The Southern Poverty Law Center no longer has an “Extremist File” on Dr. Ben Carson. SPLC still thinks Carson has plenty of extreme views. But Bill O’Reilly dismissed SPLC’s remaining concerns and took full credit for what he seemed to think was a complete acquittal of Carson. Oh, and while he was at it, O’Reilly accused SPLC of supporting polygamy.
Carson was named an extremist by the SPLC back in October. But conservatives didn’t notice until last weekend. They threw a hissy fit and now SPLC has walked back its findings. In a statement yesterday:
This week, as we’ve come under intense criticism for doing so, we’ve reviewed our profile and have concluded that it did not meet our standards, so we have taken it down and apologize to Dr. Carson for having posted it.
We’ve also come to the conclusion that the question of whether a better-researched profile of Dr. Carson should or should not be included in our “Extremist Files” is taking attention from the fact that Dr. Carson has, in fact, made a number of statements that express views that we believe most people would conclude are extreme. They are described below.
We laud Dr. Carson for his many contributions to medicine and his philanthropic work, and we, like so many others, are inspired by his personal story. Nevertheless, particularly because Dr. Carson is such a prominent person, we believe that his views should be closely examined.
The statement was followed by more than a dozen comments by Carson that would be considered extreme – including praise for the armed militia supporting the law-breaking rancher Cliven Bundy, accusations that ObamaCare is worse than 9/11 and suggestions that the Obama administration is “very much like Nazi Germany.”
On The O’Reilly Factor last night, Bill O’Reilly implied that Carson was labeled “extremist” only for saying, “Marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a well-established pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA [North American Man/Boy Association, a group advocating pedophilia], be they people who believe in bestiality—it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition.”
O’Reilly left out the quote in which Carson called same-sex marriage a slippery slope that could destroy the country:
[I]f we can redefine marriage as between two men or two women or any other way based on social pressures as opposed to between a man and a woman, we will continue to redefine it in any way that we wish, which is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire.
“After we did the story last night, they got heavy heat,” O’Reilly said about SPLC – without mentioning that the “heavy heat” arrived well before the O’Reilly Factor aired its attack on the SPLC the previous night.
“It’s a freedom of speech deal and they can’t be doing that,” O’Reilly announced. Not unless they were to pick on Beyoncé or an American Sniper critic, that is.
Of course, O'Reilly insinuated that the SPLC is the immoral extremist:
O’REILLY: They don’t believe in traditional marriage. They believe in inclusion: everybody should have the same access to marriage. If you were to say, “Well, we want to marry three or four people, pluralism, they would say, “fine.” I mean, they don’t care.
And Carson widened that to make the left is the root of all evil in this country:
CARSON: We need to get back to a place where people feel free to express themselves and not to be intimidated by political correctness. It’s destroying our nation.
Crossposted at News Hounds
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