Dr. Carson Puts Obuma on the Hot Seat

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You need to hear this:
..Dr Benjamin Carson's Amazing Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast with Obama.  Watch Obama Squirm.

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The Stoning of Dr. Ben Carson

By Paul Kengor on 2.13.13 @ 6:09AM

How dare anyone disagree with Obama?

Liberals continue their hysteria over remarks made by Dr. Ben Carson at the National Prayer Breakfast last week. Carson, a prominent pediatric surgeon from Johns Hopkins University, dared to weigh in on healthcare — something he knows something about, and certainly knows better than Barack Obama. In the liberal mind, Carson committed a grave transgression; he had dared to disagree with Obama, and in Obama's presence.

In a discussion of Carson's moral effrontery, Candy Crowley, host of CNN's State of the Union, asked her panelists whether they were offended by Carson's comments. "He [Carson] was talking about the idea of, you know, weaving the Bible into some objections he appears to have with the president's approach," said Crowley, as if the president would never likewise do anything so outrageous. Count Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky among the offended. She told Crowley: "I think it's... not really an appropriate place to make this kind of political speech and to invoke God as his [Carson's] support for that kind of point of view."

In truth, what the likes of Crowley and Schakowsky object to is the mere fact that someone publicly disagreed with Obama on healthcare, and especially in the context of faith. This was sheer blasphemy. For liberal Democrats, conservative Republicans are never permitted to use their faith to disagree; no, only liberal Democrats enjoy such freedoms. I could give a thousand examples illustrating the point; I've written entire books doing so. For now, however, here are some particularly salient examples involving Obama, liberals, and healthcare reform:

From the very first year of Obama's presidency, the Religious Left (Obama included) incessantly claimed God's support for their vision of healthcare reform. This was no surprise whatsoever, just as it was no surprise that the liberal press was not only not outraged but silently supportive. There was nary a whimper of protest from liberal journalists, let alone their usual howls (when a Republican cites his faith) of "separation of church and state!"

For instance, in August 2009, Obama addressed a "virtual gathering" of 140,000 Religious Left individuals. It was a huge conference call to liberal Christians, Jews, and other people of faith. Obama told them that he was "going to need your help" in passing healthcare reform. Christ-like, Obama penitently invoked a period of "40 Days," a trial of deliverance from conservative evildoers. He lifted up the brethren, assuring them, "We are God's partner in matters of life and death."

Like a great commissioning, in the 40 Days that followed the Religious Left was filled with the spirit, confidently spreading the word, pushing for — among other things — abortion funding as part of an eternally widening "social justice" agenda. A group called the Religious Institute, which represented 4,800 clergy, urged Congress to include abortion funding in "healthcare" reform. To not help poor women secure their reproductive rights was unjust, declared the progressive pastors. As the Rev. Debra Hafner, executive director of the Religious Institute, complained, federal policy already "unfairly prevents low-income women and federal employees from receiving subsidized" abortions.

Here we see the Religious Left's continued perversion of "social justice." Behold: social justice abortions.

Other Religious Left faithful joined Obama's crusade.

A group of 59 leftist nuns sent Congress a letter urging passage of Obamacare. This was in direct defiance of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which insisted the bill "must be opposed" because of its refusal to explicitly ban abortion funding. The liberal media cheered on the nuns, gleefully exaggerating the sisters' influence. In a breathtaking display, the Los Angeles Times beamed, "Nuns' support for health-care bill shows [Catholic] Church split." Amazingly, the Times reported that the nuns' letter represented not 59 nuns but 59,000. Like Jesus with the loaves, the Times (normally militantly secular) had demonstrated miraculous powers of multiplication. Hey, anything for Obama.

The nuns' brazenness was matched by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Roman Catholic, who, in March 2010, invoked the Solemnity of the Feast of St. Joseph on behalf of Obamacare. She urged American Catholics to "pray to St. Joseph" — earthly guardian of the unborn son of God.

All of that was prelude to what happened the evening of March 21, 2010, A.D., with a rare vote not merely on a Sunday — God's day — but the final Sunday in Lent, the week before Palm Sunday that initiates the Lord's Passion. Obama's healthcare bill was passed by his Democratic Congress. To Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and the Religious Left faithful, Jesus had gotten his healthcare package, and they had been his faithful handmaidens.

Amid that process, secular liberals in the press suddenly got religion — modern-day Sauls on the road to Damascus. Their political soul mates in the Democratic Party had spearheaded this "change" in the name of Jesus Christ, and liberal journalists found themselves moved to tears at the inspiring display. It was a rather radical departure from the eight years they had just spent scourging George W. Bush every time he merely confessed that he prayed. At long last, there was room for Jesus in the inn, so long as the Savior stood in "support" of the Democrats' "progressive" agenda.

If all of that seems hypocritical enough from liberals, in light of their castigation of Dr. Ben Carson, consider this final glaring double standard:

The coup de grâce from Obama came in no less than the National Prayer Breakfast two years ago, February 3, 2011. Obama stated: "But sometimes what I can do to try to improve the economy or to curb foreclosures or to help deal with the healthcare system — sometimes it seems so distant and so remote, so profoundly inadequate to the enormity of the need. And it is my faith, then, that biblical injunction to serve the least of these, that keeps me going and that keeps me from being overwhelmed."

Yes, Barack Obama, at the National Prayer Breakfast, had invoked his faith and the Bible on behalf of healthcare reform — much like he has done on behalf of gay marriage and a litany of other liberal agenda items.

Question for Ms. Crowley and Rep. Schakowsky and liberals everywhere: Was this appropriate? Are you offended? No, of course, you aren't.

But now, ladies and gentlemen, here comes a heretic, one Ben Carson, pediatric surgeon, and a vile sinner. He disagreed with Obama and the mass of liberal faithful. He did so on the issue of healthcare, at a prayer breakfast. His price: political excommunication and denunciation. In Alinsky fashion, he must now be isolated and demonized. The Religious Left grabs its stones to cast them at the good doctor.

How dare Ben Carson mention healthcare at the National Prayer Breakfast! How dare he disagree with Obama!

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A Message to Obama, Served Cold

By Jonah Goldberg
2/13/2013


In an earlier era, Dr. Benjamin Carson's speech before the National Prayer Breakfast last week would have been a really big deal rather than mere fodder for a brief squall on Twitter and cable news.

Born in crushing poverty to an illiterate single mother dedicated to seeing her children succeed, Carson became the head of the department of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins medical institutions when he was 33. He's been a black celebrity role model ever since.

Even if you didn't like the substance of what Carson had to say at the breakfast, his speech made for great political theater. President Obama was seated on the stage, just a few feet away, and he didn't look like he was having a good time.

Intellectual historians of black America might make a great deal out of the image of a frowning Obama listening as Carson inveighed against a culture of victimology and dependency. It's too trite to say that the president is the incarnation of W.E.B. DuBois and Carson of Booker T. Washington. After all, DuBois renounced his American citizenship, became a communist and moved to Ghana at the end of his life. Obama, the son of a leftist (if not an actual communist) from Africa, went on to become the president of the United States -- a significantly different story, to put it mildly.

But as Mark Twain allegedly said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The great argument between DuBois and Washington is often boiled down to integration versus self-help. Washington believed that blacks should emphasize education and self-advancement first and worry about integration later. DuBois favored a civil-rights-first strategy combined with reliance on the leadership of technocrats, including what he called the "talented tenth," or the best African-Americans.

Culturally, DuBois won the argument and the allegiance of liberals and the left, while Washington has often been unfairly cast as an Uncle Tom (despite fighting against racial injustice his whole life).

But in a country that's elected a black president -- twice -- and passed the Civil Rights Act half a century ago, even if Washington was wrong about the sequence of priorities, it seems fair to ponder whether the time has come for his philosophy to get a second look.

Although much of Carson's speech focused on personal responsibility, he offered two concrete policy ideas. The first is a flat tax. The Bible endorses the idea, Carson explained. Everyone should tithe -- give 10 percent -- in good times and bad. It doesn't have to be 10 percent, he conceded. It's the principles of proportionality and simplicity that matter.

Critics complain that the poor guy who puts in $1 will be hurt more than the rich guy who puts in $1 billion. But, Carson asks: "Where does it say you've got to hurt the [rich] 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."

Carson's idea for health-care reform is even more Washingtonian. Instead of the technocratic behemoth of Obamacare, empower the individual. "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 till the time you die. If you die, you can pass it on to your family members ... and there's nobody talking about death panels."

The beauty of Carson's argument exceeds its simplicity, particularly as even economist Paul Krugman now concedes that something like death panels are inevitable if we stay on our current path. Taxpayers, the rich or charities can contribute extra money to the accounts of the poor, but at the same time, Carson says, the poor will "have some control over their own health care. And very quickly they're going to learn how to be responsible."

As a conservative, I'm obviously partial to all this. But there's something bigger than a policy dispute going on here. Although DuBois and Washington were understandably consumed by racial questions, the philosophical divide between Obama and Carson is one we are all part of now. And that's a sign of the racial progress both DuBois and Washington fought for.

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http://video.foxnews.com/v/2168364509001/?playlist_id=928378949001


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