The quantity and durability of that data are not really in question.”
There is a reason for this. “It appears — and stop me if any of this sounds familiar — that happiness is at least partially about how connected a person is to other humans, particularly through the mechanisms of family, faith and community.”
Research by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatly Institution found that “happiness is directly related to greater family satisfaction and higher levels of religious attendance.” Another study concluded that liberals have become less happy over the last few decades.
Now you may be thinking, that is sad for liberals but what difference does it make? Michael McKenna connects the dots. He has found that “personal attitudes and beliefs tend to bleed into the body politic and ultimately find their way into government policies that affect us all.”
I think that explains why liberals, and especially leftists, have been in the process of deconstructing so much of American society. We have seen such revolutionary fervor before in places like France in 1789 and Russia in 1917.
That is why we should pay attention to liberal dissatisfaction in society.

Liberal Dissatisfaction Read More

Kerby Anderson
Three years ago, a presenter at an international conference compared the printing of currency to alchemy. Although I didn’t hear the message, I read enough about it to see the connection.
If you are not familiar with the term, it points to alchemists who tried to turn cheap “base” metals into gold. The idea goes all the way back to Aristotle, who believed that all matter combined the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. He guessed that these elements could be changed by the action of heat and cold, or dampness and dryness.
Why did alchemists want to create more gold? Gold has been a store of value for thousands of years and has been used as money in so many civilizations. The science of the alchemists was flawed, but so was their economics. If they had been able to create gold, they would have ruined its value because it would no longer be scarce and would decline in value.
The story of gold and alchemy is an apt illustration of what central banks and governments have been doing for centuries. Instead of creating gold, they have been creating currency out of thin air. Although we talk about cranking up the printing presses and printing more dollars, the reality is that the Federal Reserve or the US Treasury merely changes numbers on computers.
You know the result: inflation and a devalued dollar. In previous commentaries, I have posted a picture of the declining value of the dollar since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. A dollar back then purchased what today would be considered $26 of goods and services.
Now that Congress has suspended the debt ceiling, expect the devaluation of the dollar to continue. Alchemists tried all sorts of experiments to create gold. The modern-day alchemists create currency instantaneously with no cost.

Alchemy and Currency Read More

Kerby Anderson
The latest information from the World Economic Forum shows that the Davos crowd wants you to give up your car. Tucked inside a briefing paper is a plan to reduce the number of cars around the world by 75 percent.
The title of the paper is: “The Urban Mobility Scorecard Tool: Benchmarking the Transition to Sustainable Urban Mobility.” It begins with the prediction that more than two-thirds of the world’s population will be urban by 2050. The paper argues that the only way to achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement is to push for “electrification, public transport, and shared mobility.”
That means fewer cars. The goal is to reduce the number of vehicles from 2.1 billion to 0.5 billion in less than 30 years. This would be one way to slash emissions from passenger vehicles. I have another suggestion on how to slash emissions. We can restrict participants at World Economic Forum events from flying in private jets that have a significant carbon footprint.
Let me ask you a question. Do you like owning a car? It gives you much greater mobility than mass transportation. In fact, you may live in an area that has inadequate mass transportation.
The push toward more electric cars assumes that states are producing enough additional electricity for those electric cars. How is your state doing these days in producing enough electricity to cool your home? Do you think it will be able to produce enough additional electricity to power more electric cars on the road?
Reducing the number of cars will require massive central planning. I’m not sure too many Americas are ready for politicians and bureaucrats to control their lives in this way.

Cars and the World Economic Forum Read More