Destroying The American “Brand”: The Absence Of Compassion In Public Policy

Jul 12th, 2025 | By

Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal recently wrote a most convicting piece on “trashing America’s global good name.” He wrote: “When I worked in Tokyo in the 1990s, a Japanese colleague told me a story about her father’s defining experience with Americans. In the days after Japan surrendered at the end of World War II, he was a young boy living in a small town.”



The Costs Of Creating A Fantasy World

Jul 5th, 2025 | By

Mark 12:30-31 declares that we are to love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength. The challenge for the believer is what theologians call the noetic effect of sin: 2 Corinthians 4:4 affirms the depths of sin’s effect on our minds. For that reason, one of the weighty commands of the New Testament is to “renew our minds” (e.g., Romans 12:1-2; Ephesians 4:23). Colossians 3:2 commands: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul speaks of taking “every thought captive to obey Christ.”



America’s Credit Rating, Its Debt And The Coming Crisis

Jun 28th, 2025 | By

It has been a long time in coming and there have been warning signs for years, but the American debt crisis is real and can no longer be ignored: Moody’s downgraded U.S. debt to a notch below its top rating, citing chronic budget deficits and rising debt-service costs. The rating agency lagged behind S&P Global Ratings and Fitch, which downgraded the U.S. in 2011 and 2023, respectively.



The Family Values Of Elon Musk, The Transhumanist

Jun 21st, 2025 | By

Transhumanism is a not a new concept. Known as the father of transhumanism, Julian Huxley, brother of the famed writer Aldous Huxley, described this concept in a 1957 essay saying “the human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself—not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirely, as humanity.” Similarly, Elon Musk has long sought to upgrade humanity claiming that “to avoid becoming like monkeys, humans must merge with machines.” This argument is based on a materialistic and in some cases an evolutionary worldview that concludes we must improve upon evolution’s current iteration of humanity or be left behind by the rise of sophisticated machines.



Legitimizing Assisted Dying

Jun 14th, 2025 | By

I had addressed the subject of assisted dying in an edition of Issues on 25 January 2025. But what is occurring in Quebec, Canada is alarming. Hence, I want to return to the topic of assisted dying in this edition of Issues in Perspective.



Anger Fear Or Revival?

Jun 7th, 2025 | By

Traditional religion in the United States has suffered huge losses in recent decades. The number of Americans identifying as “not religious” has increased remarkably. Religious affiliation, service attendance, and belief in God have declined. More and more people claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” Religious organizations have been reeling from revelations of sexual and financial scandals and cover-ups. Public trust in “organized religion” has declined significantly. Crucially, these religious losses are concentrated among younger generations. This means that, barring unlikely religious revivals among youth, the losses will continue and accelerate in time, as less-religious younger Americans replace older more-religious ones and increasingly fewer American children are raised by religious parents.



The UK’s Supreme Court Decision On Trans Women

May 31st, 2025 | By

In mid-April, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that trans women do not fall within the legal definition of women under the country’s equality legislation. This landmark 88-page ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, is a blow to campaigners for transgender rights. As Lizzie Dearden of the New York Times reported, “[T]he five judges involved in the ruling emphasized that they were not commenting more broadly on whether trans women are women, saying it was not the role of the court to adjudicate on the meaning of gender or sex. Instead, the judgment is limited to the precise interpretation of language in the 2010 Equality Act, which aims to prevent discrimination.”



Higher Education, The Federal Government And Accountability

May 24th, 2025 | By

Over the last several months, President Trump has acted to withhold federal funds from a raft of elite universities: Harvard ($2.26 billion), Cornell ($1 billion), Northwestern ($790 million), Brown ($510 million), Columbia ($400 million), Princeton ($210 million) and the University of Pennsylvania ($175 million). His complaint is the “abject failure of these institutions to deal with antisemitism on campus, but the president has also demanded a broader crackdown on DEI compulsions and an expansion of viewpoint diversity among predominantly progressive faculty.”



The Embryo Question

May 17th, 2025 | By

Anna Louie Sussman of the New York Times writes, “Scientists are doing human embryo research that could, for instance, help prevent miscarriages. Companies are pushing the boundaries of what kind of testing can be done on embryos in the name of optimizing future lives. Embryos are at the center of divorce cases that are part property dispute, part custody battle.



The US Retreat In The War On Ideas

May 10th, 2025 | By

Ideas have consequences and the battle for ideas is important in any age, but especially in our own day, when relativism, secularism and intentional disinformation are rampant in our world. Thus, in an astonishing and shocking act, President Trump, on 15 March 2025, ordered the termination of grants for Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and Television Marti), the Open Technology Fund and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks are also being dismantled.