Ben Carson: Another Fake “CONservative”

For some people, defining a person by drawing ridiculous lines of what constitutes a liberal vs. conservation, i.e. right and left, republican or democrat, is very important. However, some will support that labeled person staunchly because they carry a label and not necessarily by what they express or speak as an indication of how they really feel and what they believe. In this same regard, we must consider there are issues that can be considered trivial in decision making about whether to support a person or not. And there are HUGE rights issues, equivalent to shooting a shotgun blast into the bottom of a wooden row boat, that should bring a person to a definite understanding.

Since appearing before the American public, as a medical doctor, speaking out against President Obama’s fascist and Marxist (yes they can go together with certain issues) policies, the right has been agog over the man, even labeling him as some kind of hero. I’m speaking of Dr. Ben Carson.

While he might find issues with Obamacare, after all, few doctors support any kind of nationalized health care because there’s no money it, is he all that he’s been cracked up to be?

It seems he revealed himself the other day in an interview with Glenn Beck, presenting himself as a supporter of the Second Amendment but not guaranteed equally for everyone. Before talking about this interview, let’s peek at an Op-Ed Ben Carson had published in the Washington Times back on December 10, 2013.

Carson, in his opinion piece, was attempting to define what he believed were the reasons the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment. There was nothing new in that regard. However, in what should have been a hint of his real position on the Second Amendment and probably his approach to all things political, we read this:

We do, however, require that anyone driving a car on the streets of our nation have a license to do so, indicating the successful completion of adequate training. We do not grant licenses to certain categories of individuals who would be deemed unsafe drivers. This is done for the safety of the public at large.

Perhaps instead of getting into our corners and screaming at each other, it is time to engage in intelligent conversation about our desire to preserve the rights granted to American citizens by our Constitution while at the same time ensuring the safety of all of our citizens. The way we treat access to automobiles is a good starting point, although there is no perfect analogy. If we keep our goals in mind and dispose of ideological rhetoric, we can solve this problem.

First I need to go find my Bill of Rights publication and see which one guarantees a person the right to drive a car. Sorry! I couldn’t seem to find it.

Carson is correct in that there is no perfect analogy but his is extremely poor. If his argument was legitimate, using the logic and reasoning of anti gun zealots, keeping cars out of the hands of those he wants to label “unsafe drivers” would be an impossible task but more importantly impractical and unreasonable. Aren’t the reasons people are killed in automobiles different than those shot with guns? How do you assess who is an “unsafe driver” when attempting to get drunk drivers off the road? Do you let the drunks kill somebody(s) before they become an unsafe driver? What about speeders? Those who fail to use directional signals? Drive unsafe cars? And then who decides? Will it be the same ones who decide who should be able to own and gun, how big it is and how many shots can be fired? Brilliant!

Carson wouldn’t be the first person to make the assumption that because a certain object is a gun it makes a person more dead when they are killed with it rather than with an automobile, golf club or a baseball bat. We could argue this till forever and if you don’t like guns, and I don’t believe Carson does, well except for himself, discussing this analogy of guns and cars is a waste of time.

Instead, let me draw your attention to a typical, and what I believe to be ignorant statement, Dr. Carson makes about “disposing of ideological rhetoric,” “engaging in intellectual conversation,” and get out of “hiding in corners” in order to “solve this problem.”

First, he never defines what “this problem” is. But if he had, what is it he is suggesting? Simple really. He is saying that the Second Amendment has no real value because it is not worth “screaming at each other” in support of that right. He prefers to call those who support firmly the guaranteed right to own a gun “ideological rhetoric.” I believe in the right to bear arms and I’m not interested in giving any of that up because somebody thinks if I did, we would be safer somehow. And that is NOT ideological thinking from someone standing in a corner “screaming” unintellectual gibberish.

If a person is asked to give up half of his savings account because someone else decided you didn’t need that much money and having it was “ideological”, it wouldn’t be long before the account had no value. Is this what Dr. Carson is suggesting we do with the Second Amendment?

If this kind of talk isn’t enough to get you to question the man and his own ideology, then perhaps what he told Glenn Beck in a recent interview will help. When Beck asked Carson for his thoughts on the Second Amendment, according to Mediaite, Carson initially said, “There’s a reason for the Second Amendment; people do have the right to have weapons.” But when questioned about owning semi-automatic weapons, this is how Carson responded:

“It depends on where you live.”

“I think if you live in the midst of a lot of people, and I’m afraid that that semi-automatic weapon is going to fall into the hands of a crazy person, I would rather you not have it,” Carson elaborated.

However, if you live “out in the country somewhere by yourself” and want to own a semi-automatic weapon, he added, “I’ve no problem with that.”

This should settle any remaining doubts you may have about Dr. Ben Carson. A man who believes some people have more rights than others merely due to geographical location is an idiot and a dangerous man. And to take a phrase from Mr. Carson himself, if you think I’m hard on the man because of his twisted concepts of rights, “I’ve no problem with that.”