Dr. Ben Carson does not shrink from public expression of views he honestly holds. He can be respected for that without question. I also appreciate that he has made his courage to render those views openly so I know what to do with them, much as we have come to understand the rhetoric of Donald Trump.
In short, both should raise the flag of fear for voters, including those who found these two men having qualities of leadership to assume the presidency of the United States of America.
In many earlier commentaries, Trump’s clownish but courageous rhetoric should have made it clear he is nothing if not one of the most “creative” candidates we have seen in a very long time.
Dr. Carson, on the other hand, no matter what you may have thought of his early candid commentaries on various issues, has been seen by this writer and tons of others, as an esteemed medical practitioner who had decided to leave medicine to take on citizen challenges in politics at the very top ... for which he should have been accorded respect and credit.
So what’s the problem?
Well, the brilliant neurosurgeon certainly was never said to be a tippler in excess or a poor parent or worse. What the “problem” is that he joined a clack of folks who believe if everyone in the world toted guns, none of the nutcases who roam our nation and elsewhere would dare do their deeds. It is his and many others’ contentions that those fighting against the madness growing almost daily want to take away everybody’s weapons altogether. No doubt there are such extremists who are not much better than those who claim all sorts of reasons to put guns in the hands of school teachers and no doubt preachers to have under their clerical robes during services.
But the good Dr. Carson suggested the need for minimal history lessons if not some rest from the hard work of politics when he came up with the amazing if not hysterical claim armed Jews in Germany and elsewhere in Europe could have stopped the Holocaust.
Once again for emphasis: credit the gentleman for his candor but condemn the rhetoric that suggested millions of people that included shopkeepers, scholars and all sorts of other categories including children might have pulled out weapons to contend with tanks, armed military forces and others committed to rounding those folks up by command of Adolph Hitler and his buddies.
Moreover, what Dr. Carson may also have not known is how few even wanted to help those Hitler declared as not worthy of citizenship at least in Germany because of their toxicity as “non-Aryans.” But what he must have also missed was the fact the card indices provided the Nazis were supplied by none other than IBM’s Tom Watson, financing of the Third Reich was coming from such fiscal stalwarts as Henry Ford and a variety of other industrialists, with Ford ultimately accorded the highest decoration Hitler could present.
But what Dr. Carson also seemed not to know of history was that most of the non-Jewish populations in the countries where the “collections for the camps” did not present objections to what was being done…in fact a boatload of 1200 Jews who had escaped on the SS St. Louis was rejected from landing in the United States with the Coast Guard ordering the ship not to dock.
And the ultimate reality is that Dr. Carson should have known that there was indeed an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto that resulted in about a couple dozen German military killed compared to more than 13,000 shopkeepers, students and others contending with the German tanks and other powerful weaponry turned on them.
In short, Dr. Carson, very few gave a tinker’s damn about what was happening as the Holocaust was becoming clear by the hour. In fact, since those days, even Amazon.com today still proudly has on sale the virulently anti-Semitic volume by the late Henry Ford titled THE INTERNATIONAL JEW…with scores of differently priced and carefully advertised versions right on the web site. So, Dr. Carson, who is obviously a brilliant medical professional and apparently a fine family man is also a horrible historian whose views on this issue alone, might well attract a lot of folks who have not wanted to be so public with such views for a long time…until now.
The hope then is that he will reconsider his comments and not see the retraction as anything but legitimately new found understanding and thereby enhance his personal candor.
Joe Honick, President of GMA International Ltd, is a consultant to business marketing abroad, creator of INNOCENTSABROAD: AMERICAN BUSINESS and is the founder and President of The International Commercial Tenants Association. He can be reached at [email protected]
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