http://www.newsmax.com/PrintTemplate.aspx/?nodeid=563818 Ben Carson: Where Are Liberals When Black Conservatives Are Harassed?
Friday, April 4, 2014 08:16 PM
By: Todd Beamon
Retired pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson charged on Friday that mainstream African-American organizations are silent when black Republicans or conservatives are criticized.
"Where are the black liberals when atrocities occur?" Carson, who is weighing a GOP candidacy for the White House in 2016, asked talk-show host Roland Martin on "NewsOne Now" on the black cable network channel TV One. "Organizations like the NAACP …, do you ever see them coming out in support of a conservative black person?"
Carson noted that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been the subject of protests by student and faculty at Rutgers University since she was selected as commencement speaker in February. They charge that Rice supported torture and lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Carson, 62, who retired last summer as chief of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said that the protests have occurred simply because Rice "was a conservative."
The university has affirmed its decision on Rice speaking the May commencement.
Carson himself has come under fire for saying Obamacare was "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery" and for likening the United States to Nazi Germany.
With his slavery remark, Carson told Martin that he was "not trying to make light of slavery. What I was trying to get people to understand is what is happening with a government program that takes control of the most important thing you have, which is your health."
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He said that the Affordable Care Act, considered President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement, has led Americans to cede their healthcare decisions to the government.
"The government tells you — doesn't suggest to you, but tells you — 'You must do this or you will have this penalty,' about something that is the most important thing you and your family can control," he said. "And, then [it] takes the IRS and puts them in charge of enforcement — an agency that has the ability to come into your life and destroy it, that is control."
In response to a caller's question, Carson, who is also a columnist for Newsmax, dismissed accusations that he was being used by conservative news outlets.
"I see a lot of bias on both sides," he said. "The people who offend me the most are the ones who say: 'Because you’re black, you have to think a certain way. And if you don’t, you’re crazy and there’s something wrong with you.’
“We really need to get over the obsession with race,” he added.
Carson also described himself as "not a partisan person" who would not specifically speak out against such outspoken conservatives as rocker Ted Nugent and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert.
"I will always come down on the side of what’s right," he said. "I don’t really care that much about what other people have to say. I’ve never really cared what other people have to say. That takes a lot of courage."
He added that he had not yet decided whether to run for the GOP presidential nomination.
"I will leave it in the hands of God. It's not something that I really want to do. I feel a lot of pressure, a lot of people pushing me in that direction."
And on his Third Reich comments, Carson explained them this way: "I find it rather amusing that many on the left have taken what I said about Nazi Germany and run with it.
"Basically, what I said is most of those people in Nazi Germany did not believe in what Hitler was doing, but did they open their mouths? Did they say anything? No.
"And the fact of the matter is the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
