Flashback: Ben Carson Hailed Cliven Bundy And Militia Members As ‘Upstanding People’

Like his fellow potential GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, Ben Carson lauded Cliven Bundy and his militia movement supporters last week during their armed standoff with law enforcement in Nevada.

Speaking with Washington Times Radio on April 23 — shortly before the New York Times published Bundy’s notorious remarks about “the Negro” and slavery — Carson, who now writes for the Washington Times, said that Bundy and his supporters are “pretty upstanding people.”

Carson said he was “encouraged” by Bundy’s armed standoff, adding that military and CIA officials personally assured him that “they are not going to cooperate if there is ever any type of government takeover of the people’s rights, that to me is very encouraging and I saw that with those people there.”

“But the fact of the matter is if you look back through history, what our government is doing is not unprecedented by any stretch of the imagination, it always starts like this and freedom is not free and there may come a time when people have to actually stand up against the government,” Carson said. “I hope that doesn’t happen.”

Later, Carson was more explicit in suggesting that martial law is on the horizon in America.

When people see selective enforcement and they see favored groups, it breaks down their respect for the government and whatever the government says. This is something that we have to change soon because if we don’t, we’re going to see all kinds of anarchy.

All we have to do is go back and read about various nations who have been in this situation before and what’s happened. I think one of the key take-home points that must be emphasized, you look at some of the real tyrants in world history and how they have always wanted to restrict the rights of citizens to have weapons to defend themselves.

Look at what happens every time we have a mass murder in this country and the calls for all of these draconian ways of getting rid of weapons or what happens in New York where they expose the names of all the people that have weapons, these are draconian tactics that are against the Second Amendment right of people. Citizens should be able to own weapons, they should not have to report what weapons they own so that somebody can come and collect those weapons before they start their martial law. These things are common sense.