Do you remember when a couple of days ago Ben Carson announced that he wants to punish liberal colleges for teaching things he doesn’t approve of – “extreme political bias” – otherwise known as facts?
Well, he’s reassuring his conservative fan-base that when he talks about “extreme political bias” he’s only talking about “liberal” bias. In Ben Carson’s world of values, the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech – like its guarantee of freedom of religion – apparently applies only to conservatives.
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Carson was interviewed by conservative talk radio host Dana Loesch on Thursday and said his “very strict guidelines” would not hurt conservatives. Which is great news to conservatives because if they did, not one conservative college would survive.
“What I would do is I would solicit examples of extreme bias and I would use those as the basis for helping to determine which places need to have their federal funding cut.” That extreme bias can even be invented bias, manufactured by the likes of Todd Starnes of Fox News.
Right Wing Watch’s Miranda Blue uses the example of Starnes’ invention of a “Florida college professor who supposedly told students to “stomp on” a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it.”
Loesch said, “There are some who would say that it’s kind of like monitoring political speech. Do you agree with their assessment of that?”
“No, I don’t, I think it’s a very big difference,” Carson somehow responded, because, obviously, there is no difference at all:
“But, of course, that would be the first thing that the left would claim because they want to be able to continue to do this. And it’s not appropriate for public funding to be used to indoctrinate students in one direction.”
Even though it’s apparently perfectly OK to indoctrinate them in one direction, as long as it’s a direction of which Carson approves.
In Carson’s universe, reality and language have no meaning. It is what he needs it to be from moment to moment, another glaring example of the Religious Right’s appalling use of moral relativism.
Loesch, at least, seemed to be using the brain evolution gave her:
“I just worry whether or not the pendulum would swing the other way and we would see sort of like monitoring of political speech for conservatives.”
But Carson assured her,
“I think we would have to put in very strict guidelines for the way that that was done. And that’s why I used the word ‘extreme.’ I didn’t just say ‘political bias,’ I said ‘extreme political biases.'”
Oh, well, extreme political bias. That makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it?
Ben Carson is an example of the extreme moral murkiness of the Religious Right, where even the word “morality” itself has lost all meaning, and all that remains is to punish those who disagree with you. And that is exactly what Carson wants to do here, in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
At least he is being open about how much he hates the very liberal principles upon which this country was founded.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
