Physician Heal Thyself

Ben Carson is apparently a very nice guy who wants to be president.

Personally, I prefer SOBs like LBJ, provided they share my ideology (he did at the time). Ronald Reagan, another formidable president, was not nearly so nice as he appeared to be. Ditto for Ike. Harry Truman didn’t even claim to be nice. FDR unleashed J. Edgar on his opponents. Of course, Nixon—much more paranoid and thin-skinned than FDR—would have been better off if he had at least a semblance of niceness.

This is Carson’s latest comment, taped last month in North Carolina but just released: “Swastikas are a symbol of hate for some people too . . . and yet they still exist in our museums and places like that,” Carson said during an event with Richard Petty in North Carolina last Monday. “If it's a majority of people in that area who want it to fly, I certainly wouldn't take it down.”

Is he OK with flying Confederate flags—or it is also swastikas? Is it in museums only, on outdoor flag poles on public buildings, or both, provided that vox populi endorses the practice?

One hopes that Carson was more precise in operating on neonatal Siamese twins than he is in his political locutions in Southern locations.

Carson has also raised the usual Evangelical objections about Darwin, but added a critique of the Big Bang Theory of the universe, as opposed to the late Fred Hoyle’s now out-of-fashion Steady State Theory. As to Darwin, I sympathise with historian Henry Adams who observed that the evolution of the U.S. presidency from Washington to Grant was sufficient to disprove Darwin’s theories about the upward trajectory of species.

When it comes to cosmology, I’m willing to give Dr. Ben more latitude (and light years)—unless he also plans also to take over the top job at the Palomar Observatory.