Ben Carson Hates Living In A P.C. World

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson has been described as the soft-spoken alternative to Donald Trump, but just because the neurosurgeon's delivery is a bit more subdued, that doesn't mean he's any less brash in his statements. On a recent appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, Carson said he feels a Muslim should not be president, and the controversial remarks have angered many. Rather than apologize, Carson decided to blame reactions to his discriminatory statements on an overly sensitive society, but there have been plenty of insane times Ben Carson blamed political correctness for things that have come out of his mouth.

Carson has blamed being P.C. for everything from the fall of Rome to his offensive comments on homosexuality being poorly received. In this latest move against political correctness, the Republican candidate indicated there was nothing problematic about his statements against Muslims but rather political correctness to blame. Speaking before a rally in Cincinnati, Carson said:

The only way we fix that is fix the P.C. culture in our country, which only can listen to one narrative, and if it doesn't fit their philosophy, then they have to try to ascribe some motive to it to make it fit. That's how we fix it. We fix America, and we get people to actually start listening and be capable of understanding what is the principles of our country and our Constitution and stop trying to fit everything into a P.C. model.

Homosexuality

His response to the backlash is eerily similar to the one he gave in 2013 following comments in which he likened homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia. Rather than issuing a sincere apology, the Republican candidate instead vowed to stop talking about gay issues altogether and instead shifted the focus on how being P.C. is, in his mind, ultimately way more exclusionary:

Someday in the future, it is my hope and prayer that the emphasis on political correctness will decrease and we will start emphasizing rational discussion of differences so we can actually resolve problems and chart a course that is inclusive of everyone.

Black Lives Matter

Carson's views on the Black Lives Matter movement are similarly filled with anti-political correctness rhetoric. He defended Democratic candidate and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley saying "all lives matter" by yet again blaming an overly sensitive society for their reaction. Carson likened being P.C. to losing the freedom of speech:

I detest political correctness. People died — they paid with their lives so we could have freedom of speech. And freedom of expression. And political correctness is the antithesis of that.

Obamacare

In a 2014 op-ed penned to The Washington Times, Carson began an anti-Obamacare essay by describing the evils of high school peer pressure then transitioning to how it's so similar to political correctness. Maybe this metaphor is a walk down memory lane?

The purveyors of P.C. seize upon a word or phrase, which they emphasize in an attempt to divert attention away from the actual issue that doesn't fit their narrative. ... Political correctness is antithetical to our founding principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Its most powerful tool is intimidation. If it is not vigorously opposed, its proponents win by default, because the victims adopt a "go along to get along" attitude.

Education

Even as far back as three years ago, Carson was decrying political correctness in the name of education. One of his strongest statements against being P.C. came in 2012 during an interview with Patrick Henry College journalism and public policy chair Dr. Marvin Olasky. At first, Carson went after the poor state of America's education system. He then traced the country's overall decline to political correctness, which Carson claims gained prominence in the 1930s. The GOP presidential hopeful then went even more hyperbolic, likening living in a P.C. society to living under a Nazi regime:

The people have become silent, very much like the people in Nazi Germany were silent. Most of them did not agree with what Hitler was doing but they kept their mouths shut and you see what happened. And exactly the same thing will happen to the freedoms that we enjoy in America and the kind of nation that we've had if people don't speak up. They need to rise up, they need to say to political correctness: "Take a hike. This is who we are, this is what we believe in, these are principles that allowed us to become the pinnacle nation in the world in record time and we're not about to throw them out of the window for the sake of political correctness."

History

Carson is so incredibly against being politically correct that he maintains it could very easily be the downfall of society. The distant example that Carson cites is, oddly enough, the fall of the Roman Empire. In a 2014 interview with Bloomberg Politics, the candidate says that America has lost sight of its morals exactly because of being P.C, which he claims is similarly what happened to ancient Rome before its demise:

They [Rome] were extremely powerful. There was no way anybody could overcome them. But these philosophers, with the long flowing white robes and the long white beards, they could wax eloquently on every subject, but nothing was right and nothing was wrong. They soon completely lost sight of who they were.

War

Yet again, Carson some how worked in his beliefs against political correctness on an incredibly important issue: war and conflict. Speaking during a February appearance on Fox News, the GOP presidential hopeful criticized President Obama's leadership and somehow tied soldiers returning from battle to the issue of political correctness:

We have people trying to manage the military who know nothing about the military, who know nothing about military strategy. Our military needs to know that they're not going to be prosecuted when they come back because somebody says, "You did something that was politically incorrect." There is no such thing as a politically correct war.