To give him the benefit of the doubt, former President Carter may have Christian intentions, but he supports a major swath of the atheistic materialism of liberal-socialist-progressivism.
While Franklin Roosevelt remains, without contest, our worst-ever President, Mr. Carter is our worst living ex-President.
For a scholarly exposition of Jimmy Carter's place in history, read the article by Joshua Muravchik from the February issue of Commentary magazine.
What emerges is the picture of a man prepared to present half-truths and deliberately distorted versions of fact, a man ready to praise the most loathsome of dictators, while denouncing the policies of the United States.
As supplemental background on Mr. Carter's actions, see "Democratically Elected?", which describes one aspect of the liberal paradigm espoused by Mr. Carter.
Another aspect of his liberalism is explained by Mr. Carter's brand of Christianity, which is more akin to the last century's Social Gospel movement than to the Bible-based traditions of Judeo-Christianity.
With regard to the Social Gospel movement, the progenitor of Mr. Carter's quasi-Christian world view, I wrote in "Truth":
Even before the 1917 Russian Revolution, leading universities in the United States had begun a transition from the Christian roots of our nation into atheistic, secular materialism in their teaching of the so-called social sciences.
Nominally-Christian theological seminaries were in the vanguard of the movement toward socialism. Rochester Theological Seminary’s professor Walter Rauschenbusch, one of the best known socialist spokesmen of his era, was a founder of the Social Gospel movement late in the 19th century. Social Gospel was nothing more nor less than socialism masquerading as Christianity.
Social Gospel embraced the avowed aims of socialism, which sound similar to the results that flow from the Bible’s commandment to love one’s neighbor as he would wish to have his neighbor love him. The insurmountable problem is that socialism, and therefore Social Gospel, is atheistic and materialistic, i.e., the antithesis of Christianity and religious Judaism.
To believe that Social Gospel is true Christianity is to believe that the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat was truly democratic.
In Christianizing the Social Order (1912), Professor Rauschenbusch wrote:
“The Socialists found the Church against them and thought God was against them, too. They have had to do God’s work without the sense of God’s presence to hearten them . . . Whatever the sins of individual Socialists, and whatever the shortcomings of Socialist organizations, they are tools in the hands of the Almighty . . . Socialism is one of the chief powers of the coming age . . . God will raise up Socialism because the organized Church was too blind, or too slow, to realize God’s ends.”
Two other prominent seminaries, among many others, were active promoters of socialism. Their spokesmen also were nationally known figures: Dr. Harry F. Ward of Union Theological Seminary in New York and Dr. Bernard Iddings-Bell of St. Stephens College in Annandale, New York.
Dr. Ward wrote The New Social Order, to express sympathy for Socialism and to laud the Bolshevik revolutionary movement in Russia, which he regarded as a desirable replacement for the Russian Orthodox Christian Church. Dr. Ward also was chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which actively defended the terrorist tactics of the radical IWW labor organization, whose members murdered more than a dozen employees and executives of industrial companies they sought to intimidate with demands for labor seizure of management control.
Dr. Iddings-Bell in Right and Wrong After the War, in this case World War I, advocated Sigmund Freud’s version of Marxian materialism, in which human life is controlled by hunger and the sex urge. From this theory of secular and materialistic human nature, he concluded that (1) private property should be abolished; (2) income earned from investments, savings accounts, and rental property is robbery; (3) the family as a social unit should be abandoned except as a temporary arrangement for purely sexual relations.
In his sermon delivered on May 23, 1920, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Dr. Iddings-Bell gave his support to revolutionary labor demands for abolishment of the wage system and control of industry by communistic labor unions. He declared that the New Social Order had arrived and that people were obliged to accept it. Among other things, that meant that internationalism must replace American patriotism.
That is essentially the foreign policy stance that Jimmy Carter tirelessly promotes in his self-appointed role as diplomat extraordinaire.
atheistic materialist of liberal-socialist-progressivism
The sucker is a communist, OK?
“Diplomat extraordinaire”?
Seems more like he envisions himself as savior of the world.
atheistic materialism of liberal-socialist-progressivism.
Duh. I aren’t no intellectual, but aint dat a commie we be talking about?
I really don’t know on this one. It’s a tough race.
FDR does have a small advantage over Carter. FDR didn’t have decades of history proving that his foolish socialistic society would fail miserably…Carter did. FDR supported these programs (much smaller in nature than today) out of the genuine desire to help people in lesser positions, not use them as pawns to gain points with the Hollywood crowd and the college know-nothings.
You may feel that FDR was the worst President, but Carter easily gives him a run for his money, and this one definately involves a photo finish, which Carter wins, because we know (at least now) that the man had a seething hate of israel as the guiding force for his ME policy.
Before he ran for President with the persuasive lobbying of bible college ‘believers’; Carter was once the most dangerous man in the world…the commander of the U.S. Nautilus, the world’s first atomic submarine..invincible and a WMD.
He was a protege of Hyman Rickover who built up today’s Navy.
I could have joined the Carter White house, but I really didn’t think he’d win the election. He and his supporters had a strength of belief—don’t underestimate this type of Christianity, that was much stronger than his competitors and carried him through the convention, the primaries and the general elecion.
There are two Carters….the compassionate Christian and the Commander of the U.S. Nautilus.
Let us also remember that Roosevelt undertook his misguided policies in the midst of the greatest economic crisis in American history. Any judgment of him has to be made in light of that. And if we’re going to discuss the title of “worst President,” we have to consider foreign policy. On that front, Carter doesn’t belong in the same contest as Roosevelt.
FDR won the election from a populist socialist, Huey Long of Louisana.
He did by stealing, err. adapting Long’s platform and marketing it to the populous NorthEast and MidWesterners.
The new deal, etc. were all drawn from dah KINGFISH!
FDR was a ‘world class’ leader; Carter was cloaked in liberal Baptist dogma. FDR had Eleanor, who had as much influence as Hillary did on Clinton; Roslyne kept a very low, traditional profile.
I guess what I’m saying is that these are two very different Presidencies and barely comparable.
How is LBJ left out of this equation? The Great Society. Vietnam. Hippies. My God, if a liberal like this is left out of the equation, what must one do to aspire to such imeptitude and failure.
OldRepublic,
Until you stop accusing people who disagree with you of capital offenses, you will never be able to have a civil debate with anyone.
OR,
Its “100% RIGHT,” not write! Since you’ve taken it upon yourself to critique others’ typing, I figured I’d play the same game.
On your recommendation I looked at some of your paleo-creep web-sites and (after showering to remove the residual taint I felt for having gone there) I have come to conclude that paleos are even more misguided than I had imagined.
One bright light wrote an article gushing with praise for Jimmy (stagflation, hostage-crisis, anti-semite, America-hating) Carter; and another kook co-authored a book with Gary Hart. These guys are true conservatives?
OldRepublic,
May I make a suggestion? Work with Dan Phillips, or work individually, to develop a series of individual essays on several of the tenets in your above list. I appreciate the desire to be succinct, but many of the above are sort of motherhood/apple pie statements to most conservatives. Very, very few people (if any) frequenting this site can be considered to be radical or even moderate liberals in the contemporary sense of the word. None of us, for example, need a primer on the hypocrisy of affirmative action, or the fundamentals of capitalism versus a welfare state, or the ways in which the Supreme Court engages in social engineering, or the extremism of political correctness.
For example, what is the difference between “multiculturalism” and “left-wing multiculturalism?” What is the difference between being “pro life” and believing an in inherent right to life? Under what conditions does one forfeit their right to life? What exactly does it mean to believe in the importance of hierarchies and what are the practical implementations/implications of this? What is the alternative to a hierarchy and in what ways are we either aligning with or deviating from a hierarchy? Why is the proposition nation thesis so inherently flawed – not just historically, but morally/philosophically/intellectually/practically? What if we could indeed create a nation of people that shared a rather narrowly defined ideology, both politically and religiously, that was colorblind?
What we’d like is something more than just a recitation of Kirk, Weaver, et. al., or a pedantic recitation of history. We’d like a thoughtful presentation of fundamental paleo viewpoints and specifically how these viewpoints contrast with or coincide with other views commonly viewed as “conservative” by most members of the political spectrum.
Mr. Phillips made a good start with his “What the Heck” article, but much more is needed in my opinion. You seem to be both well read and willing/able to articulate paleo views in the comment threads to most articles/essays. Why not take the next step and articulate those views more fully for the benefit of us all via your own essays or articles here?
WolvenBear / Honker,
Two issues:
1. The author was referring to living ex-presidents here. His first sentence says as much. FDR also had four terms to leave his thumbprint, while LBJ had only one. So, I’m not sure if you were suggesting if LBJ should go down as the worst president, or worst ex-president.
2. It seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon that former presidents now feel compelled to go out and change society more than they were ever able to do so while actually occupying the Oval Office. LBJ and FDR may have been a completely inept presidents, but once they left office, did they continue to seek the limelight as erstwhile diplomats, pundits, and influencers, or did they largely retire from the public eye? Thus, while they may have been particularly bad presidents, they might have been rather model ex-presidents. Namely, invisible and passive.
OldRepublic,
Very few conservatives will deny that FDR implemented abysmal policies and had distinctly liberal politics. But “leadership” can be quite devoid from ones politics. One can decisively and couragerously lead his compatriots into disaster, yet still be an effective leader precisely because he can convice so many to follow his errant vision.
Few would rally to Hitler’s defense in terms of his politics or beliefs. But few could deny his ability to lead and inspire.
Thus, I’m not sure I disagree with fjh’s characterization of FDR as “world class” leader. Can you imagine what the man would have been able to accomplish had he been a paleo, for example? Would you then still accuse him of being a bad leader? Leadership is quite separate from ideology. Grant and Lee should be ample evidence of that.