George Cady Carson (1832–1901) was a merchant, road builder, rancher and member of the Los Angeles, California, Common Council in the 1850s.
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Ben Carson - Liberty University Convocation
Transcription
Thank you. Thank you very much. It is a real pleasure to be here at Liberty. You know, this is my first time at Liberty, although I've followed the progress over the many years and I am very, very proud of what's going on at this university. And I actually have some people that are very close to me who are students here, Hannah and Ben Walker. Ben was actually named after me. And just the things that have been going on here represent, I think, a lot to the country, and I want to talk a little bit today about how important it is in your life to stand up for what you believe in. You know, I've always only wanted to be a doctor. That was the only thing that really interested me in life. When I was a small child I used to listen to the mission stories in church and Sabbath school, they frequently featured missionary doctors, people who traveled all over the world at great personal expense, sacrifice, to bring not only physical, but mental and spiritual healing to people. It seemed to me like the most noble thing someone could do, so when I was eight years old, I decided that I was going to be a missionary doctor. And that was my dream until I was 13. At which time, having grown up in dire poverty, I decided I would rather be rich, so at that point, missionary doctor was out, and psychiatrist was in. Now I didn't know any psychiatrists, but on TV they seemed like rich people. You know, they drove Jaguars. They lived in big fancy mansions, big plush offices, and all they had to do is talk to crazy people all day. It seemed like I was doing that anyways, so I said, "You know, this is going to work out extremely well!" And I started reading Psychology Today, I was the local shrink in high school, everybody brought me their problems. I would sit there and stroke my chin, say, "Tell me about your momma." And I majored in psychology in college, did advanced psych in medical school, and I was gung-ho! I was all ready to be a psychiatrist, and then I started meeting a bunch of psychiatrists. Need I say more? I'm just kidding, some of my best friends are psychiatrists. But what I discovered pretty quickly is what psychiatrists do in real life and what they do on television are two completely different things. And they really are some of the more intellectual and very important parts of the medical community but it really wasn't what I wanted to do. I just said, "Lord, what is it that you really want me to do?" and I started thinking about special gifts and talents. You know, God gives everybody special gifts and talents. Everybody in here is better than everybody else at something. It's a matter of figuring out what your gifts and talents are, and I realized that I had a lot of eye hand coordination. I had the ability to think in three dimensions. I was a very careful person. I never knocked things over and said "Oops," which is a good characteristic of a brain surgeon by the way. I loved to dissect things, and so I said, "You would be a terrific neurosurgeon." And really that's how I came up with that idea. It turned out to be obviously the right choice for me but I think if you spend some time trying to get in contact with those gifts that God gave you, and then think of careers that take advantage of that, as opposed to just doing what your mom or you dad did or what your friends are doing, it, I think, will make a tremendous difference in terms of how things turn out. Now let me just take a brief moment for a disclaimer. Everybody makes disclaimers these days, they says I sit on this board or that board, I'm associated with this organization therefore you must take everything I say with a grain of salt. Well, what I've discovered in recent years that it is very difficult to speak to a large group of people nowadays without offending someone. Have you noticed that? When I was a kid growing up, "Sticks and stone break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Do young people know that anymore? I don't think so. Because now people walk around with their feelings on their shoulders, waiting for somebody to say something. "Did you hear that?" And then they can't hear anything else you say. I was talking to a group one time about the difference between a human brain and a dog's brain, and a man got offended. He said, "You can't talk about dogs like that." And then I was talking to a group about how the fashion industry has gotten young ladies to think they are supposed to be so skinny, they look like they escaped from a concentration camp. And you know, a Jewish man got offended. "You know," he said, "You can't mention concentration camps!" He said, "That's way too sensitive. It would be as if I said something to you about slavery." I said, "You cant talk about slavery all you want; doesn't bother me." You know some people choose to get offended. So this is my disclaimer. It is not my intention to offend anyone, and if anyone is offended, too bad. Because I've got to tell you, I do not believe in political correctness and in fact, I believe that it is a highly destructive force that is threatening to destroy our nation and you know a lot of the people who founded this nation came here trying to escape from people who told them what they could say and what they could think. And who are we, reintroducing it through the back door. And really the emphasis should not be on unanimity of speech, or unanimity of thought, the emphasis should be on learning how to be respectful of people you disagree. And if we can ever learn that, I think we will be on our way to having a much stronger nation. And this is something that we clearly are going to have to convey to the people who supposedly run this nation who seem to have no concept of it whatsoever. At any rate, there I was, you know I wanted to be a doctor but I wasn't a particularly good student. My parents got divorced early on, and my mother only had a third grade education. She worked very hard two or three jobs at a time as a domestic, cleaning other people's houses because she didn't want to be on welfare, because she was very observant, and she noticed no one she ever saw go on welfare came off of it. So she didn't want to go on it in the first place. She had a very difficult life. Discovered after getting married at age 13 and moving to Tennessee with her husband to Detroit some years later she discovered he was a bigamist and I remember telling that story at the University of Utah graduation nobody thought it was that strange. See, that probably offended somebody. But you know, with all the things that happened in her life, she never felt sorry for herself. And I think that was a good thing. The problem was she never felt sorry for us either. There was never any excuse we could give that was good enough. She would always say, "Do you have a brain?" and if the answer to that was, "yes," then she would say, "Well, it doesn't really mater what John, or Mary, or Susan, or Robert or anybody else did, you could've thought your way out of it." And you know when people don't accept your excuses, pretty soon, you stop looking for excuses and you start looking solutions, and I think it made all the difference in the world. At any rate, I was a terrible student, probably the worst student you can ever imagine. In fact, my nickname was, "dummy." That's what everybody called me. They enjoyed the fact that I was in the classroom, though. And the reason is I was what is called the, "safety net." You never had to worry about getting the lowest mark on a test as long as I was there. I just kind of gave up on myself. I really didn't think that I was very smart. Fortunately, my mother would not give up. She prayed and she asked God to give her wisdom to know what to do. How could she get her young son to understand the importance of intellectual development? You know what? God gave her the wisdom. At least in her opinion, my brother and I didn't think it was all that wise, because it was to turn off the TV set. Now what kind of wisdom is that? As far as we were concerned, that was child abuse, but she said we could only watch two or three TV programs during the week, and with all that spare time we had to read two books apiece from the Detroit Public Library and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn't read, but we didn't know that. She put little check marks and highlights and underlines and stuff, and we thought she was reading them, but she wasn't. But you know, I hated it. Everybody else was outside having fun, but after a few weeks, I actually began to enjoy reading those books because we were desperately poor, but it didn't cost anything to get a book out of the library. And between the covers of those books, I could go anywhere, I could be anybody, I could do anything. I'd begin to imagine myself in laboratories conducting experiments, looking through telescopes and discovering new galaxies, and microscopes, microcosms. And I began to know things that nobody else knew. And I started reading about animals and then plants and then rocks. And pretty soon I could identify virtually any rock, tell you where it came from, how it was formed. Still in the fifth grade, still a dummy. And one day the science teacher walked in and he held up a big black shiny rock and he said, "Can anybody tell me what this is?" Well now, I never raised my hand. I never answered any questions. So, I waited for one of the smart kids to raise their hand. And nobody did. So, I waited for one of the dumb kids to raise their hand, and nobody did. So, up went my hand. Everybody turned around. They couldn't believe it. Carson's got his hand up! Oh, this is gonna be good. They were ready. And the teacher was so shocked, and he said "Benjamin?" I said, "Mr. Jake, that's obsidian." And there was silence in the room. Because it sounded good. Nobody knew whether it was right or wrong. They didn't know whether they should be laughing or whether they should be impressed, and finally Mr. Jake broke the silence and said, "That's right, that is obsidian!" and I said, "You know, obsidian is formed after a volcanic eruption and the lava flows down and hits the water, there's a super-cooling process, elements coalesce, air forces out, the surface glazes over." They were all staring at me. They could not believe all of this geological information spewing forth from the mouth of the dummy. But I was perhaps the most amazed person, because it dawned on me at that moment that I was no dummy at all. I said the reason you knew those answers is because you were reading the books. What if you read books about all your subjects? Can you imagine the effect? And from that point on, no book was safe from my grasp. I read everything I could get my hands on. If I had five minutes, I was reading a book. Waiting for the bus, reading a book, on the bus, reading a book, in the bathroom, reading a book. At the kitchen table, my mom would say, "Benjamin, put the book down and eat your food." It didn't matter, I was always reading. And you know, within the space of a year and a half, I went from the bottom of the class to the top of the class. Much to the consternation of all those students that used to laugh and call me dummy, now the same ones were coming to me in the 7th grade, and they were saying, "Benny, how do you work this problem?" and I would say, "Sit at my feet, youngster, while I instruct you." I was, perhaps, a little obnoxious, but it sure felt good to say that to those turkeys. But you know, the fact of the matter is, I had the same brain but just a very different outlook. And when you think about it, you think about the brain that God has given you. We were made in His image, and He's no dummy. You know, your brain has billions and billions of neurons, hundreds of billions of interconnections. It can process more than 2 million bits of information in one second. It doesn't forget anything you've ever seen, or anything you've ever heard, which is why it's important to make sure you don't put the wrong things in there, because they will always impact upon you, subconsciously and consciously. But to give you some idea of how complex your brain is, how many of you remember your birthday? Let me just see your hand. I think it's unanimous. Now, what did your brain have to do to respond to that question, almost instantly? Well first of all, sound waves have to leave my lips, travel to the ear, enter you external auditory meatus, travel down to the tympanic membrane, set up a vibratory force, which traveled across the ossicles of the middle ear, to the oval and round windows, setting up a vibratory force in the endolymph which mechanically distorted at the microcilia, converting mechanical energy into electrical energy which traveled across the cochlear nerve to the cochlear nucleus to the pontomedullary junction, from there to the superior olivary nucleus, ascending bilaterally at the brainstem, through the lateral meniscus to the inferior colliculus and the nuclei, across the lambic gradiation to the proceric temporal lobes to begin the alterior processes to the frontal lobes coming out (unintelligible).... So you could raise your hand. Now, that, that's a simplified version. Now see how many rap singers can do that. If your brain can do all that, and you barely have to even think about it, what is your brain capable of if you actually put your mind to something? It really is quite daunting when you stop to think about it. And you know, our nation right now is in a bit of trouble intellectually, because people don't think. People are not knowledgeable. The founders of our nation said that our system of government could only succeed with a well-educated populous. And they said once the populous becomes ignorant, they become easily lead by slick politicians and our system of government will fail. It's a very interesting prediction that was going on there. And you know, I want you to think about this. There was a survey done some years ago looking at the ability of 8th grade equivalence in 22 nations to solve so-called complex math and science problems. We were one of the 22 nations. We came in number 21 out of 22, and we barely beat our 22. It was neck and neck. Couple that with the fact that we produce only 70,000 a year in this country, 40% of whom are foreigners, China produces 400,000 engineers a year. 30% of people who enter high school in this country do not graduate from high school, and this is the information age. This is the age of technology, so you can see, we have a very significant problem. And it wasn't always like that. You know, in 1831, when Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to study our nation, because Europeans were fascinated. How could a nation barely 50 years old already be competing with all the powers of Europe on virtually every level? That is unheard of! He wanted to know what was going on. In addition to studying the way the government worked, he said, let me look at their educational system. He was flabbergasted. To recognize that anybody finishing the second grade was completely literate. He could go out and find a mountain man and the guy could read the newspaper and have a political discussion with him, knew how the government worked. He'd never seen anything like that. You really want to be impressed, and you'll find this in our new book, "America the Beautiful," 6th grade exit exam from the middle 1800's. I doubt that most college graduates today could pass that exam. You look at it when you read that chapter, see if you can pass those questions. We need to double down on the academic standards and not allow ourselves to be lulled into a sense of false security. It is extraordinarily important. But you know the other thing that Alexis de Tocqueville saw that really impressed him? He said, "In their public education system in America they teach values, they teach right and wrong. They have Bibles in their classroom." And he felt that was really the key to America's power, and he concluded his two volume set by saying, "America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great." I think he was very prophetic. And the reason I bring that up to you young people, is because it is so important in the world in which we live, where secularism has such a loud microphone that you stand up for what you believe in. You can't just let them have the microphone all the time and do things the way they want. You know, we've reached the point in this nation where people hesitate to say, "Merry Christmas." How did we allow ourselves to get to that point? And if we continue down that pathway, the rights will be encroached upon further and further, and soon our nation will not be recognized as a free nation, and it's going to require courage of people to stand up and be counted. You know, people ask me all the time, "You're a man of science. How can you be a man science and a man of faith at the same time?" I don't think the two are incompatible at all. You know, people say "Yeah, but you actually believe in God and that he created things? You know, you can't believe that as a scientist." I've had public debates with Don Johansen, the guy who discovered the missing link, Richard Dawkins, you probably know who he is, "The God Delusion," he wrote. And he thinks anybody of faith can't possibly be a person of science. And as we were debating evolution, I concluded by saying, "OK, well let's agree on one thing. I came from God, and you came from a monkey." I said, "No problem." But the fact of the matter is, now people who believe that, they have to believe it on faith, and I think it actually requires more faith than it takes to believe in God. You know, when you stop and you think about our solar system, how precise our solar system is. Now, you can predict 70 years hence when a comet is coming because of the incredible order we see and yet they want to say that there was a big bang and all of it just came perfectly into order. The same people believe in the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, which says things move towards a state of disorganization. So now, can you have both? Well, you have to integrate into that probability theory. You see, if you have enough explosions over a long enough period of time, eventually one of them will be the perfect explosion and you'll have a perfect universe. And I said, "So you're telling me that if I blow a hurricane through a junkyard enough times, eventually at the end of one of those hurricanes there will be a 747 fully loaded and ready to fly?" "Well, we don't understand everything." And I said, "I don't think you understand anything, but the fact of the matter is, you're perfectly welcome to that opinion. But just remember, that is your religion. That is what you believe by faith, just like I choose to believe in God, by faith." So don't allow anybody to denigrate your faith just because they claim to be a scientist because I can guarantee you there are a lot of arguments against what they believe. Well at any rate, you would've thought that once I got on the track academically, life was going to be great for me. Wrong! You see I had this terrible temper and I was one of those people who thought they had a lot of rights. If you know anybody like that, you know somebody who gets angry a lot. Once a fellow hit me with a pebble. It didn't hurt, but I was incensed that he would dare hit me, I picked up a large rock, hurled it at his face, broke his glasses, almost put his eye out. Another time a guy was trying to close my locker. I didn't want it closed. I stuck him in the forehead with my fist. Unfortunately the lock was still in my hand, put a 3-inch gash in his forehead. My mother was trying to get me to wear something I didn't want to wear, I picked up a hammer, went to hit her in the head with it, fortunately my brother caught it from behind. Other than that, I was a pretty good kid. But you can see how that temper could get you in a lot of trouble. And another youngster angered me and, how many of you saw the movie, "Gifted Hands?" Anybody see that movie? OK, several of you then. Well, in the scene that was depicted, another teenager angered me, and I took a large camping knife, tried to stab him in the abdomen with it and fortunately under his clothing he had on a large metal belt buckle and the knife blade struck it with suck force that it broke. And he fled in terror but I was more terrified than he was, I ran into the bathroom, locked myself in, and I started contemplating my life. And I realized that if he had not had that belt buckle on, he would've been killed or seriously injured, I would've been on my way to jail or reform school. And I said, "There's no way I'm going to realize my dream of becoming a doctor with this kind of temper." I said, "Lord, you've got to take it away from me. I can't do it myself." And there was a Bible in the bathroom and I picked it up and opened it up to the book of Proverbs and there were all these verses about anger. Like Proverbs 19:19 that says there's no point getting an angry man out of trouble because he's just going to get right back into it. But there were encouraging verses like Proverbs 16:32, "Mightier is the man who can control his temper than the man who can conquer a city." And it seems like they were all written just for me. And I stayed in that bathroom for three hours reading and contemplating and praying and I came to an understanding that to lash out at somebody, to punch somebody in the nose, is not a sign of strength; it was a sign of weakness. It meant that you could be controlled by the environment and by other people. And I also understood that if you step out of the center of the circle so that everything is not about you, then you're not likely to be angry. You see, people who are angry all the time are selfish people. He took my thing! He's in my space! He's in my lane! It's always about me and about my. And when you learn to shed that, it goes away. And when I came out of that bathroom after 3 hours, that temper was gone. And I've never had another problem with it since that day. And some people say, "Yeah, you just learn how to cover it up." But no, I've got to tell you something. When God fixes a problem, he does not do a paint job, He fixes it from the inside. And it's always good to go to Him. When you have a problem, He knows how to fix it and to fix it the right way. And our nation has a problem. It has a big problem right now with a lot of issues. However, the way to solve those problems is to equip yourself. Equip yourself with knowledge and understanding about all kinds of things with values, with allies, work together with other people. Because I think it can be changed. And never give up. And don't let people tell you that you can't talk about God. You know, we have a slogan in the Carson Scholar's Fund, called, "Think big." Each one of the letters means something special. The "G" is for "God." And a few years ago some lawyers came to us and they said, "You can't put your "Think Big" banners up in public schools because the "G" stands for "God" and the first amendment says there can be no government sponsorship of religious expression." I reminded them that the first amendment also says that there can be no government suppression of religious expression. So we had a really vigorous argument, and I suggested that we would resolve it at the level of the Supreme Court, which seemed like a bold and reckless statement, but it really wasn't because I knew the next week I was going to the Supreme Court to receive the Jefferson Award. So, I figure I would ask while I was there and I did, and just as Sandra Day O'Connor said they were ... , and of course that was no violation of separation of church and state, and we just have to be bold about those things and we have to be persistent. And I want to close with a story of persistence. The flag. Every time I see our flag, I think about this. During the War of 1812 the British came back, they were marching up the Eastern seaboard, destroying city after city. They burnt down Washington, D.C. , they burnt down the White House, they were going to make us a colony again. They rolled into the bay with their big armada. Chesapeake Bay, Fort McHenry. They were going to reduce it to ashes. General Armistead had a large American flag put up. They sent a message to General Armistead, "Take that flag down and we will stop the bombardment. As long as you leave that flag up, we will continue to bombard you, you will be dust." There was an amateur American poet on that ship by the name of Francis Scott Key, sent to do a mission by President Madison to help get some captives back. And he had heard the plans, so they were not going to let him off the ship. And that evening as the bombardment started, Key's heart ached as he thought about this flegding... young country that he loves so much going back to becoming a colony again. This fort, which was the last ... before the British overran us. And through the night as the bombs were bursting in air and the rockets were glaring, he just thought about how sad that was. And at the crack of dawn he looked through all of that debris, looking to see if there was any chance that the fort was still there. And there was a clearing in the dust and he saw the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, the torn and tattered stars and stripes were still waving. And that was the beginning of the turning of the tide in the war in 1812 which we eventually won. And if you were to go onto the grounds of Fort McHenry that day you would've seen at the base of that flag many American soldiers dead who had died holding that flag up. They would not let that flag go down. That's the kind of attitude, the kind of persistence that has created and will continue to maintain one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you and God Bless.
Personal
Carson was born in New York in 1832, and when he was thirteen he was brought to Saint Charles, Illinois.[1]
On July 30, 1857, he married Maria Victoria Dominguez (April 27, 1842 – December 18, 1916), the daughter of Manuel Dominguez and Maria Engracia Cota.[2][3] Their sons were John Manuel, George Henry Jr., Edward Albert, Christobal José, William Christobal, Joseph Noel and David Victor and they had eight daughters — Anna Francisca, Maria Engracia, Amelia Magdalena, Victoria Lenora, Virginia Adelaida, Maria Victoria (died same day as born), Ellen Victoria (died 1 day after birth) and Lucy Susana. He had a brother, Henry.[4][5][6]
He died November 20, 1901. In religion, Carson was a Catholic.[1]
Career
Military
Carson enlisted at the age of fourteen as a "soldier, drummer and bugler" to serve in the Mexican War in a regiment of Illinois volunteers. and was mustered out in Santa Fe.[1]
Commercial and ranching
After he left the Army, Carson became a trader in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, and south into Mexico.
He moved to Los Angeles, California in 1853.[1]
In 1854, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors gave Carson and William T.B. Sanford a contract to build a new wagon road alignment of the Stockton – Los Angeles Road through the San Fernando Pass section of the Stockton – Los Angeles Road in the northern San Fernando Valley. They also lowered the pass with a road−cut 50 feet (15 m) deep for a less steep hill climb/descent by wagons.[7] In 1858, the first Butterfield Overland Mail stage used the pass.[7] In 1862, a narrow and deeper road−cut lowered the road by 50 feet, known as the Newhall Cut—Beale's Cut.[7]
Carson owned a hardware store and livery stable business on Commercial Street in Los Angeles, in partnership with William T.B. Sanford. He sold his share in 1862 to take on the management of the Rancho San Pedro, and then Dominguez Rancho section of it, in southwestern Los Angeles County. Carson began "stock raising and ranching on a large scale." One project was in partnership with prominent Southern California banker and investor Isaias W. Hellman.[1][6][8]
Public service
Carson was Los Angeles County public administrator for twelve years, beginning in 1855.[1][6] In a special election on December 27, 1856, he became a member of the Los Angeles Common Council, the governing body of the city. He served until January 19, 1858.[9]
Legacy
The city of Carson, California, was named in honor of George Carson. His descendants formed the Carson Estate Company, which later became the Carson Companies.[8]
References
- ^ a b c d e f "Great Divide Crossed by George Carson," Los Angeles Times, November 21, 1901, page 12
- ^ "The Historic Dominguez Rancho Adobe, City of Carson Archived 2012-06-26 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Program Faculty," California State University at Dominguez Hills
- ^ "Death of Miss Anna Carson," Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1899, page 11
- ^ "Old-Time Custom Again Revived," Los Angeles Herald, September 23, 1906, page II-5
- ^ a b c "John Manuel Carson," Notables of the West, volume 1 (1913)
- ^ a b c ElsmereCanyon.com: "Beale's Cut", by Stan Walker.
- ^ a b "Dominguez Heritage Project," Dateline Dominguez Hills, May 1, 2008
- ^ Chronological Record of Los Angeles City Officials,1850-1938, compiled under direction of Municipal Reference Library, City Hall, Los Angeles (March 1938, reprinted 1966). "Prepared ... as a report on Project No. SA 3123-5703-6077-8121-9900 conducted under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration."
Notes
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