Jimmy Carter: An Opinion That Makes Sense!
The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal of December 27, 2007, has the following commentary on Jimmy Carter and the reasons for his bizarre opinions. My take is that the analysis is correct and seems to be a phenomenon of aging liberals who tend to forget that progress only comes with some pain and they cannot accept that pain - but must assure that all underdogs are saved this pain. Interesting to think about!
"Not Bird Nor Plane Nor Even Frog
Is Jimmy Carter an anti-Semite? Shmuley Boteach, who styles himself "America's rabbi," argues in the Jerusalem Post that the answer is no:
Jimmy Carter is not so much anti-Semite as anti-intellectual, not so much a Jew-hater as a boor. The real explanation behind his limitless hostility to Israel is a total lack of any moral understanding.
Carter wants to do what's just. His heart's in the right place. He just can't figure out what the right is. He is, and always has been, a man of good intentions bereft of good judgment. He invariably finds himself defending tyrants and dictators at the expense of their oppressed peoples. Not because he is a bad man, but because he is a confused man.
Carter subscribes to what I call the Always Root for the Underdog school of morality. Rather than develop any real understanding of a conflict, immediately he sides with the weaker party, however wicked or immoral.
Israel has tanks and F-16's. The Palestinians don't. Therefore the Palestinians are being oppressed. Never mind that the Palestinians have rejected every offer to live side by side with Israel in peace and elected a government pledged to Israel's annihilation. Their poverty dictates the righteousness of their cause even if their actions speak otherwise.
Boteach likens this attitude to that of marriage counselors "who always take the side of the wife in an ugly dispute in the belief that a woman, inherently weaker than her husband, is always the innocent and aggrieved party. Even where the evidence points to the wife as being violent and unreasonable, such arbitrators cannot conceive of the husband as anything but the oppressor."
But the "Always Root for the Underdog school" is even more perverse when applied to international relations. It's not just that to side with Yasser Arafat--or Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein or Robert Mugabe--is to choose the wrong side vis-à-vis Israel, America or some other Western power. It is that to side with these dictators is to side against their own people, who are the actual underdogs in the situation.
Meanwhile, America-hating polemicist Robert Fisk, in London's Independent, sings the praises of Carter, whom he describes as "the only American president approaching sainthood." That Lincoln was such a slacker!"
"Not Bird Nor Plane Nor Even Frog
Is Jimmy Carter an anti-Semite? Shmuley Boteach, who styles himself "America's rabbi," argues in the Jerusalem Post that the answer is no:
Jimmy Carter is not so much anti-Semite as anti-intellectual, not so much a Jew-hater as a boor. The real explanation behind his limitless hostility to Israel is a total lack of any moral understanding.
Carter wants to do what's just. His heart's in the right place. He just can't figure out what the right is. He is, and always has been, a man of good intentions bereft of good judgment. He invariably finds himself defending tyrants and dictators at the expense of their oppressed peoples. Not because he is a bad man, but because he is a confused man.
Carter subscribes to what I call the Always Root for the Underdog school of morality. Rather than develop any real understanding of a conflict, immediately he sides with the weaker party, however wicked or immoral.
Israel has tanks and F-16's. The Palestinians don't. Therefore the Palestinians are being oppressed. Never mind that the Palestinians have rejected every offer to live side by side with Israel in peace and elected a government pledged to Israel's annihilation. Their poverty dictates the righteousness of their cause even if their actions speak otherwise.
Boteach likens this attitude to that of marriage counselors "who always take the side of the wife in an ugly dispute in the belief that a woman, inherently weaker than her husband, is always the innocent and aggrieved party. Even where the evidence points to the wife as being violent and unreasonable, such arbitrators cannot conceive of the husband as anything but the oppressor."
But the "Always Root for the Underdog school" is even more perverse when applied to international relations. It's not just that to side with Yasser Arafat--or Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein or Robert Mugabe--is to choose the wrong side vis-à-vis Israel, America or some other Western power. It is that to side with these dictators is to side against their own people, who are the actual underdogs in the situation.
Meanwhile, America-hating polemicist Robert Fisk, in London's Independent, sings the praises of Carter, whom he describes as "the only American president approaching sainthood." That Lincoln was such a slacker!"
posted by Jim | 8:43 AM
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