As Republican presidential candidate and crazy person Dr. Ben Carson moves up in the polls, threatening to unseat current front-running Republican presidential candidate and crazy person Donald Trump, he shows no signs of toning down his most insane statements. Among his latest hits is an ambitious plan to repurpose one of our federal agencies into what we'll call a Department of Reeducation.
To briefly recap, the retired right-wing neurosurgeon argued last week that he doesn’t want to shut down the federal Department of Education; he’d prefer to turn it into an investigatory body in which it would “monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias.” If a Carson administration decided it disapproved of the “extreme” political speech on a university campus, the school would lose its federal funding.
Asked about this on
Meet the Press this week but lost among future president Carson's ambitions to
overturn Roe v. Wade and
do away with Medicare and Medicaid, Carson patiently explained to a skeptical Chuck Todd that he simply meant, well, exactly that. The federal government would "invite students at the universities to send in their complaints" about political bias among their professors, upon which Ben Carson's government would "investigate" those professors for improper political bias, and institutions found to be harboring that "propaganda," to use Dr. Ben Carson's word for it, would lose their funding.
Reminded that Carson’s definition of “propaganda” might look like “free speech” to others, the Republican replied, in a bit of a non-sequitur, “Well, that’s why I said we’re going to have the students send in. And we will investigate.”
To refresh our memories on how an American Department of Reeducation would work under a Dr. Ben Carson presidency, note that Dr. Ben Carson believes that the theory of evolution is
the work of the devil. This is certain to pose certain challenges to a great number of professors, as is his opposition to the "fairy tale" of the big bang theory; need those classes be cancelled outright, if a student objects to their content, or would it suffice to add pre- and post-class disclaimers noting that the content to be taught on that day may or may not be devil's work? Professors speaking on religious matters might find themselves in similarly hot water if they were to say that
Muslims were not inherently anti-American—they would do well to at least
teach the controversy over whether it was possible to "be a Muslim in good standing" and also live "abiding under the Constitution."
What of history professors, or any professors who touch on sexual themes? Read on!
Dr. Ben Carson ascribes to the theories of fringe right-wing conspiracy theorist Cleon Skousen, who believed that Marxist forces had infiltrated Hollywood and the rest of the arts and that homosexuality was a plot by communists to weaken American men in preparation for Soviet takeover. Presumably colleges will scramble to include classes with titles like Joe McCarthy Was Right and The Gay Soviet Menace for students who might prefer to believe those versions.
So to sum up, local county law clerks ought to have accommodations made for them if they believe their personal religious beliefs rank more highly in the law than decisions by the United States Supreme Court, but if a college professor shows "political bias," the full weight of the federal government will come after them and their whole institution.
Well that doesn't sound the least bit terrifying. He's just like America's soft-spoken grandpa, looking out for America's youth through a gentle program of monitoring American educational institutions and eliminating ones that are not sufficiently right-thinking. Not at all the ravings of a batshit crazy person—not one bit.