American Experiment’s Katherine Kersten Tops Star Tribune’s Most Read Opinion Columns in 2020
It’s the one time I can count on the Star Tribune’s editorial page not to disappoint. Candidly, I look forward to opening the paper’s December 31 edition in my e-mailbox year in and year out.
That’s because every New Year’s Eve the Strib publishes a top-20 list of the most widely read opinion pieces from its editorial columns of the year. And Minnesotans can be sure one author’s name and courageous work will be on the list—American Experiment Policy Fellow Katherine Kersten.
In fact, Kersten topped the list with more Minnesotans reading her op-ed titled Racial justice: The new religion? than any other piece in 2020. True to form, Kersten did not shy away from exploring the hottest topic of the day.
What is unfolding before our eyes is a new secular religion. For all its claims of “inclusivity,” this new faith is deeply intolerant. It has roots in the American past that would likely surprise its adherents: the Puritan era of our nation’s earliest religious zealots. Progressives are now engaged in doing theology without God. “ Woke is the new Saved,” in the words of commentator John Zmirak.
It’s the sixth consecutive year Kersten’s work has made the paper’s year-end honor roll. As in most years, her byline appeared twice on the list of most compelling columns carried by Minnesota’s most influential media outlet in 2020.
Her second offering, Minnesota must recover from its pandemic of fear, attracted the sixth largest readership of opinion pieces in the paper last year.
Minnesotans have been herded into a massive new regime of political control over the details of ordinary life. They have been pummeled by apocalyptic propaganda that pressures them to comply. Those responsible include political leaders intent on extricating themselves from the disastrous steps they have taken, without acknowledging and reversing their mistakes, and a complicit media that refuses to criticize or ask hard questions.
We are giving up our rights with scarcely a whimper and no clear explanation of why government’s call to transform our way of life is justified. We must continue to take prudent precautions to minimize the virus’s impact and shift our focus to a diligent, targeted effort to protect the vulnerable. But the shutdown calamity must end.
No one could have foreseen the calamitous events that would reshape our daily lives so dramatically in 2020. Whatever unfolds this year, Minnesotans can count on Katherine Kersten to be there to provide clarity and perspective.