We have heard quite a bit these days about fake news, but what about fake science? That is the title of the book by Austin Ruse. He has served as the president of the Center for Family & Human Rights where he testifies to our government and the United Nations about important issues. He was on my radio program recently to talk about some of the misinformation and false information presented in the media and in various governmental hearings.

Some of the book deals with homosexuality and the transgender issue. One chapter addresses whether homosexuals are “born that way” and whether such orientations of immutable. In other words, can people change their sexual orientation? Another chapter addresses the studies that attempt to argue that there is no difference between traditional parents and homosexual parents rearing children. This “grand experiment on children” has been detrimental to their physical and psychological health. That is why he wanted to set the record straight.

Some states have very strict labeling laws for food. Even a miniscule amount of a naturally occurring chemical must have a warning label. But Austin Ruse points out that in order to hit the cancer target zone for acrylamide, a child would have to eat 182 pounds of French fries every single day. A teenager couldn’t even do that on a dare.

For decades, Austin Ruse has been testifying on pro-life issues. He reminds us in one chapter that nearly everything the secular media and pro-abortion groups say about abortion is a lie. The same could be said about what these groups say about sex education and sexually transmitted diseases. And he laments how the population control advocates are driving many countries toward a demographic winter.

I recommend you read the book. And if you are skeptical of the claims, check out the more than 40 pages of endnotes documenting his critique of fake science.

Earlier this month, Jonah Goldberg wrote a column and other writers are still quoting one of his lines. He said: “The more you sound like some cowbell-wielding street preacher wearing a sandwich board that says, ‘The End is Nigh!’ the more likely people will ignore you.”

It’s a vivid image of a street preacher but he uses it to criticize the hysterical rhetoric being used by environmentalists these days. He says that one of the hallmarks of the “Ugly American” is a habit of thinking foreigners will understand what you’re saying if you just shout it louder and louder. The Ugly Environmentalist, he says, is doing the same thing by grossly exaggerating doomsday predictions with more and more hysterical rhetoric.

Here is just one example of this rhetoric. Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking predicted the consequences of Donald Trump withdrawing from the Paris climate accord. He warned that, “Trump’s action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of 240 degrees and raining sulfuric acid.” He may be a brilliant scientist, but this is certainly crazy talk.

This hysterical rhetoric creates two significant problems. First, people who hear it constantly begin to close their ears and minds to it. When we were children, we heard the story of the boy who cried wolf one too many times.

Second, there are the people who do believe it and are absolutely convinced that climate change will hasten the end of civilization and the end of life on this earth. In order to prevent this dystopia they are willing to endorse any policy and punish anyone who appears to be standing in the way of saving the planet. That is why you sometimes hear environmentalists say that climate change deniers should be put in jail. A few have even suggested the climate skeptics should be prosecuted as war criminals.

That is why all of this hysterical rhetoric is really very dangerous.

Columnist Kyle Smith says that the Left have a hamburger problem. Let me explain. He borrows the phrase from Josh Barro who coined the phrase to explain why progressives and Democrats seem to be losing so much. He writes, “Democrats’ problem isn’t that they’re on the wrong side of policy issues. It’s that they’re too ready to bother too many ordinary people about too many of their personal choices, all the way down to the hamburgers they eat.”

John Stuart Mill referred to British conservatives as “the stupidest party.” Kyle Smith says that today, the Democrats are “the annoying party.” Not only do they criticize eating hamburgers, they also complain about every perceived social ill right down to the team name of the Washington Redskins. He says that when average Americans think about the current nanny state, those on the Left think Americans imagine Mary Poppins. Instead, he said they are often thinking of Nurse Ratched from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

In twenty years, perceptions have changed. Back in the 1990s, Republican leaders were often accused of intruding into people’s lives because they were promoting family values and telling kids to just say no to drugs. Today, Americans who want to be left alone are more likely to side with the Republican Party rather than the Democratic Party that seems filled with political busybodies.

Will this perception change? Jonah Goldberg does not think so because he says that the Left are the aggressors in the culture war. And the culture war will never really end. The moment the Left wins a victory; they immediately push forward to the next fight, which is often so extreme that even Democrats would not have embraced it a few years ago. The day after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, progressives started pushing transgender issues.

This is why we are hearing people talk about the sad reality that the Left has a hamburger problem.

Biology books that teach evolution tell certain stories to illustrate the evolutionary process. Back in 2000, Dr. Jonathan Wells wrote the book, Icons of Evolution. He explained that these ten icons of evolution were false. Many of them were fraudulent and known to be so. Nevertheless, they appeared in these textbooks.

In his latest book, Zombie Science, he asks a simple question. If these icons of evolution published 17 years ago were just innocent textbook errors, why do so many of them still persist? In his book, he also adds a number of other icons that are also wrong. The book’s title Zombie Science gets its name because these false icons of evolution don’t die but live on to mislead the next generation of students.

When he was on my radio program, he talked about Darwin’s tree of life and provided a catalog of what he calls the survival of the fakest. This includes scientists’ prebiotic simulations, Haeckel’s embryos, the Peppered Moths, and Darwin’s Finches. These erroneous icons were present in textbooks decades ago, and continue to show up in textbooks today.

One of the newest icons of evolution is the “walking whales.” This story shows up in many textbooks today because paleontologists found a wolf-like creature they claim would be the ancestor of the blue whale. Jonathan Wells spends a chapter critiquing that spectacular claim.

In a previous book, he also dealt with the claim that we have so much junk DNA and addresses that again in this book. If evolution is true, we might expect to have lots of leftover and unused DNA. He shows that is not the case.

This book not only will be helpful to science students with questions, it can also be a manual for activists. After all, our tax dollars each year go to purchase textbooks that have erroneous icons of evolution.

We need to help the next generation learn to navigate the culture. That is why I am so excited that John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle have written, A Practical Guide to Culture. The rowboat on the cover reminds us that this emerging generation will have to navigate through choppy waters.

John was on my radio program recently to talk about the book and share his experiences from Summit Ministries and the Chuck Colson Center. Both of the authors have ministered to thousands of students and their parents. They are facing a range of challenges from digital media to pornography to drugs to transgender issues.

They not only focus on the hot-button issues we hear about and read about every day, they also focus on the undercurrents in the culture we often miss. Those would be: consumerism, materialism, addiction, the sexual revolution, racial tension, extended adolescence, and key principles of wisdom and virtue.

On our radio program we often talk about the challenges the millennial generation face, especially in an age with greater hostility toward Christianity. They also must do so in a digital world that moves much faster than in previous generations. This book will equip them and their parents to address many of the cultural issues other generations never had to consider.

Another helpful aspect of the book is the attempt to answer or refute many of the cultural lies in our society. Technology helps spread these lies quickly. Christians will need biblical discernment to deal with so many lies that are assaulting biblical truth.

They say that young people can either: celebrate, create, confront, co-opt, or correct cultural trends and habits. Obviously we must stand for biblical truth and correct culture trends, but we also must do it with love and compassion. This book provides a model for all of us to follow.

David Brooks took on the difficult task of reminding us that class distinctions in America do make a difference. For that he was pilloried in the social media. He was trying to explain how the privileged elite are “ruining” America. He unfortunately came off to some as an example of another privileged elite. He may have faired better if he had not mentioned taking a friend (with only a high school education) to a sandwich shop that has sandwiches with nearly unpronounceable Italian names.

If we ignore that paragraph, he really had some important observations. For example, he showed how upper-middle-class parents confer certain benefits on their children that are often unavailable to others. Put simply, they spend more time with their kids.

He also focused on how the privileged also are able to exclude other people’s children from the same opportunities. Richard Reeves writes about this in his book, Dream Horders. Zoning restrictions are one way. Well-educated people tend to live in places like Portland, New York, and San Francisco. I talked about this is a recent commentary about bubbles. Many of the people in blue states and liberal cities are socially isolated from the rest of society. Many of these zoning restrictions also serve to keep the poor and the less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities.

Another structural barrier is college admissions. Educated parents live in neighborhoods with the best teachers and some of the best schools. This gives an obvious advantage to students who want to go to the college of their choice. David Brooks does not mention other advantages that occur to me. Students with affluent parents may not need to get a summer job so they can do internships or volunteer work that look good on college resumes. They can also afford to take test prep courses in order to do well on the SAT test.

David Brooks identified a real concern, but unfortunately too many decided to lampoon his attempt to explain why it is a problem.

If you ask people around you about summer jobs they have held, you will notice a generation gap. The older people will recall some of the jobs they held as teenagers. The younger people may not have had any summer jobs.

Forty years ago, nearly 60 percent of U.S. teenagers were working or looking for work during the summer months. Last year, that percentage was just 35 percent. Some of that decline is due to the lack of summer jobs, but much of it is due to fewer teenagers looking for a summer job.

Karl Vick writing in Time magazine says that Jenkinson’s Boardwalk went looking for seasonal employees last year. In order to fill some 1200 summer vacancies, they held an Easter-time job fair that drew just 400 people. More and more summer jobs are either going unfilled or being filled by foreign students or family and friends.

If teenagers aren’t working, what are they doing? Of course, some are chilling out in front of television and video games. But many more are busy, but they aren’t working at summer jobs. They may be doing volunteer work or doing an internship. Those activities look good on resumes for students trying to get into the college of their choice.

Many are taking summer school classes. Summer school used to be for the students who did not do well in school and needed enough hours to graduate. Karl Vick explains that many more students are taking courses as an academic accelerator. Last July, 40 percent of 16-to-19-year-olds were enrolled in summer school.

Other students are playing sports. Youth sports have now expanded into a year-round, all-consuming activity for kids and parents. Many simply would not have time for a summer job because their scheduled lives are full of games and tournaments.

Sadly, many students won’t learn the valuable lessons many of us learned in our summer jobs.

If you are on any social media, you have probably seen the many memes people have produced about Denmark. Some claim that Denmark has free healthcare and free college. All of them remind us that Denmark is the happiest country in the world.

All sorts of articles and blog post challenge many of these claims. In fact, I feel sorry for people from Denmark because some of criticisms are very harsh. Let me say that if you live in Demark or plan to move there, go ahead. It is a nice country, but be aware of the economic facts behind these claims.

First, Denmark has one of the highest if not the highest taxes in the world. And we are not only talking about high income taxes but also high sales tax. Once you understand that, you can see that free healthcare and free education come at a very significant economic cost.

Second, free healthcare works well for people with minor ailments and minor injuries. But if you have a more significant medical condition, you likely with find yourself on a “waiting list.” As one commentator put it, “you get in line and await your turn to get the health care you’ve already paid for.” Of course, if you are rich you can go to a private hospital or clinic and pay for healthcare you already paid for with your taxes.

Third, free education may not be as good for society as you might think. On the one hand, students graduate from college without the debt load many in the U.S. face. However, one article in the Business Insider explains that: “Too many [students] pursue fulfillment and too few the science and engineering degrees needed in well-paid growth sectors critical for the nation’s future.” And again, if you have money, you probably will put your kids in private school rather than public school.

All of these claims sound good until you begin to investigate them. All of this free stuff actually costs lots of money, but that never shows up in any of the memes about Denmark.