"If we despise our own government we have no future"

The words of Jimmy Carter, from his inaugural address, January 20, 1977.



Carter's administration wasn't "progressive," or even particularly "liberal," as the terms were understood in the United States of the mid-70s, which is the last time those terms really meant anything in America. (To anyone who wants to champion the liberal bona fides of the Carter White House, I have two words: Zbigniew Brzezinski.) Carter himself was the safe, "centrist" choice of the Democratic establishment. And that says much about where America's middle was 30 years ago, and about the scary, dark place to which it has since been absconded.

I'm old enough to remember the Seventies as a decade of disappointment in North America. Lots of promise, extinguished. Carter began well, but faltered. And as a young Canadian on the left, I was perpetually frustrated by Pierre Trudeau's half-measures.

To think that there's a very good chance now that the Seventies might have been the high-water mark of social democracy, liberal policy and industrial-age civilization - well, I can't begin to tell you how that depresses me.

From Carter's address:

You have given me a great responsibility--to stay close to you, to be worthy of you, and to exemplify what you are. Let us create together a new national spirit of unity and trust. Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes.

Let us learn together and laugh together and work together and pray together, confident that in the end we will triumph together in the right.

...

Let our recent mistakes bring a resurgent commitment to the basic principles of our Nation, for we know that if we despise our own government we have no future. We recall in special times when we have stood briefly, but magnificently, united. In those times no prize was beyond our grasp.

But we cannot dwell upon remembered glory. We cannot afford to drift. We reject the prospect of failure or mediocrity or an inferior quality of life for any person. Our Government must at the same time be both competent and compassionate.

...

We have learned that "more" is not necessarily "better," that even our great Nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems. We cannot afford to do everything, nor can we afford to lack boldness as we meet the future. So, together, in a spirit of individual sacrifice for the common good, we must simply do our best.

Now it's Midnight in America, Carter's words sound like a faint transmission from a galaxy far, far away. George Bush's inaugural dragon breath - his vow to bring the "untamed fire of freedom to the darkest corners of the world" - is rhetoric worthy of Pyongyang. Just not nearly as amusing, because unlike Kim, Bush has the means to act out his mania, which is forever being fanned by his Straussian cadres. "Fortunately for the oppressed, America’s influence is considerable and we will use it confidently in freedom’s cause." Katie, bar the door!

How they must laugh, away from the microphones. How often then do you think their much-abused word, "freedom," passes their lips?

I'm sure it plays well to his doped-up, ditto-headed base, who can't wait for the flat-screen spectacle of "Showdown: Tehran." For everyone else, this headline in The Scotsman should do: "A Shiver Runs Round the World."