WAS HE RIGHT ABOUT US ALL? From Jimmy Carter’s Speech “Crisis of Confidence” July 15, 1979 “I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy… The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. Weve always believed in something called progress. Weve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own… Our people are losing that faith; not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy… 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… The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote... As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning… We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate. We remembered when the phrase sound as a dollar was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed. Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nations life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual. What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You dont like it, and neither do I… We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path Ive warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose … “ FOLKS… it’s seems pretty obvious to me, some 35 years down the road that we chose the path Carter warned against, the path of materialistic self-indulgence, the path towards chaos and immobility.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 13:54:00 +0000
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