When author, columnist and retired pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson looks at the United States in 2014, he tends to describe what he sees in dire terms: the country's religious and family traditions under siege; its founding Judeo-Christian principles being second-guessed; its future and identity in doubt.
But even as he's narrating a moral catastrophe, he sounds genial.
In the second part of an
exclusive interview with
Newsmax TV, the soft-spoken, often-controversial Carson continued in that vein, telling "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on Tuesday that America — if it continues along its present course — is at risk of remaking itself according to a very different set of values.
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"Get a book called
'The Naked Communist' — written in 1958, a long time ago — that lays out the whole secular progressive agenda, a large part of which is to kick our Judeo-Christian values to the side," said Carson.
Fast-forward half a century and the country is splintering exactly as old antagonists from within and without had hoped it would, said Carson — whose latest book,
"One Nation," depicts a United States struggling to stay true to its original ideals.
One of those ideals, alongside faith, is the primacy of family, said Carson.
"A well-working, functioning family where everybody plays their part is an incredibly good environment in which to bring up a child," he said.
"And what we have today are those who say, 'well, there is no such thing as the ideal family, you know; every family situation is of equal value and this whole traditional family thing — this is what people who are bigots and religious fanatics talk about.'"
Carson said the rhetoric of political correctness, and the resulting fear of being labeled intolerant, has cowed people with traditional beliefs into silence.
"The majority of people in America, unfortunately, have been beaten down and actually find themselves afraid," he said. "I talk to people all the time. I say, 'Why don't you speak up?' 'Well, I could lose my job. Somebody could call me a name. I could get an IRS audit.'
"You know, people are afraid to donate money because they're going to be targeted," he said. "This is America? How did this happen?"
"And you look at the places that are supposed to be the bastions of intellectual exploration, our universities. What's going on there?" Carson continued. "You have graduation speakers being cancelled or pressured to step out because they may not agree with the administration or with some radical group of students.
"And we're tolerating this? Not only are we tolerating it, our universities are saying to our students, 'If somebody doesn't agree with you, you shouldn't hear them, but no one else should hear them either. If they have a business, you should destroy it. If they have a reputation, you should tarnish it.'"
"This is pre-fascist thought," said Carson, adding, "When I was a teenager, liberals of that time would have been horrified."
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Carson, arguing that Marxists of an earlier time understood that "one of the key pillars of our strength was our Judeo-Christian faith," said
religious persecution is on the rise today, and takes many forms.
"There has been a consistent pattern of denigrating religion over the last few decades, and it's reaching a peak at this point," he said. "And in many parts of the world, as you know, Christians are being slaughtered."
The man whose remarks — neighborly and barbed — at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast dramatically raised his public profile still wonders whether he earned himself some unfriendly scrutiny by speaking his mind that day about politics and religion to an audience that included President Barack Obama.
As Carson has said and written previously, he told Berliner that a few months after his prayer breakfast appearance, he was audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
"I don't have any proof that he [Obama] was involved," said Carson. "I will say that I got multiple warnings from all kinds of people that I was going to get audited, and I'd never been audited before and nothing had changed . . . except that I gave a speech."
"Could it have been a coincidence?" he said. "I guess it could've been, but I've talked to a lot of other people who had the same coincidence."
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