Posted on 01/14/2017 11:15:58 AM PST by Kaslin
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Dr. Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development-designate, told a story. He said his mother was a domestic who cleaned beautiful homes. One day she asked him if he would rather live in those nice houses or the house in which he and his brother lived in Detroit. She told him that only he could decide the type of home he would eventually live in by how much he studied in school and the choices he made for his life.
Thus motivated, Carson said he went from last in his class to first, and people who used to call him "dummy" started asking him for help with their schoolwork.
He also said people used to tell his mother she could receive welfare payments, but she refused them, believing she could make it on her own without the government.
Carson said people on welfare are not "bad people," they just don't know any other life. He said he wants to take a "listening tour" of America to find out from people how best government can serve them and by implication how much more they can do to help themselves.
Stories about overcoming adversity, discrimination and poverty should be at the heart of the incoming Trump administration. It isn't that government is all bad, as Carson stated, but that government is doing things it should not be doing. That is why it has become bloated, dysfunctional and detached from everyday Americans.
Carson spoke of the poor as "human capital." When was the last time anyone said something like that? Possibly it goes back to the days of HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, who did what Carson proposes by showing up at public housing projects and listening to the people who live there. Everyone has a story. Some are very sad stories, but they don't have to be the final chapter in one's life. Bad conditions can be bettered. Inspirational stories like Carson's can lead to change.
The rap against Carson is that he has no government experience. That should be considered an asset, not a liability. Unlike many top government officials who have enjoyed a life of privilege, Carson knows what it is to grow up in poverty. That experience will count as he travels around the country telling people how they might overcome their circumstances today instead of someday.
Ben Carson is one of two people who could be this administration's and the Republican Party's greatest asset when it comes to reaching the poor. The other is secretary of Education-designate Betsy DeVos, whose strong advocacy for school choice can liberate poor children from failing public schools, giving them a decent education, which is the ticket to success for anyone. Perhaps DeVos can make her own tour of failing public schools and shame those Democrats who have refused to let underprivileged children escape, while sending their own children to elite private schools.
Two quotes from Dr. Carson reflect an attitude that will serve him and the people who need decent housing well. One is: "It doesn't matter if you come from the inner city. People who fail in life are people who find lots of excuses. It's never too late for a person to recognize that they have potential in themselves."
The second is: "Our children need to see and hear about more black role models in many fields so they can make better choices."
Ben Carson could be the role model those striving to better themselves have been waiting for. Let's wait and see.
Carson’s book, “Gifted Hands” should be required reading in all American schools. His mother was illiterate. Noticing all the reading material in the homes where she cleaned, she cut off TV for her sons until they read two books a week and wrote reports on each. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. I wish him well.
Totally agree with Cal Thomas, good piece.
My dad, a WWII vet who passed 2 years ago, was not a book reader. In fact he often joked about how it must be a requirement to get a job on Fox News that you write a book. But someone gave him a copy of “Gifted Hands” and he read it cover to cover. He was highly impressed and I know he would have been very proud to see Dr. Carson in a leadership role in our government.
Very nice - hope he can make some headway.
Very nice piece. I love his story and message.
As he moves forward to help those American citizens who have been victims of the counterfeit ideas of so-called "progressives," with their vote-seeking empty promises, may God guide him and his audience to seek and find ways to improve the lives of families and children in the former ghettos created by those who wished to enslave them to partisan politics.
ditto!!
Certainly he is not a roll model for democrats. Carson embodies everything they hate. He left the plantation. He worked hard. He established him self as one of the most prestigious surgeons in modern history. But Carson’s biggest sins is he did it without the democrats.
Read that book. It would be great for children to read and understand since Ben Carson had a destructive “worldview” (one which would have been nihilistic and ended in unhappiness) which changed to the Christian paradigm of Hope and Love (forgiveness) (unity).
As Milton stated, “The Mind can make a Heaven, Hell, or Hell, Heaven. It is all in the Mind to understand Good and Evil-—and always choose (free will) the “good” if you desire happiness and flourishing. Free Will is only a Chrsitian concept and only Classical Christian curricula gives people the Power to use their OWN mind (ability to think outside the State’s programming indoctrination system which is the “publik skools” of today).
The Cultural Marxists intentionally destroyed America’s “skools” so that they would produce (as Fichte planned in 1810)—people incapable of “Free Will” and being so dumb and irrational (removed from Reality (Natural Law/family)) that they would believe “Snow is Black”.
They stripped curricula from teaching children “agency” (Classical Christian curricula which created the Age of Reason, Modern Science and the US Constitution). They made most children into ideologues (Marxists/atheists/satanists—all irrational and removed from Natural Laws) and having the ability to “think” for themselves. It is on purpose (unconstitutional) and TV programming forces the brain to literally atrophy. Only “reading” creates agency and wisdom along with MOSTLY unstructured Real Life experiences, the knowledge needed to “think” coherently and critically and be able to truly understand human beings in Reality (real life human interactions—not artificial, controlled “screen” time).
Read Booker T. Washigton’s autobiography, “Up from Slavery”. His story is much more dramatic and remarkable than even the incredible life of Carson. Both should be REQUIRED READING in any true “educational” system. But Classical Christian curricula is literally banned (for satanism/paganism/islam), because it is the ONLY true education system which literally gives children the ability to “think” critically. Carson is brilliant because he read the Great Books, including the wisest book in history (the Holy Bible). His mind was integrated and filled with the best, most virtuous, complex “thinking” in the history of mankind.
The public school system programs irrationality and “vice is virtue” into young children to destroy virtue formation (habits) in the minds of little children, so they are incapable of wisdom and knowledge and “free will”—thinking critically for themselves like a Ben Carson.
Vice creates slaves for the State and corporations always. Without virtue formation in children, there is no Freedom ever !!!! That is why all the Marxist programming (skools/TV/Movies/Music) (allowed by our “Just” laws (lol) and TV is to normalize vice and warp the Natural instincts and “thinking” of our children by promoting vice and irrationality (artificiality removed from Reason/Natural Laws (Western Civ)) 24/7. Common Sense (the ideas of Founders) would be impossible for brainwashed, warped children removed from their Natural Family (mother/father paradigm) and put into artificial systems of “group-think sexist systems”, very much like the tribal cultures of the Ancient world and irrational islamic tribal cultures with their vile boy harem behaviors and concepts of “motherhood”. Only Christianity elevated women and Natural Laws (Reason/Individuality/Free Will).
It sure is a model for how to get out of the current Democrat miasma.
Whether there will even BE such a thing as Democrats in the wake of such honesty, is an open question. Yes, there exists the occasional blue dog. Kim Davis is one example. Will blue dogs take over the Democrat party, those sick mangy mutts of today being hounded out (to keep on siccing the canine metaphor)?
At any rate, we are in for a political sea change.
All the virtue in the world, Susie, would be in vain if not used in direct exaltation of the Lord. We can’t go halfway and expect it to look like “blessing.”
well said
My Dad was a WWII vet also...truly the greatest generation.
Nope. Their fathers were, at least in modern times.
They fought their own war, raised families during the dust bowl and Great Depression, then gave their sons to another great war. Much, much tougher.
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