Ben Carson likened Syrian refugees fleeing the country’s bloody civil war and Islamic State violence to dogs on Thursday.
Speaking to reporters following a campaign stop in Mobile, Alabama, Carson stressed that the United States wants smart leaders who care about people, but noted there should always be a balance between safety and humanitarian concerns.
“For instance, you know, if there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog, and you’re probably gonna put your children out of the way,” Carson said. “Doesn’t mean that you hate all dogs by any stretch of the imagination.”
Continuing his analogy, the Republican presidential candidate said that screening refugees is like questioning how you protect your children, even though you love dogs and will call the Humane Society to take the dog away to reestablish a safe environment.
“By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly,” he added. “Who are the people who wanna come in here and hurt us and wanna destroy us? Until we know how to do that, just like it would be foolish to put your child out in the neighborhood knowing that that was going on, it’s foolish for us to accept people if we cannot have the appropriate type of screening.”
Ben Carson just needs to stop giving analogies. They get him in trouble. Obviously Syrians aren’t mad dogs. Far from it. What Carson fears is that some terrorists will FAKE being a refugee and will attempt to gain entrance to the United States. Period. He doesn’t need to insult all refugees or all Syrians in order to make his point.
Just imagine his unskilled speaking attempts at explaining this one on the world’s stage. Shudder!
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has suggested that there might need to be national registry of Muslims. He did not deny that there could even be a national ID for Muslims. Come on Trump. This is getting a little too close to wearing a star on your outer garments. We know how that turned out.
What are these people thinking? This is America. There is no religious test for being an American. This kind of talk really needs to stop.
The Post’s View
America’s ugly panic over Refugees
A reality-based response to the threat posed by the Islamic State would direct extra scrutiny at the estimated 3,000 Europeans — mainly French, British and Belgian — who have traveled to Syria in the past two years. Of the nine suspected assailants in Paris, at least six were either French or Belgian citizens, not Syrians. Another might have been a Syrian who entered Europe as a refugee — possibly — although it was unclear whether the passport found near his body was genuine.
In the past year, Germany has welcomed nearly 100,000 Syrian refugees, an impressive act of humanitarianism that shamed President Obama into authorizing 10,000 to enter the United States in the coming year. By comparison, the United States accepted fewer than 1,700 Syrian refugees in the most recent fiscal year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fanning-the-fear-at-home/2015/11/19/cd40a624-8f06-11e5-acff-673ae92ddd2b_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-alt1-h%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Germany accepted 100,000 refugees yet we can’t accept a tenth of that?
Carson should go back to his medical practice and Trump should go back to running casinos.
The democratic smear, spin and mis-quote machine is in full swing today. Carson and Trump need to make way for the DNC’s choice for a republican candidate, Marco Rubio.
I have 100 gum balls, but upfront I tell you that 10 of them are deadly with poison, and the rest of them cannot and will never digest into your system. bon apetite.
Please. The next person with the silly gumball/chicklet/or whatever poison arrow analogy is going to get zapped.
Let’s leave the Democrats out of this. Carson is who said it. Holy cow. How can this be blamed on the Democrats or Rubio?
You just don’t say crap like that.
@Starryflights
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/18/the-obama-administration-stopped-processing-iraq-refugee-requests-for-6-months-in-2011/
@Moon-howler
He’s an “outsider”, just like Trump. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get the same latitude as Trump, or for that matter, Joe Biden, John Kerry, or the President, does, when they poorly articulate a response to a question from the press. This is just a “set-back” but it shows “rationale”.
Now, if you had a hundred rabid dogs, who each had 100 gumballs, and a train left Paris for Brussells, would it rain in Athens? I don’t know. Way too “common core” for me.
Now THAT was funny.
Speaking of common core, I think that is why I have defended our former governor during his legal difficulties. He sought the advice of former Virginia Secretary of Education Patricia Wright who advised him not to go with common core. He asked one smart cookie who also gave the best bath inservice I ever sat in, but many years prior to advising the governor.
@Moon-howler
How about this one:
If a terrorist posing as a refugee leaves Athens at 9am local time, headed by train to Paris, with an average speed of 138 KmPH, to what time should he set the clock on his suicide belt so it goes off while he’s collecting his checked AK-47 at the luggage carousel?
Another good one!!! And if anyone gets smart-ass with you, just tell them to do the math!
Did Dr. Ben call terrorists “rabid dogs”or did he call call all Syrian refugees “dogs”? The opening sentence of the cited Politico article is so typical of that biased and dishonest crew.
I posted the video so everyone could hear for themselves. It was awkward at best.
To make this worse, if possible, is the fact that dogs, to Muslims,
are dirty animals and they won’t touch them.
Probably Carson did not know this. Then again, perhaps he did.
I used to have a Muslim dog. Well, he didn’t belong to me. He belonged to my Muslim neighbors in the shack next door. He apparently got tired of rice and sauce for every meal; and, since my neighbors were young bachelors, there was no human baby poop in the shared courtyard for the dog to clean up. Thus, he spent a lot of time at my place, especially around chow call.
Poor dog must have been starved for human sympathy because he eventually started to haul his unwashed and not exactly beautiful body into my lap without an invitation — but especially after a belly scratch, which was something totally new to him. He especially liked it when I picked the tics off him one by one. With the bigger ones I would throw them on the cement floor and stomp on them. That floor was sometimes spattered with so much dog blood that it looked like the scene of a terrorist attack. Didn’t bother me much. Except when one of those fat African tics was a pregnant mama and a million little tics started running in ever direction. Then I did a frantic stomping dance which would have made any American hillbilly proud.
My dog friend took to considering my home as his and had no problem sharing me with my crazy parrot and a rather large, sporadic menagerie of mice, rats, snakes, sheep, chickens, and biting ants. He became my house guard — as long as he didn’t have to go outside to carry out those duties. But he did o.k. — except that he never warned me about the stray donkeys in the front courtyard. You haven’t lived until you have been sitting comfortably at night in a chair reading a sexy French mystery novel and suddenly a donkey lets out a loud bray for his lady love. That can make you pee in your pants if you haven’t been to the john lately.
Well, sir, that old dog provided some services that way. And I returned the favor a few times. You see, dogs in some parts of Africa rule the night. They wander through town and establish and protect territories or compete for breeding possibilities. You can lie abed at night and hear the howling and snarling and growling and fighting. Hardly a warrior among them does not sport a missing ear or a set of scars.
And then into the town creeps a thing called the “rage.” That’s “rabies” to the rest of you. Soon a warning goes around for all those who want to keep their dogs to pen them in or tie them up on such and such a night. Late into that chosen night, the soldiers come in their trucks and toss poisoned meat into the streets of the town. The dogs which are penned in or tied up begin to whine and strain as they hear the others jousting for access to this sudden cornucopia of juicy vittles. And, then, as dawn breaks, the soldiers come again to shovel up the carcasses; and the town opens for business once more. The “rage” is gone…..for now.
That old dog was penned in my house on those nights — tics and all.