The summer after my junior year in high school, I had the privilege to attend the Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA)’s 2013 National Leadership Conference in Tennessee. The keynote speaker that year was Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson, Sr. M.D. – the same Dr. Ben Carson who was the star of Gifted Hands, the story of how he performed the first (and only) successful detachment of Siamese twins joined at the head in 1987.
Dr. Carson is a member of numerous renowned organizations including the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Science, is on the board of directors of a multitude of organizations including Kellogg Company, and is an emeritus fellow of the Yale Corporation, which governs Yale University. In 2004, he was appointed a position on the President's Council on Bioethics and by then, President George W. Bush and later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest civilian honor in the land – by President Obama in 2008. Furthermore, he was classified as one of America’s 20 leading physicians and scientists by TIME magazine and CNN, as one of 89 "Living Legends" by the Library of Congress, and as one of “America's Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report and Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership. He’s also been presented more than 60 honorary doctorates and literally hundreds of accolades. However, what’s most moving is that he surmounted crippling poverty, the absence of a father figure, the statistically low chance for success from having a mother who had an elementary education, a history of poor academic achievement, and battles with anger and low self-esteem, to become director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for over 25 years.
It’s no one wonder he was chosen to inspire America’s future health professionals aspire to become competent, empathetic leaders in the field.
What’s jarring is the Good Doctor’s comments about Hitler’s genocide last Thursday. “The likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” he told CNN. Later he clarified: “Basically, what I said is when tyranny occurs traditionally around the world, they try to disarm the people first.”
First, this is just factually incorrect and goes far beyond discussing how the Holocaust could have been prevented. If the Jewish people had been armed, they probably would have been sent to death camps far earlier, instead of, for example, transported to ghettos for forced labor as many in Poland were. Remember that the Holocaust was perpetrated by educated people in all levels of society who chose to be complicit in some form as whole groups of people – ethnic, racial, interracial, disabled, political, religious, resisters, homosexual, clergymen, etc. – were wiped out through the use of gas chambers, concentration camps (different from death camps; these were mostly for forced labor until it led to death), mobile killing squads, killing centers (the same as death camps; literally used to exterminate groups of people as quickly as possible), death marches, euthanasia, and other horrific ways (http://www.ushmm.org/learn/students). When the majority is complicit and armed in far greater ways, how can the minority armed with guns make a difference?
Second, his comments are insulting. How do you tell victims, survivors, and their loved ones that those who were victimized could have changed their fate had they been armed with guns? That what led to the deaths of whole families and generations was not the prevalence of state-sponsored bigotry, discrimination, extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, and extremist ideologies, but gun control? By misusing the Holocaust to support his appeal for guns, Dr. Carson diminishes its impact on human suffering. The Holocaust's existence should not be used to win minor debates, but to serve as a reminder that we must never let this level of excruciating pain and misery occur again.
What’s more shocking is that this isn’t the first time Dr. Carson has said something appalling. “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," he said last month (c). He later elaborated: “Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that's inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.” Public service and justice are part of Islam, Dr. Carson. I hope you ask your colleagues, a few are bound to be Muslim.
As if the above wasn’t alarming enough, Dr. Carson is still second (21 percent) in the race to become the Republican presidential nominee ), second only to Donald Trump (27 percent) – another disheartening candidate. For the love of this country, for its inspirational diversity, for commitment to freedom and justice and truth, for the pledge to spread prosperity to all, for true love of the people: your friends, neighbors, colleagues, countrymen, and those only made different by manmade boundaries, please America, choose someone who is dedicated to upholding values that will better us, not divide us.
