By James H. Shott
The National Prayer Breakfast is
held each year in Washington, D.C., on the first Thursday of February, and is
attended by some 3,500 guests. The event is hosted by members of the United States
Congress, and this year was co-chaired by Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Sen. Jeff
Sessions (R-AL). It is organized by The Fellowship Foundation, a conservative
Christian organization and is designed to be a forum for the political, social,
and business elite to assemble and build relationships.
Among the speakers this year was
President Barack Obama, who told the audience, “We are united in the knowledge
of a redeeming savior whose grace is sufficient.” However, he said that even
though America’s leaders come together in prayer over national policy and the
right direction to lead the country, such talk is often forgotten after the
event. “I’d go back to the Oval Office and turn on the cable news networks –
and it’s like we didn’t pray!” he said.
Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of
Pediatric Neurosurgery at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, delivered the
keynote message, which has drawn criticism from the left as being
inappropriately political in a decidedly non-political setting.
However, Dr. Carson's comments were
fundamentally about empowering the individual rather than the government, and
were non-partisan and delivered respectfully. In fact, he claims political
independence, being neither a Republican nor a Democrat. "If there were a
party called the Logic Party, I would be a member of that," he told Fox
News on Sunday.
That said, Dr. Carson is not the
first to inject political messages at the Prayer Breakfast. President Obama
himself did so last year, discussing public policy issues such as barring
health insurance companies from rejecting people with pre-existing conditions
and reducing tax breaks for the wealthy, and tying them in with popular Bible
verses. “[S]o when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same
rules as folks on Main Street … or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t
taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely
believe it will make the economy strong for everybody,” Mr. Obama said on Feb.
2, 2012.
Benjamin Carson's story is one that
inspires us all. He grew up in poverty in urban Detroit, but his home was one
built on values typical of the 1950s, raised by a single mother with only a
third-grade education who worked long hours to support her family, but who
understood American values of hard work and determination. He overcame dire
poverty, poor grades, a horrible temper, and low self-esteem, all of which
worked against his dream of becoming a physician someday. But his mother would
not allow him to give up and challenged her two sons to strive for excellence
and stressed the importance of education. His mother refused to become a
victim, and did not accept excuses for failure.
Today Dr. Carson is a devout
Christian, a full professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and
pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and he has directed
pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for over a
quarter of a century. His brother is an aeronautical and mechanical engineer.
"I became the brain surgeon and he became the rocket scientist," he
said.
He told radio host Armstrong
Williams last Friday that his comments were “directed at the situation that is
going on in our nation and how we can solve it. ... It’s not an attack on
anybody, but it’s saying there are logical solutions for our problems and there
are things that we can all get behind — be we right wing, be we left
wing."
His condemned political
correctness, which he described as dangerous because it interferes with freedom
of thought and expression. Americans must stop fearing over-sensitive reactions
when they express their thoughts and speak their minds freely, he said, but at
the same time respect those with whom they disagree.
“We’ve reached a point where people
are actually afraid to talk about what they want to say, because somebody might
be offended,” he said, citing the example of people refraining from saying
“Merry Christmas.” “We’ve got to get over this sensitivity; it keeps people
from saying what they really believe.”
Comparing what is happening in
America to history, he said: "I think particularly about ancient Rome.
Very powerful — nobody could even challenge them militarily … they destroyed
themselves from within,” he said. “Moral decay. Fiscal irresponsibility.”
And he offered suggestions for
taxation and health care that require far less government involvement than
current systems. Citing religious tithing, he suggested a flat tax where
everyone pays the same rate, with no loopholes. And he suggested replacing the
Affordable Care Act with health savings accounts opened at birth that could be
passed on to surviving family members and could receive contributions other
than from the owner of the plan to assist the financially disadvantaged.
These are sensible ideas, but they
will not gain the support of the control freaks that run our government because
they disenfranchise the special interests that Dr. Carson referred to as the
fourth branch of government.
Cross-posted from Observations
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