The Immorality of Jimmy Carter

I finally understand how some people can hate George W. Bush so much. Their combined hate is dwarfed by my utter disgust and visceral loathing at Jimmy Carter. I despise him with the white hot heat of a thousand suns. There is no measure for the disappointment I feel for that spineless husk. I used to think he was just an inappropriate old man. You know the kind you nod politely to but dismiss just as readily. Now I believe that there's no way to make up for his shame.

It's becoming more and more clear that Carter has been angling for a UN job the whole time, playing up to those that oppose the Bush Administration throughout the world. He never misses a chance to slam to slam President Bush. Up until now, that seemed to be his raison d'etre. Now whether or not you are of the opinion that former sitting Presidents should keep their criticisms to a dull murmur if at all; regardless of what you feel about his politics, no one can honestly hold the opinion that he is acting in good faith any longer.

He is not an elder statesman. A public servant. He is just like everybody else trying to advance their own position in life. Carter's motives aren't altruistic. They are self-serving amd only masquerade as the for the general good.

And that's the distinction many people fail to draw. Many people go through life believe that they are being honest and telling the truth without doing their due diligence. How can you claim authenticity if you have spent no time trying to honestly verify something on your own? In fact, a person's a ability to testify to the factual nature of something is limited by his attempts to verify and more importantly disprove that fact. They can honestly believe they are telling the Truth? But what if their "Truth" is just plain wrong.

Rather than delve into this rigorous academic exercise, most people settle for for weak sort of relativism. But that's a cop out too. Aristotle said that the height of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. Point for point, Western civilization, on the whole, is superior to every other civilization in helping the maximum amount of people achieve the good life. There may be individual points where other cultures may have an advantage that weight differently to different people, but let's just look at drinking water. How many cultures have produced consistent potable water out of the tap? Without a good supply of that, growth is ultimately limited.

I've always had a problem with NGO's such as Medecins Sans Frontiers. Not because they help sick people. Who could fault them for that? But when an organization like MSF goes into a host country, it eviscerates any trust the people might have for the local system. More than that, it completely incapacitates the local medical talent who need to step uo and not aside. MSF should know better and they do. They have attempted to develop infracstructure but as volunteers, the doctors quickly lose their patience when confronted with the labryintine 3rd world bureaucracy. In addition, the doctors, while smart, are not equipped or educated enough to create long-term systemic institutional change. So everybody ends up doing 'what they think in right' and natives get screwed in the long term.

It seems apparent by my tone that I fault the Western system here disproportionately. I do and for good reason. We in the West should know better. We have the opportunities for due diligence and it is our responsibility to use it. When it comes down to it, the results of a course of action are the only measures we can judge that action by. Was it effective or not? Morality is a different issue. If you knew a course of action would produce disastrous results but cannot resist doing it for you own personal reason, is that not the very definition of guilt?

So I have developed this Hierarchy of Morality in the Event of Disatrous Results:
1. Didn't know and had no way of knowing (Just wrong- not due to error)
2. Didn't know and looked in a sloppy (intellectually dishonest) manner
3. Didn't know and chose not to look
4. Did know but had other agenda
5. Did know but arrogant
6 Did know but optimistic

In these examples, you are always wrong and must be responsibile for your actions. However, in meting out proper retribution, we have to look at the inherent morality of an issue. In the case of Carter, clearly we have a man who is educated and has access to information. We don't need men who do what they think is right. We need men who do what is right regardless of what they think. That's the definition of service and the sine qua non of a public servant. Sadly, Carter no longer comes even close.