Dr. Ben Carson warns Florida delegates of potential "dumbing down" of America

Florida delegates needed their “Florida Grown OJ” to kick in quickly Tuesday morning- as soon as their featured speaker, Dr. Ben Carson, took the stage the focus was all issues.

The delegation breakfast was sponsored by Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, and he kept the air light by joking about how nobody was allowed to leave the hall hungry or he wouldn’t be doing his job. Bloody Mary’s and mimosas were also on hand for those who “partied like Republicans last night”- in Putnam’s words.

The crowd was certainly lively when Lt. Col. Allen West came on stage to do the invocation. The attention truly focused, though, when Carson- who was quick to point out his primary residence is now in Florida- started speaking.

Carson started out by telling the delegation about his upbringing and goal growing up that he would one day be “middle class”. That led to the central theme he continued to drive home- you control your own future and it’s up to you to make something happen.

Much of Carson’s attention went to education. He voiced concern about the “dumbing down” of the population and the impact that has when elections come around, saying “the nature of the country is changing”. He says until we focus on improving education, people aren’t going to free themselves from dependency, like on the government. He sees this as closely tied to criminal justice reform- another area he spoke to- saying it’s warehousing, where people go in with few skills and little education and come out the same way, leading to high recidivism.

How to answer that, according to Carson, is by creating opportunity. He says the answer is not to rob from one to give to the other, but rather to give people a chance to create change.

“This country is in a lot of trouble, and one of the reason’s it’s in so much trouble is because we concentrate on the wrong things,” Carson said to reporters following his speech to the delegation.

Carson was referring to the attention paid to whether Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, plagiarized part of her primetime Convention address from a speech Michelle Obama made during a prior Democratic National Convention. He doesn’t believe there was plagiarism, saying instead that the similarities point to how the big issues aren’t partisan, but American.

“The future of our children is at stake,” he says.

A host of other topics went under the microscope, but the one that drew some of the biggest response from Florida delegates was Carson speaking about terrorism. He said the country needs to stop worrying about being politically correct, and that’s one of the reasons Donald Trump should be the next President- because he will bring “fire” and won’t hold back. The only bigger salvo came from Carson distinguishing that, while he has no problem with the separation of Church and State, he takes issue with the separation of God and State.

For some Florida delegates, like Thelma Rohan out of Bay County, Carson’s message hit home.

“I have eight grandchildren and I look at them some times and want to weep because I fear what’s coming if we don’t get it [the country] back,” she says.

Rohan believes Carson hammered home her belief that Trump knows what needs to be done and can do what it takes to create that change.