{"id":8332,"date":"2013-02-15T16:40:55","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T16:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=8332"},"modified":"2013-02-15T16:40:55","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T16:40:55","slug":"ben-carson-and-neutral-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/ben-carson-and-neutral-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Carson and neutral principle"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little over a week ago, renowned pediatric surgeon Ben Carson electrified the Right by giving a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast <\/a>that was widely deemed a critique of President Obama\u2019s agenda on health care, taxation, and stimulus spending.\u00a0 Some in the media, including conservative columnist Cal Thomas<\/a>, objected that Carson had violated an unspoken rule of the National Prayer Breakfast tradition to steer clear of partisan politics.\u00a0 The Right has gleefully fought back<\/a>, celebrating Carson for allegedly speaking truth to power and rejecting any idea that there should be any muzzle on speech in such a forum.\u00a0 Carson is now being touted as a possible presidential contender in 2016, despite his own protestations to the contrary.<\/p>\n

Carson is unquestionably impressive and was so during that speech.\u00a0 I recently had the opportunity to observe him in person during a taping of a Sean Hannity special in which he was the featured guest.\u00a0 He is superbly articulate and magisterially calm, and is an unapologetic and persuasive exponent of personal responsibility,\u00a0free enterprise, \u00a0and limited government (with one odd exception for food stamps).\u00a0\u00a0 His contempt for redistributive politics is exhilirating and it would be a boon for the country if he had a wider platform.\u00a0 (Sadly, however, Carson\u2019s arguments have been made before in the political realm, sometimes as compellingly, yet they failed to win a sufficient number of converts.\u00a0 The problem is not the messenger, but the message, I am increasingly coming to believe, pace<\/em> conservative wishful thinking.)<\/p>\n

With regards to the Prayer Breakfast protocol, however, the Right might have had a case if there were any chance that it wouldn\u2019t make the identical argument if the roles were reversed.\u00a0 Imagine if a liberal cleric giving the Breakfast keynote had objected to the Iraq War during President Bush\u2019s realm, or had criticized Republicans for hurting the poor.\u00a0 The Right would have howled with protest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Showing a similar oblivion to neutral principle, U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn objected on CSPAN\u2019s Washington Journal this morning to Obama\u2019s declared intention to act on certain policy matters if Congress didn\u2019t give him his way.\u00a0 Few on the Right objected to Bush\u2019s expansionist view of the executive war powers, which dismissed any Congressional check on his power.\u00a0 One despairs at the lack of self-awareness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little over a week ago, renowned pediatric surgeon Ben Carson electrified the Right by giving a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that was widely deemed a critique of President Obama\u2019s agenda on health care, taxation, and stimulus spending.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8334,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8332\/revisions\/8334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}