Ben Carson for President?

by Geoffrey Rees

In the week since neurosurgeon and best-selling author Ben Carson spoke on February 7^th at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, his remarks have been hailed enthusiastically by critics of President Obama. “ConservativeDr. Ben Carson speech upstages Obama at prayer breakfast,” proclaimed the Washington Times the next morning. A few days later Fox news exclaimed: “WATCH: AmazingConservative Speech Upstages Obama at Prayer Breakfast.” And “Dr. Carson for President!” appeared in venues as diverse as the Wall Street Journal and the comments section on the YouTube video of his performance. (A full transcript also is available.) 

In part the relish on the right for Carson’s speech seems to reflect a sense that he out-orated the nation’s orator-in-chief. In larger part it seems to reflect a sense that he delivered a definitive smack down of Obama’s liberal agenda. It was the gumption, so to speak, that is causing so much delight, even as the speech did also spark some debate about its fit with the occasion, about whether a moment of National Prayer was a fit moment for such a spirited display (pun acknowledged) of political partisanship.

My curiosity piqued by the hubbub, I WATCHed Carson’s speech expecting to hear something amazing, expecting to hear a coherent challenge to the President’s record and agenda, expecting to hear some reasoned engagement on the issues of health care, taxation, federal spending, education, economic growth, deficit reduction, and the list goes on. After watching the video, I was in fact amazed. Amazed that such a tissue of homespun sounding stories told to make a point, with the points missing, elicited such high praise. “Enough said,” Dr. Carson kept saying. Amazed by the dissonance between the four Biblical texts offered at the start as context, and the remarks that followed. Amazed to hear an audience applauding so much falsehood and caricature.

Contra Dr. Carson, the current tax code is not so complicated that it is impossible for anyone ever to comply fully with its requirements, so that every taxpayer is vulnerable at any moment to prosecution by vindictive IRS agents, as if the mission of the IRS is to terrorize the population with its bureaucratic powers to “get” anyone it chooses. Contra Dr. Carson, the rationale for a progressive tax code is not to increase rates on the wealthiest citizens as high as necessary in order to hurt them at least as much as everyone else. And contra Dr. Carson, the end of a law school education is not to learn to win at all costs, by learning how to craft a winning argument at the expense of any regard for the truths that facts speak.

The amazement of Carson’s speech, instead, is its power I think to speak directly to its conservative audience while speaking around everyone else.  As dramatic demonstration of this power, and of its ironies, consider Carson’s comments on the dangers, as he styles them, of “political correctness:”

Although framed as a kind of defense of free speech, Carson instead exemplifies a kind of coded speech that excludes as much as it engages. To say that the “PC police are out in force at all times” is to say up front that one must choose one’s words carefully, because one never knows who might be listening. It is to style, up front, conservative political discourse as a paranoid political discourse. Which makes sense, since the only persons whoever bandy about the term political correctness are persons on the right projecting in advance some kind of imaginary opposition, some kind of imaginary censorship. They are persons on the right who assume that their political opponents are already always speaking against them before they have even spoken themselves, who are always anxiously anticipating that they might be challenged as persons in the wrong. No wonder it becomes imperative to choose one’s words carefully! (On paranoid reading, see Eve Kososky Sedgwick's introductory essay in Novel Gazing.)

It doesn’t help that Carson immediately paints a picture of a solitary Jewish person who has the power – the power that is to take offense – wielding that power to prevent Christians from wishing each other, wishing anyone they please, a Merry Christmas. Who has the power, more critically, to remind anyone who asserts otherwise, that the words Merry Christmas are more than a salutation and a greeting of good will.  A point that Carson himself proceeds to underscore.

The trouble with political correctness, he urges, is that it “keeps people from discussing issues, while the fabric of this society is being changed.” The paranoia of conservative discourse redoubles:  “We cannot fall for that trick.” Political correctness is a ploy to achieve change without allowing debate about the change underway. Excluded from the discussion, in this style of presentation, is any acknowledgement of winning and losing, any acknowledgment that this society is being changed, because the regulative understandings of freedom and liberty and equality are changing. Not because anyone has been tricked into changes they wouldn’t have accepted if they had been presented with clearer choices. But because the choices have been presented pretty clearly, and people have chosen accordingly, continue to choose accordingly. What appears at first glance as an appeal for greater respect and openness of political debate, is instead I think better appreciated as a kind of lament of a lack of ability to control that debate according to one’s own terms, to keep that debate in check.

So it is particularly telling that Carson concludes this passage with an elliptical assertion that what is at stake, finally, is a loss of all “the things that were important in the development of our nation.” Which is a fairly standard way of asserting that the Christian heritage of the nation is under threat. Political correctness, it turns out, is not so dangerous because it stifles free speech in a general sense. Instead it is so dangerous, because it stifles the specific speech necessary to defend the Christianity of the nation.

There is much more to unpack in Carson’s speech, most notably the distrust of policy that is emblematic of conservative political rhetoric, and that is displayed in full force in his comments about taxation and health care. The guiding analogy – false – is from individual to corporate experience. Balancing the federal budget is balancing the family check book writ large. Proportional treatment is strictly literal:  everyone pays ten percent. Any adjustment of the numbers to achieve a more nuanced proportionality is playing with the numbers. Health care reform is all about individuals learning the value of dollars and sense and as a result learning to become responsible. The complexity of current policy challenges gets a nod in passing, but in this view the complexity is always suspect. If the policy doesn’t conform to common sense (whatever that means) it must be some kind of trickery. (Although Carson owns no political affiliation, he reportedly declared afterward on Fox News that “If there were a party called the Logic Party, I would be a member of that.”)

The contrast between Carson’s speech and Obama’s own much more explicitly Christian and as a result much more genuinely ecumenical speech is striking, So that it is hardly surprising, considering the contents of Carson’s speech in critical perspective, that Obama listened stony-faced and otherwise unresponsive. A lot of the commentators have explained his restraint as proof of personal offence, and taken some glee in the sight. But if he was irritated, perhaps it was because Carson wasn’t making much sense, wasn’t speaking coherently to the occasion. Perhaps it was because Carson was displaying a kind of fetishization of self-reliance that is, arguably, in its roots not so charitable. Perhaps it was because Carson was encrypting as beyond argument, under the guise of folk wisdom, any debate about whose wisdom counts, and in what sense. Perhaps it was just because Carson was getting essentially a free ride.  

Previous posts by Geoffrey Rees:
Not All Indignation is Righteous -- March 4, 2012

Treating Conscientious Objections with Respect - December 1, 2011
A Work in Progress  - July 20, 2011
Could I Get Some Regret With That Please? - May 8, 2011
The Gray Lady Grows a Beard - February 18, 2011

An Enthusiastically Dyspeptic Note - February 11, 2011

Inside and Outside Tel Aviv Protests

by Sarah Imhoff

Over the past two weeks, demonstrators have taken to the streets of Tel Aviv to protest economic and social policy. Many of these demands have carried over from last summer when demonstrators called for solutions to skyrocketing housing costs and basic public services, such as healthcare and free education for children. The protests attracted national and even international attention, and the government approved limited measures to ease housing shortages and some other issues. Just over a week ago, lead activist Daphne Leef and others again took to Rothschild Blvd to renew their calls for social justice. When police began to forcibly remove tents and protesters because of a lack of permits (and permits for such demonstrations are not often granted), the confrontation ended in violence and the arrest of Leef and 11 others. Photos and videos of at least five officers holding Leef down on the sidewalk pervaded the media. Other videos, like this one, show police exercising inexcusable violence on those in their custody. The next night police arrested more than 80 demonstrators, even though they the police subsequently released almost all of them because of lack of evidence and failure to follow protocol about properly recording arrests. Police misconduct and Leef’s arrest have sparked growing organized demonstrations in the days that have followed.

I have participated.