I have just finished Jimmy Carter’s “Our Endangered Values”. This book is written in a very accessible manner and is a quick read. President Carter’s take on the religious right and the neocons is quite interesting. He sees in them a similarity in style in that they are both absolutely certain of their rectitude about everything and unwilling to negotiate with anyone who might disagree with them. I might add that they have similar ideas about power: they want it without limit.
I have always been perplexed at the way some people vilify Jimmy Carter as if he were the worst president in their lifetimes. I have the opposite opinion. He was the best president during my lifetime, and we would have been a lot better off if he had been re-elected. Growth of government was low during his tenure, and he was relatively fiscally responsible. His commitment to human rights abroad seemed to me to represent a commitment to limited government power. He got the hostages out of Iran alive and did not start a war. Back in his day, I was free to travel to Cuba. I wish I had done.
He was the only actual believing and practicing Christian in the White House during my lifetime. He was an outsider, though, and he was torpedoed by his own party. He can hardly be blamed for the crappy economy that prevailed at the time, but I routinely hear people talk about his causing inflation. As if there had not been sky high inflation under Nixon and Ford.
When you examine the national debt and the growth of government and concomitant loss of liberty over the last 40 years, you can lay almost all of it at the doorsteps of Ronald Reagan and GW Bush, not Jimmy Carter. Reagan has been undergoing apotheosis for some time now especially since he died, but he really was a disaster for the country. It galls me to hear folks talk about Reagan as if he had saved America from Carter.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The reason the Ayatollah is vilified in the United States, instead of being thought of as a religious leader like Korea's Rev Moon, is because of the snob attitude and jealous minds of the Iranian students who came to study here under President Carter. I studied at Texas A&M University from 1974 until 1977, and revisited Iranians I met in 1980 and 1981. When they first arrived, they were put in student dormitories and comingled with American students, and were popular with classmates. They were good soccer players, and made the school's team. So were Palestinians who studied there, and played soccer on the team (Benjamin Hassani, for example). Then Mohammed Cehzat, his family Nehzar and Ahmad, his friend Rhouallah Shirazi, decided to move away from the Corp of Cadets influence to pursue radical policies in America (marching around the Dresser Building in Houston weekly, going to the Circle Line in NY/NJ to seize the Statue of Liberty, etc.) The Deans of the Colleges recruited students to watch them, fearing the conservative university would become the next Berkeley. When they started studying Stalinism, I had enough and broke contact. When I returned during the hostage crisis to get their inputs, they were psychotic, and I put one to sleep after I saw him living on roaches, rats, Skaggs garbage, selling himself to Corp Members, getting water for drinking from neighbors hoses, etc. The landlord took down my car license number and the College Station Police contacted me in Houston to make him move, one way or another. The Corp of Cadets thought they knew how to manipulate them, by taking their passports. Have you ever left a country without a passport? Just try to leave HEB without paying for your groceries, and you'll get my drift. Mr Carter is still in my opinion a great president. His Administration lost control of the Iranian students not in Tehran, but by allowing them to isolate themselves in America.
"He was the only actual believing and practicing Christian in the White House during my lifetime."
I agree with the rest of your post, but being a Christian is not a requirement for serving as President, nor does it offer any particular qualification for the job.
Post a Comment