Nov. 13, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:54
3125 The Truth About Ben Carson
Ben Carson overcame a very difficult upbringing to become a gifted neurosurgeon famous for pioneering life-saving brain surgery techniques and for leading a team of seventy people to separate conjoined twins. Carson is currently battling Donald Trump at the top of the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. As of late the mainstream media has questioned the truth of Carson’s backstory – raising some legitimate questions but also smearing him with nonsensical falsehoods. What is The Truth About Ben Carson?Sources: http://www.fdrurl.com/ben-carsonFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.fdrurl.com/donate
We're going to take a few minutes to delve into the absolutely fascinating history and current political positions of the Republican wannabe to the presidential office of the United States, whose name is Dr.
Ben Carson.
I'm sure you've heard of him and seen him, perhaps seen him speak.
Now, he's relatively new to the public scene in terms of politics.
He only registered very recently as a Republican after having been an independent previously.
And, of course, he's undergoing the kind of media scrutiny that only Republicans seem to go through in the modern mainstream media, particularly in the United States.
But he himself has said that he welcomes this.
He said about the vetting process, there are some people that are thrust into positions of great responsibility, and sometimes we don't vet them.
We don't look into their past.
We don't look into their associations.
We don't look into their accomplishments.
We don't look into the kind of person they are.
And all of those things become clear.
I actually welcome the magnifying glass.
I don't have any problem.
In his book, One Nation, Carson advised citizens to study with due diligence the dubious characters and associations of those vying for power.
So with that in mind, we will do exactly that and tell you the truth about Dr.
Ben Carson.
A couple of highlights from his rather staggering resume.
He participated in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program in Detroit, reaching the rank of Cadet Colonel.
He became the Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at 33 years of age.
He was the youngest department head in the history of the facility.
He pioneered life-saving brain surgery techniques, including hemispherectomies to treat seizure patients.
He led a team of 70 people to separate conjoined twins in the first ever surgery of its kind.
He was awarded the highest civilian honor in the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2008.
Now, he was catapulted to national attention.
His widely publicized speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast led to his current presidential campaign.
As the old saying goes, the child is the father of the man.
Where did he come from?
Well, both of Ben Carson's parents came from large families.
His father had 13 siblings, and his mother had 23 siblings in total.
His mother, Sonia Carson, was raised in various foster homes, surrounded by an untold and staggering amount of poverty and neglect, abuse, single motherhood, and so on.
At the age of 13 years, with only a third grade education, she was married off to one Robert Carson, a man who was 15 years older than her tender 13 years of age.
It's described as if this man rescued her from a desperate home situation and lavished and lauded her with attention, calling her his little china doll.
After getting married, they moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Detroit.
Robert Carson got a job at a Cadillac plant back when you could do such a thing and acted as a minister in a local Baptist church.
Once Curtis and Benjamin, Ben Carson, were born, Robert reportedly became secretive and stopped coming home after work.
When Ben was eight years old, his mother told him, your daddy isn't going to live with us anymore.
Sonia had discovered that Robert Carson was a bigamist, meaning that he had another wife and several children on the side.
She divorced him on finding this out and thus accelerated Ben Carson's not insignificant issues with his temper.
Now Ben Carson said, I'm not aware of going through stages of anger and resentment.
My mother says that the experience pushed Curtis and me into a lot of pain.
I don't doubt that his leaving meant a terrible adjustment for both of us boys.
Yet I still have no recollection beyond his initial leaving.
Maybe that's how I learned to handle my deep hurt.
By forgetting.
He also said, my father put great importance on being liked by everybody.
If anyone asked me to describe my dad, I'd have to say, he's just a nice guy.
And despite all the problems that erupted later, I feel that way today.
Now, several months after the divorce, Sonia Carson began, quote, going to see some relatives on a regular basis, and she would leave her children with neighbors or family or friends.
It was only when he was older that Carson realized his mother had actually been checking herself in to a mental institution, sometimes for three to four weeks at a time.
Ben had significant struggles when he was very young, early in life.
He had undiagnosed eyesight problems, which, of course, would hinder him from picking stuff up in the classroom.
He later described his academic turning point as when his mother restricted television access and forced both of her sons to read two books every single week and submit detailed book reports on what they had read.
Now, Sonia Carson, of course, third grade education, she was actually unable to read, but would stare diligently and conscientiously at these book reports and mark them up and didn't let on that she couldn't read.
She stressed the importance of education on her children.
And, of course, they both excelled in their particular fields.
Now, Ben Carson's violent history, and this may come as a bit of a shock to you, it certainly did to me, but this is what he has said when he was young.
I would go after people with baseball bats.
I remember once a guy hit me with a pebble and I took a big rock and threw it right at his face, broke his glasses, almost put his eye out.
I remember another kid did something silly, shut my locker or something when I wasn't ready, and I took the combination lock.
I put it in my hand and pop!
Knocked a three-inch gash in his forehead.
I was terrible.
I tried to hit my mother in the head with a hammer.
When I was 14, Ben Carson said, another teenager angered me, and I took a large camping knife, and I tried to stab him in the abdomen.
And fortunately, under his clothing, he had on a large metal belt buckle, and the knife blade struck with such force that it broke, and he fled in terror.
Oh, that really happened, Carson's mother told Parade magazine in 1997.
I sat him down and told him, you don't accomplish much by being a bully.
You accomplish much more with kindness than you ever do by being harsh.
Ben Carson said, I was more terrified as I recognized that I was trying to kill somebody over nothing.
After the incident, Carson locked himself in his bathroom, prayed and read Proverbs for three hours.
He said, I was already reading about personality disorders and behavior disturbances, and I knew that I had one.
And I said, Lord, you're going to have to be my psychotherapist because I can't go on like this.
And I just turned it over to him, and I said, if you want me to do something in life, you're going to have to fix this.
If not, you know, I'll just go on like this, but I'll tell you right now, I can't do it.
Now, his brother had actually bought him a subscription to a psychological magazine, and perhaps his mother's stay in mental hospitals had given some exposure to self-knowledge, to therapeutic techniques, and so on.
But this didn't just save his life or the life of the boy that he stabbed and would have killed if it wasn't for the belt buckle severely injured.
All the lives that he saved going forward were saved by this moment, which is hard to argue with.
Ben Carson said, I recognize that if I couldn't control that temper, I would never realize my dream of becoming a doctor.
Now, why did he want to become a doctor?
What he said is that when he was young, of course, his family was very poor, and they would go to the emergency room for healthcare issues.
And they would have a long wait, nature with emergency room situations, and the nurses would let him play with the stethoscope and teach him a little bit about medical stuff.
And he would listen to the amplifier, like the loudspeaker would be saying, you know, paging Dr.
Green, paging Dr.
Green.
He said, oh, what if one day that could be paging Dr.
Carson?
It just shows you the little kindnesses that you show can really be life-changing to people.
Now, Carson has repeatedly said in his books, in speeches that he's given, in interviews, that he had a psychological disease with the anger he exhibited.
However, following the stabbing incident of the hours spent in the bathroom, Carson claims he was cured and never got angry to that level ever again.
Now, recently, the media has questioned the stabbing story, and Carson now claims that the almost victim previously described as Bob was a close relative under an alias.
Partly why he's come up with these stories as well, or retelling these stories, is because Trump, along with Jeb Bush, has been calling Ben Carson and Jeb Bush sort of low energy and so on.
So this is one reason why.
Ben Carson said, the person that I tried to stab, you know, I talked to today, and said, would they want to be revealed?
They were not anxious to be revealed, and it was a close relative of mine.
I didn't want to put their lives under the spotlight.
This is something that I decided to do, i.e.
running for president.
None of those people decided that they wanted to do this.
And the media is ruthless.
So I would say to the people of America, do you think I'm a pathological liar like CNN does, or do you think I'm an honest person?
Donald Trump says, he hit a friend in the face with a lock.
He tried to kill somebody with a knife and he said he suffers from pathological disease.
Okay, when you suffer from pathological disease, you're not really getting better unless you start taking lots of pills and things.
Okay, I guess we know which one is the doctor in that conversation.
Trump said also, Ben Carson's trying to prove that he did it in order to have credibility.
Who would want to prove this?
There's something very strange here.
There's something very strange that's going on.
Now, this has been an issue recently, the West Point Scholarship.
So, Politico recently ran a story with the headline, Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point Scholarship.
And, of course, when this happened, many people, including a lot of Carson supporters, believed presidential run is over, baby.
The lead line continued, Carson's campaign on Friday admitted that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated.
It didn't take long for this damning headline to be proven false, and for the story to be drastically edited for correction.
In the end, it all amounted to a simple game of semantics.
So, what happened was Ben Carson once claimed that he was offered a scholarship to attend the US Military Academy at West Point.
But he's plainly stated that he was never interested in military service.
He said, no, thanks.
I want to be a doctor.
And he applied to only one college, Yale, where he was accepted.
Now, West Point at this time was in the midst of a massive recruitment drive, particularly for black applicants.
And they used the term scholarship to sell the tuition-free West Point.
So West Point will give you education tuition-free in return for a couple of years of military service after you graduate.
And they use this word scholarship all the time.
And technically, you could say it's incorrect.
You've got to apply.
There have to be fees that are deferred to because of a scholarship.
It's really not a very important issue.
Because, of course, nobody who attends West Point pays tuition.
Costs are covered by the U.S. military slash taxpayer in exchange for future service.
Now, Carson could have got in without a doubt.
I mean, his academic and ROTC accomplishments, he would write his own ticket.
So Politico took the informal offer Carson received, saw that he never applied to West Point and took that as evidence that he was never recruited or told he could easily attend the academy without paying tuition.
In the end, Politico changed the story to, when presented by Politico with these facts, Carson's campaign conceded.
He never applied.
Ben Carson had conceded this as well.
And Ben Carson has been pushing back the media, saying, well, where was all of this hysterical vetting when Barack Obama was heading towards the White House?
Why is it only Republicans that get vetted to this insane degree?
Now, in his autobiography, Gifted Hands, Carson recalled a time where students were told that their final exam papers for the Perceptions 301 class had accidentally been destroyed, which was supposed to require all 150 students to retake the test.
This new exam was reportedly much more difficult, leading students to walk out with the excuse that they didn't see the notification about retaking the exam.
They just kind of scurried out and said they were never there.
Carson claimed that he was the last student remaining in the class taking the exam.
As he said, the professor came toward me.
With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture.
A hoax, the teacher said.
We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.
Carson wrote that the professor then handed him a $10 bill for his honesty.
The media recently questioned this story, noting that no photo of Carson as a student was ever published in the Yale Daily News archives and referring to a Yale librarian who claimed there was no course by that name during Carson's years at Yale.
I'm sorry, it's just, oh my God.
Let's go check the archives.
Good job, reporters.
Thank you for avoiding all of the major issues.
Carson released a newspaper clipping from the Yale Daily News, noting that a fake version of the paper had been distributed, announcing that a series of psychology 10 exams were destroyed, and announcing a date slash time for a makeup test.
The clipping continued, a false exam was attended by several students not aware that the replacement exam was a hoax, thus of course corroborating his story.
The author of the clipping produced by Carson has since noted that he did not witness.
I guess we had heard that some folks had showed up, noting that, to my knowledge, we didn't send anyone over to cover the story.
This can explain some of the discrepancies, exam difficulty, number of people, between the clipping and Carsten's story.
Reports of the event have also since been corroborated by an editorial assistant of the satirical paper who helped write the fake exam, and noted he was 99% certain the way Carsten remembers it is correct.
Although the assistant was not present at the end of the fake exam.
The assistant also backed up Carson's claim that, quote, at the end, what few students remained, it may have been just one or two, I wasn't there, received a small cash prize.
We got a room to do the test in, and one of us from the record impersonated a proctor to give the test.
So Carson got the name of the test wrong, although a Perceptions 301 class currently exists at Yale, claimed that a professor had given him the cash prize, which is a very understandable mistake, said he was a junior instead of a freshman and painted the story more as an inspirational tale instead of a goofy prank.
Come on, people.
We all know there's no photography in memory.
There's no video recorder in memory.
Memory is, to some degree, a narrative, and what we tend to remember tends to conform with the central narrative of our lives.
Now, Manatec.
Ben Carson's relationship with Manatec.
He was questioned about this in one of the debates.
It's a Texas-based health and wellness company best known for its blends of plant extracts called Glyconutrients.
In 2013, Manatec reported sales of more than $170 million.
The company previously made claims that their products could cure many illnesses, including cancer, cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, etc., without really providing evidence.
They were charged with unlawful sales practices by the Texas Attorney General in 2007 and paid a $7 million out-of-court settlement while admitting no wrongdoing.
Good job, American legal system.
Either they were guilty, in which case they bought their way out of trouble, or they weren't guilty, in which case they were shaken down for $7 million.
Carson made four speeches in front of Manatech's sales associates, the first in 2004, the last in 2013, and until recently, Carson's image was front and center on websites and promotional material for the company.
Carson was paid $42,000 for the most recent speech, and Manatech made donations to the Carson Scholarship Fund for the previous appearances.
A group involved with the distribution of Manatech products also sponsored a public television special featuring Carson in 2014.
When asked about Manatech during the debate on October 28th, he said, In an interview, he elaborated, quote, They contracted me to give a speech.
I do not, you know, go into great depth when I get a contract to give a speech.
I go into the speech.
I happen to like their products, and since I've been taking it, I almost never get sick.
But I constantly want them not to use me as an endorser, and some of the associates took the tapes and put them up on websites and stuff like that.
There's nothing I can do to control that.
Now, Carson was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2002 and was introduced to glyconutrients after his diagnosis.
In 2002-2003, he publicly discussed possible, quote, dietary connection to cancer rates, but went even further in the 2004 speech to Manatech.
Quote, within about three weeks, my symptoms went away, and I was really quite amazed.
And I actually toyed with the idea of not having surgery done.
But then I began to realize that having a high profile, that if I did that, a lot of other people...
Might follow that example too, but they may not be quite as diligent about taking the product as I was.
And there would be a lot of needless deaths.
And I didn't feel as though I could have that on my conscience.
So I went ahead and had the surgery done.
This is an amazing thing to say, that he had a cure that he believed in, but he went and had elective cancer surgery because he was concerned that other people might not be smart enough to follow the instructions on what pills to take.
In his 2007 book, Take the Risk, Carson again noted the belief that he could have managed and or cured his illness with nutritional supplements and a healthy diet.
And of course, this is partly what he's running on, it's his medical expertise.
In January 2015, Carson claimed he gave a speech 10 plus years ago and that he was not aware of the company's legal problems in 2004.
He did not mention his other three speeches, with one as recently as 2014, seven years after charges were filed against the company.
The other financial entanglements also weren't mentioned by Carson, nor the objective fact that he himself made public claims about the Manatech product eerily similar to those which led to charges being filed.
Now, during an interview on May 8, 2015, and during the second Republican debate in September, Carson differentiated himself from other candidates by saying he was probably and or possibly for an increase in the federal minimum wage.
Carson suggested adjusting the minimum wage for inflation automatically.
We should index the federal minimum wage so that we never have to have this conversation again in the history of America.
Of course, when the government calculates inflation, it does so more for its own benefit than the illumination of people wanting objective facts about the economy.
He also proposed a new minimum wage system with both a starter and a sustained minimum wage, with the starting wage for those entering the workforce being at a lower rate.
At a November 11, 2015 debate, Carson noted that he did not support the Fight for 15, $15 an hour minimum wage movement, noting, quote, As far as the minimum wage is concerned, people need to be educated on the minimum wage.
Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases.
This is particularly a problem in the black community.
Only 19.8% of black teenagers have a job or are looking for one.
And that's because of those high wages.
If you lower those wages, that comes down.
After the debate, Carson's communications manager, Doug Watts, insisted that the candidate has remained consistent on his position.
Dr.
Carson has said and believes in a two-tier minimum wage.
His answer focused on the lower tier, which he does not believe needs raising as it is an entry-level wage.
He believes in a second higher tier that once determined is indexed.
There's kind of a number of categories here for his minimum wage.
The first is a higher one, which is indexed, and the second is a lower one, which is not indexed.
So he says that having a wage artificially higher than market demand results in unemployment, which is not that controversial a position, but he still wants two minimum wages.
Why not five?
Why not ten?
Who knows, right?
But this is not a very consistent position.
How is he on immigration?
In his book, America the Beautiful, Carson wrote, I believe we have taken the moral low road on this issue, i.e.
illegal aliens.
Some segments of our economy would virtually collapse without these undocumented workers.
We all know that.
Yet we continue to harass and deport many individuals who are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families.
Is there a way to apply logic to this issue and arrive at an intelligent solution?
The idea that without the illegal aliens that certain sections of the economy would collapse is nonsense.
Literally, to take an extreme example, it's like saying, well, you know, without the slaves, there'll be no fruit and cotton picking in the South.
The whole thing will collapse.
No, you just automate or you pay workers and you pass the costs along.
So...
When asked about a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in 2013, Carson said, of course allow illegal immigrants to have a pathway to citizenship.
That's the only humane and reasonable thing to do.
Now, of course, if Ben Carson is concerned about the impact of a high minimum wage or lack of job opportunities for black youths, having endless waves of people who have even lower income requirements than black youths is not going to help drive their wages up, but instead there's going to be a giant sucking sound as those wages decline.
After we, quote, he said, seal the borders, after we turn off the spigot that dispenses all the goodies, Carson proposes something similar to the failed Gang of Eight legislations.
Quote, what I would do is allow illegal immigrants to become guest workers if they register and they get involved in a back tax program and taxes going forward.
On deportations, he said.
It sounds really cool, you know.
Let's just round them all up and ship them back.
People who say that have no idea what it would entail in terms of our legal system.
The cost.
Forget about it.
And plus, where are you going to send them?
So that's, you know, a double whammy.
Well, of course, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower deported some estimates between one and two million illegal immigrants at the time, managed to get it done, and I don't believe that the entire economy collapsed.
Alright, gun control.
Now, in the past, Carson used to support federal gun registration, but that changed.
He changed that position, noting, quote, I used to think they needed to be registered, but if you registered them, they'd just come and find you and take your guns.
If we were only concerned about external forces, then we would be okay, but there are some pretty sinister internal forces.
By that, he means his suspicion of government itself.
Carson created a media stir when he added, I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed.
And this is a well-known Second Amendment argument, which is that when a dictator wants to get into power and wants to extend the police state, what he does is disarm the population.
And people thought that maybe this meant that the Jews were responsible for their own demise and so on, which was nonsense.
I mean, when the Jews staged rebellions in their ghettos, the first thing they wanted to do was get a hold of weapons.
Carson also previously spoke out against the right of Americans to own semi-automatic weapons in large cities.
He said, I think that if you live in the midst of a lot of people, and I'm afraid that semi-automatic weapon is going to fall into the hands of a crazy person, I would rather you not have it.
If you live out in the country somewhere by yourself, I have no problem.
Now, of course, this is what drives guns.
Writes activist crazy, which is that if it's a principle, it's a principle, right?
If you're allowed to have the right to bear arms, then you're allowed to have the right to bear arms.
This idea that, well, you can tweak it based upon your geography, your location, your income, your this, your that.
It's not a principle anymore.
In response to his unique stance on gun control issues, he said, quote, I fully believe in Second Amendment rights.
I would never advocate anything to interfere with Second Amendment rights.
However, I do think we have to be intelligent.
Not often you get to see someone contradict himself in the same breath.
I would never do anything.
Well, okay, except for this, this, this, and this.
Where is he on abortion?
Well, he's always publicly been opposed to abortion and recently commented that he wants to see Roe v.
Wade.
The Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion overturned an abortion made illegal with few exceptions.
When asked about abortions to preserve the life and health of the mother, he said, that's an extraordinarily rare situation.
But if in that very rare situation it occurred, I believe there's room to discuss that.
He said, I'm a reasonable person, and if people can come up with a reasonable explanation of why they would like to kill a baby, I'll listen.
In October, Carson was asked about abortion in the event of rape and incest.
Quote, I would not be in favor of killing a baby because the baby came about in that way, he said, adding that there were, quote, many stories of people who have led very useful lives who were the result of rape or incest.
Depending on the age of his mother...
Now, this is in contrast to Carson's position on the very same issue as recently as August, where he said, quote, if a woman was raped, I would hope that they would very quickly avail themselves of the emergency room, and in the emergency room they have the ability to administer RU486 and other possibilities before you have a developing fetus.
RU486, often referred to as a chemical abortion pill, that ends a pregnancy and is strongly opposed by many anti-abortion groups.
Needless to say, the statement has confused many anti-abortion advocates.
It should never happen.
If it happens, get to a hospital and do it.
In 1992, Carson told the Baltimore Sun, as a physician who does not believe in abortion, when faced with a patient who has severe medical problems, I would refer someone for an abortion.
I believe that person needs to hear both sides.
He also added, I would never advocate it's illegal for a person to get an abortion.
I think in the long run we do a lot of harm when we bludgeon people.
When his campaign was asked if Carson stood by his previous decisions to refer women whose fetuses had genetic defects to abortion providing doctors, they responded, he does.
Noting he believes in quality medical care, number one, and secondly, he believes in people making their own decisions based on facts and information.
Now that, of course, making something illegal is not allowing people to make their own decisions based on facts and information.
Now, of course, changing your mind from 1992 to 2015, sure, but from August to October, that seems like a rather narrow time frame to change your mind on something so fundamental.
How Carson's current desire to see Roe v.
Wade overturned, an abortion made illegal for victims of rape or incest, fits with, quote, people making their own decisions based on facts and information has yet to be explained.
To add even more confusion, Carson recently discussed the abortion debate and noted, quote, if we are willing to open up the discussion, both sides, I think we can come to an accommodation.
We'll never come to an accommodation as long as we get off in our respective corners and say, absolutely not.
So, it's bad, it's okay, and we should do both, and compromise.
I think that's pretty much covering all corners.
Fetal tissue research positions.
Now, we did a video on this topic, Planned Parenthood, in these videos, and so on, you can check them out on this channel.
Upon the release of the first Planned Parenthood videos, Carson spoke out against fetal tissue research, claiming that there was, quote, nothing that can't be done without fetal tissue.
And that the benefits of fetal tissue have been overpromised, and the results have very much under-delivered.
So, given his strong opposition to fetal tissue research, it was rather surprising to discover that Dr.
Carson had previously conducted research involving, yes, fetal tissue, co-authoring a 1992 research study titled Colloid Cysts of the Third Ventricle.
And again, it's a time frame, but at least you can say, well, I used to be in favor, and now I'm not.
When asked about the paper, Carson called the questions desperate and noted, quote, when we obtain tissue like that, we want to know what the origin of that tissue is developmentally.
Knowing that helps us determine which patients are likely to develop a problem.
It's one of the reasons why, at the turn of the last century, the average age of death was 47.
Now the average age of death is 80.
Using the information that you have is a smart thing, not a dumb thing.
So the benefits of fetal tissue have been over-promised and under-delivered, But it's key as to how human lifespan has almost doubled in 100 years.
So I'm not sure how you can square that circle.
I put it to you to consider.
Gay marriage and homosexual position.
He is opposed to gay marriage, although he does support civil unions.
He says, I'm trying not to comment too much, but lumping gay people in with people who promote pedophilia and bestiality, not cool.
Not cool at all.
He said, how I feel and what I think isn't just my opinion.
God, in his word, says very clearly that he considers homosexual acts to be an abomination.
I guess we'll wait for him to get to the White House so he can pass laws against atheism and sorcery.
On if homosexuality is a choice, he says, absolutely.
Because a lot of people who go into prison, go into prison straight.
And when they come out, they're gay.
So did something happen while they were in there?
Ask yourself that question.
Prison doesn't turn people gay.
People might get raped in prison.
It doesn't turn people gay.
After his comments caused a significant uproar, he said, quote, I realize that my choice of language does not reflect fully my heart on gay issues.
I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation.
I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive.
For that, I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended.
He said, I'm not a politician, and I answered a question without really thinking about it thoroughly.
No excuses.
Well, if you say I'm not a politician, that's kind of an excuse, but neither here nor there.
Now, we've had genetic experts on this show who've talked about the strong genetic relationship between sexual preferences, sexual affiliations, that gay twins, higher percentage, and so on.
And there's some epigenetic arguments for this as well.
You can look at the material on this channel.
But again, this guy is a doctor.
He should know this stuff.
This is not, dare I say, this is not brain surgery.
He also noted, quote, some of our brightest minds have looked at this debate.
And up until this point, there have been no definitive studies that people are born into a specific sexuality.
Well, I don't know what you mean by definitive.
because there are elements of choice and randomness in all of this stuff, but there's a very strong correlation between genetics and homosexuality.
Here's religious beliefs.
It's America.
We've got to do it.
He's a Seventh-day Adventist.
He said, in my education, I had to learn evolutionary theories, and as a God-fearing Christian, I wondered how to make God an evolution mesh.
The truth is, you can't make the mesh.
You have to choose one or the other.
They say, Carson, you know, how can you be a surgeon, a neurosurgeon, and believe that God created the earth, and not believe in evolution, which is the basis of all knowledge and all science?
Actually, it's not, but...
Well, you know, it's kind of funny, he says.
But I do believe God created us, and I did just fine.
And in fact, the more you know about God, and the deeper your relationship with God, I think the more intricate becomes your knowledge of the way things work, including the human body.
I guess he believes that.
I still want a doctor who's gone to medical school, not theology school.
He said, I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary, which is the devil.
And it has become what is scientifically, politically correct.
Darwin, motivated by the devil, and somehow it conforms to political correctness, that evolution has a lot of validity.
He said if God used evolution to create, then he used the process of millions of years of death, disease, bloodshed, and suffering to create life.
He then looked over millions of years of death, bloodshed, suffering, disease, and animal carnivory, and called it very good.
The God who calls death the last enemy and will eventually destroy it in the lake of fire would not call death and suffering very good.
This is a major theological problem with evolution in millions of years, and it's just one of many.
Okay?
The fact that animals eat each other is not solved by denying evolution because they're still eating each other, so it doesn't matter what happened in the past.
He said, I believe in microevolution, I believe in natural selection, but I have a different take on it.
The evolutionists say that's proof that the theory of evolution is true.
I say that's proof of an intelligent and caring God who gave his creatures the ability to adapt to their environment so he wouldn't have to snot over every 50 years.
He said, I'm not a hard and fast person who says the earth is only 6,000 years old.
I do believe in the six-day creation.
It says in the beginning God created the heaven and earth.
It doesn't say when he created them, except for in the beginning.
So the earth could have been here for a long time before he started creating things on it.
Okay, if it's six days, it's six days.
If the earth has been around for millions of years before God creates life on it, that's not six days anymore.
Anyway, why do I say it?
I don't know.
He said, some people believe in the Bible like I do, and don't find that to be silly at all, and believe that God created the earth, and don't find that to be silly at all.
The secular progressives try to ridicule it every time it comes up, and they're welcome to do that.
With regards to the pyramids, of course, the archaeologists as a whole, the specialists, and I guess most of the people in the world, accept that the pyramids were there as part of the Pharaoh death cult tombing that happened to the ancient leaders of the ancient world.
Ah, not for Dr.
Carson, he says.
My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain.
Now, all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaoh's graves, but you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it, and I don't think it would just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.
And when you look at it, the way that the pyramids are made, when you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they'd have to be that way for various reasons.
And various of scientists have said, quote, Well, you know, there were alien beings that came down, and they have special knowledge, and that's how, you know, it doesn't require an alien being when God is with you.
I'm not positive that there are a lot of scientists who say that the pyramids were built with the help of extraterrestrials.
He's also said...
Can you prove evolution?
No.
Can you prove creation?
No.
Can you use the intellect God has given you to decide whether something is logical or illogical?
Yes, absolutely.
It all comes down to faith, and I don't have enough to believe in evolution.
I'm too logical.
Now, what this amount of trash compacting that occurs in these statements with regards to metaphysics and epistemology is intense, to say the least, and I won't unpack it all, but...
If it's logical, you don't need faith.
Faith is the belief in the impossible.
As Tertullian said, I believe because it is absurd, because it is impossible.
So this is not consistent even within the same syllables.
Here's chemistry dream.
Now, I accept that the value of dreams, I'm with Freud in a lot of ways, the royal road to the unconscious, worth examining, worth thinking about.
This goes a little further.
In his autobiography, Ben Carson tells a story of almost failing chemistry at Yale, which in his mind would have ended his dream of becoming a doctor.
I turned to God, he said.
I need help.
I prayed.
Being a doctor is all I've ever wanted to do, and now it looks like I can't.
And Lord, I've always had the impression you wanted me to be a doctor.
But if I fail chemistry, I'm going to have to find something else to do.
Now, he says, if failing students did well on the final exam, the teacher would throw out most of the semester's work and let the good final test score count heavily towards the final grade.
That presented the only possibility for me to pass chemistry.
It was nearly 10 p.m.
Ah, and I was tired.
I shook my head knowing that between now and tomorrow morning, I couldn't pull off that kind of miracle.
Ben, you have to try, I said aloud.
I'd fail, but I can solve myself.
At least I'd have a high fail.
The words on the page blurred, and my mind refused to take in any more information.
I flopped into my bed and whispered in the darkness, God, I'm sorry.
Please forgive me for failing you and for failing myself.
Then I slept.
While I slept, I had a strange dream.
In the dream, I was sitting in the chemistry lecture hall, the only person there.
The door opened and a nebulous figure walked into the room, stopped at the board and started working out chemistry problems.
I took notes of everything he wrote.
When I awakened, I recalled most of the problems and I hurriedly wrote them down before they faded from memory.
A few of the answers actually did fade, but still remembering the problems, I looked them up in my textbook.
I knew quite a bit about psychology, so assumed I was trying to work out unresolved problems during my sleep.
Then he says when he got to the exam, I opened the booklet and read the first problem.
The exam problems were identical to those written by the shadowy dream figure in my sleep.
Near the end of the test, where my dream recall began to weaken, I didn't get every single problem, but it was enough.
I knew I would pass.
God, you pulled off a miracle, I told him as I left the classroom, and I make a promise to you that I'll never put you in that situation again.
The only explanation, he said, just blew me away.
The one answer was humbling in its simplicity.
For whatever reason, the god of the universe, the god who holds galaxies in his hands, had seen a reason to reach down to a campus room on planet Earth and send a dream to a discouraged ghetto kid who wanted to become a doctor.
When the final chemistry grades came out, Benjamin S. Carson scored 97, he said, right up there with the top of the class.
All right.
Quick run through his facts and positions.
On Obamacare, the worst thing that has happened to this country since slavery.
Apparently worse than, say, the Civil War, worse than bank runs, the Great Depression, worse than the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, worse than the welfare state, worse than Vietnam.
That's it.
Worst thing that's happened to the country since slavery.
On healthcare, under a proposal outlined by Carson, the government contributes $2,000 to each individual's account annually, so a health account.
Individuals and employers would be permitted to contribute additional funds to the accounts, and unspent funds could be shared within a family.
Carson has said that his plan makes every family their own insurance company.
So this is not a very free market position, which is something that the Republicans are generally more keen on.
This is...
Just another bunch of socialized government interference stuff, right?
I mean, there's other things you could do.
Of course, you could make it easier for people to become doctors.
You could deal with some of the problems with suing and malpractice tort legislation.
You could do things like let non-doctors see people who didn't actually need to see doctors.
You could allow insurance companies to compete across state lines.
Lots of things you could do, but this is just another bit of government manipulation.
On the Veterans Affairs scandal, he said, quote, I think what's happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the healthcare provider.
And if we can't get it right with the relatively small number of veterans, how in the world are you going to do it with the entire population?
Now this is the guy who hates the fact that an anteater eats an ant, but somehow veterans dying in their own filth and being unable to get healthcare is a gift from God.
On the Michael Brown shooting, when asked if he would have shot Brown if he were in Wilson's shoes, Carson said, it's hard to say.
I probably, knowing who he was, I probably just would have arrested him.
Oh great, let's get another race baiter into the White House because that's been wonderful for the past seven years, hasn't it everyone?
Yay!
Go Missouri!
Of course the whole point of Darren Wilson was he was trying to arrest the guy.
But the guy punched him, and the guy grabbed his gun, and the gun went off.
And then when he tried to get the guy to stop, Michael Brown turned around and charged him.
300 pounds of the guy.
He was trying to arrest him.
He's either talking about something he has no idea about, which is totally wrong, or he has an idea about it, but he's just race-baiting.
On the Oregon shooter, this is Chris Mercer Harper, the guy who went in and asked people of their religion reportedly before shooting them.
He said, not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me.
I would say, hey guys, everybody attack him.
He may shoot me, but he can't get us all.
It's a lot of courage there.
Let's see how that goes.
On a Muslim president, he said, we do not put people at the leadership of our country whose faith might interfere with carrying out the duties of the Constitution.
Now, if someone has a Muslim background and they're willing to reject those tenets and to accept the way of life that we have and clearly will swear to place our constitution above their religion, then of course they will be considered infidels and heretics.
But at least I would then be quite willing to support them.
Okay, so if somebody completely betrays their faith, then he's fine with them.
Educational funding.
He said, if you happen to be in an affluent community, there's a lot more money for the schools, better facilities, everything.
All that does is perpetuate the situation.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to put the money in a pot and redistribute it throughout the country so that public schools are equal, whether you're in a poor area or a wealthy area?
Actually, that's kind of how it works.
And there's lots of schools who've had Olympic pools put in and computer labs doesn't really budge the marks.
Washington, D.C. has some of the lowest marks in the country and some of the highest spending and more than $20,000 per student.
And it is a kind of redistribution, a socialist state of education.
So I think you might be having a bit of a red herring there.
Regarding affirmative action, Carson believes in socioeconomic affirmative action, or what he calls compassionate action.
Quote, if we're talking about applying to Yale University, and you know my son is applying, and you know the son of a coal miner who got killed in a mine who's been working since he was 12 to help support for the family is applying, and they have similar academic records, I'm going to give the edge to the coal miner's son, because he's had a much harder road, and that's the way the program should work.
It should not be attached to any ethnicity.
And of course, the idea that everything's equal except for a couple of facts is usually so rare that do we really need to build a whole policy around it?
I'll let you decide.
With regards to the war on drugs, Carson has spoken positively about the use of medical marijuana in some situations, but opposes outright legalization and would intensify the war on drugs.
Political affiliation to Carson, as we mentioned, was registered as an independent until becoming a Republican in November of 2014.
He talked about an armed robbery in a Popeye's fast food restaurant.
He said, The Baltimore Police Department later said it couldn't find a report matching the incident Carson described.
But this is the guy who was like, yeah, I'd take on the Oregon shooter, I'd rush him and take him down.
Then he actually has someone who comes in with a gun and is like, oh no, that guy over there, who you want to shoot?
Race right here or the day after Dr.
Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, some of Carson's black classmates unleashed their anger on the minority white students at Detroit's Southwestern High.
Carson claims to have shielded several white classmates from the violence by hiding them in the biology lab.
As he worked in the lab part-time, he had his own key.
The usual suspects are disputing these claims.
There's no real clear evidence either way as of yet.
His mother's having some health issues.
Sonia Carson is critically ill, was not expected to live.
She was expected to die within days of Carson's presidential announcement, but she's held on.
She developed Alzheimer's tragically in 2011, and Carson said, quote, Sometimes I think it's not the worst thing.
She's very feisty.
She would have been on the warpath for people who tell lies about me.
She would have been ready to shoot them.
I wonder where his aggression may have come from.
Carson's business manager, Armstrong Williams, commented, quote, Everything that he's ever had and ever known was his mother.
He has to go and make peace with his mother because if he doesn't, nothing will be the same.
President Barack Obama, Carson infamously, called Obama a psychopath.
He looks good.
He looks clean.
Shirts, white, the tie.
He looks elegant, like most psychopaths.
That's why they're successful.
That's the way they look.
They all look great.
For what it's worth, surgeon is one of the occupations which has the most reported psychopaths in the field.
Media personality, I think, number two.
Reporters, number six.
Carson recently surprised many supporters by announcing his support for the controversial 5,544-page Trans-Pacific Partnership global trade deal negotiated by the White House.
Boy, just one page away from total free trade.
In October 2015, top Carson advisor Armstrong Williams wrote an article entitled, To Curb Chicago Violence, Bring in the Nation of Islam, urging the city of Chicago to use taxpayer money to hire Louis Farrakhan's organization to help stem violence in the city.
Wait, is that gun control not working?
And he supports Puerto Rican statehood.
Despite the $72 billion in debt and 65% unemployment rate, Carson announced his support for making Puerto Rico the 51st state.
Miss Hermanos Americanos, my campaign is built around the premise of we the people!
And through such lens, I view the statehood question in Puerto Rico as settled.
So just in case you don't have enough debt, unfunded liabilities, and massive amounts of people on welfare who are not employed, and possibly not employable, he's your guy.
So...
It's worth examining the man.
I obviously have mixed feelings.
His medical accomplishments are absolutely staggering and astonishing and wonderful and amazing and should be held up as a candlelight to everyone who has ambitions, his mother.
In helping to encourage his education did him and his brother, of course, a great turn.
I'd like to see that replicated in more communities, particularly troubled communities around America.
And I really wanted to point out the pluses and minuses, the position, so you had a nice place to go to, hopefully, where you could get a balanced view of the enigma, the contradiction, the heroism, and the rather slow public...
Speaking style of Dr.
Ben Carson.
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