Ben Carson

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be back here with you once again. I just found out instead of 15 minutes, I only have 10 minutes. But I'm a surgeon and I know how to cut. Not a problem. But, you know, the other thing that's easy for me is that I don't have to spend a lot of time working on what words I'm going to say because I'm not politically correct. And so I don't really care about that. I think that that's a big problem in our society. We're letting media and big tech and people tell us what we can and cannot say. That's a bunch of garbage. We can say anything we want. A lot of people fought for our rights to say what we want to say. And I'm so glad we have this CPAC conference because, as the Bible says in the book of Isaiah, come, let us reason together. And that's what we do. We come and we reason together. Unlike the other side, which doesn't reason, they just like to impose and to mandate. And it doesn't lead to the kind of place that I think Ben Franklin and our other founders worked so hard to give us. You know, our founders have gotten a bad rap by the people on the left. And they try to attribute all kinds of evil intentions to them. I wonder if they ever look in the mirror. I mean, that's where the evil intentions are. And there are no perfect people. There never have been any perfect people. Except for Jesus. And they crucified him, right? So, you know, we need to stop applying all these litmus tests to people in the past and deciding whether or not they're good or bad people. You know, our founders were amazing individuals. They worked so hard. They studied every single government system that had ever existed in the history of the world. They were eclectics. They took the good things, rejected the bad things, because their goal was to have a government that didn't become like the other kind of governments, which naturally grow, infiltrate, and dominate the people. They wanted something that would allow us to remain free. And it was hard to get. And in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention, it looked like everything was going to fall apart. They couldn't come to agreement. And then Benjamin Franklin, the elder statesman at age 81, stood up and said, Gentlemen, stop. Let's get down on our knees and let's seek wisdom from God. And they prayed and they got up and they resolved their issues. And maybe that's something that we should learn to do once again. You know, let's not run away from our Judeo-Christian roots and values and try to reestablish our own values, because there is plenty of evil out there, but it exists together with good. And we're the ones who get to decide which direction we want to go in. It makes a big difference. And, you know, we have a situation in our nation right now where we're going to go one way or the other. And, you know, when Franklin came out of that convention hall, he was asked, What do we have here, sir? A monarchy or a republic? And he said, A republic, if you can keep it. If you can keep it. We've kept it for 240 plus years so far. But we're in danger of losing it. We're closer to losing it now than we ever have been. We're closer now than we were at World War I, World War II, any of the other world wars, the Civil Rights Movement, anything that's happened in the past has not led us to this point. And we must be extraordinarily vigilant now, and we must be willing to stand up for the things that we believe in. And we have to realize that we are together in this. You know, America is strong when we are united. But we're letting people come in and divide us up on the basis of race, income, age, religion, political affiliation, gender, you name it. And they're trying to divide us up. And it's causing significant turmoil in our society. And you have to realize in the early days of America, we were able to live together in small communities, families of 20, 50, 100 people, 50 miles away from any other group of people, sometimes speaking different languages, coming from different countries, different thoughts. They were able to subjugate all that for the common good. And not only were those communities able to survive, they were able to thrive and to grow into an incredible nation. And that's because they didn't allow all those little factions to grow and to tear them apart. And that's what the Federalist Papers talk about. That's what Madison talks about, the factions. And how we must be careful, because no matter what we build, if we allow the factions to grow, they will destroy it all. We need to understand what's going on, why these people are working so hard to destroy what's going on here. But the good thing is, there are courageous people here, and there are people who are looking for what's right. And we have entered a new phase in our country. It's Ashbury College versus Harvard. And I think, like in David and Goliath, Ashbury's going to win, because it's starting to spread. And the young people are starting to realize that those principles, such as love your neighbor rather than cancel your neighbor, are the things that helped us to grow and to become a strong country. And then we hear a lot about equity, and our society knows that. We want to have equal outcomes for everybody. Well, that wasn't what made us into a great country. You know, as the administrative state began to grow, starting in the early part of the 20th century, they started thinking the government had to move this group up and move this group down to create equal outcomes. We hear about that a lot now. That's not who we are as a nation. That's certainly not who I am as a person. One of the reasons that equity lovers don't like people like me is because they say, you're not supposed to grow up in the environment that you grew up in and be successful, because this is a horrible, racist country. And you're simply not supposed to be successful in that setting. What a bunch of crap. You know, that's not happening. But what is happening is that administrative state is getting bigger and more powerful. And look what they did during the Trump administration. They were after him from day one. They were making up all kinds of stories. You know, you had Schrock and Page saying, we've got to make sure he doesn't get into the presidency. Senior FBI agents, you know, they're working and colluding with big tech to shut down certain stories and to elevate other stories, to favor one party over another party. And they have the nerve to talk about dangers to democracy. They are the danger to our democracy. And there's one thing that Senator Schumer said that I agree with, and I think it's probably only one. But he said, in terms of the FBI and the various agencies, that they had six ways to submit to get you if you disagree with them. And I don't know if he was saying that as a point of information or as a threat. But it is a threat to us. But we must be willing to stand up to that threat and recognize that it's us. We are the only ones who can fix this problem. The government's not going to fix it. It's going to be we the people who have the courage to stand up. And you look at things like the way the administrative state handled COVID. And I could talk about that for a long time. But all I have to say, I think, is that the FDA, at the time that all this was going on, the head of the FDA is now on the board of Pfizer. Do I need to say anything more than that? And at HUD, we had all these deep state people who tried to stop the Trump policies. But we got them done anyway. And we're going to continue to get them done anyway. And one of the things that I'm announcing today is the Executive Branch for America. That's part of American Cornerstone Institute. And it is going to give people what they need to know, particularly college students, young staffers, what you need to know about the government so that you don't have to ‑‑ so that you can hit the ground running. Because we need to get these people in, because 90% of the career employees are people who live in this area, who have the politics of this area, who slow things down, who push things forward. We've got to be able to do much better than that by understanding this process. So that's what the EBA is all about. This will help us to determine and answer the question, which Benjamin Franklin said, if we can keep it. It's a wonderful system that we have. Don't let anybody tell you anything that's different from that. But we're the ones who are going to have to do it. And if you want to know, can we keep it, find a World War II veteran and ask them what was going through their head. And D‑Day, when they are on the shores of Normandy and all of those people were being shot and they stepped over those dead bodies, knowing in many cases they would never see their loved ones or their homeland again. Why did they do it? They did it for you and me so that we could live in peace and safety. Ask them if we can keep it. We can with all of us. Thank you so much.