Dr. Ben Carson

"What's the Importance of Common Sense?" +

2:50 video, May 1, 2014.

[Music]
TEXT: Talk to us about common sense Dr. Ben Carson

Dr. Ben Carson, M.D.: You know one of my favorite things to talk about is common sense because it is something that I believe the majority of Americans actually have.  The ability to actually assimilate information and then use that in a practical way to solve problems.

What happens unfortunately sometimes is ideology gets in the way.  When you become an ideologue you have to strain everything through your ideology whether it makes sense or not.  Therefore if your ideology says we must redistribute the wealth of America then everything has to be strained through that particular strainer which completely eliminates your ability to think logically about how to solve problems.

Even when somebody comes up with a very excellent way to solve a problem, if it doesn't fit with your ideology you can't agree with it.  That's part of our problem.  We have ideologues on the right; we have ideologues on the left.  Common sense and logic play no role with ideology.  We need to throw that out.  And we need to think about what is our vision.

The Bible, in Proverbs 29:18, says without a vision, the people perish.  It is talking about the fact that you have to know who you are, you have to know what your principles are before you can make any progress.

That's again another reason that conversation, talking is important.  That is one of the most common-sensical ideas there is.  You know, why do marriages break up?  Because people stop communicating.  Why do wars start?  Because people stop communicating. 

You know there was a radical individual by the name of Saul Alinsky who said never have a conversation with your adversary because that will tend to humanize them and your job is to demonize them.  Well we don't want to demonize people.  We want to empower people and we want to use our collective power to make progress.  And we can do that.  And that makes sense.

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