Ep 98 | Dr. Ben Carson's Prescription to Heal America | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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Most Americans first encountered our guest during the 2016 presidential primaries.

He was a surprise success, even made it to Super Tuesday.

He then did another surprising thing.

The quietest guy on stage joined the loudest guy on stage and became a member of the Trump administration.

He was one of the few cabinet members to make it all four years.

Now, if you really pay attention to politics, you'll remember his speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, where he

said a few frank things to President Obama, but that's the kind of guy he is.

He won't stab you in the back.

He'll say it to your face.

The Washington Post was so offended by the speech that they wrote his obituary for his legacy.

They were wrong.

The speech wound up being his launching pad.

The very next year, a Gallup poll ranked him the sixth most admired person in the country, right next to Stephen Hawking.

Before entering politics, he was a decorated brain surgeon.

This is the first time I met

our guest.

He,

at 33,

he was the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery in the country.

Just one of the many reasons he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George Bush.

This man's life is incredible.

And in his farewell speech earlier this year, he said, only in the land of opportunity can a poor inner-city boy go on to become a brain surgeon, a candidate for president, and then one day a cabinet secretary.

And now he's on to new ventures as the founder and chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute.

Today on the Glenbeck podcast, welcome Dr.

Ben Carson.

Ben, it is good to see you again.

Ben, it's been a long time.

I know.

I have so much to talk to you about from politics to medicine to

what you're up to now lately, the things that you have for the future, the past.

So, this is going to be kind of a meandering conversation.

But

I want to start with something that has truly affected every American and everyone worldwide, and that's COVID.

There is so much misinformation, disinformation,

that people don't even know what the truth is anymore, and it is still being spun.

We found out from the now President Biden that when he got into office, there wasn't even a vaccine, which

not true.

Is not true, is it?

It is absolutely funny, but in a way, it's tragic how we take every crisis and make sure that we can make it into a political issue.

I think it was Rah Emanuel who said, never let a crisis go to waste.

And that's what's being done with this.

Now, one thing people should realize is that it's called the novel.

coronavirus.

And why is it called that?

Because it's new.

It doesn't act like things that we've dealt with before in many different ways.

And

one of the reasons that I think we've managed to

generate so much distrust is because we're unwilling to admit that we don't fully understand this thing.

We're learning as we go.

And sometimes we're wrong.

because we make predictions based on what other viruses did and then it turns out that this one is acting differently.

We just should be willing to

you know, we were basing that on something else, and that's not what's going on.

This is what's going on, and we're going to work with this as it goes.

Just admit fallibility because there's plenty of it to go around.

So, you were on the task force.

When did this first hit your radar?

And when did you realize, ooh, this is going to be a real problem?

Probably

around March

of

last year,

when everything we predicted didn't seem to happen,

began to realize that there's something going on here that's more substantial.

You know, as you might recall, we were predicting that, you know, by May or June, you know, things would be under control and back to normal.

But I think we've learned that that's not the case now.

Well, how do you...

How do you explain?

This is the real hard part.

First of all, don't treat us like children.

We all want to do the right thing.

And, you know,

the best doctors came out and said, masks don't work.

And then masks do work.

And then you should wear a mask.

And then you have to wear this special mask.

Now you have to wear two masks.

And somehow or another, you're a hater if you don't do this.

I have more faith in the American people than this.

But I don't understand one thing.

How can the virus be taking down states like California when they have the most strict lockdown.

And Florida seems to be doing well.

Texas, I mean, we've had our problems, but why is what's happening there?

It's almost like the lockdowns make it worse.

Well, I think we just have to go into this with an open mind.

You know, the average age of death in this country is 78 years.

The average age of death for people with COVID is 78 years.

So maybe there's things, maybe we're reacting in a way that isn't consistent with logic.

Because the fact of the matter is the people who seem to be dying most are elderly and people with other compromises in their immune system.

Well guess what?

Those are the people who die when almost anything comes along.

And so, you know,

this fits in that bucket of almost anything.

And it's it's knocking people off what we should be doing is concentrating on how do we protect the elderly and the vulnerable people that's where the concentration should be not on locking down not on keeping kids out of school but what do you do with your elderly grandmother how do you behave

and you know that would make considerably more sense and you know i think that's uh the approach that is being taken in the places places in our country that are doing better.

So this is

I mean, we can't seem to even have a decent, honest conversation with anyone about things that we all know.

The lockdowns are really bad for A, the economy.

More importantly,

what's happening to our children.

I have high school-aged children.

We had an attempt at suicide in my family in the last few months, and that is all directly to being locked down in your house, the school being, when you go, you're still not with anybody.

It's horrible.

What is this?

Why aren't we balancing this better?

What is happening, Ben?

Because we've politicized it.

We don't really care about the children.

In many cases, we care more about the teacher teacher unions.

And I'm not exactly sure why they don't want to go to school and teach when all the science indicates that that's safe.

You're more likely to get it outside of the school than you are to get it in the school.

And as far as the children themselves are concerned, for that age group 0 to 19, the chances of succumbing to this virus

is incredibly small.

The recovery rate is 99.997%.

So, you know, to alter everything on the basis of statistics like that really doesn't make a lot of sense.

And common sense is missing in this whole equation.

Right.

That's a problem.

I mean, when we first locked down, up until really the summer, you kind of understood, hey, we don't know what's happening.

We're not really sure.

You know, we've got the fall coming.

But now we're almost a year into it.

And

I know it's it's a big deal, but part of me says it's 99% recoverable.

It's not that big of a deal.

The numbers are big, but it's not that big of a deal that we would tube everything, including a year of our children's life and education.

Exactly.

And we have controls.

We have a number of private schools and charter schools and even some public schools where life is going on.

and they're not reporting higher incidence of transmission.

So

there's no scientific reason to keep the kids out of school at this point.

And you look at those children who are poor,

who don't have access to the latest computers, who don't have access to high-speed internet.

What is happening to them?

They are losing a big portion of their life, a big portion of what would lead them to be successful, it's going to have a negative impact on the rest of their lives.

Why does no one care about that?

You know,

I'm a self-educated historian.

And the one thing I've noticed about wars is

people are so anxious for the war to be over in the end.

that it never really goes back to the way it was.

You're so far away from where you were

and you just want it to end that you compromise and you change and many times you change without even noticing it because you're too far away from where you were.

Yeah, well,

you're right.

And unfortunately,

so many people have become sheeple.

I mean, they just sort of listen to what they hear on the television and they say, well, that must be what's what's right those are the people who are the experts and i'm coming more to more to believe that the founders of our nation were much more dependent upon the people and upon the wisdom of the people because they recognize that the politicians and the people who are influenced by the politicians which in this case includes the media don't necessarily have the best interests of the country or the people at heart.

So as you

look at this, I mean, I think that's the difference between

the people who believe in the Constitution and those who are heading in this new direction is

one trusts the people

and the other says, no, I've got to be their shepherd or their master.

And

it seems like the ones who are saying, I will lead them and I will tell them what to do,

it seems as though they're winning, are they?

It does seem like,

but I think a lot of the people right now are sort of in a state of shock,

sort of like deer caught in a headlight, and

they're going to have to obviously get themselves together.

I don't think the majority of people in America will sit still while their rights are just taken away.

I just don't think that they will.

But

they're not there yet.

They're still trying to figure out what the heck is going on because it's come so fast.

If someone,

let's say the election had turned out differently and someone had said, you know, the left is going to

you know, challenge your ability to freak speak, speak freely.

They're going to challenge our energy resources.

They're going to challenge our relationships around the world.

They're going to open the borders.

They're going to do all this.

You'll say, nah, nah, come on.

You're exaggerating.

You're not going to do all that.

Well, now you have a chance to see that they are going to do all of that.

And I think that will make a difference once people

get out of the headlights and kind of figure out what's going on.

So you've been inside.

The one thing that I think Donald Trump didn't do,

he did an amazing amount, and you were a big part of that.

And

it happened,

and it seemed solid at the time.

They made some really good things.

It seemed solid.

But you need two terms to set it in stone, especially if you don't make the people appoint that you've appointed, if you don't flip them into career

bureaucrats, which i despise

but donald trump paid very little attention in his first term to that bureaucrat and that's the opposite of president obama and president biden it seems they are putting those paper pushers in that seem to be the ones that you would call the deep state that are just there and unelected and pushing it through

we're going back to what the people voted to escape from, unfortunately.

And,

you know, it's going to require real resolve.

You know, freedom is not free.

And, you know, when we sing the national anthem, we talk about the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Well, you can't be the land of the free if you're not the home of the brave.

If you're sitting in a corner, hoping that nobody will notice you

so that they won't cancel you or punish you in some way.

You're really part of the problem, not part of the solution.

May I ask you, I mean,

you were the youngest head of pediatric neurology in the country at 32 years old.

You're,

I mean, we all have our own struggles,

but you have been massively successful.

I have been massively successful.

Those people who are working at a job and their company comes in and says, you have to have this equity training and it's all critical race theory.

Those people look at their job and say, I'm putting food on the table.

I don't have, you know, Dr.

Ben Carson's ability to just go anywhere or Glenn Beck's ability.

So

I feel that there are a lot of people in America that want to speak up, but they totally feel alone.

Can you speak to those people who are not cowards?

They just know reality

yes well you know we each have a sphere of influence and you can you can ignore that sphere and just keep your mouth shut or you can begin to foster conversation conversation with your sons and your daughters and your aunts and your uncles and your neighbors and your co-workers because

When people only hear one side of the story,

we've already seen the impact of big tech and the media in terms of being able to shut down stories, to shut down information.

You know, the Hunter Biden computer is a perfect example of that.

Just completely shut it down.

Don't let the people know.

We decide what they get to know and what they base their opinions on.

That is completely antithetical to the whole concept of America.

America is more of an idea than it is a place.

It's an idea of freedom to live the way that you want as long as it doesn't negligently impact your neighbor.

And that's why so many people came here from all over the world.

It's why it's still a destination country.

Can you imagine

why people form caravans to try to get in here?

If this is a horrible, horrible place that's racist and tries to destroy people, why in the world didn't they get that information?

Why are they all still trying to get here?

It doesn't make any sense.

And it shows you how propaganda is used.

When I first started looking in

right after 9-11, I started really paying attention and doing my homework and doing research.

And

I at one point thought we all pretty much basically agree on the fundamental principles.

We disagree on policies, but we agree on, you know, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the Bill of Rights.

That is long gone.

That is long, long gone.

Are we now in the minority

or is it just the media and the power of the government that's making us feel that way?

I don't think we're in the minority at all.

But I liken this to the kids on the third grade playground having a good time, just enjoying themselves.

and then along comes the guy and say did you hear what he said about your mama always trying to stir things up and you see that's what the politicians and the media do convince you that that person living next to you who you were getting along just fine with is your enemy

because you know they support this person or that person or you know they have a different opinion than you do you know we all have different opinions we all grew up differently we've had different experiences in life there's nothing wrong with that and i always say if two people believe the same about everything, one of them isn't necessary.

You know, we need to be able to express ourselves, work together in a pluralistic society, but that requires people actually sitting down and engaging in conversation, not getting their respective corners and throwing hand grenades at each other.

And it's like in a marriage.

You know, in the beginning, they love each other so much, they talk all the time, they want to be with each other.

You know, by the time they're ready to get divorced, they're not even talking to each other.

And the next thing you you know, their spouse is the double incarnate.

That's what's going on in our country right now.

We, the people of America, are not each other's enemies, not by a long shot.

And we have a lot more that draws us together than what tears us apart.

But the media only focuses on those things that we disagree on and tries to magnify them.

And it's having a deleterious effect on our country.

This goes into a project that I want to talk to you about that you're working on now, the Cornerstone Institute.

But before we go there, I want to ask, you are

I think people

like you so much.

There was a Gallup poll that puts you as like the fourth most admired man in America.

You were right in front of Stephen Hawking.

I'd like to point out that Stephen Hawking wasn't in America, but I think it might have even been a global poll.

But people like you because you're not a politician.

And that was one of the things that people wondered.

You know, you wanted to be president, and you were just like,

can we just talk?

I mean, it was amazing to watch

how not a politician you were when you were running.

But now that you've been in Washington,

what

surprised you in a good way, and and what surprised you in a bad way?

What did you learn?

Well, first of all, you learned that there are some good people in Washington.

Some of the career people who've been there for 20, 30, 40, even 50 years have a lot of valuable information.

And it was good to be able to work with them as we develop some of the policies.

let them have some ownership.

And I think for that reason, a lot of the things things that we did probably will survive, even this new administration, because a lot of the career people are invested in them as well.

And some of them are just tremendous people.

In terms of bad things,

I learned that the swamp is much deeper and wider than I expected.

And it's not just

people in one party.

The swamp creatures are abundant throughout the system

and they like the advantages that they get from position

and in many cases they care much more about that than they do about the people.

And you have to factor that into everything that you're doing, which is really rather sad.

Someone who came to Washington with the ideal of being an advocate for the people and doing what's right will frequently be demonized.

And they will try to find ways to negate you very quickly.

And particularly if you're doing things that disturb the peace of the swamp.

They do not like that at all.

Donald Trump was a disturber.

Now, you know, he could have done it in a nicer way.

You too could not be more different on your approach.

That was the nicest thing.

That's the nicest way I've heard anybody describe Donald Trump.

I don't know how he could have been different.

Well,

philosophically, he and I are very, very similar, but personality-wise, I think we're in the opposite end of the spectrum.

But,

you know, what people need to recognize is good things happen

with good policy.

When you begin to reduce the regulatory burden, the entrepreneurial spirit, the innovation of the American people really comes through.

Look how many new businesses were established over the last four years that would not have occurred before because of all the regulatory barriers and how the unemployment numbers just plunged for everybody, and particularly the minority communities.

That's one of the reasons that Donald Trump was attracting so much support in the Hispanic and the black communities.

And And the swamp creatures saw that as a major threat.

Was it about

him

as a person and the things that he said online?

Or was it really cast from the beginning?

This guy is not going to play ball and he's going to kick doors down and break windows and

put an end to our comfy little party.

Well, I think they knew that.

They were already talking about impeaching him before he was even president

and continued to talk about it throughout his presidency and impeached him twice.

And if they had a chance, they would have impeached him again.

I mean, but it's just such hatred

for what he represents.

It wasn't as much

the rhetoric, which, you know,

admittedly was not always something that I would give, but

it wasn't so much that as the fact that he was disturbing the habitat of these

on both sides of the aisle.

And then I could tell you about things that were going on on Trump's side of the aisle, too,

that

would curl your hair.

I just can't really talk about them in public, but it's pretty bad.

Are we salvageable at this point?

I mean, at some point, you know, God bless America.

He has blessed us, but we, God's not on our side.

You know, Lincoln made this very clear in the Civil War.

How can both sides claim God?

God is on God's side with his plan, and he loves all of his children.

He just wants you to be on his side.

And

I don't feel America is a vastly different place than it was 20 years ago.

It has changed dramatically, you're right.

But

if God was willing to save Solomon and Gomorrah for 10 people,

and God plays the long game, not the short game like we do,

I think there's a lot of hope.

I talk to a lot of people out there all the time,

good,

decent American people.

They don't have much of a voice.

There's no question about that.

And sometimes they think they're a voice crying in the wilderness alone.

It's not true.

You know,

Jeremiah

thought that

he was alone.

There were a whole lot of other people.

He just didn't know about them.

And that is the case in America today.

We are going to need the kind of leadership

that will help to galvanize those people and give those people the kind of courage to stand up for what they believe in.

You know, you look at how the left tries to cancel people and to boycott everything.

If the other side starts doing that, they'll get equal play, believe me.

Because a lot of this is about dollars on the bottom line.

A lot of these companies that come out and support

Antifa and BLM and all this stuff, they do it for economic reasons.

And if they also start to feel the pressure from the other side, believe me, they're going to moderate their stance pretty quickly.

Well,

there's a...

The right is torn on this.

I mean, I've read enough Martin Luther King to understand, and enough Gandhi and enough Jesus to understand the

peaceful activism and the peace, the movement of peace and how powerful that is.

But I've also read enough Martin Luther King to know that he also said, if it wasn't for the boycotts,

we wouldn't have made the progress that we made.

That's essential.

And because

the right

They're just not built that way.

You know, that's a tool of the left and the right has always hated it.

I don't think that they comfortable with it.

They don't feel comfortable with the peaceful movement.

They don't feel comfortable with an angry what happened in

January 6th.

They're not comfortable with that either.

But

they think that

the Gandhi movement isn't going to do anything.

And they think that boycotts are wrong and that private companies should have a right to do whatever they want.

So, if they want to ban somebody's speech, they can do it.

Make the case that we need to open our eyes and see that we're in a different world and those things are effective.

Well, the case is made by our children and by our grandchildren.

Do you want them to have the same opportunities you've had?

Do you want them to live in a land of freedom?

Or do you want them always looking over their shoulder, always wondering who's listening to them and who's going to shut them down, who's going to persecute their family.

It's a serious, serious issue and we're at the flex inflection point right now.

We are in the same position as those patriots who fought for the freedom of this country.

And the odds almost look the same too.

You know, they didn't have much of a chance against the most powerful empire in the world, a bunch of ragtag militiamen.

But what they had was heart.

And they had faith.

They believed in God.

And we say we are one nation

under

God.

We say that.

Our Pledge of Allegiance,

we mention

God.

Every bill in our pocket.

Every coin says, in God we trust.

On the walls of many of our buildings, including many of our courtrooms, it says, in God we trust.

Are they just empty words?

Is there a reason

that our country accelerated to the pinnacle of the world in record time

that was more than just what you can explain naturally?

When George Washington was down to his last battalion of troops on Long Island,

and the British had surrounded them on land and sea, and it looked impossible.

It looked like the war was over.

What happened?

The meteorological records will show you that a dense

fog came down and it stayed not only overnight but into the next day, and his troops were able to escape.

Now, some people say, it's just a coincidence.

It's not a coincidence.

And George Washington had a very, very strong faith in God.

So I think if we claim those godly principles, and what do those godly principles say?

They say, love your neighbor, have compassion upon the poor,

develop your talents so that you become valuable to the people around you.

Have values and principles that govern your life.

If we adhere to those things,

God will be there.

He will not allow our country to be destroyed and taken into socialism.

If we go there

and if

other powers become the ruling powers, the world goes right back to the way it used to be before the power of the United States was exerted.

A bunch of despotic leaders destroying anyone who is weaker than they are.

We don't want that.

So it's not just a matter of the United States, it's a matter of the world.

My daughter, three weeks ago, had brain surgery.

And I have, she had strokes at birth, and I have witnessed technological and medical miracles, things that couldn't have been done before.

She went through a WATA test.

I know you know what that is.

A terrifying on the outside, terrifying kind of test.

She went in for surgery.

They drilled the hole in her head about the size maybe of a dime instead of taking the full skull cap off.

The technological future

is so incredibly bright.

We are at the precipice of miracles.

We have now in Israel a new replacement for

cornea.

We've fixed now a third of the blindness on earth with that one piece of technology.

At the same time, we have technology that

Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, any of them would have given everything for

because we can be sorted and

found and silenced rapidly.

What do you see over the horizon, both good and bad?

Well, again,

I come back to my faith in the American people.

There actually,

there's a lot of common sense.

and the population at large.

This is something I discovered when I was running for president.

And, you know, I was in every little hamlet, all 50 states, all over the place.

I was so impressed with the questions that people asked and with the common sense that they use to regulate their own lives.

And it's very apparent to me that if you leave people

to their own devices,

able to utilize the resources they have and the intellect they have, they will do just fine.

And we will do just fine.

But when you have this desire to control everyone,

you know, I go back to something Khrushchev said.

A lot of your leaders say, Khrushchev, who's he talking about?

This Soviet leader, many, many years ago,

he said,

Your grandchildren's children will live under communism.

That's what he said about us.

And

he knew what was necessary.

And you look at some of the writings of Lenin and Stalin and Marx.

And what do you have to do to achieve that?

You have to gain control of the school system

so that you can indoctrinate the kids.

You have to create enormous social

financial debt.

so that you can justify raising taxes so that you can take the money that is being produced back into the government, so the government can control it.

You want to create dependency amongst the people

so that they will do what you want them to do.

You have to control their health care.

In fact, they said that is the linchpin.

Because really, when push comes to step, the most important thing you have is your health.

And you look at what people are doing now to to get a vaccination

believe me there are those who are observing this they're saying you know how can we use this in the future to control people

and it's all about control versus freedom america is about freedom Control was what other people were trying to escape.

And the real question is, do we understand that?

And are we willing to fight for it?

If we're not willing to fight for it, the natural consequence is it disappears.

Well, one of our founders, I think it was Franklin, but I'm not sure.

One of our founders said the people don't really want freedom.

They want security.

The majority of people want just to be left alone, to go on with their life, and that is freedom, but they also don't want to suffer so much.

And that's why the Declaration of Independence says that the people will suffer until it becomes suffering that is intolerable.

That's when they rise up.

I'm not sure where that line is anymore.

It does say that.

Most people don't know about that.

And I'm glad you brought that up.

It says, you know, we will tolerate the government.

as long as it is working for us, but the people have the right to change it if it's not.

Yeah.

And it's really interesting.

People say that, you know, hey, we have a right to revolution and we can overthrow the government or whatever.

But you really, you do and you don't.

You can't replace this government with just anything.

You can't overthrow this system of government to adopt communism, socialism, and oligarchy.

It says that the right of the people to abolish,

they have that,

but it says, but,

comma,

they

will establish something in its place that will secure those rights better than the last.

So we can make this more free, but we're not supposed to make it less free.

But do those words even mean anything to even people in Washington, Ben?

I'm not sure that they've really thought about it, to be honest with you, Gwen.

They are so caught up in their power schemes.

You know, both parties, you know, how do we get control?

Not how do we fix America?

Not how do we help the people to have a higher quality of life, but how do we get control?

And, you know, the left has done a masterful job.

I got to give them credit.

You know, it's brilliant.

They've thought about this for a long time.

If you really want to see what's going on,

read the book, Rules for Radicals by Solana.

I mean, it just puts everything down.

You can read it.

You see all of that happening in our society executed it very well.

And if the right,

or not even the right, but the people

And there are good people, believe me, in both parties.

One party party has sort of left

its calling and gone off on an extreme.

And I think a lot of the people in that party don't quite know where to go.

And I think that may be true in both cases.

I'm not advocating for a third party, but I am saying that

people themselves have got to take responsibility.

You can't just be passive at a time like this when, in fact,

things are happening that could change this country forever and that could have a profound negative effect on us and the rest of the world.

So that brings me, I think, to the Cornerstone Institute.

Because what you just said, even though you said it like only Dr.

Ben Carson could say it so calmly and rationally, somebody will take that out of context and say that you were calling for an uprising.

And there are people, I hear people all the time on both sides say, you know, what Antifa is doing is right.

And maybe that's the way it should be.

Chaos is not the answer.

Revolution is,

ours is the only revolution in the history of the world that ended with the same people that started it.

Once you start that fire,

it can burn completely out of control.

But people don't know what to do.

They did the Tea Party, and that was mocked and ridiculed.

They elected Donald Trump, who was a hammer.

And look at

what happened to him.

And people will think: if he can't do it,

who could possibly do it?

So, what do they do, Ben?

Well, they're going to have to

stop being complacent.

Complacency is that part of the eight points of civilization that precedes tyranny.

So that means we have to become active.

That means you've got to go to your legislative bodies and make sure that they understand that when it comes to voting,

one

vote per person

and

no hanky-panky.

You can't turn those responsibilities over to the governor.

You can't turn them over to the Secretary of State.

You can't make changes a few weeks before the vote that will

impact the vote and favor one side or the other side.

The people have to ensure that that doesn't happen, and they need to make the legislators know that if they allow it to happen, that they will throw them out.

Ben,

what you just said

could be interpreted as saying what I believe.

I don't know if there were enough votes to change the outcome of this election, but I know there was fraud in this election.

I know that there were things like you just said, changing the structure, not through the legislature, but through the governor's office or through the Secretary of State's office.

Those things are being institutionalized right now in Congress.

They're pushing through, trying to, H.R.

1, which would make all of the elections federal.

So what you just said

is a conspiracy theory, according to those in power, those who want to have truth squads.

So

how do you get that message out?

And for how long can you?

Well, you know, you have to be brave.

You can't cower in the corner.

You have have to speak the truth.

The truth is that we need to have open, transparent elections.

And anything that

precludes that is something that we need to deal with.

And,

you know, it's sort of like, you know, you stole the cookies from the cookie jar.

But then you get to make a rule that says, no investigating who stole the cookies from the cookie jar.

And in fact, if you even talk about it, you know, we're going to punish you.

You know, we don't want that.

That's not America.

And that doesn't help the left.

That doesn't help the right.

Well, it helps the one who happens to be in power at the time.

But, you know, things change.

And we have to go back

to wanting

a system

of liberty, freedom, and justice for all of our people.

And if we want something other than that,

like major major control over people's lives, that is at variance with the ideal of America.

We have to decide is which one do we want?

Do we want the utopian society where you give the government all power

and they take care of you from cradle to grave?

Or do we want a system where people have equal rights and equal opportunity and the government protects those opportunities and rights but the government does make that makes no attempt to control your life

are we headed towards a

my opinion on this has changed i i thought we were headed towards a marxist utopia is what they were striving for i think that's a ruse i think those people are being used I think we are headed for much, something much more like Russia, an oligarchy, where you have these giant corporations that can change and go around the Constitution because they're private corporations that are colluding with many people in powerful positions in countries all over the world.

And you see it with Facebook and Google.

They are playing a game with Congress and Congress is playing a game with them.

They actually need each other, I think,

at least those who like to be the swamp creatures.

And

so are we headed towards, you know, what Sololinsky wanted, which was Marxism, or are we headed towards something different where

it's not about Marxism.

It's more like

Chinese capitalism.

If you're in, and you'll play ball, you're fine.

If you don't, you're trouble.

Well, you know,

there's a saying, Glenn,

it's always darkest before the dawn.

But we were sliding

gradually and almost imperceptibly

to what you just described.

But what's happening right now

is like taking a cold fish and slapping us in the face.

We're going to wake up.

This is not who we are.

20 years ago, if people had described today's America to you, it would say, oh, come on,

that's not going to happen.

Here it is, facing us.

The only people who can change it is us.

And no, I'm not advocating for the forceful overthrow of the government.

But I am advocating for people to think,

to think about what's going on, to think about your children, to think about your grandchildren, and to think about what you can do about it.

Are you going to accept these massive changes in the control of your life?

Or are you going to fight for freedom that is what America stands for?

Ben, you grew up poor.

You grew up with a mom who worked her brains out to be able to give you a better life.

You've lived the American dream.

I do believe

there are racists in the country.

I do believe there are people who have racist tendencies and don't really know it, don't think of themselves that way.

But I certainly don't think the majority of people are like that.

I certainly don't think that America is defined by race.

In fact,

it's an insult

to

Martin Luther King and all that marched with him, all that came with him and before him.

It's an insult to people like Booker T.

Washington on what's going on.

Are we a racist nation and or is this just about categorizing, separating, and

keeping us angry with each other?

Well, you know, racism is based on ignorance.

And,

you know, what is most important about a person?

The color of their skin or the content of their character?

Content of the character.

What they think.

And, you know, children are not born racist.

They're taught to be racist.

They're taught to hate other people.

But I can tell you, having lived in this country for 69 years,

that It has changed dramatically.

You know, when I was a kid growing up in Detroit and Boston, examples of massive racism I saw every single day.

Life was completely different than it is now.

And I'll tell you something as a psychology major, you know, I did a lot of studying human behavior and human expectations.

If you go into a situation and you are pre-programmed to believe that everybody there is a racist, then you interpret everything they say as racist.

Right.

And that's what we're doing now.

We're teaching our children America is a racist country.

All white people are racist.

They owe you something.

They're teaching black people that you are victims.

The policies that come from white guilt and black victimhood are horrible.

Things like abolish the police, defund the police.

I mean, just absolutely crazy things that make no sense whatsoever.

People obviously haven't thought them through, haven't looked at the consequences, certainly haven't looked at the data in places where they have tried to defund the police and seen how the crime rates are dramatically increasing.

They just close their eyes to all this.

And, you know, you look at even things like

energy, the Green New Deal, which is just an excuse to

take control of everything because you can hook almost everything back to the environment.

And I'm a tremendous environmentalist, and, you know, I love nature.

I do everything to preserve it, but that doesn't mean going crazy.

You know, you look at the Keystone Pipeline, for instance.

Now, you're going to, you know, know, cancel the jobs of all those people.

And it's not just the 11,000 workers.

It's all the people in those communities that depend on those people.

You know, it's a domino effect.

And you're doing that in the face of a system of energy transport that is much cleaner than using trucks and trains.

We have the cleanest air and the cleanest water that we've had since we began measuring those things.

We've become energy independent.

We're a net exporter of energy.

I mean, that's a tremendous position to be in.

Now, that doesn't mean I don't like renewable green energy.

I do.

I think we should be working on that.

But we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

We can take advantage of what we have to get what we want.

We don't have to shock the system, throw people out of their jobs, disrupt communities,

in order to appease some political component who only cares about their specific titles, groups, and

things that they're advocating for.

Who's in charge of the

parties now?

Let's start with the left.

Is the left running the Democrats or are the Democrats using the left?

What's happening?

Who's really, Whose agenda is this?

Well, of course,

we have seen over the last few years

the radical element in the left exercise greater and greater control.

And, you know, when you look at the number of executive orders that have been signed recently, most of them cater to the desires of the extreme left.

This is problematic

in a situation where we have a president who says he wants to bring people together.

I'm not sure what he means by that based on what's been going on.

And

I just hope at some point we don't have tit for tat because, you know, believe it or not, the power will shift again.

And, you know, if we always say they did this, therefore we're going to do even more, how do we ever make any progress?

You know, we lurch from left to right, left to right, no forward progress while that is going on.

But right now, the extreme left seems to be in control.

And I'm sure they're very happy about it.

In 1999, I was on the air in New York City, and I was defending Clinton's bombing of

the aspirin factory, if you remember that happened.

They said it was for political reasons.

I said, no, he was going after a guy named Osama bin Laden.

And

I read Osama bin Laden's words, and I said on the air, there are going to be blood, bodies, and buildings in the streets of New York in the next 10 years, and it will have his fingerprints and his name all over it.

Same thing happened with the caliphate.

Everybody mocked me for the caliphate.

You know, you said earlier, can you imagine saying these things 20 years ago?

Yeah, I was saying them 15 years ago and mocked and ridiculed by all the great thinkers.

The reason why I can see these things is because I take them at their word.

When somebody who has power

or wants power says, you know what?

I'm going to round up all the Jews and kill them.

You might laugh at that when he first publishes Mein Kampf, but if he gets the power, he will do that.

People aren't taking people seriously.

And I wonder, do you take them seriously when they say

we've got to re-educate, reprogram white

supremacists, that

there are white supremac terror groups out there,

and then they conflate those with Trump supporters or GOP members.

Do you take them seriously when they say we have to stop these people at all costs?

Well, you know, I've been accused of being a white supremacist.

I mean, it's so ridiculous.

But, you know, if you don't agree with them,

you know, their mission is to destroy you.

And that's the unity that they're talking about.

Destroy everybody who disagrees with you so you can have uniformity in the community.

We're not the first society to try that.

It never turns out well.

I wish people

would study their history a little bit more to find out how these things end up.

They sound good.

They sound good.

Yeah, but

they don't end well.

And when we don't have principles in common, we don't have anything

to unify.

And we don't have principles in common, it seems.

I will join hands and defend you every step of the way if you believe in the Bill of Rights.

If you believe in the Bill of Rights, we can disagree on policies night and day, but if you believe in the Bill of Rights, I'm with you 100%.

Absolutely.

We're not having those conversations.

Well, you know, what's critical here is, you know, you look at the First Amendment.

and our ability to speak freely and what we believe in, believe what we want to believe.

And some people say, well, that's not under threat.

The government's not imposing any restrictions on people.

But you know what?

When our founders started writing about that,

they weren't just saying only if it's imposed by the government is it bad.

It's bad no matter where it comes from.

It was the concept of restricting people's freedom of speech that was antithetical to the concepts of providing a nation of free people.

That's the first step.

And, you know, what I can't understand is how the news media

doesn't understand this.

You know, they're facilitating a transition.

And all you have to do is study history.

And you will see that communists and socialists, the first thing they do is control the media.

So are they advocating for their own freedom extinction?

I hope they will give that some thought.

I just think that they are surrounded in their own little bubbles and they all think that they're right and they all think that they know the answer.

And they also all think that, well, it'll never be turned on them.

And we're starting to see people who are on the left be eaten by the left.

And

while

I don't

revel in anyone's pain, it's going to take that kind of pain on the left for them to finally wake up and go, wait, wait, wait.

I mean, I was on your side.

It kills me how

the press treats Antifa.

And then they're shocked when Antifa says, you're part of the problem.

I mean,

you can't deal with

that.

Yeah.

well, I mean, when you deal with a poisonous snake, you may think that they're your friend because they kill the rat, but believe me, they'll kill you too.

And that's what we're dealing with, these very dangerous groups who don't believe in America as a concept, who think that we're evil, who think that we need to be destroyed.

and that all of our people need to be controlled and re-educated.

This is serious stuff.

And,

you know, you've got people, they spend all of their time looking for entertainment and

fun.

And,

you know, we're in a battle here.

And again, I'm not advocating for people to go out and grab their guns and go and fight.

You know, you go to Washington, D.C., and you see it looks like a fortified camp there.

And I don't think there's any necessity for that, quite frankly.

But

we do need people to be willing to stand up for what you believe in.

America is the salvation of the world.

It is the beacon of freedom and prosperity for the world.

Ben, I can talk to you about this because you're a devoutly religious man.

It's beyond freedom.

When you said we are the salvation of the world, we are entering a world where there is no concept of redemption.

And that is one of the most important

and impactful

concepts on all of humanity as an individual and collectively.

If there is no salvation,

then

there's no hope.

There's no hope.

That's true.

And we are a nation that was based on Judeo-Christian values.

And if we throw those out, we have to replace them with something else.

That something else does not say love your neighbor.

That something else says, cancel your neighbor.

Where does that lead in the long run?

I cannot think of a good outcome.

for hatred and revenge.

It never leads to a place.

I said, I don't know, five, six years ago, I was going to stop using the word evil because it's so overused.

And evil, I believe, is real, and it is a force.

But there's a difference between

I look at things like critical race theory, and I see what it is teaching.

It is teaching division, hatred, dependency.

All of the things that just destroy societies, destroy families, destroy individuals, and puts them really, one way or another, literally or figuratively, into bondage.

And it's the only word I can,

what's being taught right now, what's being pushed, the only word I can use to describe it is evil.

Well, it can only happen with the complicity of the media.

in this country.

There's a reason that the very First Amendment protects the press.

And the press is the only business that the United States Constitution protects.

Why?

Because they were supposed to disseminate unbiased information to the people.

They were supposed to be the watchdogs.

They were not supposed to be the advocates for one philosophy or another.

They were supposed to be right down the middle.

And they've rejected that and are largely responsible for what's going on in our nation right now.

Tell me about the Cornerstone Institute, because,

you know, when I first read your article on,

I think it was Politico.

And,

you know, you used two words that I've grown to really despise.

That is think tank.

We don't need another think tank.

We need a do-tank.

I mean, what happened in the 1980s is the left got their act together

in a dark sort way and put together the Tides Foundation.

And that idea was we have to infiltrate the

board of directors at all the major corporations.

We need to be able to fight on the street.

We need people to give money, but it'll go into this and it'll be kind of shadow money.

I mean, it's a very

the reason we're in the situation we're in now.

But they developed something to do something.

What is Cornerstone going to do?

Well, first of all, what we've done as a nation is we've taken our cornerstone principles,

things like liberty

and life

and community and faith, and we've pushed those things aside.

So we want to bring those things back to the forefront.

We want to fight for those things.

But we also want people to begin to openly discuss those things.

One of the things I learned when I was at HUD is one of the ways that we make progress, particularly with affordable housing, is we would have town halls and we would have roundtables and you bring people from varying opinions to that table, but you put on the middle of that table the facts.

the evidence and say, let's see if we can come up with solutions we can agree on based on the facts, not based on your ideology, but based on the facts.

Begin those conversations and those people then are able to continue to work together.

If it's called a United States of America, we will never be successful as the divided states of America.

And that's what we're going to be concentrating on, those issues, that faith that allowed us to actually love our neighbor, not try to destroy our neighbor.

Those things that allow us to cherish the freedom, the liberty that we have, to pursue those things that we wish to pursue.

That

community that allows us to work together.

and not be divided into hateful little groups.

And

the respect for life as we've thrown away our respect for life from the womb to the tomb

we've become a coarser

kind of people a more callous type of people and when you become like that you become like the barbarians that's not who we are We are so different from that.

We have been in the past and we can be and we must be

because we are, as I said, the salvation of the world.

But if we throw away those principles and we become just like everybody else, that's the end.

But I'm not a pessimist.

I'm an optimist.

And like I said before, it's always darkness before the dawn.

Sometimes we need the darkness to wake us up.

And it's time for America to wake up.

People, we are not each other's enemies.

Do not believe that.

And one of the Cornerstone's goals is to help to point out to the American people that we are not enemies.

And we have a lot more that binds us together than that separates us.

You sound a little like Abraham Lincoln there.

Ben Carson.

Thank you so much.

It's good to talk to you again.

Thank you, Gwen.

I look forward to talking to you again.

You got it.

God bless.

Take care.

See you too.

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