Ben Carson's conservatism: 'much ado about nothing'

Surgeon's claim about Schiavo wrong

By Alan Keyes

This week, I read an article that quoted Ben Carson's response to a question about the judicial murder of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, by starvation, in 2005.

When...asked whether Carson thought it was necessary for Congress to intervene, he said: "I don't think it needed to get to that level. I think it was much ado about nothing."

Longtime readers of my columns may recall that I was among those who tried to help the Schindler family prevent the anti-constitutional abuse of judicial power that procured Terri's death. At the time, I wrote a column that explained at length the profound constitutional issues that were at stake, which affect the whole purpose of constitutional government in the United States. Dr. Carson's remark shows either utter contempt for those issues, or inexcusable ignorance. Either way, it suggests that he is profoundly unfit for the high office he seeks. Though his supporters will make their usual self-contradictory excuses, they are frequently called upon to do so because of his present and past lapses. They indicate that instances of Dr. Carson's profound indifference to, or contempt for, our nation's moral premises have been so frequent as to establish an evidentiary pattern.

But this article isn't intended simply to belabor that point. I have come to know and respect the grassroots people fighting on the front lines of the battle to restore America's moral heart. I fear that support for Dr. Carson's now undeniable penchant for unprincipled pragmatism jeopardizes the morale and integrity of the political effort to restore respect for America's life- and family-preserving principles. It also jeopardizes the spiritual integrity of those who are, however unwittingly, making themselves complicit in the damage Dr. Carson's errant double-mindedness inflicts.

If you profess to be a Christian who really cares to do right according to God's will, it's morally imperative that you exercise what the business lawyers call "due diligence" before investing your political capital in a candidate for political office. In conjunction with that of others like you, the evidence of your support builds credibility for the candidates you support. It allows the media to portray them as typical representatives of your views. Given that credibility, what such candidates say and do becomes part of the public's understanding of those views, for better or worse. If their behavior rightly represents your views, the cause you strive for (which is God's ultimately saving truth) will be served. The faithful will be instructed, strengthened, and encouraged, and others may be brought to turn onto the way of life that is in Christ.

But if such candidates say and do what misrepresents the perspective of Christ, they forfeit the power of God's truth. This not only obscures the opportunity for conversions, it risks offending against those who, humbled by their surrender to God, become as little children, trusting in the Lord. Of this offense Christ said "whoso shall offend (scandalize) one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea" (Matthew 18:6).

What is more scandalous, in terms of salvation, than to disparage the truth of God's intention for human life? Christ said it plainly: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). But the life he offers is not the perishable life of the flesh only, but the life that consists in conforming to the loving will of God, which encompassed the sacrifice of His Son "who being found in human form...humbled himself, by becoming obedient even to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8).

The Schindler family's dedication to defending Terry's helpless life was clearly an act of obedience to God's love. But in our age, we witness the ascendancy of the death cult, which uplifts as right and liberty the abuse of freedom that sacrifices human offspring at the altar of idolatrous human ambition, convenience, and sexual passion.

As it strikes a death blow against the will to perpetuate humanity itself, this cult also aims a killing stroke at the premise of justice and decent liberty in the United States. For we are a nation founded on the premise of respect for the self-evident truth that all human beings "are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

In His benevolent act of creation, God's love impels us to do right by His intention for our existence. So, in the disposition of our nature, He has prescribed (these days we might say "encoded") certain inclinations conducive to our preservation, as individuals and as a species. Though His image and likeness in us includes the freedom to do otherwise, yet when we decide to follow these prescriptions, we do right by our humanity.

When we do, we have, by God's authority, the right to act, and to enjoy the presumption that any interference with our action violates God's will, not just our own. This understanding of rights, reflecting our obligation to God, becomes the basis for the authority by which every human being willing to act in conformity with God's prescription of right represents His sovereign authority. So when we join with one another to form a government to wield the just powers derived from our common consent, we enact the justice God intends for all humanity. This goes to the heart of the political cause at stake in the issues that involve securing the unalienable right to life and the rights of the natural family, endowed by the Creator.

That cause will be severely damaged if Dr. Carson's apparent contempt for America's moral principles and logic is construed as an acceptable representation of the moral understanding from which the cause springs. Young people, like the pro-abortion students I encountered years ago at Notre Dame University, will be seduced into believing that God's moral intention for justice is irrelevant to America's Constitution and politics, even though it is, in fact, its indispensable foundation. Above all, the perdition of souls, well advanced by clergy of all denominations who supported Barack Obama, will be confirmed and extended by people who sow confusion by supporting Dr. Carson.

As one who cherishes the God-revering character of the black American's historic struggle for justice; as one who upholds the God-acknowledging premises of America's liberty; and as a follower of Christ who trusts above all in the benevolent intention of God for the good of all humanity, I pray that the people who have persevered in the long struggle to return our nation to its true moral foundations will not risk the moral and material capital laid up by so many decades of conscientious toil. I pray that they will refuse to accept and validate Ben Carson or any other candidates for public office who persistently abuse the credibility that capital may endow in ways that undermine the vital cause it is supposed to serve.

© Alan Keyes