Onward Christian Soldier
by digby
“I was asked what would you do if you were there and they were holding a gun to your head and asking you about your Christianity and I told them what I would do… Ben Carson on Andrea Mitchell this morning
He seems to be hung up on his belief that the shooter targeted Christians. He always mentions it as if that has some special significance. The facts are that this guy was hostile to religion while also being a big fan of the IRA, which was the very definition of a religious revolutionary force, so I don’t think we can glean a whole lot from that other than that he was a mentally ill person with deadly weapons who had some very confused ideas. Also, he shot people who didn’t answer and people who said they weren’t Christian so I don’t think this was an attack on Christianity as much as Carson clearly wants to believe it was.
But think about this. Carson’s views on Islam are very clear. He believes that suicide bombers are coming over the border and we need to defend ourselves against from the “radical extremist Islamic terrorists” whom President Obama doesn’t intend to fight.
“When they get here,we need to be able to fight them, particularly if we have an administration that won’t fight them, we need to be able to fight them ourselves.”
He condemns them for their religious fanaticism and nihilistic dedication to their beliefs.But it’s clear to me that Carson believes that Christians should also be willing to die to defend their faith. For him this event was all about “that question”:
Ben Carson was among those proudly declaring their faith after Thursday’s massacre at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.
The Republican presidential hopeful posted a photo of himself on Facebook that showed him holding a sign that read ‘I Am A Christian’ and featured a drawing of an ichthys.
He shared the photo – which has been liked close to 800,000 times – following reports that gunman Chris Harper-Mercer asked his victims if they were Christian before shooting them dead.‘Today, many of your questions were in regards to the sorrowful event that took so many precious lives in Oregon yesterday. We don’t have all the details yet, but as time passes more are coming out,’ wrote Carson on Facebook.
‘Millions of people are posting pictures of themselves declaring they are Christians in support of the victims and their families. I did so on Facebook this afternoon. If you have a moment, please consider doing it as well.’
Harper-Mercer said on multiple sites that he was not religious and against organized religion.
The motives for his attack are still uncertain, as are the faiths of many of his victims, though it is known that they were not all Christian and included at least one Jewish man – teacher Lawrence Levine.
It was the father of one of the victims Anastasia Boylan – who survived the horrific attack but remains in the hospital – who revealed that Harper-Mercer had been asking individuals if they were Christian.
Another eyewitness, Kortney Moore, said that the gunman asked if they were religious before shooting, but did not mention anything specifically about Christianity.
Harper-Mercer had also voiced his contempt for the Black Lives Matter movement, complained about women and the fact that he was a virgin and applauded the actions of Vester Flanagan, the Virginia man who murder his former colleagues while they were on camera doing a news segment.
The facts don’t matter to Carson on any subject. And on this one, Carson is convinced this was a hate crime against Christian. And he believes that one should die for one’s faith. Just like those Islamic fundamentalist suicide bombers.
Here’s Carson at that NRA convention last spring. Yikes:
Note that he doesn’t seem to know that when the nation was founded there was no “military” and it wasn’t anticipated that there would be one, hence the first part of the Second Amendment that was evidently written in invisible ink to wingnuts: A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state… They really hate that “well-regulated part.”
Carson is one scary dude and he scares me more each day. I get trump — he’s a brash egomaniac clown who speaks for the bros and the yahoos. Carson is something else again. He’s a crazed right wing fanatic who sounds like a reasonable person. I suspect that’s far more dangerous.
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