Ben Carson on Why He’s Fighting to Save American History

Dr. Ben Carson has long seen God’s hand in his own life story—from overcoming poverty in Detroit to becoming one of the world’s most celebrated neurosurgeons, then serving as President Donald Trump’s first housing secretary.

Now, through his American Cornerstone Institute, Carson is taking on what he sees as one of the most urgent challenges facing the country: the erosion of American history in the minds of its youngest citizens.

Carson sat down with the Daily Signal at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday for the premiere of “Star Spangled Adventures: The Movie,” a feature-length animated film produced through his Little Patriots program.

The film takes children on a journey through 250 years of American history—from the Revolutionary War to the 20th century—guided by Liberty the Eagle and featuring an all-star cast of voice actors, including Pat Boone, John Schneider, Kevin Sorbo, and Rich Little. All of the Little Patriots content is available free of charge at littlepatriotslearning.com.

Speaking with the Daily Signal, Carson opened up about the Marxist influence he sees creeping into public schools, the providential moments in American history that he believes are being deliberately erased from textbooks, and why he thinks equipping young people with the truth about their nation’s founding is the most important fight of our time.

A lightly edited transcript of our interview is below.

Rob Bluey: We are here at the Kennedy Center with Dr. Ben Carson for the premiere of a new film, “Star Spangled Adventures.” Dr. Carson, thanks for joining the Daily Signal.

Ben Carson: We always enjoy the Daily Signal because they try to tell the truth.

Bluey: That is our mission. That is for sure. This is exciting. It’s the 250th anniversary of the United States. You have a new film that takes us back in history intended for young kids. Tell us what was the inspiration behind the film.

Carson: The inspiration was the fact that so many Americans don’t know our history, and that’s problematic because there are forces that we see every day now pushing other types of government other than what was established by our Constitution. And it’s very easy to be captivated by them if you don’t actually know who we are and what we stand for and what our values are. So we wanted to create this series, Star Spangled Adventures. We started a couple of years ago with just five- to 10-minute vignettes of important things that happened in our history. And then we said as the 250th was coming up, why don’t we make this into a full feature-length film to cover the whole 250 years? And we started talking about it. A lot of people got behind it financially, which is the reason we were able to do all the things that we do at the Little Patriots program free of charge because of very generous patriotic Americans who understand that we’re still in a fight.

There are those who want to fundamentally change our country to something else. And if we don’t equip our children with the right knowledge, they’ll go away thinking, “Oh, America’s a horrible place.” We had slaves and we put Indians on reservations and we treat people badly and all that crap. It’s not to say that some bad things didn’t happen, but we try to give the good, the bad and the ugly. And the fact of the matter is there’s a lot more good than there is bad and ugly.

Bluey: Going to the heart of where you started with that, with the education of our kids, tell me how you see that having changed over the course of your lifetime from the time that you were in school and learning about American history to today.

Carson: It’s changed dramatically. You have a situation now where many of the school systems have a large number of Marxists in them, and their belief is that children actually belong to the government, actually belong to the school system, and they have the right to do what they want to do, and their agendas they know frequently would not correspond with what the parents would want. So don’t tell the parents and just do what you want to do. And that was never the case when I was growing up. I mean, there was a good, strong relationship between the home environment and the school environment. And if we can get that moving in the right direction again, it would be a tremendous advantage, but that’s one of the reasons that you’ve seen the explosion in homeschooling and then private schooling. And a lot of the homeschools and private schools use the Little Patriots program because with each of our cartoons, there’s a teaching lesson that goes with it.

So you can use it formally in schools, even some public schools are using it. And the important thing is also that you can make it a family affair because a lot of parents don’t know the stuff either. They have no idea who are these, but you make it fun together learning. When I show it to my grandkids or other little kids, they always say the next question is, “Can I see another episode?”

Bluey: It’s great to see so many families here at the movie premiere today. What are some of the ways that parents can access the content and as you noted, it is free. So what’s the best way whether you’re a homeschooler or just somebody who wants to supplement a public school education?

Carson: They can just go to littlepatriotslearning.com, or they can always go to the main website, americancornerstone.org. And just to talk about this particular event and the movie and how to access it and maybe be able to shorten your community, they can go to little… No, it would be starspangledadventures.com.

Bluey: How did you, when you were working on the film, identify the moments in US history over the last 250 years that you wanted to showcase in the movie?

Carson: We have historians. Dr. Amy Butler leads that effort, does a very good job of figuring out which are the most inspirational stories.

Bluey: And you were able to recruit quite a star-studded cast of voice actors. What was it like working with some of them as they told some of these stories?

Carson: They are great people. You go back to Pat Boone. Pat Boone is related to Daniel Boone. Just go back a couple of generations. He has a lot of fantastic stories to tell about his career and the kind of things that he did that were breakthrough events at that time. John Schneider talks a lot about getting into the character because he’s known obviously for his role in Dukes of Hazard, but he played a very bad character in The Have and Have Nots. But he did such a good job in all of them and he really is a patriot and he recognizes how valuable it is for us to educate our young people and to create patriots.

Bluey: That’s fantastic. As you look ahead to July 4th, what are some of the ways that you’ll be celebrating America’s 250th birthday, and are there particular things in our nation’s history that stand out to you as pivotal moments?

Carson: Boy, there’s so many of them. The Battle of Breed’s Hill, everybody calls it Bunker Hill, but it was really Breed’s Hill, the battle. Yet relatively few soldiers and they inflicted tremendous damage upon the British. The Battle of Long Island, George Washington was down to his last battalion and it looked like General Howe and the British had it all wrapped up and that was the end of this revolution with these silly Americans. And a very thick, dense cloud covering came down over the area. It lasted not only through the night but well into the next day, which gave Washington cover to sneak his men out.

Those kinds of incidents are amazing. The bulletproof Washington. George Washington was a courier during the French and Indian War for General Braddock and all the other couriers were killed. Washington had two horses shot from beneath him, had four bullet holes in his overcoat, no flesh wounds. And many years later, Washington was in the area. He hadn’t become president yet, but one of the old Indian chiefs said, “Please take me to see this man.” And when he got there he said, “Sir, I’m an excellent marksman and I shot you 17 times and my men shot you.” And pretty soon I said, “Just stop wasting your bullets on this guy.” And I wanted to come and meet the man who’s protected by the great spirit above and would become the leader of a great nation. That story used to be in all of our history books and then it became politically incorrect so they took it out.

But those kinds of things let you know that America was no accident and our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, says that our rights come from our creator. This is a marked difference from any other country. And look what happened. We went from a bunch of ragtag militiamen to the pinnacle of the world in record time and that was not a coincidence. So those kinds of things tell you that this is a very special place and we need to preserve it and we need to preserve the freedoms of it. And many people try to denigrate this country and say we’re systemically racist and we’re horrible to everybody else. But if that were the case, why are so many people trying to get in here?

Bluey: That’s true. If I can end with a question about your own personal role, I understand you’re starring in the film itself. You’ve had an incredible life story as well. I mean, overcoming challenges in your younger years, becoming a well-known brain surgeon, obviously serving in government and the first Trump administration. What is the message that you would have for young people who maybe see the division in our country or the broken world that we live in to give them the hopeful positive note that they can have a future like yours?

Carson: My message would be that everybody has a sphere of influence. You may not think you have a sphere of influence, but you do and you get to decide what you want to do with that sphere. Are you going to go along with the false narrative that anybody who disagrees with you is your enemy, or are you going to say, “It’s okay to disagree, and if two people agree about everything, one of them isn’t necessary.” Everybody say we just need to learn to talk to each other, but in your sphere of influence, you can be much more effective if you’re also knowledgeable. That’s key and that’s the pathway we want to get people started on. I hope that this film encourages people to read more and to find out what actually is the story of America. Who are these people? Why did they do what they did? Why did they give up so much? What were they trying to do and what responsibility do we have?

Bluey: Dr. Ben Carson, thanks for speaking to the Daily Signal.

Carson: Oh, it’s a pleasure.