Dr. Ben Carson, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary during the Trump administration, recently slammed the "woke" church people responsible for altering the lyrics to the classic Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," to include stanzas acknowledging the "queer" community and "questioning" the spirit of the holiday.
During a conversation with Fox News, Carson was pressed on the alternative lyrics and song title for "God Rest You Queer and Questioning."
Carson then recalled a National Prayer Breakfast from 1997, where he sounded off warnings of political correctness seeping into timeless Christmas fare.
"[I said that] 'if we continued along that pathway, it was going to destroy our nation.' It has continued to get worse. Now it's morphed into wokeness," said Carson.
"And we have a situation on our college campuses where students are afraid to express themselves. Conservative students are. College is supposed to be a place where you explore, and you have an opportunity to discuss certain things so that you can determine which way you're going," added Carson. "People are being shut down."
The former Republican presidential candidate explained that changing holiday lyrics to conform to a certain politically correct standard, in effect, restricts other people's freedoms of speech and expression.
"If the government is compliant with that, it's the same as if they're doing it. And we, the American people should be outraged about that," said Carson, while adding, "our freedoms come from God. That's stated in our Declaration of Independence. And yet we're allowing them to be taken away from us."
During the Fox interview, Carson also expressed disappointment with the recently enacted omnibus spending bill, a $1.7 trillion piece of legislation that doesn't focus enough on facilitating the goodness of the American people, he reasoned.
"Most people don't even know their neighbors anymore," lamented Carson. "[We] don't even know what their names are. ... All of these things are changing us from the dynamic and innovative people that we used to be."
Carson then added: "We had a system that encouraged innovation and entrepreneurship. Most of the big inventions in the world came from the United States of America. But if everybody is thinking the same way and saying the same things, where's that out of the box thinking that's going to allow us to continue to be that beacon?"
On Thursday, while speaking to Newsmax, Carson discussed similarly disheartening changes to America, saying the country has undergone a "massive" change — and not necessarily for the better.
"It's been a massive change ... you can go to any variety of areas," Carson told "Eric Bolling The Balance."
"We were energy independent. We were a net exporter of energy. We controlled our own destiny. That had a tremendous impact upon the economy upon, you know, transportation of goods that affects every American family," said Carson.
Also, "you look at the ballooning national debt. Somebody has to pay for that. Why does no one care about those who are coming after us, about future generations and about the quality of their life when so much of their earnings is going to have to go to service the debt?" wondered Carson.
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