By way of our good friends over at Crooks and Liars…
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Ben Carson Says Middle East Would Have Turned Bin Laden Over If We Threatened ‘Oil Independence’ **
Comment is superfluous.
In some limited ways, Carson is right, but not in the way he thinks.
In Colonial times, a student had to know Greek and Latin in order to be admitted to college!
There might be a lot more nuances to that than are initially apparent - and I can’t be arsed to even read the snopes link, let alone research…
But could it be that America was comparatively better educated as a nation than they are now (eg: although international student rankings weren’t around then, would America have scored higher in 1830 than today)?
Probably not. I mean, there was a large segment who legally weren’t allowed to read. That can’t help rankings.
Is he back on the campaign? I thought he suspended his campaign to go on a book tour, or did he suspend the book tour to go on his campaign? It’s pretty obvious to me that he’s not campaigning to win, he wants to pump up his book sales and if he can get some shills to give him money to run, he’ll gladly cash the checks.
I am now convinced that Carson is not running for President. Why is he worth our time again?
Carson has no nuance here - he’s just wrong, and twice wrong for repeating a chain letter as if it were true. In Colonial times a much, much smaller segment of the population had formal education than we educate today. Yes, those few who went to college had classical education. But it’s not the 18th Century anymore. We no longer require Latin or Greek, but HS graduates in 2015 know a lot more about math, science, technology, world history, and world languages than typical college grads of the Colonial era. Partly because those areas barely existed in the current sense, and the teaching techniques for those areas didn’t exist at all.
You can’t have a modern economy with a large fraction of your population illiterate, as was the case in Colonial times (including many free people who just never learned to read). Given the mechanization and chemicalization of farming, you couldn’t even bring literate Colonial era farmers into the modern farmstead without a lot of training.
However the US would have ranked in world education in 1830, or however the American Colonies would have ranked in 1760, Dr. Carson is wrong to use a crank Facebook meme to measure US education in 2015. Carson is still making at least one bone-headed statement a week. Not good.
And I can’t be arsed to look up numbers myself. Also not good, but I’m not running for President.
Well, this probably won’t make any difference to the Carson fans, but these recent comments by the Doctor have me shaking my head.
From the article:
Ben Carson says he’s soft-spoken now – but he hasn’t always been so calm.
“As a teenager, I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers. And, of course, many people know the story when I was 14 and I tried to stab someone,” Carson said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
I don’t understand his popularity.
It’s a redemption story, and he’s doing best in Iowa where roughly 117% of Republican caucusgoers are evangelical Christians.
Yeah, I understand, I just find it a very strange response to the question asked.
He actually appears to be on some sort of “relaxing” medication to me.
That occurred to me also. He looks like has been writing his own scrips.
You’d think they would all be thrilled about our current POTUS, who was also an “angry young black man.” But for some reason his redemption doesn’t move the needle with them.
Haven’t you seen the clip about how he was a “wild child” as a teenager? Throwing rocks at people, pulling knives, etc.
Seriously.
I suspect lithium.
He never really stopped pulling knives, did he? 
He channeled his love for cutting people into something productive.
Actual quote from Ben Carson’s Facebook page from yesterday: “It is important to remember that amateurs built the Ark and it was the professionals that built the Titanic.”
Tells you everything you need to know about the kind of people he’s courting.
So he’s saying that if elected, he promises to drift aimlessly?
Good to know. If I ever need brain surgery, I’ll get some amateurs to do it.
Also, to pursue Carson’s brilliant analogy, one major difference between the Ark and the Titanic is that the Titanic existed and the Ark is a fairy tale. Sometimes it’s good to be able to tell the difference.
But it might further be noted that the Titanic was the greatest and most magnificent ship of its time – it exceeded all previous standards of both engineering and luxury. It was driven to its destruction by the goading of an egotistical know-nothing dumbass of a president (of the White Star Line) to set a transatlantic speed record, and a captain who didn’t have the guts to stand up to his irresponsible idiocy. No amount of science or engineering can compensate for a complete idiot at the top of the chain of command.
And Carson wants to be that idiot.
Carson’s lead over Clinton is +5.2 in the RCP average: