Thursday, February 7, 2013, will be a date to remember. That is the day on which Dr. Benjamin Carson, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, in Baltimore, was the principal speaker at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast. With Barack Obama seated within spitting distance, Dr. Carson proceeded to take Obama and all his liberal friends out behind the woodshed and gave them a long overdue public ass-kicking.
Dr. Carson, is a black man who typifies exactly what any young man or woman… regardless of race, creed, or color… can achieve in the United States with a little bit of non-Benjamin Spock parenting, some good study habits, a solid work ethic, and some intelligent life choices. In fact, Dr. Carson is the exact polar opposite of the plantation slaves that liberals and Democrats want black men to be because the very existence of the Democrat Party depends on the continued belief among black Americans that they are the victims of white racism.
Dr. Carson is the product of a single parent home in Detroit. His mother, who dropped out of school in third grade and who married at age 13, worked two or three jobs in order to make ends meet. Yet, as her two sons were growing up, she had sense enough to limit the amount of time they spent watching TV. Instead, she required them to read two library books each week. And although she was unable to read, herself, she required her sons to write book reports on each of the books they’d read.
After earning an undergraduate degree in psychology from Yale University, Carson attended the University of Michigan School of Medicine. Following med school he served his residency in neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, where he eventually became Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery. Finally, having proved himself to be the ideal role model for black children… far beyond what liberals and Democrats would ever expect, or want, a black man to achieve… he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush on June 19, 2008.
Dr. Carson’s speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast was entirely reminiscent of a similar speech by a Hollywood actor named Ronald Reagan on October 27, 1964, during the final days of the Goldwater presidential campaign.
In his 1964 speech, Reagan pointed out that the Democrats were attempting to convince the people that the primary issues of that election were the “maintenance of peace and prosperity,” and that “we’ve never had it so good.” In response, Reagan said, “But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. He pointed out that, “Today, 37 cents of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector’s share, and yet our government continues to spend $17 million a day more than the government takes in. We haven’t balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We have raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations in the world.”
Does that sound familiar? Change the numbers by a factor of “x” and Dr. Carson could have used the same statistics in his speech.
In his 1964 speech, Reagan ridiculed Senator Joseph Clark, (D-PA), who once described liberalism as “meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.” Reagan said, “This was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize… A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew (that), when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose…”
Dr. Carson, in a direct challenge to Obama’s idea of “fairness,” said, “When I pick up my Bible, you know what I see? I see the fairest individual in the universe, God. He’s given us a system. It’s called (the) tithe. Now, we don’t necessarily have to do it, 10 percent, but it’s the principle. He didn’t say, if your crops fail, don’t give me any tithes. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithes. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality. You make $10 billion, you put in $1 billion. You make $10, you put in $1… but now some people say, 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 have to hurt the guy? He’s just put a billion in the pot. We don’t need to hurt him.”
Dr. Carson opened his remarks by quoting Proverbs 11:9, which King Solomon must have written with Barack Obama in mind. The proverb tells us, “With his mouth the Godless destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge the righteous escapes.” Obama should have taken that as a hint that he was about to receive a major league ass-kicking.
But the most interesting parallel between the Reagan speech in 1964 and the Carson speech in 2013 is the way in which both speakers made the point that it is not liberals and Democrats… those who exist by taking money away from those who have it and giving it to those who don’t… who are the most loving, caring, and compassionate.
In commenting on the cruel way in which Democrats attempted to demonize Goldwater in 1964, Reagan told his audience some things about Goldwater that few people were aware of. He told of how, before he entered politics, Goldwater instituted a profit-sharing plan in his business long before trade unions ever thought of it; how he provided health insurance for all of his employees; how he set aside 50% of his business profits, before taxes, in order to establish a retirement program for his employees. He told of how Goldwater sent a regular monthly check, for life, to a former employee who was ill and could not work; and how he provided daycare for the children of mothers who worked in his stores.
Reagan told the story of a returning serviceman, during the Korean War, who found himself stranded at the Los Angeles International Airport in the week before Christmas, trying to get home to Arizona. A great many other returning GIs were having the same problem; there simply were no seats available on any of the commercial airlines. But then a voice came over the public address system saying, “Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such,” and when they went to that location they found Barry Goldwater waiting there in his plane. Then, every day, all day long, in the days before Christmas, Goldwater would load up his plane in Los Angeles, fly the servicemen to Arizona, drop them off at their hometown airports, and then fly back to LA to get more.
In his Prayer Breakfast speech, Dr. Carson described how, some16 years ago, he and his wife heard of an international study which showed that, in terms of their ability to solve math and science problems, American eighth graders ranked 21st out of the 22 countries surveyed. It was then that he and his wife created the Carson Scholars Fund.
Instead of receiving trophies only for sports prowess, the Carsons saw to it that schools and students were also recognized for scholastic achievements. The Carson Scholars Fund started giving out scholarships to students from all backgrounds for superior academic performance… Those who demonstrated academic excellence received cash awards. As Dr. Carson explained, “The money would go into a Trust. They would get interest on it. When they would go to college they would get the money…”
According to Dr. Carson, “Many teachers have told us that when we put a Carson Scholar in their classroom, the GPA of the whole classroom goes up over the next year. It’s been very gratifying. We started 16 years ago with 25 scholarships in Maryland, now we’ve given out more than 5,000 and we are in all 50 states, but we’ve also put in Reading Rooms. These are fascinating places that no little kid could possibly pass up. And they get points for the amount of time they spend reading, and the number of books they read. They can trade the points for prizes. In the beginning they do it for the prizes, but it doesn’t take long before their academic performance begins to improve.”
It’s the sort of thing that conservatives regularly do. Liberals, on the other hand, are noted only for their generosity with other peoples’ money.
In his remarks, Dr. Carson told the story of a very successful young businessman who loved to buy his mother exotic gifts for Mother’s Day. When he ran out of new ideas he came across some very expensive birds. The birds could dance, they could sing, and they could talk, but they cost $5,000 apiece. He was so excited, he bought two of them. And when he sent them to his mother he couldn’t wait to call her up on Mother’s Day. He said, “Mother, mother, what did you think of those birds?” To which she replied, “They was good.”
The young man was horrified. He said, “No, no, no, Mother! Surely you didn’t eat those birds. Those birds cost $5,000 apiece! They could dance, they could sing, they could talk!”
To which the mother replied, “Well, they should have said something.”
Ronald Reagan said something very important in his 1964 speech and it was the launching pad that ultimately sent him to the White House. Dr. Ben Carson also said something very important in his speech on February 7, 2013. It will be interesting to see how far it takes him. It is easy to see how Dr. Carson can now be seen as the “black Reagan.”