More slander against Ben Carson

[bonnie]

Ben Carson's file

Dr. Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, is running as a Republican for president in 2016.

Carson's statements by ruling

 

• False5 (38%)(5)
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http://www.politifact.com/personalities/ben-carson/

Fact checker!

 

 

 

 

 

“…those of us who believe that the benefits of Planned Parenthood as a vital key to the elimination of human waste must reach the entire population, also believe that a double effort must be made to extend this program as a public health measure to Negroes who need is proportionately greater.”The Negro Project was initiated in 1939 by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. It was a collaborative effort between the American Birth Control League and Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau.1For a eugenist, it wasn’t controversial, it was integral to the implementation of eugenics to eliminate the ‘unfit’. Eugenics is “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed”.2 Negative eugenics focused on preventing the birth of those it considered inferior or unfit. This was the foundation of Sanger’s Birth Control Policy and advocated throughout her writings, speeches, and her periodicals including “Pivot of Civilization”, “Plan for Peace” and countless Birth Control Review articles. The pseudo-science (racial hygiene theory) of negative eugenics influenced social policy and eugenics-based legislation (Immigration Act of 19243, segregation laws, sterilization laws) and led to the racial hygiene theory adopted by the Nazis. Noted eugenist, Eugen Fischer, who was funded by The Rockefeller Foundation (one of many same organizations that also financially supported Sanger’s work), was responsible for the Nazi adoption of racial hygiene theory at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute that led to the eugenics implementation of the holocaust.4 The connection between American Eugenics and the horrors of Nazi Germany are irrefutable. The preponderance of evidence of where Sanger wanted to go (although she decried the atrocities of the holocaust after WWII) shows the ignorance and naivete of eugenics philosophy and its eventual conclusion, left undeterred.  The Negro Project was but a precursor to what eugenists wanted to implement on a much larger scale.

— Dr. Dorothy Ferebee (black physician serving as the Chairman of the Family Planning Committee of the National Council of Negro Women) at 1942 annual Planned Parenthood meeting. (One should note that, today, both Planned Parenthood and the National Council of Negro Women are radically pro-abortion.)

 

This is the same Sanger who persuaded a few reluctant, yet incredibly influential, black ministers to join in her Birth Control movement. To dispel the rising doubts among those who objected to Birth Control on religious and moral grounds, Sanger wrote that “the ministers work is also important…offering to train him in their ideals because “we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members”.6 Many use this statement to bolster the claim that Sanger wanted to exterminate all of the black population, but this statement is about reducing a certain type of black individual that Sanger believed should be eliminated, sterilized, or segregated onto farms.7 Those who were poor and (supposedly) less intelligent. Eugenists believed the entirety of the black population were intellectually and racially inferior. (Sanger’s ideological agreement and written/spoken solidarity with the eugenics movements does throw legitimate doubt on whether it was only a segment of the black population that was being targeted.) With the help of elite and famous African-Americans Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. DuBois, and Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., the Negro Project was able to be sold as a solution to poverty and high birth rates. It is crucial, however, to understand this endeavor in conjunction with Sanger’s dominant efforts of ‘eliminating the unfit’ and her hatred of charitable organizations.  She devotes an entire chapter on charities and how those who finance them “are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst.”8

“Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease…Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks [of people] that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.”

— Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, Chapter V, “Cruelty of Charity”

[bonnie]

Another,

 

 

The Truth About MARGARET SANGER

(This article first appeared in the January 20, 1992 edition of Citizen magazine)

How Planned Parenthood Duped America

At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the "black" and "yellow" peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.

Sanger's other colleagues included avowed and sophisticated racists. One, Lothrop Stoddard, was a Harvard graduate and the author of The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy. Stoddard was something of a Nazi enthusiast who described the eugenic practices of the Third Reich as "scientific" and "humanitarian." And Dr. Harry Laughlin, another Sanger associate and board member for her group, spoke of purifying America's human "breeding stock" and purging America's "bad strains." These "strains" included the "shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South."

Not to be outdone by her followers, Margaret Sanger spoke of sterilizing those she designated as "unfit," a plan she said would be the "salvation of American civilization.: And she also spike of those who were "irresponsible and reckless," among whom she included those " whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers." She further contended that "there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped." That many Americans of African origin constituted a segment of Sanger considered "unfit" cannot be easily refuted.

While Planned Parenthood's current apologists try to place some distance between the eugenics and birth control movements, history definitively says otherwise. The eugenic theme figured prominently in the Birth Control Review, which Sanger founded in 1917. She published such articles as "Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics" (June 1920), "The Eugenic Conscience" (February 1921), "The purpose of Eugenics" (December 1924), "Birth Control and Positive Eugenics" (July 1925), "Birth Control: The True Eugenics" (August 1928), and many others.

These eugenic and racial origins are hardly what most people associate with the modern Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), which gave its Margaret Sanger award to the late Dr. Martin Luther King in 1966, and whose current president, Faye Wattleton, is black, a former nurse, and attractive.

Though once a social pariah group, routinely castigated by religious and government leaders, the PPFA is now an established, high-profile, well-funded organization with ample organizational and ideological support in high places of American society and government. Its statistics are accepted by major media and public health officials as "gospel"; its full-page ads appear in major newspapers; its spokespeople are called upon to give authoritative analyses of what America's family policies should be and to prescribe official answers that congressmen, state legislator and Supreme Court justiices all accept as "social orthodoxy."

Blaming Families

Sanger's obsession with eugenics can be traced back to her own family. One of 11 children, she wrote in the autobiographical book, My Fight for Birth Control, that "I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails with large families." Just as important was the impression in her childhood of an inferior family status, exacerbated by the iconoclastic, "free-thinking" views of her father, whose "anti-Catholic attitudes did not make for his popularity" in a predominantly Irish community.

The fact that the wealthy families in her hometown of Corning, N.Y., had relatively few children, Sanger took as prima facie evidence of the impoverishing effect of larger families. The personal impact of this belief was heightened 1899, at the age of 48. Sanger was convinced that the "ordeals of motherhood" had caused the death of her mother. The lingering consumption (tuberculosis) that took her mother's life visited Sanger at the birth of her own first child on Nov. 18, 1905. The diagnosis forced her to seek refuge in the Adirondacks to strengthen her for the impending birth. Despite the precautions, the birth of baby Grant was "agonizing," the mere memory of which Sanger described as "mental torture" more than 25 years later. She once described the experience as a factor "to be reckoned with" in her zealous campaign for birth control.

From the beginning, Sanger advocacy of sex education reflected her interest in population control and birth prevention among the "unfit." Her first handbook, published for adolescents in 1915 and entitled, What Every Boy and Girl Should Know, featured a jarring afterword:

It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stoop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them.

To Sanger, the ebbing away of moral and religious codes over sexual conduct was a natural consequence of the worthlessness of such codes in the individual's search for self-fulfillment. "Instead of laying down hard and fast rules of sexual conduct," Sanger wrote in her 1922 book Pivot of Civilization, "sex can be rendered effective and valuable only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of the pupil himself." Her attitude is appropriately described as libertinism, but sex knowledge was not the same as individual liberty, as her writings on procreation emphasized.

The second edition of Sanger's life story, An Autobiography, appeared in 1938. There Sanger described her first cross-country lecture tour in 1916. Her standard speech asserted seven conditions of life that "mandated" the use of birth control: the third was "when parents, though normal, had subnormal children"; the fourth, "when husband and wife were adolescent"; the fifth, "when the earning capacity of the father was inadequate." No right existed to exercise sex knowledge to advance procreation. Sanger described the fact that "anyone, no matter how ignorant, how diseased mentally or physically, how lacking in all knowledge of children, seemed to consider he or she had the right to become a parent."

Religious Bigotry

In the 1910's and 1920's, the entire social order–religion, law, politics, medicine, and the media–was arrayed against the idea and practice of birth control. This opposition began in 1873 when an overwhelmingly Protestant Congress passed, and a Protestant president signed into law, a bill that became known as the Comstock Law, named after its main proponent, Anthony Comstock. The U.S. Congress classified obscene writing, along with drugs, and devices and articles that prevented conception or caused abortion, under the same net of criminality and forbade their importation or mailing.

Sanger set out to have such legislation abolished or amended. Her initial efforts were directed at the Congress with the opening of a Washington, D.C., office of her American Birth Control League in 1926. Sanger wanted to amend section 211 of the U.S. criminal code to allow the interstate shipment and mailing of contraceptives among physicians, druggists and drug manufacturers.

[Bravus]

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/08/what_happened_when_brave_gunman_charger_ben_carson_was_actually_held_up_at_gunpoint/

(yep, it's a Salon article, so read the spin with care, but the facts are not in dispute and are a direct quote of Carson's own story) When he had a chance to take down a gunman, he instead threw someone more vulnerable under a bus.

Edited October 11, 2015 by Bravus

[bonnie]

Obviously you are unable to tell the difference between the two situations.

A armed robbery is quite a bit different than the random shooting of victims.. How would you charge a gunmen with his gun in your ribs. Most people would have the intelligence to hand the money over as quickly as possible and stop the possibility of someone being shot. Not having the money it would have been tough for Dr Carson to do so,don't you think?

Watching people being shot around you  would and should have a different impact on your thinking and what id anything could be done.

[phkrause]

So are you saying that Ben has no intelligence?? I thought that his comment was pretty interesting. I don't think anyone knows what they would do in a situation like that, until it actually happens.

[bonnie]

I hope you are responding to another poster. Personally I believe he is a highly intelligent man. HIs lack of intelligence seems to center around his outdated belief in the bible

[Tom Wetmore]

missing the point...

[bonnie]

No Tom,I did not miss the point. 30 years between two entirely different situations

When he had a chance to take down a gunman, he instead threw someone more vulnerable under a bus.

I would like to know what Bravus or you know about the opportunity Dr Carson had with a gun in his ribs. This was simply over money and most people should understand the money has no value at all compared to escalating something like that and getting killed yourself or having others injured or dead. I believe anyone with common sense will encourage those that have access to the money give it up as quickly as possible

Quite different than knowing other  people,yourself included are going to die unless something or someone stops them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 11, 2015 by bonnie

[Tom Wetmore]

I'd be very interested to see some credible evidence on the disarming of the German population prior to WW2.

Here's is a start... http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/stop_talking_about_hitler/   As is so often the case political hype and memes frequently have little basis or at least a very distorted basis, in fact or reality. 

Time to talk sense...  

[CoAspen]

Very interesting....if a falsehood is spoken enough times, it becomes a fact.

The article points out one of the larger issues, IMO, of the public's willingness to accept what ever is said, published, perceived factual, etc when it agrees with what we want to be true. It happens to all parts of out lives from religion to the secular, to medicine, every part of life. In a way, we are extremely uninformed about the real world we live in. Our own fault.

[bonnie]

wikipedia

History of firearms restrictions in Germany[edit]

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles[edit]

From 1918 to 1920, with the defeat of Germany in World War I, the nation was forced to accept a series of devastating reparations after signing the Treaty of Versailles. The defeated Weimar government agreed to payments it did not have the ability to make, which would eventually lead to the 1920s inflationary depression. The treaty had stipulations to disarm the government. Fearing inability to hold the state together during the depression, the German government adopted a sweeping series of gun confiscation legislation against the citizens prior to completely disarming the German military. Article 169 of the Treaty of Versailles explicitly targeted the state: "Within two months from the coming into force of the present Treaty, German arms, munitions, and war material, including anti-aircraft material, existing in Germany in excess of the quantities allowed, must be surrendered to the Governments of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers to be destroyed or rendered useless."^[3]

In 1919, the German government passed the Regulations on Weapons Ownership, which declared that "all firearms, as well as all kinds of firearms ammunition, are to be surrendered immediately."^[4] Under the regulations, anyone found in possession of a firearm or ammunition was subject to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 marks.

On August 7, 1920, rising fears whether or not Germany could have rebellions prompted the government to enact a second gun-regulation law called the Law on the Disarmament of the People. It put into effect the provisions of the Versailles Treaty in regard to the limit on military-type weapons.

In 1928, after a near decade of hyperinflation destroyed the structural fabric of the society, a rapidly expanding three-way political divide between the conservatives, National Socialists, and Communists prompted the rapidly declining conservative majority to enact the Law on Firearms and Ammunition. This law relaxed gun restrictions and put into effect a strict firearm licensing scheme. Under this scheme, Germans could possess firearms, but they were required to have separate permits to do the following: own or sell firearms, carry firearms (including handguns), manufacture firearms, and professionally deal in firearms and ammunition. Furthermore, the law restricted ownership of firearms to "...persons whose trustworthiness is not in question and who can show a need for a (gun) permit." This law explicitly revoked the 1919 Regulations on Weapons Ownership, which had banned all firearms possession.

Gun regulation of the Third Reich[edit]

The 1938 German Weapons Act, the precursor of the current weapons law, superseded the 1928 law. As under the 1928 law, citizens were required to have a permit to carry a firearm and a separate permit to acquire a firearm. But under the new law:

• Gun restriction laws applied only to handguns, not to long guns or ammunition. The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as was the possession of ammunition."^[5]
• The legal age at which guns could be purchased was lowered from 20 to 18.^[6]
• Permits were valid for three years, rather than one year.^[6]
• The groups of people who were exempt from the acquisition permit requirement expanded. Holders of annual hunting permits, government workers, and NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers' Party, aka the Nazi party) members were no longer subject to gun ownership restrictions. Prior to the 1938 law, only officials of the central government, the states, and employees of the German Reichsbahn Railways were exempted.^[5]
• Manufacture of arms and ammunition continued to require a permit, with the revision that such permits would no longer be issued to Jews or any company part-owned by Jews. Jews were consequently forbidden from the manufacturing or dealing of firearms and ammunition.^[5]

Under both the 1928 and 1938 acts, gun manufacturers and dealers were required to maintain records with information about who purchased guns and the guns' serial numbers. These records were to be delivered to a police authority for inspection at the end of each year.

Disarming Jews in Nazi Germany[edit]

On November 11, 1938 (the day after Kristallnacht) the Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons were promulgated by Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, effectively depriving all Jews living under the Third Reich of the right to possess any form of weapons including truncheons, knives, or firearms and ammunition.^[7]

Before that, some police forces used the pre-existing "trustworthiness" clause to disarm Jews on the basis that "the Jewish population 'cannot be regarded as trustworthy'".^[5]

[GayatfootofCross]

I found a news article that makes my point.

o to be a wordsmith!

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/09/ben-carson-controversial-comments-islam-gun-control-holocaust

The problem with blowback against Ben Carson? 'People take him too literally'

The Republican presidential candidate has come under fire after a slew of incendiary comments touching on everything from 9/11 to the Holocaust. Can it be that it was all so simple as a misreading of his intent?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Straight Outta Carson: We look at six of Ben Carson’s most controversial statements

Tom McCarthy in New York

@TeeMcSee

 

•  

Ben Carson has a way with words. With the exception of Donald Trump, who has more practice, Carson is the most quotable presidential candidate in the current Republican field.

Ben Carson claims Jewish people might have stopped Holocaust if they had guns

Read more

For both men, quotability means controversy. Trump brands Mexicans as rapists, women as more or less attractive, prisoners of war as feckless and opponents everywhere as losers. Headlines and bothered head-shaking follow.

Carson’s controversial words, especially in the three weeks since the second Republican debate, have created a different kind of turbulence, one that feels more violent and less predictable than anything Trump has so far stirred up. It’s no small accomplishment.

The strength of the reaction to Carson’s most recent incendiary comments may be owing to the fact that he has touched on two issues that are especially sensitive for Americans – Islam and guns – and then attempted to illuminate them, in the past two days, with references to the Holocaust and the 11 September 2001 attacks.

But the contrast between Carson and Trump, and their brands of controversial speech, is deeper than the topics that attract their most provocative words.

The public knows Trump well, and Carson little. People have decided for themselves whether Trump is primarily a provocateur, a fearless teller of hard truths, or a buffoon. To explain something he said, just pick a category.

The public does not yet have a feel for whether Carson means what he says, nor the extent to which he means what he says, nor whether he is speaking by accident – as a result of his near-absolute inexperience as a politician – or with the utter deliberation and self-assurance of a man who has opened 15,000 tiny skulls to fix the brains inside.

A retired pediatric neurosurgeon and presidential medal of freedom recipient, Carson has never run for public office.

Longtime friends assign the controversies surrounding Carson’s speech to a double failure. They say on one hand that Carson has not always succeeded in adapting to the necessities of political speech. On the other hand, they say the public has failed to pick up on an ironic quality which is essential to understanding what he means.

For his part, Carson has said he has been misquoted, or quoted out of context. To the extent that the emotionally cool candidate has seemed to exhibit frustration on the campaign trail, it has been in interviews in which he has been asked to explain his own words.

“I would advocate that people go back and look at the transcript,” he has said, in a typical reply.

One of Carson’s oldest friends, Dr Donlin Long, who trained Carson as a medical resident and worked alongside him in a historic 1987 surgery to separate twins conjoined at the cranium, said last week that Carson often uses ironic speech as a way of engaging, entertaining or even testing his listeners.

He’s trying to provoke discussion in an area that he thinks has not been appropriately discussed up to that time

Dr Donlin Long

“Sometimes I am surprised when I hear him say something, and only weeks later, months later, does it really become apparent what he meant,” Long told the Guardian. “I think many people just take what he says literally without much thought. My impression is Ben never says what he says lightly.

“He’s trying to provoke discussion in an area that he thinks has not been appropriately discussed up to that time.”

A second Carson friend of two decades, Harold Doley, who was an ambassador during the Reagan administration, said in an interview last month that Carson was still learning how to calibrate what he says on the campaign trail.

“He is going through a metamorphosis phase right now, and he’s gaining momentum and traction, but it’s hard for him to think and respond in sound bites,” Doley said.

He singled out Carson’s comments a week earlier that he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation”.

“One of the things that he has to be careful of is, in some of these sound bites he’s trying to make a point, and he goes to the extreme in making the point, and it has not been helpful,” Doley said.

A good example of how Carson can go to extremes in making a point lies in the way he roped Hitler and 9/11 into America’s guns debate.

“I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” Carson said on TV on Thursday, picking up on a theme from his latest book, A More Perfect Union.

In a radio interview on Wednesday, Carson said his assertion that “I would not just stand there” during a mass shooting had kicked off a needed conversation that could change how people act during mass shootings. As a corroborating example he proffered United Flight 93, in which passengers confronted al-Qaida hijackers.

Analysis Ben Carson's healing hands and bedside manner have GOP donors dreaming

Despite missteps over Muslims and quiet debates, the retired neurosurgeon is running high in the polls. Supporters say his big breakthrough is nigh

Read more

“You know, they decided that, you know, if they were going to go down, you know, they were going to go down trying,” Carson said. “And I believe that if, you know, you don’t really see hijacking situations anymore, but if you did see one I think you’d see a lot of passengers get up and attack the person.”

Carson has made much of the fact that he does not speak like a politician, instead offering something more authentic. He has framed his campaign as a threat to “the political class”, of which he says the media is a member.

It is unclear whether Carson’s controversial speech – like Trump’s – may have diminished his appeal. Indeed, certain of his comments may have enhanced his appeal in certain corners of the electorate.

For example, there is no evidence in the polling that Carson’s comment that he opposed a Muslim becoming president hurt him. Trump’s campaign took off after his first anti-immigrant comments.

The adverse reactions to Carson’s most controversial statements, however, cannot all be characterized as the result of willful misquoting or media manipulation. Judging by the number and diversity of voices that have taken issue with it, Carson’s speech has had an implicitly provocative quality.

Asked about Carson’s stated opposition to a Muslim president, Texas senator Ted Cruz, a hard-right conservative also running for president, replied quickly: “You know, the constitution specifies there shall be no religious test for public office and I am constitutionalist.”

Ben’s used to dealing with people who are just about as informed, in a highly specialized field, as he is

Dr Donilon Long

Carson’s assertion that “I would not just stand there” during a mass shooting drew criticism from Erica Lafferty, whose mother, Dawn Hochsprung, was shot and killed in the December 2012 attack on Sandy Hook elementary school.

“My mother did not just ‘stand there’ and let herself get shot,” Lafferty said in a statement emailed to the Guardian.

Long, the fellow neurosurgeon, said Carson may bear some responsibility for repairing what he characterized as miscommunication.

“Ben’s used to dealing with people who are just about as informed, in a highly specialized field, as he is,” Long said. “It’s very different, talking to a group of people with very different biases, and very different levels of understanding. It’s very hard to use a somewhat facetious, provocative technique.

“My view of what he said so far is that that most of the responses are totally irrational. That doesn’t mean that Ben doesn’t have some responsibility to be more explicit.”

..........................................................................................................................................................

still another troubling thought

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ben-carson-just-cant-help-himself

 

Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson speaks during a news conference, Oct. 2, 2015, in Ankeny, Iowa.

Photo by Charlie Neibergall/AP

Ben Carson just can’t help himself

10/12/15 10:03 AM—Updated 10/12/15 01:51 PM

 

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By Steve Benen

Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson just had quite a week. It was a week in which Americans learned that Carson believes bullet-riddled bodies are preferable to new gun laws; he questioned why victims of a mass-shooting weren’t as brave as he imagines himself to be; he told a bizarre story about a robbery he claims to have witnessed; and the GOP topped it off with a fight with the Anti-Defamation League over his Holocaust confusion.

 

Most candidates for national office would take months to rack up a list like this. Carson did it over the course of five days.

 

The Associated Press published a piece today highlighting the Republican’s “freewheeling approach.” I honestly can’t think of a more charitable way to characterize a presidential hopeful who makes ridiculous comments for no reason, while facing no real consequences.

 

But just when it seemed Carson couldn’t move any further from reality, he sat down with TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network and came up with a brand new fantasy.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been tied to controversial Mideast Muslim leaders since the time they attended school in Moscow, according to Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson. […]

 

Carson said Putin shares a deep historical tie with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, suggesting he became acquainted with them during their college days in Moscow when Putin was a young KGB operative.

“He has longstanding relationships down there,” Carson said. “Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, were both classmates in the class of 1968 at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow where they became acquainted with a young Vladimir Putin.”

 

The Christian Broadcasting Network’s report referred to this as a “little known historical fact.” The trouble is, it’s little known because it’s not a historical fact.

 

There’s literally no evidence to suggest Khamenei ever studied in the former Soviet Union. And since he and Abbas are several years older than Putin, the timeline doesn’t even make sense – Putin would have been a 16-year-old high school student at the time.

 

Note what happened when the Christian Broadcasting Network sought some clarification on this point.

In a follow-up interview, Dr. Carson would not disclose his sources, but told CBN News he learned about the ties between the three leaders from advisors across the government, including the CIA.

 

He said the connection helps to explain what’s currently happening around the world.

 

“That’s what I call wisdom,” Carson said. “You get these pieces of information. You talk to various people. You begin to have an overall picture. You begin to understand why people do what they do.”

Carson went on to say, “There’s a lot more information that I’ve gotten that’s probably not appropriate for revelation.”

 

I see.

 

Not to put too fine a point on this, but we’re delving deep into crackpot waters at this point. An unhinged presidential candidate, citing clandestine sources that probably do not exist, is now describing a decades-old relationship between foreign leaders that also does not appear to exist. All of this comes on the heels of increasingly alarming claims that Carson appears to have invented out of whole cloth.

 

Is there a point at which the political world has a conversation about whether Carson is grounded enough to be seen as a credible candidate for public office? Is it fair to say we’ve reached that point now?

 

[GayatfootofCross]

By Geoffrey Nelson-Blake October 8, 2015

Open Letter to Ben Carson From Fellow Seventh-day Adventist: Stop the Islamophobia

http://religiondispatches.org/an-open-letter-to-ben-carson-from-a-fellow-seventh-day-adventist-stop-the-islamophobia/

 

Dr. Ben Carson,

As a clergy-trained fellow Seventh-day Adventist, I urge you to stop singling out Islam and Muslims. This upcoming weekend there are anti-Muslim rallies planned across the country—some of them calling for armed protesters—fueled by the anti-Muslim rhetoric you are helping advance in mainstream America. You are profiting in fundraising and in polls off the backs of a marginalized religious minority in our country.

Your singling out of a marginalized faith community is ironic, perhaps hypocritical, on many levels. As a lifelong Seventh-day Adventist, I am well aware (and assume you are, too) of the fears held by many in our community of the possibility of persecution for beliefs that differ from mainstream Christianity, such as a Saturday Sabbath. Holding membership in what many view as a small, fringe faith community, it is surprising that you are giving voice to religious discrimination.

Recently, when talking about “American values,” you raised concerns over Islam pertaining to discrimination of women, LGBTQ people, and subjugation of those with different religious beliefs. As a presidential candidate with a public platform it’s puzzling that, in addition to calling out a marginalized religious community, you would be singling these issues out in another faith group and failing to call out discrimination within your own.

Let’s take a closer look at these issues in Seventh-day Adventism.

Church leadership recently changed its “Marriage and Family” Fundamental Belief from the language of “partners” to specifying “a man and a woman” when speaking about marriage. Such discriminatory language counters the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage from earlier this year, requiring that same-sex couples be allowed to marry anywhere in the country. Given your expressed concerns about this issue it seems like you might have similar concerns about faith-based discrimination from fellow Christians. You didn’t sound concerned over whether government employee Kim Davis’s religion was “consistent with the Constitution” when she was defying the Supreme Court by denying marriage licenses to gay couples. I would expect this kind of consistency from someone who prides himself on making choices based on values rather than political expediency.

Earlier this year, our Seventh-day Adventist church leadership once again voted against the ordination of female clergy. Without ordination, female pastors can’t lead out in regional conferences or establish churches. This stained-glass ceiling and other forms of faith-based gender discrimination run counter to American values of equality and opportunity for all.

Or perhaps your statement of concern about Islam reflects a change of heart from your previous comments about women and LGBTQ people. If that is true, I invite you to join the growing chorus of Seventh-day Adventists denouncing the moral authority of Adventist church leadership as a result of its choices to perpetuate discrimination against women and LGBTQ people.

In my current role as director of the interfaith Community Organizing Residency at Bend the Arc, I have the privilege of knowing many Muslims who are working in the non-profit sector on issues such as healthcare access, housing affordability, and public education, throughout our country. We would all be fortunate to have any one of these Americans run for president one day.

Your anti-Muslim rhetoric is not only ironic, but also immoral. I can assure you that it is not in line with our faith tradition. Our sacred texts call us to love our neighbor as ourselves—this includes our Muslim neighbor. I implore you to be a better representative of our faith community. You could start this weekend by visiting a local mosque and engaging in peaceful dialogue with our Muslim brothers and sisters.

If you want to fight faith-based discrimination, start within our own Seventh-day Adventist faith community, not with our Muslim neighbors whom we’re called to love. As a presidential candidate you are not responsible for every individual’s words and actions toward Muslims, but you are responsible for your words and actions that set a tone for conversations and actions across our country.

......................................................................................

thanku!

[Gregory Matthews]

The above was written by Geoffrey Nelson-Blake.

Over the years, he has written on many subjects,  see:  http://spectrummagazine.org/authors/geoffrey-nelson-blake

Edited October 13, 2015 by Gregory Matthews

[GayatfootofCross]

Dear Dr. Ben Carson,

Equipping the populace for greater violence is not the solution. You come from a faith tradition long considered to be a peace church. In the name of peace making, please consider the following:

MILITIA MYTHS: WHY ARMED POPULATIONS DON’T PREVENT TYRANNY, BUT OFTEN LEAD TO IT

 

 

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http://www.armedwithreason.com/militia-myths-why-armed-populations-dont-prevent-tyranny-but-often-lead-to-it/

Militia Myths: Why Armed Populations Don’t Prevent Tyranny, But Often Lead To It

Constitutional Fallacies: Part III

Myth

It’s something we’ve seen happen time and time again in history — with Stalin, happened in Cambodia, and then of course, the Third Reich.  No one saw that coming until it was too late. – Joshua Boston

Hitler took the guns, Stalin took the guns, Mao took the guns, Fidel Castro took the guns, Hugo Chavez took the guns!  And I am here to tell you, 1776 WILL COMMENCE AGAIN IF YOU TRY TO TAKE OUR FIREARMS!!! – Alex Jones

Gun control has no place in a free society. The body of research is growing which shows that before the genocides of this century have been carried out by rogue governments, they first disarmed the target population. – Larry Pratt

A government that intended to protect the liberty of the people would not disarm them. A government planning the opposite most certainly and logically would disarm them. And so it has been in this century. Check out the history of Germany, the Soviet Union, Cuba, China and Cambodia. – Charlie Reese

One of the arguments that had been made against gun control was that an armed citizenry was the final bulwark against tyranny. My response had been that untrained, lightly-armed non-soldiers couldn’t prevail against a modern army. I had concluded that the qualitative difference in firepower was such that all of the previous rules of guerilla war no longer applied. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan demonstrated that wasn’t true. Repelling an armed invasion is not something that American citizens are likely to face, but the possibility of a despotic government coming to power is not wholly unthinkable. One of the sequellae of Vietnam was the rise of the Khmer Rouge and slaughter of perhaps a million Cambodian citizens. Those citizens, like the Jews in Germany or the Armenians in Turkey, were unarmed and thus utterly and completely defenseless against police and paramilitary. An armed minority was able to kill and terrorize unarmed victims with total impunity. – Paul Hager

Overview of Pro-gun Arguments

• A well-armed population has the power to stop tyrannical governments. Our country was founded by such a battle, where a well-armed population succeeded in stopping tyranny and founded a government of the people.
• Governments will inevitably abuse their power, and we must be ready to overthrow the government as a last resort to protect liberty.
• Without guns, we are powerless to prevent government overreach.

Reality

It is worth noting at the outset that this fear of tyranny suddenly arising belies a fundamental misreading of how authoritarian regimes actually come to power. Namely, it assumes a false dichotomy between “the people” on one side and “the government” on the other. Government is not some foreign entity imposed on the people, which would only arise from a foreign country conquering the United States (not going to happen). Rather democratic government is derived from the people. A tyrannical government could only arise in the US with a majority of the population supporting it due to some economic or military crisis: in reaction, say, to a heavily armed minority attempting to enforce its will on the rest of the country. Government does not just “suddenly” become tyrannical. The debate should just end here. However, given that this a blog dedicated to thoroughly debunking myths, I will delve deeper.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The founding fathers were wrong.

Blasphemy, I know. Yet the idea that Militias are in anyway necessary or good for a free State has no historical justification, especially in the modern era. Militias (especially unregulated ones) are overwhelmingly detrimental to the existence of a free society, and at best are impotent in its defense. A historical analysis reveals that Militias are typically the gateway to tyranny, not the safeguard against it. A heavily armed population has little to no bearing on preventing tyranny.

Pro-gun arguments typically follow at least one of four paths:

1. Our own Revolutionary War shows militias are effective at protecting liberty.
2. Militias promote liberty.
3. Armed populations deter tyrants while unarmed populations are defenseless.
4. Disarming a population is the gateway to genocide.

All of these arguments are false. Let’s first look at our own Revolutionary War.

The idea that militias are the bulwark against tyranny typically begins in a faulty reading of American History. The Revolutionary War was not won by Militias, but rather the Continental Army with considerable help from the French. While it is probably an exaggeration to suggest that the Militia was completely worthless during the War, that is far closer to reality than the myth promulgated by some pro-gun advocates. And the Militias that did significantly contribute to the cause were organized by the states and represented a well-disciplined, cohesive fighting force that mirrored the Continental Army, not the minutemen of lore.

Moving to the modern era, Militias have a terrible history of creating tyranny, even when fighting against foreign powers. Militias that have been successful in warding off foreign aggression overwhelmingly opposed democratic rule. A few examples are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba, Somalia, Iraq, and southern Lebanon; in none of these countries did the militias promote a free State. Add to this list countries where militias have ripped apart society in tribal states or civil war (such as Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Colombia, and the Palestinian Territories) and we can form an even clearer picture of militias. For a more immediate example, one only has to look at the bewildering array of militias (more than “1,000” according to Robin Wright) currently fighting in Syria to see how little they promote democratic values and how ineffective they tend to be on the battlefield. While there may be an example of victorious militias replacing tyranny with freedom since the industrial age hiding somewhere in an obscure footnote of history, the rule that militias are detrimental to preserving freedom holds.

An astute reader will note that all of the examples I am providing are from poor countries or societies that never had a well-established democratic tradition. And this is true. While it is typically wise to refrain from comparing countries in different socio-economic strata, there simply aren’t any wealthy, free societies that use militias for self-defense. Every democratic country, with the exception of Costa Rica, has a standing army to defend it, not militias.

For examples closer to home, we can easily see that the Klu Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi elements, and the Black Panthers (all of which are or were unregulated militias) have done little to promote a free society. Perhaps the best example in America of the influence militias have on society is “Bloody Kansas” during the 1850s. Pro-Northern and Southern settlers, armed to the teeth, streamed into Kansas in order to sway whether the state became free or slave. The constant skirmishes killed 56 settlers, out of a total population of 8,000. It is safe to conclude that the sudden explosion in the number of armed men did not contribute to a democratic process.

However, gun advocates claim, armed populations never have the chance to stop tyranny as they are disarmed first. There are many cases though where this is demonstrably untrue. Yemen is currently the second most heavily armed country in the world (per capita), and it is currently a battlefield between a Western dictatorship and various Jihadist organizations who have no love for a free State. Saudi Arabia and several other Arab countries are heavily armed, with what can only be described as tyrannical governments. Iraq before the 2003 US invasion is perhaps the best example. Saddam Hussein falls under any definition of a tyrannical dictator, yet the Iraqi people were very heavily armed with a gun culture mirroring that of the US. How armed a population is appears to have no empirical bearing on how free that society is.

Along with reversing the likely causality, the idea that gun control leads to genocide is a pure example of post hoc ergo propter hoc (“after this, therefore because of this”). Oftentimes, the argument gun advocates advance is as simplistic as: name a dictator, claim he supported gun control. The entire process of determining which dictator did what quickly devolves into an exercise of historical whack-a-mole. As there are dozens of dictators various gun advocates claim used gun control to disarm and then murder people, I will only focus on a few of the main tyrants. Regimes that haven’t engaged in genocidal acts (such as Cuba and Venezuela) will be excluded. Yes these countries have stiff gun control, but so does nearly every modernized country in the world, including England, Australia, Canada, France, Switzerland, Israel, etc.  While Nazi Germany is not one of the examples provided by the widely circulated “A Little Gun History,” it is often the first alleged case of gun control leading to tyranny and genocide that gun advocates advance.

Hitler took the guns

If only to affirm Godwin’s Law, the most frequently used example of gun control leading to genocide is that of Nazi Germany. At a superficial glance, gun advocates do appear to have a point. After all, didn’t Hitler praise gun control? Hitler clearly lays out his beliefs here: “This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!”

However, like many widely circulated pro-gun quotes, this attribution is fake. There is no evidence that Hitler actually made these remarks. In reality, Hitler was relatively pro-gun. Most of the strict gun control was implemented by the Weimar Republic in direct response to rising street violence and to prevent an armed coup from either the Nazis or Communists. And to a small degree it was successful, as it prevented Hitler from seizing power by armed insurrection. The “gun control” law implemented in 1938, when the Nazis were fully in power, actually loosened restrictions on gun ownership. If the “armed populations prevent tyranny” maxim held, the Germans could have removed Hitler from office with relative ease.

When presented with these facts, gun advocates typically reply that their theory still holds, as Hitler did do his utmost to prevent Jews (as well as Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs, communists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses) from owning weapons. Therefore, if they had been armed, genocide could have been averted. However, the notion that small groups of armed Jews could have succeeded where the entire Polish and French armies failed is completely inane. It took the combined might of the US, Britain, Russia, and our allies to finally defeat Hitler and his allies. Comparing this reality to the Red Dawn narrative of armed resistance gun advocates offer highlights how little merit the “guns prevent tyranny” hypothesis has. The few instances of armed resistance such as the Warsaw uprising were quickly annihilated.

Stalin took the guns

The hypothesis that a heavily armed Russian population could have stopped Stalin and communist rule completely overlooks the massive civil war (1917-22) that culminated in the triumph of communist forces. Lenin and Stalin didn’t need gun control. They simply annihilated any domestic threats to their rule. As Omer Bratov, a historian from Brown University, explains about Stalin, “the very idea of either gun control or the freedom to bear arms would have been absurd to him. His regime used violence on a vast scale, provided arms to thugs of all descriptions, and stripped not guns but any human image from those it declared to be its enemies. And then, when it needed them, as in WWII, it took millions of men out of the Gulags, trained and armed them and sent them to fight Hitler, only to send back the few survivors into the camps if they uttered any criticism of the regime.” It also defies logic that where the military might of Nazi Germany failed, scattered bands of Russian resistance could have somehow succeeded.

The Turks took the guns

It is true that the Ottomans/Turks seized the weapons of many Armenians. But the Turkish government also took the Armenian’s right to speech, property, livelihood, etc. Anything the Turks could take, they did. Seizing their weapons was simply one of many tools used by the Turks to carry out genocide, not the cause. The idea that a better armed Armenian population would have stopped the genocide is naïve. Although some Armenians were able to hold out versus the government (with the help of the Russian military or French naval forces), most batches of armed resistance were annihilated with artillery bombardment and overwhelming military force. As the Armenian National Institute explains, while the armed resistance was noble, it was ultimately the International awareness and pressure on Turkey that saved the remnants of the Armenian population.

Mao took the guns

Like the Russian case, the idea that Mao’s gun control allowed him to commit genocidal acts completely overlooks how Mao gained power in the first place: a massive civil war. If guns could have stopped Mao, they would have then, not at the height of his power. It also overlooks the fact that any type of gun laws would have had only a negligible influence of gun ownership as the vast majority of Chinese peasants (those bearing the brunt of Mao’s disastrous policies) were too poor to even consider owning a gun. Gun policy shouldn’t enter any meaningful discourse on Mao’s rule.

Guatemala took the guns

The rationale for Guatemala’s wanton slaughter of the Mayan population was to eliminate the threat of Marxist rebels by removing their support base. Guatemala’s genocidal acts were a response to an armed threat, not an opportunistic assault to take advantage of a recently disarmed population as some gun advocates suggest. The tactics to remove this armed resistance, unfortunately, involved the slaughter of unarmed civilians, and was spurred by decades (if not centuries) of pent up racial tensions. It was the presence of armed resistance, not the absence of it, which led to further atrocities.

Idi Amin took the guns

The Ugandan case is a prime example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in action. Gun advocates point to a 1970 Uganda law that restricted firearm ownership and regulated the types of weapons a citizen could own as the gateway to genocidal acts beginning in 1971 under the rule of Idi Amin. Had the population not been “disarmed,” the people of Uganda could have stopped the reign of terror. However, this analysis completely overlooks two very basic facts. First, the gun law implemented in 1970 was mostly an extension of a colonial firearms law dating back to 1955, meaning the number of gun owners would not have changed substantially. Second, the idea that the gun law was stage one of genocide is not viable, as the law was implemented in 1970 and Idi Amin did not seize power and begin killing people until 1971.

Pol Pot took the guns

The claims of Cambodian gun control leading to genocide is, like the Uganda case, a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that conveniently ignores the fact that there was a massive five year civil war from 1970-75 in which the Republican forces protecting the “one million educated people” were decisively defeated. As Robert Spitzer, the author of “The Politics of Gun Control” states the idea that gun control led to genocide in Cambodia and the other countries mentioned represents “a cartoonish view of the complex events” and the people touting these ideas “don’t know comparative politics, they don’t know international relations, they haven’t studied war.”

Conclusion

Even if the gun advocates’ deeply flawed reading of history was accurate, applying the lessons from these countries to the US is foolish. None of the above countries had well established democratic traditions at the time. Most of these nations were suffering from battlefield defeats or economic catastrophe. In no way do these scenarios bear any resemblance to the US. Even if gun control was the gateway to genocide in these countries (which was definitively not the case), such analysis overlooks the vast host of causal socio-economic and political factors that led to these tragic events. Extrapolating these flawed conclusions to domestic gun policy, in the words of James Madison, “must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.”

Takeaways:

• Militias were largely ineffective in our own Revolutionary War.
• Militias in the modern era have overwhelmingly fostered tyranny, not liberty.
• Liberty and the degree of gun ownership in a society are uncorrelated.
• Even if they were positively correlated, the idea that gun control leads to tyranny is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
• Even if this thought process wasn’t fallacy ridden, the historical examples gun advocates supply don’t hold up under closer scrutiny.
• Even if the historical cases displayed what gun advocates contend they do, the argument would still fail as applying the lessons from the examples to the US overlooks massive cultural and socio-economic differences.

[GayatfootofCross]

The above was written by Geoffrey Nelson-Blake.

Over the years, he has written on many subjects,  see:  http://spectrummagazine.org/authors/geoffrey-nelson-blake

Thank you!