I love Ben Carson. He calls things as he sees them.

This trait, plus the facts that he is a brilliant surgeon, a conservative and a black man are the reasons the Left hates him so, and the reasons they try so desperately to make him appear wrong, uneducated or ignorant.

Right now, the Left and its media cohorts are working double time to slam Carson because he made a damaging and very correct observation about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during his appearance at the Republican National Convention.

That observation is that Clinton in her college years was heavily influenced by the works of Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, who offered her a job, which she declined after interviewing him for her senior thesis at Wellesley College.

Although her thesis suggests she didn’t embrace all of Alinsky’s strategies, it also makes clear that she held him up as a role model, and mainly just disagreed over his belief that it was not possible to change the system from within.

The reason any of this matters is not just because of Alinsky’s self-described radicalism that helped shape Clinton’s views of how to wage politics, but because of what Alinsky said in the acknowledgement section of “Rules for Radicals.”

Carson said at the RNC, “Now, one of the things that I have learned about Hillary Clinton is that one of her heroes, her mentors, was Saul Alinsky. And her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky — this was someone she greatly admired. And let me tell you something about Saul Alinsky. So he wrote a book called Rules for Radicals. It acknowledges Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom.”

The various denials and excuses being spread by the liberal media today will tell you things like, oh, it wasn’t really an acknowledgement, it was just a funny thing to say, meant humorously; or, it’s just quote taken out of context; or, Alinsky didn’t really believe in Lucifer; etc. In short, don’t believe your own eyes.

Because this is what Alinsky actually wrote:

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer. — SAUL ALINSKY”

He quotes himself (using the word “acknowledgement”) speaking admiringly of how Lucifer (aka Satan) rebelled (against God) and “won” his own kingdom, which most people know as Hell.

One of the many, many, many failings in Alinsky’s thought processes is that he fails to see any distinction between being a “radical” as he calls himself, and being a “rebel” like Thomas Paine, to whom he compares himself. Paine, obviously, was rebelling against a corrupt dictatorship in order to restore the inalienable rights of mankind.

Lucifer’s rebellion, according to tradition, was based solely on his own uncontrollable pride and selfishness (and it ended with the Fall, in which Satan was expelled from Heaven and dragged all his friends and allies down with him). That more accurately describes the character of the radical as Alinsky portrays it in his book.

Alinsky lacked the wit to see the difference, and so, too, does Clinton, as her career and now her campaign have shown an embrace of the Alinsky strategies she adored in college.

So here is a man whose rule book is the standard for leftist community agitation, a man Clinton obviously held as a role model for herself, and his role model is Satan.

Draw your own conclusion.

Don’t expect the Left to acknowledge it, even though the “Satanic stench” occasionally wafts out publicly from various liberal groups, as when pro-abortionists in Texas three years ago chanted “Hail Satan”in the state capital.

It’s unlikely that Clinton draws pentagrams on hotel room floors and engages in unholy sacrifice, or at least if she did, you wouldn’t hear about it.

But the Alinsky attitude that it is all right to reject all that is holy and good, so long as you get what you want, that is also the Clinton philosophy. Whether you believe in Satan or not, rational people should reject that line of thinking as being unworthy of the next holder of the Oval Office.