Fox News contributor Dr. Ben Carson defended his incendiary attack on Obamacare – which he called “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery” – by attacking Democrats andor liberals for using incendiary language.
You may recall that Carson made news earlier this month when he spoke at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. Huffington Post reported:
“You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery,” Carson said Friday. “And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control.”
Today, on America’s News HQ, Carson first fear mongered about The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) by saying, “If we give government control of (health care), it won’t be long before they have control of virtually every aspect of our lives.”
In fact, most other developed countries have government-provided health insurance – without oppressing their citizens. Not surprisingly, host Shannon Bream didn’t point that out.
Meanwhile, Carson went on to spout the kind of anti-Obama talking points you’d expect to hear from Sarah Palin:
This is antithetical to the original intent of what America was supposed to be. Federal government was there to allow people to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not to control every aspect of their lives. And we’re sleeping through it. We need to wake the people up.
…The American people, we the people are not each other’s enemies. The enemies are those people behind the curtain pulling every string, driving a wedge in every place that they possibly can. Be it race, be it gender, be it age, be it income. Doesn’t matter. If you can keep everybody divided and at each other’s throats and you can throw them off the real issues, then they won’t even noticed that the government is insinuating itself into every part of their life and gradually changing America into something that we don’t want it to be.
In that case, Dr. Carson might want to resign immediately from Fox News. Divide by race? Check. Divide by gender? Check. Divide by age? Check. Divide by income? Check.
But, predictably, Carson not only attacked liberals and Democrats for doing what’s commonplace on Fox, he upped the ante. With a little assist from Bream. She cited the “pushback” from the NAACP to Carson’s slavery comments. Any time a Fox host mentions a civil rights leader or organization, it’s with the intent of painting them as race baiters. Don’t believe me? Instead of focusing on the substance of the criticism of Carson's remarks (called "insensitive" by the NAACP), Bream played the race card. She said, “A guest on Al Sharpton’s radio show, sometimes a co-host, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, called you ‘a black racial hitman.’ How do you respond?”
CARSON: Very simple. It’s a well-known tactic , comes right out of “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. Someone gets real close to the truth and you don’t want ‘em to know, you attack them, you try to change the subject. You really don’t want to talk about what they’re talking about. That’s understandable. …So they can continue with their silly attacks but …I’m gonna keep bringing it back to the real issue. The real issue is government trying to take control of our lives. This is what we must fight. They will try every tactic to keep us from talking about it. In this case, it’s not going to work.
In fact, it was Bream doing the subject changing. And some might say it was an effort to divide by race. Because Ofari had not been talking about Obamacare per se but Carson’s role in the Republican party and his use of incendiary language – the same kind of incendiary language Carson was attacking others for using.
From there, Bream moved on to hyping Carson's potential presidential run.
Gee, maybe MR Carson would like to speak with some Americans who live EVERY SINGLE DAY of their lives with the “government” having “control of virtually every aspect of their lives.” Most folks call them “Military personnel.” Of course, Carson has NO first-hand experience with that kind of life since he conveniently managed to avoid military service. Being told when to wake up, being told when to eat meals, being told when to go to bed, being told when they can have “free time,” being told what clothes to wear and when, virtually everything short of being told when to use the bathrooms. Is MR Carson suggesting that our military are essentially “slaves?” That’s what it sounds like to me.