Ben Carson for President
The Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon has two big ideas
for America.
Whether this weekend finds you blowing two feet of snow off the driveway or counting the hours until "Downton Abbey," make time to watch the video of Dr. Ben Carson speaking to the White House prayer breakfast this week.
Seated in view to his
right are Senator Jeff Sessions and President Obama. One doesn't look happy.
You know something's coming when Dr. Carson says, "It's not my intention
to offend anyone. But it's hard not to. The PC police are out in force everywhere."
Dr. Carson tossed over
the PC police years ago. Raised by a single mother in inner-city Detroit, he
was as he tells it "a horrible student with a horrible temper." Today
he's director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins and probably the most
renowned specialist in his field.
Late in his talk he
dropped two very un-PC ideas. The first is an unusual case for a flat tax:
"What we need to do is come up with something simple. And when I pick up
my Bible, you know what I see? I see the fairest individual in the universe,
God, and he's given us a system. It's called a tithe.
"We don't
necessarily have to do 10% but it's the principle. He didn't say if your crops
fail, don't give me any tithe or if you have a bumper crop, give me triple
tithe. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality. You
make $10 billion, you put in a billion. You make $10 you put in one. Of course
you've got to get rid of the loopholes. Some people say, 'Well that's not fair
because it doesn't hurt the guy who made $10 billion as much as the guy who
made 10.' Where does it say you've got to hurt the guy? He just put a billion
dollars in the pot. We don't need to hurt him. It's that kind of thinking that
has resulted in 602 banks in the Cayman Islands. That money needs to be back
here building our infrastructure and creating jobs."
Not surprisingly, a
practicing physician has un-PC thoughts on health care:
"Here's my
solution: When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic
medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be
contributed—pretax—from the time you're born 'til the time you die. If you die,
you can pass it on to your family members, and there's nobody talking about
death panels. We can make contributions for people who are indigent. Instead of
sending all this money to some bureaucracy, let's put it in their HSAs. Now
they have some control over their own health care. And very quickly they're
going to learn how to be responsible."
The Johns Hopkins
neurosurgeon may not be politically correct, but he's closer to correct than
we've heard in years.
A version of this article appeared February 9, 2013, on page A12
in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Ben Carson
for President.
And then there is
a second post I choose to share.
DR. BENJAMIN CARSON: There are a group of people
who would like to silence everybody and have everybody go along to get along,
but that's not going to be very helpful for us in the long run, in terms of
solving our problems. And somebody has to be courageous enough to actually
stand up to, you know, the bullies.
###
DR. CARSON: One of the things I also said during the speech is there will be some people who will say, 'but you’re a doctor and you’re a surgeon, you should be sticking to that.' And I mentioned the fact that five physicians signed the Declaration of Independence and were involved in the framing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and several other things.
There’s absolutely no reason at all that physicians, scientists, shouldn’t be involved in things that affect all of us. We’re people who've learned how to make decisions based on facts, empirical data, rather than on ideology, and one of the geniuses, one of the real things that made us a great nation, is that we brought people from all backgrounds into the legislative process. So that all of us would be able to place our interests there and we've gone significantly away from that.
And no one goes up to a lawyer and says why are you getting involved in this, that and the other thing. I don't see why they would say it to a physician, who has more education than anyone else in society.
###
DR. CARSON: There’s no question that [President Obama] has advocated, you know, basically a policy of tax the rich. And I have advocated a policy that comes from the Bible, which is a very fair policy of proportional taxation. If it was good enough for God, why wouldn’t it be good enough for us? The minute you deviate away from that, you begin to get into all kinds of biases. And one could legitimately make the argument that the rich pays too many taxes. The top 1% pays 37% of the taxes, the top 5% [pays] 59% of the taxes, but they don't make that much of the income. One could make that argument.
###
NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS: Obviously, you got a quite a round of applause there. Some in that room and elsewhere since that video has gone viral have said you should run for president. What do you think of that?
DR. BENJAMIN CARSON: Well, actually I've had people tell me that for many years now. If I had a nickel for everybody who told me that, I could finance my campaign.
CAVUTO: You and me both. You and me both. Your reaction to that is what? I mean, you don't think that's for you? You want to be a doctor and help people, what?
DR. CARSON: I've always said if God grabs me by the collar and sticks me in that arena, that's the only way that I'll do it. But, no, I'm actually going to retire in June from surgery. I will still teach, I will still be involved, but I'm going to retire from surgery, so it does open up a lot of possibilities for me. I'm very focused on education and getting the populace back to where it used to be -- like back in 1831 when Alexis de Tocqueville was so impressed -- because an uneducated populace will fall for anything.
And if you and you talk to most people, they mean well but they don't have much of a breadth of education, of knowledge, of understanding of what the real issues are and, therefore, they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they're supposed to think and they keep repeating that and pretty soon they say, 'Oh, well that must be true.' (Your World, February 11, 2013)
###
DR. CARSON: One of the things I also said during the speech is there will be some people who will say, 'but you’re a doctor and you’re a surgeon, you should be sticking to that.' And I mentioned the fact that five physicians signed the Declaration of Independence and were involved in the framing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and several other things.
There’s absolutely no reason at all that physicians, scientists, shouldn’t be involved in things that affect all of us. We’re people who've learned how to make decisions based on facts, empirical data, rather than on ideology, and one of the geniuses, one of the real things that made us a great nation, is that we brought people from all backgrounds into the legislative process. So that all of us would be able to place our interests there and we've gone significantly away from that.
And no one goes up to a lawyer and says why are you getting involved in this, that and the other thing. I don't see why they would say it to a physician, who has more education than anyone else in society.
###
DR. CARSON: There’s no question that [President Obama] has advocated, you know, basically a policy of tax the rich. And I have advocated a policy that comes from the Bible, which is a very fair policy of proportional taxation. If it was good enough for God, why wouldn’t it be good enough for us? The minute you deviate away from that, you begin to get into all kinds of biases. And one could legitimately make the argument that the rich pays too many taxes. The top 1% pays 37% of the taxes, the top 5% [pays] 59% of the taxes, but they don't make that much of the income. One could make that argument.
###
NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS: Obviously, you got a quite a round of applause there. Some in that room and elsewhere since that video has gone viral have said you should run for president. What do you think of that?
DR. BENJAMIN CARSON: Well, actually I've had people tell me that for many years now. If I had a nickel for everybody who told me that, I could finance my campaign.
CAVUTO: You and me both. You and me both. Your reaction to that is what? I mean, you don't think that's for you? You want to be a doctor and help people, what?
DR. CARSON: I've always said if God grabs me by the collar and sticks me in that arena, that's the only way that I'll do it. But, no, I'm actually going to retire in June from surgery. I will still teach, I will still be involved, but I'm going to retire from surgery, so it does open up a lot of possibilities for me. I'm very focused on education and getting the populace back to where it used to be -- like back in 1831 when Alexis de Tocqueville was so impressed -- because an uneducated populace will fall for anything.
And if you and you talk to most people, they mean well but they don't have much of a breadth of education, of knowledge, of understanding of what the real issues are and, therefore, they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they're supposed to think and they keep repeating that and pretty soon they say, 'Oh, well that must be true.' (Your World, February 11, 2013)
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