FoundingFathers: "Actually, he did say his objective was to fundamentally transform America, and his past actions provided a fairly obvious roadmap."

He threw out the "fundamentally transform" line to his base at a political rally, but never 'elaborated' on what he meant by it. Progressives typically deny that he is a socialist with the sophistry of claiming he is not implementing government ownership of "all" means of production (and never mind the essence of what he is doing and would do if he had more power). They also do not recognize that his fascism is itself a form of socialism. There is more than enough in his past to figure out his ideological statism and collectivism, including his Marxist upbringing, Alinskyite "organizing", affinity to terrorist Ayers, specific actions with pen as president, "you didn't build that", past membership in an explicitly socialist party, etc., but most people don't take ideas seriously enough to integrate and assess what he is and the consequences.

db is looking at Carson's fundamental premises to assess what he is even though Carson does not think of himself as a theocrat and would not be able to or want to implement a full across the board theocracy. It is the fundamental premises that are incrementally killing us, one step at a time. Carson is an impressive individual, but has alarming false premises and confusions. He has a lot of explaining to do about what he would do and why instead of the constant religious zealotry if he is to be taken seriously as a better candidate.

Achievement in what area that is related to being president? Prayer meetings?

The Constitution and the founding of this country were not based on Christianity. They were a result of the Enlightenment emphasis on reason and individualism overthrowing the grip of the Church in western civilization. See Bernard Bailyn's The Ideology of the American Revolution, and Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels on the parallels between America and rise of nazism in Germany (which was a heavily religious nation) in philosophy and political consequences.

The founding ideas of America were the rights of the individual to his own life, liberty, property and pursuit of his own happiness here on earth in accordance with his own reason in choosing his own goals, free of authoritarian controls. Christianity demanded duty to serve a supernatural god; renunciation of reason, of happiness and of life on earth; sacrifice to others; and an ethics of duty and submission across the board in the form of dogmatic commandments. It was primarily other worldly and mystical, with duty to others on earth as a distant second. It was the philosophy of the entrenched ignorance and stagnation of the Dark and Middle Ages, not America. Christian mysticism, duty, sacrifice on earth as a way of life, and other worldliness did not and could not possibly intellectually lead to the American ideals of achieving happiness on earth under a system of capitalism and material values, which religionists have continued to denounce for centuries. It is also not what most Americans who consider themselves to be "Christian" take seriously in their own lives, even while they embrace the worst ethical premises of self-sacrifice, with deadly consequences.

The Enlightenment did not completely eradicate religion or altruistic ethics, but to the extent that intellectuals paid lip service to its premises -- with no solution to it in philosophy, especially in ethics -- the accomplishment of the founding of America was in spite of, not because of, the remnants of the religious mentality. It was not accomplished by the remaining most fervent mystics, evangelists and Bible thumpers. The founders were generally ardent admirers of Newtonian science and reason. (See I. Bernard Cohen's Science and the Founding Fathers) Christianity played no role in the founding Enlightenment political philosophy and principles of government.

The Bible is not the basis of the Constitution. The few references to religious notions related to founding documents were not specifically Christian, like the deistic notion a creator (in the Declaration), were deliberately vague, and played no actual role in the ideas, nor could they have in any logical way.

Ben Carson and other religious conservatives who constantly push religion in their politics are not only intellectually ignorant of the historical and philosophical basis of a free society, they are a threat to it. See Ayn Rand's "Conservatism: An Obituary" in her Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. They continue to inject and dominate irrelevant religious dogma into political discussions that not only cannot support a free society but undermine it. Yet the ugly trend has been to progressively increase pushing this nonsense rather than leave their religious beliefs private.

Ben Carson in particular appears to allowing his religious obsessions to take over everything he does, now in politics. He has said little about the policies he would pursue, in part because he pushes religion instead. He emphasizes his professed religious righteousness (mixed with some crackpot history and philosophy) at the expense of rational defense of individualism and freedom, and in place of discussing policy for serious national problems -- as if to say, 'I am religious so whatever I do will be good and never mind what that may be'. The exceptions have been his revealing his sweeping, dogmatic attacks on a woman's right of abortion and denunciations on religious grounds of certain kinds of scientific research. Whether or not he has good ideas that have yet to be expressed, this is not promising as he uses religion to rationalize interfering in highly personal choices not made in accordance with his religion.

For all his success as a surgeon, and because that is where he dedicated his time, he does not appear to understand much at all of political philosophy and the kinds of problems we face. (Has he ever mentioned property rights?) Previous interviews with him -- a few years before he became famous for opposing Obamacare at an official presidential prayer meeting -- show him as rather conventional in altruistic-based establishment government. He now appears to be trying to catch up on his lack of certain kinds of important knowledge by listening to anti-intellectual stock conservatives who have his ear. Whether or not he thinks of himself as a theocrat (which he apparently does not), he badly mixes his espousal of the Constitution with incompatible religious dogma. If he were not doing that, he would not be promoting the religious restrictions he advocates. The problem is not that he is explicitly anti-Constitution on principle but rather that he doesn't know the difference.

Neither Carson nor anyone else electable could turn this country into a full blown theocracy within a presidential term of office, and he is very mixed and would not want to. But everywhere he pursues religious restrictions while ignoring reform of already existing government abuse is another nail in the coffin of this country. He could be expected to worsen the entrenchment of altruistic-based welfare statism across the board, intellectually unable to challenge it, and he could be expected to promote specifically religious agendas such as suppressing abortion rights wherever he could get away with it and to follow Bush's ugly precedent in discriminating against stem cell research on religious grounds (while doing nothing to alleviate government funding controlling research). Whatever else he might try do on top of it as consequence of his fundamental religious premises and which he dares not announce in advance, that attack on science alone is a mind boggling theocratic precedent to build on. Any of this religious fanaticism pushed in politics is enough to frighten reasonable people into either not voting or running from him, pushing the country into the arms of a Hillary Clinton.

db also rejects the Scottish Enlightenment and its philosophers (Locke, Hume, Mill, Adam Smith). Most of the Founders, particularly Jefferson and Paine, believed in their ideas, too. As do I (minus the religion). (Indeed, all the grievances in the Declaration of Independence were an attempt to prove that the conditions of the "right of revolution" spelt out in Locke's Two Treatises of Government had been satisfied.)

I guess socialism, fascism, communism, etc. are also really "religions" too. So we have Hillary as religious as Carson really- just in a different way. None of them are based on anything rational. Carson would have no abortions at all, and homosexuality would be relegated to a crime, and there would be no same sex or plural marriages either. They are all against "scripture". Imagine if the president were a Mormon. They have some interesting beliefs that would impact us all negatively. With Hillary and Sanders the government is entitled to take everything you have and give back only what it wants- just enough for you to live and keep producing. Our constitution needs to be changed and limited again to prevent the government from taking from A and giving to B, as it does now.