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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.

- Pete Barkett, August, 2017

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