Dr. Ben Carson, who served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Trump administration, says political correctness has only made things “worse” while blasting recent changes to Christmas classics.
“The first time I spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1997 about the fact that political correctness, if we continued along that pathway, was going to destroy our nation,” Carson said on a special edition of Fox News‘s Hannity. “It has continued to get worse.”
“Now it’s morphed into wokeness,” he told guest host Tammy Bruce.
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Bruce was referencing a church in the United Kingdom that shared a more modern take on the classic Christmas hymn, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
“God rest you queer and questioning, your anxious hearts be still. God rest you also, women, who by men have been erased. Through history ignored and scorned, defiled and displaced,” the new lyrics from All Saints Church in Loughborough, England, read, which Bruce called left-wing “woke madness.”
When asked for his take, Carson talked about the United States, where he said it has gotten so bad that students on college campuses are now “afraid to express themselves,” especially conservatives.
“College is supposed to be a place where you explore and you have an opportunity to discuss certain things so that you can determine which way you’re going. And basically, what’s happening is people are being shut down,” the heart surgeon told the host.
“And it doesn’t have to be the government that shuts down your freedom of speech, you know. Big Tech, social media, college professors can shut down your speech. And if the government is compliant with that, it’s the same as if they’re doing it. And we, the American people, should be outraged about that,” Carson said.
From changes in the Marines being required to stop calling commanding officers “sir” and “ma’am” to avoid the risk of “misgendering” them to even Carson’s name being removed from a school in Detroit for his views, the former Trump official said America’s freedoms are being diminished.
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Quoting from the Declaration of Independence that “our freedoms come from God,” Carson said that with each “woke” change, society is “allowing them to be taken away from us.”
“We also have a government that is insinuating itself into every aspect of our lives. You know, liberty and community was about what the people could do, not what the government could do,” he said, adding that America is dynamic and innovative because of the country’s diversity.
“If everybody is thinking the same way and saying the same things, where’s that out-of-the-box thinking that’s going to allow us to continue to be that beacon?”