On Past Judgements
Don't it always seem to go
that you don't know what you've
got til it's gone. - Joni Mitchell
In the 1976 Presidential
election, I voted for John Anderson. I
was then, and still am, a liberal. So, Gerald
Ford was not a consideration, especially after he pardoned Nixon, which was
unforgivable. But I didn't trust Jimmy
Carter, who claimed to be honest. I
didn't know much about the Southern Baptist Convention, but what I did know was
that they opposed most everything that I supported. Carter was a Southern Baptist, so Carter was
out. Four years later, I had changed my
mind, and I enthusiastically supported Carter against Reagan, and over the
years I grew to appreciate him more and more.
Carter turned out to be
much more honest and thoughtful than the average politician. And he was open to change. He recently left the Southern Baptist
Convention after 60 years due to their belief that women should be subservient
to men.
Here is an example of some prescient thoughts,
from a 1979 speech by then-President Jimmy Carter:
"Too many of
us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no
longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered
that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for
meaning. . .
"You see every extreme position defended to
the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another.
You often see a balanced and fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little
sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without
friends. . ."
Carter
warned the nation against following the “path that leads to fragmentation and
self-interest”, for “down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right
to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others”.
We
have lost our way … because we have exalted “a mistaken idea of freedom";
our self-indulgence had led us to assert every right as absolute, every form of
compromise or regulation as inimical to freedom, and … to elevate the very
avatar of self-absorption to the highest office in the land.
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