I have an essay today on Tropics of Meta about Ben Carson's new venture as head of a non-profit with a very unfortunate name:
TROPICS OF META
HISTORIOGRAPHY FOR THE MASSES
April 26, 2021
Steven Lubet
Ben Carson’s Unfortunate Cornerstone
Dr. Ben Carson has a new gig as the head of something called the American Cornerstone Institute. It seems that the outfit exists primarily as a funding vehicle for the good doctor himself, but that should hardly raise an eyebrow in today’s Washington, D.C. The greater problem is that the operation’s poorly chosen name echoes an historically freighted pro-slavery declaration, issued on the eve of the Civil War.
The former presidential candidate, ex-secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and retired neurosurgeon’s not-for-profit think tank promises to “champion conservative solutions to the real problems our nation faces.” After four years of quiescence during the Trump administration, Carson now claims to have realized that values such as “compromise, compassion, and civility” have vanished from our political discourse, and he is determined to restore them.
The Cornerstone Institute is basically a one-man show. The website flogs Carson’s accomplishments, with multiple still photographs, video clips and pull-quotes touting his wisdom, insight, and principles, with no mention of anyone else. And of course, there are pitches for contributions. The Cornerstone Institute was only incorporated in February 2021, so it is too soon to obtain the IRS form with information on its top salaries, but it is a pretty safe bet that Carson is paying himself handsomely for what is essentially just a big exercise in self-promotion.
I don’t have any complaints about ex-Trump officials cashing in however they can. Carson wasn’t close enough to the president to write a tell-all book, he doesn’t seem to have the energetic people skills needed for lobbying, and he isn’t a lawyer. So that leaves think-tanking, with Carson evidently betting that he can do better on his own than he can working for one of the established right-wing outfits.
The actually disturbing thing about Carson’s endeavor is its name. “Cornerstone” seems obviously intended as a New Testament reference – although that is unmentioned on the website – but the word also has a much more poisonous association in American political history. It is odd that nobody appears to have warned Carson about it before he went public.
On March 21, 1861, Georgia’s Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the recently formed Confederate States of American, delivered what has come to be known as the Cornerstone Address, explaining the reasons for secession from the Union. He minced no words, defending slavery as the guiding principle of the Confederacy:
Our new government is founded . . . its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition. . . . This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
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