Restoring Faith and Unity in America with Dr. Ben Carson

In this episode of Roots, Rights & Reason, host Lee Smith welcomes Dr. Ben Carson for a timely conversation about faith, religious liberty, education, and the principles that shaped the United States. Dr. Carson explains why America’s growing secularism has weakened its sense of community and common purpose, and stresses the importance of teaching children an honest and complete account of American history while preparing the next generation to defend faith, liberty, community, and life.

Drawing upon his extraordinary career as a pediatric neurosurgeon, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and founder of the American Cornerstone Institute, Dr. Carson also reflects on how his childhood faith inspired his calling to medicine, the future of artificial intelligence in healthcare, and his work empowering young people through education. Above all, he offers a message America urgently needs to hear: disagreement does not make us enemies, and restoring faith, unity, and respect for one another is essential to preserving the nation for generations to come.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

From the brave roots of our family, to the unstoppable force of American ingenuity, to the sacred inheritance of freedom we must protect. This is our legacy. Join investigative journalist Lee Smith on Roots, Rights, and Reason. Powered by America's future.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Hi, I'm Lee Smith. Welcome and thanks for joining us for this new episode of Roots, Rights, and Reason. This week we're discussing America's first freedom, religious liberty. At the core of religious liberty is the recognition that our rights do not come from government, but from our Creator. That conviction has animated the American experiment from the pilgrim seeking refuge on these shores to James Madison's defense of liberty of conscience, to the First Amendment's guarantee of the free exercise of religion. It is also the conviction that has guided today's guest, Dr. Ben Carson. Dr. Carson has often observed that a free society cannot long endure if it forgets the source of its freedom. Religious liberty, he argues, is not simply the freedom to worship for an hour on Sunday or Saturday. It is the freedom to live according to one's conscience every day of the week, to teach, to heal, to serve, to build businesses, to raise families, and to participate fully in civic life without being compelled to abandon deeply held convictions. It is, in his words, America's first freedom, and that's because freedom of conscience is the foundation upon which every other liberty rests. Dr. Carson also reminds us that religious liberty is a universal principle that protects every American precisely because it begins with the dignity of the individual. Preserving religious liberty means more than defending constitutional doctrine. It means cultivating a culture that values faith, moral character, and the freedom of conscience on which self government depends. These ideas have shaped Dr. Carson's own extraordinary life. Faith, he often says, is the cornerstone upon which liberty, community, and respect for life are built. Without that cornerstone, the American experiment itself begins to weaken. With it, our nation remains a beacon of freedom for all mankind.

unknown 2:26

Dr.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Ben Carson is a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon whose groundbreaking work at Johns Hopkins University transformed children's medicine and earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He later served as the 17th U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and founded the American Cornerstone Institute, where he continues to advocate for the principles of faith, liberty, community, and life.

unknown 2:54

Dr.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Ben Carson, thank you so much for being here with us today. Just wanted to start off right away. Why is religious liberty such a crucial part, such a crucial part of our country?

SPEAKER_02 3:05

Well, you know, our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, says that our rights come from our Creator and not from government, so they can't be taken away by government. And that was a radical departure from any governmental structure that existed before. And it's a departure from all those that exist today. So we are unique in the sense that we are a God-centric country in terms of our origin. Now, have we strayed uh yes, we have strayed away. We have become much more secular in orientation. But the blessings of our beginnings are still with us. And we should remember the things that made us into a great nation. It wasn't a coincidence that we went from a bunch of ragtag militiamen to the pinnacle of the world. It was because of the values and principles that we follow.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Do you think that how how have we gotten more secular? Do you think that people are also, as we've gotten more secular, that the the fabric of the country weakens that and that people forgot have forgotten about what what what our idea of religious liberty really is?

SPEAKER_02 4:23

Uh yeah, I think uh, you know, the whole concept of love your neighbor, uh which is a biblical concept, uh, we've forgotten about and we're we're allowing it to be replaced with if your neighbor doesn't agree with you, cancel them. Uh, you know, that doesn't lead to good places. You know, in the beginning of our nation, there were people here from everywhere. And uh neighborhoods would form, communities would form, a hundred families. People spoke different languages, but they understood one very important thing, and that is the common good. That was a phrase that you heard very often in the beginning of our nation and from our founders. Not what's great for this community versus that community, but what's good for all of us. And it was that unity that provided an enormous amount of strength to be able to uh overcome so many adversities.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

That had to be a major part of your service.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Well, you know, it attracted me as a youngster to mission stories, the missionary doctors who how they traveled all over the world, great personal expense and danger, uh, to bring not only physical but mental and spiritual healing to people. They seemed like the most noble people in the world. And I decided when I was eight years old that I was going to be a missionary doctor. Now it changed in focus from missionary doctor to psychiatrist, uh, and finally to neurosurgeon. But there was still that desire to change people's lives, to intervene. And even today, you know, that's one of my greatest joys. I run into people all over the country, and even in other countries, to say, You operate on me when I was a little baby. I just want to thank you.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

It's a wonderful thing to be able to do that. That must be incredible. That must be that must be an enormously wonderful thing.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Absolutely. And and that's how I'm sure God feels when somebody joins his family. What where where did you first hear the missionary stories? In church? In church. Yeah. Every week there was a mission story. And uh it was actually my first experience in public speaking, because I was to give the mission story to the primary division. These were like eight to ten year olds. And uh my mother said, Well, anybody can read the story. You have to give it as if you're the missionary in first person. And they enjoyed it so much they asked me to come up and give it to the adults.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

How did you tell it? May I ask? Like uh uh I mean I'm I'm asking you to reach far back into your memory, but it sounds great. What'd you how'd you do?

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Well, I just talked about how I got myself together and traveled to a foreign land not knowing what I was going to encounter, and then talk about some of the things that were in the story as if I were the one who was actually encountering them.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Your American Cornerstone Institute, your think tank, um children are important there. I know that you have a book series called, uh I believe it's called Little Patriots, and what you what what is what's the focus of that?

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Well, uh a whole division uh of our organization is called Little Patriots, where we focus on the children, recognizing that the future of our country really depends on how we raise our children, and that there are forces that want to captivate our young people. But the Bible even talks about it. It says in Proverbs 22, 6, train up a child the way he should go when he's old, he'll not depart from it. But the Marxists, the communists, Lenin said, Give me your children to teach for four years, and the seed that I sow will never be uprooted. And we see that happening, particularly in our teacher unions and our public schools. And we say we can't just sit around and complain about it. We have to do something about it. We have to present an alternative. And so we have a program online that teaches all of American history. The good, the bad, and the ugly. But the fact of the matter is there's a heck of a lot more good than there is bad and ugly. And those who want to pervert our history and make our people ashamed of it, they only focus on the bad and ugly. They don't talk about the myriad good that helps not only our country, but other countries around the world.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Well, I I mean, they don't talk about, I mean, this is one I I I uh reported from the Middle East for a long time, and I know how much work the missionaries did there, especially with hospitals. I mean, you know, and and and and uh, you know, all throughout the Persian Gulf and the Levant as well, Lebanon, Egypt, and stuff like that, right. What what what why why is that ignored?

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Uh because there's a concerted effort to change who we are. We've never had smooth sailing in this country. There have always been those who wanted to change it into something else. Uh they're achieving a great deal of momentum. Right now, you see this large push for socialism and things of that nature. Uh but of course that that's going to happen anywhere where you don't have an opposing force. And uh, you know, God understands man and man's heart. And that's why he gives us some concrete rules, like the Ten Commandments, for instance. Um how you relate to your fellow man. And that the tenth commandment is actually quite interesting. Thou shalt not covet. Isn't that what happens when there's no God in your life? You see somebody else, they have more than I do. They got I want theirs. Let's make this fair. They should give me what they have. Um that leads you to lying, to killing, to cheating, to stealing, to everything else.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Is the f is it harder now than it was you've been working with children for a long time? Is it harder now to get them to um to interest them, to to win them away from the forces of uh the forces maybe of evil, certainly of mischief?

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Well, you know, uh you hear people all the time say, nothing has really changed, it's all the same. I vehemently disagree with that. It's changed tremendously. The forces that the children have to deal with now, uh from the time they get up to the time they go to bed, uh all the propaganda. And if parents don't make it a huge part of their day to interact with their children, to find out what did you learn in school today, to talk about it with them, to have conversations, uh they will be drawn away by other forces.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Are you hopeful? I mean, I I know a lot of people after COVID, uh a lot of parents woke up when the children were sent home, when schools were shut down, and they saw what the st what they saw with their children were uh were being directed to read. So it seems like there was uh at least a small awakening then. Are you optimistic about this?

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Uh I'm optimistic that things will work out in the end because I read the last chapter of the Bible. But uh there's gonna be turmoil in the meantime. But it doesn't mean that we don't get in the fight. We don't, you know, do everything we can to present, you know, the other side of the story.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

I want to come back, if I may, to religious liberty. Um there's a lot of people, when we're talking about the different forces that are to capturing people's attention, there are a lot of people looking around the country and a lot of people are concerned about the uh a lot of people are concerned about Islam and and Islam becoming a a a big part not only of politics but of but of different American societies. So does that really is is is Islam an exception to religious liberty, or how do we talk about it, or what do we do about it?

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Well, we try to be fair and just to everybody. We don't coerce people uh to look at things our way. That would not be the American way. It's done by convincing people that this is a better way to go, that giving people freedom, not forcing people. Uh the radical Islamists don't believe that way, they believe differently. And uh the radicals of any religion or any government tend to move in the direction of force. You know, look what happened uh in the Soviet Union. Look what Stalin did to his opponents, look what Mael did to his opponents. You know, this is this is a common part of of human history, something that we must fight. But we cannot become totalitarian. We say everybody has to believe the way we do, and if they don't, they should be eliminated. We never want to become part of that.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Right. Are you um I guess are are you concerned about different forces? You know, you've talked before about communism, then we talked about Islamism and stuff. We see all these forces sort of gathering on the ground. So are the does that concern you? And how do we how do we contest that? How do we how do we uh save our save our children from that, save our country from that?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Well, we'll never contest it if we don't talk about it, if we don't teach our children our real history. What was the impetus behind people coming to this country and starting a government where they were concerned about freedom? And even though, you know, people will al always come back and say, but you can't really say that about America because it has slavery. Well, you have to be equipped with the facts. The facts are there's no civilization that hasn't had to deal with slavery. Um, but we are the only ones who had so many people who were vehemently opposed to it that we fought a bloody civil war uh to stop the evil practice. We were the ones who had the Underground Railroad that had people of all different nationalities risking everything, including their lives, to provide freedom for others. You know, we need to talk about those things too, not just the evil. Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

What are the things that's most important for let's say a kid under the age of ten, a little boy, a little girl, uh growing up in this great country, what's the most important thing for them to know about the United States? To know about our history, to think about our future?

SPEAKER_02 15:32

I think it's very important for them to know that in this country, as opposed to a lot of other places, the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. It's your mindset, it's your determination, it's your desire to work. Not your desire to take from others, but your desire to take advantage of the opportunities to improve and empower yourself.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

What what part of our history uh illustrates that most clearly, you think?

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Uh the fact that the vast majority of inventions that are world-changing came from this country. Uh that demonstrates that the atmosphere of openness, of entrepreneurship, of innovation works.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

And it creates a high quality of life for everybody. What uh what are the sorts of things, if I can ask, what are the sorts of things that I mean, you are a person who's done so many different things. You've run for president, uh, you're one of the most famous and greatest doctors in history. Um wha what are the different things that that you're doing now? What are the different projects that you are that you're looking forward to?

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Well, uh running the American Cornerstone Institute, which uh helps people to focus on those things that made this into a great country. As I said before, it wasn't by coincidence. It was our faith, our love of liberty, our sense of community and our respect for life. And those are the things that I continue to emphasize. Uh we also found that the Carson Scholars Fund has uh over thirteen thousand scholars now. We put in reading rooms all over the country uh to help people, particularly in the Title I school areas where they don't have a lot of books and emphasis on that kind of thing. Because if you can get a kid reading at grade level by grade three, it changes the trajectory of their lives. Uh focusing on those kinds of things. I thought seriously about retiring at one point, but then I realized that word is not in the Bible. Yeah. You just got to keep going.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

That's interesting. How can people help? How can people help uh the American Cornerstone Institute?

SPEAKER_02 18:01

American Cornerstone.org. It's much more entertaining than HBO or anything. Go to that site. You'll see all kinds of things, including our Little Patriots uh website, Star Sprang Adventures. This is an animated series that comes out on a regular basis. We recently did a feature-length movie uh called the Star Spangled Adventures, the movie, which chronicles the 250 years of our existence as a culture.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

This is great. So now you're also a movie producer. This is exciting. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Leave no stone unturned.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

What about what about do you I mean, do you still do you still work in medicine? Do you keep up with any with any of the with any specialized literature?

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Uh to some degree, but for the most part, I'm I got my hands full with the things that I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

What do you think are the most interesting things uh that we'll see in the medical field and say, I don't know, the next the next 25 years, what are the things that you think will be truly uh uh not just life-changing, but change changing the nature of the world? And maybe it's not in medicine, maybe it's something like clean water or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

Well, the ability to analyze data with AI is gonna have a profound effect. We can rapidly speed up things that used to take years and years to do. And uh, you know, just as an example, you you think about the human genome. You know, we were talking about how many decades it was gonna take to work that out. But once we really put the power of computing behind it, it got worked out very quickly. We're gonna see those kinds of things happening. And uh, you know, there's all there's good and bad about everything. People will always take advantage of anything to make money, and they don't care what the end result is. So uh we're gonna have to be very careful with the new technologies as they present themselves.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Will this will this help uh I mean, this will help patients as well? Why? Because it'll it'll give doctors a chance to assess and analyze much more quickly and understand what they what what the problem is.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Aaron Powell Yeah, all kinds of applications. You know, they've already dis decided and determined how to use the stethoscope in a new way. So that it it's not just those sounds that you hear, but it's able to analyze those sounds and uh tell you about some of the potential structural issues that are going on with the heart. It's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Do you does it make you miss being in medicine at all?

SPEAKER_02 20:52

I do miss it. I I miss the sanctity of the operating room. You know, and when you go in the operating room and they close the door, you turn on your classical music and you're just concentrating on that patient and the cares of the world you forget about until you come back out. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

My um I'll just say my my my child had uh had a very serious health problem. Uh and he was actually at Johns Hopkins. And I just and just the surgeons are just, I mean, those are the surgeons are just, I mean, they're a combination of a whole bunch of different things, right? I mean, sort of priests, sort of rock stars, fighter pilots. It's a very impressive personality.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Oh, no question about it. And you know, training people to become those kind of surgeons is a wonderful thing also.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

How do you do that? I mean, isn't it a certain isn't it kind of a certain character type? And if people don't have it, it's hard to teach them how to have basically nerves of steel now.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Well, uh surgeons are no different than anybody else. They they they learn by watching and by copying what other people are doing, particularly successful people. And if if they see people who are nice and kind and understanding of others as they're coming through, they will adopt some of those traits. If they see people who are always yelling at people and throwing things and acting fools, they will emulate some of those traits as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

It's just amazing with people who work with children. The people who work with children just uh amazing. I mean, you know, they're again, just they have to deal with parents who are at their wit's end because of their child they're concerned about. And then, you know, the between the doctors and the the nurses, it's just an amazing environment. I can s I can I can see why that in particular would be something to miss.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

It is. But so wonderful, all the people that you run into all the time that you used to work with, or uh who were students coming through. Um I just find that fascinating. I run into so many doctors uh all over the place who say, you know, when I was in college, I read your book and I did this, and and then I had a chance to meet you. It was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

That's very nice. I mean, yeah, I mean, the amount of the amount of lives that you've helped and the amount of lives you've saved through your own work and the different people you've influenced as well as the people you've taught, really kind of amazing. Um Dr. Carson, I'm gonna add before you go, I'm gonna ask not a question. I'm gonna ask what what I'm gonna ask you, what is the way that you want America to be blessed? What is the most important thing? How sh how how must we as adults, as children, yeah, what kind of blessing do we need?

SPEAKER_02 23:46

We need a blessing that helps us to realize that we are not enemies. We're not each other's enemies. Just because you disagree with somebody about something, it does not make them your enemy. And we've allowed uh negative forces to make us believe that we should be adversarial to each other uh because of different beliefs. And that is never a good way to be when you live in a complex society composed of many different components.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Dr. Ben Carson, thank you so much for speaking with us today. It's really moving. And uh yeah, it's just uh just a treat to get to speak to you. Thank you so much, Doctor. It was a pleasure. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Roots, Rights, and Reason. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please subscribe, share this episode, and visit America's future dot net for our full library of podcasts. Until next time, remember that understanding our roots, defending our rights, and exercising our reason are essential to preserving the greatest country on earth.