Rich "Sparkle Pants" Lowryhas a new superhero. It's this cat, Ben Carson, who's all the rage in the shebeens on the starboard side of the docks of Blogistan as he attempts to becomethe Alan Keyes of the new millennium. The "neurosurgeon and motivational speaker" got up at the National Prayer Breakfast and didn't take no mess from the Kenyan Muslim Socialist Usurper, and that's got Lowry and the rest of the kidz all hot and bothered.

(And, if I may, I don't think we should even have a National Prayer Breakfast but, since we do, what in hell are we doing hiring "motivational speakers" for it? What, was Rick Pitino busy that day?)

The Johns Hopkins Hospital neurosurgeon and motivational speaker lit up the event with a politically charged speech that quickly went viral. Mention "death panels" standing a few yards from the president, who is professionally obligated to sit and listen, and that tends to happen.

Well, that's fine, as long as we all stipulate that the whole "death panels" thing is pure bullshit that's been debunked more often than Sarah Palin's effect on Lowry's libido. What's remarkable is that, in a column in which he praises Carson for what he had the nerve to say with the president sitting right there, Lowry doesn't quote the speech practically at all. This is odd, considering that, in Lowry's words, the speech "lit up" YouTube and "went viral." He paraphrases. He states Carson's general themes — Government bad, individual initiative good, never the twain etc. etc. — but never lets Carson do it himself. Let's do it for him, shall we, and please try to ignore the commentary at the beginning of the transcript because this was the only one I could find.

And people walk away with their feelings on their shoulders waiting for you to say something, ah, did you hear that? The pc police are out in force at all times. I remember once I was talking about the difference between a human brain and a dog's grain, and a man - and a dog's brain, and a man got offended. You can't talk about dogs like that.

OK, that's either a joke or bullshit. In any case, it didn't happen.

And we've reached reach the point where people are afraid to actually talk about what they want to say because somebody might be offended. People are afraid to say Merry Christmas at Christmas time. Doesn't matter whether the person you're talking to is Jewish or, you know, whether they're any religion. That's a salutation, a greeting of goodwill. We've got to get over this sensitivity. You know, and it keeps people from saying what they really believe.

The War On Christmas! The man is a font of new ideas and innovative thinking!

But PC is dangerous. Because, you see, this country one of the founding principles was freedom of thought and freedom of expression. and it muffles people. It puts a muzzle on them. And at the same time, keeps people from discussing important issues while the fabric of this society is being changed. And we cannot fall for that trick. And what we need to do is start talking about things, talking about things that are important.

I agree. Let's start talking about important things. Like history.

To continue on that theme of education, in 1831 Alexis de Toqueville came to study America. The Europeans were fascinated. How could a fledgling Nation, barely 50 years old already be competing with them on virtually every level. This was impossible. De Toqueville was going to sort it out and he looked at our government and he was duly impressed by the three branches of government - four now because now we have special interest groups, but it was only three back in those days. He said, WOW, this is really something, but then he said, but let me look at their educational system and he was blown away. See, anybody who had finished the second grade was completely literate. He could find a mountain man on the outskirts of society who could read the newspaper and have a political discussion, could tell him how the government worked.

Yes, in 1831, there were no such things as "special interest groups," which is why the banking and agricultural sectors of the economy got along so well, and why the slave interests declined to press their case as a unified political bloc and, yes, you might indeed find a mountain man who would tell you that the government worked because the Eastern bankers and the Jews and the Masons were stealing all the money, but that it worked for him because it helped him kill Indians and get rich.

We need doctors, we needs scientists, engineers. We need all those people involved in government, not just lawyers...I don't have anything against lawyers, but you know, here's the thing about lawyers...I'm sorry, but I got to be truthful...got to be truthful - what do lawyers learn in law school? To win, by hook or by crook. You gotta win, so you got all these Democrat lawyers...

Wait. Stop right there. "Democrat lawyers"? That's a tell.

...and you got all these Republican lawyers and their sides want to win. We need to get rid of that. What we need to start thinking about is, how do we solve problems? Now, before I get shot...

Oh, drive the nails into your hands on your own time.

He and his wife apparently have set up a foundation and a program to help with the education of at-risk kids and, if everything he says about it is true, then good for them. We continue.

Why is it so important that we educate our people? Because we don't want to go down the pathway as so many pinnacle nations that have preceded us. I think particularly about ancient Rome. Very powerful. Nobody could even challenge them militarily, but what happened to them? They destroyed themselves from within. Moral decay, fiscal irresponsibility. They destroyed themselves. If you don't think that can happen to America, you get out your books and you start reading, but you know, we can fix it.

And another original conservative trope takes a curtain call. We are becoming ancient Rome! (I thought we were becoming modern Greece. I am so confused.) Beware of Ostrogoths bearing gifts. But, later on, because he is primarily a Motivational Speaker and, as such, needs to keep the fees rolling in, and you don't get the fees talking to Head Start classes, Doc Carson gets to the real point of things.

When I pick up my Bible, you know what I see? I see the fairest individual in the Universe, God, and he's given us a system. It's called tithe. Now we don't necessarily have to do it 10% but it's principle. He didn't say, if your crops fail, don't give me any tithes. He didn't say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithes. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality. You make $10 Billion dollars you put in a Billion. You make $10 you put in $1 - of course, you gotta get rid of the loopholes, but now now some people say, that's not fair because it doesn't hurt the guy who made $10 Billion dollars as much as the guy who made $10. Where does it say you have to hurt the guy. He's just put in a billion in the pot. We don't need to hurt him.

Motivational speakers exist to make poor people believe they can be rich and rich people believe they are better than everyone else. Doc Carson is a motivational speaker. Which you can tell by his next example.

Now, what about the symbol of our Nation? The Eagle. The Bald Eagle. It's an interesting story how we chose that but a lot of people think we call it the bald eagle because it looks like it has a bald head. That's not the reason It comes from the Old English word Piebald, which means crowned with white. And we just shortened it to bald. Now, use that the next time you see somebody who thinks they know everything. You'll get 'em on that one.

Bar bet!

But, why is that eagle able to fly, high, forward? Because it has two wings: a left wing and a right wing. Enough said.

Damn straight. (The same can be said for hummingbirds and bats, by the way.) Yeah, Rich was probably smart to paraphrase.

Lowry's waferish reportage doesn't matter because Doc Carson isn't one to hide his light under a bushel. Ever since his speech, he's popped up everywhere, speaking motivationally on behalf of the country's divinely sanctioned plutocrats and styling himself a victim of practically everything that's annoyed conservatives since Jimi closed out Woodstock. And it is also possible that Lowry went light on the direct quotations because Doc Carson's prescriptions for what ails us as a nation are, well, a little bit outside the camp. For example, he suggests that we rearrange the country's tax code in accordance with the Old Testament.

God's laws offer solutions to the problems which plague us, Dr. Carson said. For instance, he thinks our baroque tax code should be replaced by a flat tax. The "fairest individual in the universe" said both rich and poor should tithe 10 percent, "so there must be something inherently fair about proportionality."

Steve Forbes and the woman who turns down his bed at night should pay exactly the same income tax because God said so back in the Bronze Age. This is a lot of things, but a new idea, it is not.

His plan for improving health care in this country is the same as that great, but forgotten, American thinker, Bill Frist.

As for Obamacare, Americans instead should be provided at birth with Health Savings Accounts, to which contributions could be made for the indigent. As people gained some control over their health care, they'd become smart shoppers.

And, because he has boldly come out publicly in favor of solutions that the Republicans have been pushing in vain for two decades now, Carson has come in for some criticism but, do not be concerned, he will not be bullied.

There are a group of people who would like to silence everybody and have everybody go along to get along, but that's not going to be very helpful for us in the long run, in terms of solving our problems. And somebody has to be courageous enough to actually stand up to, you know, the bullies.

Who are these awful people? Doc Carson declines to say, because he is educated and smarter than most of us.

I will still teach, I will still be involved, but I'm going to retire from surgery, so it does open up a lot of possibilities for me. I'm very focused on education and getting the populace back to where it used to be — like back in 1831 when Alexis de Tocqueville was so impressed — because an uneducated populace will fall for anything. And if you and you talk to most people, they mean well but they don't have much of a breadth of education, of knowledge, of understanding of what the real issues are and, therefore, they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they're supposed to think and they keep repeating that and pretty soon they say, 'Oh, well that must be true.'

This would all be great if democracy were only a management seminar in some Holiday Inn in Hamtramck. Keep an eye on this guy.

Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.