The Islamic State (ISIS) has one thing in common with the American Revolution: leaders with strong convictions and a willingness to die for their beliefs, retired neurosurgeon and rumored GOP presidential candidate
Dr. Ben Carson told "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News Friday .
Americans today, by contrast, "are in the process of giving away all of our beliefs for the sake of political correctness," Carson said on the show.
Carson called the comparison a "warning," not a statement of moral equivalency between our Founding Fathers and the barbaric fighters known as ISIS who are terrorizing Iraq and Syria.
Revisiting a speech he gave this week to Republican officials in San Diego, Carson told O'Reilly that ragtag American revolutionaries beat the British Empire "because they had convictions" and "believed in what they were doing to the point that they were willing to die for it."
"Fast forward to today, and you have ISIS," said Carson.
Carson cautioned O'Reilly that he was "not saying that as a comparison between our patriots and ISIS," adding that "the liberal media will of course take that out of context."
"They have the wrong philosophy completely — [I] totally disagree with them — but they also have strong convictions and are willing to die for what they believe," he said.
Carson named "honesty" as one core value Americans are surrendering to political correctness.
"People are afraid to express what they actually believe because they’re afraid that they’re going to be ostracized or called a name," he said.
Carson, who has not declared himself a presidential candidate, also said he welcomes a crowded field of Republican contenders — "the more the merrier," he said.
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