Carter was Ethical

I'm old enough to remember President Carter. He was our last President to really care about ethics. There are thorny questions one could pose to the other Presidents that would just dissolve any pretences they might have. I wonder about Obama sometimes, now that we know he approved spying on Americans. I don't believe anything that his spy chief says. They didn't want us to know about their spying. Now they are spending all their passion on vindictiveness, on their plans to punish whoever betrayed their secret. But it should not have been a secret in the first place. They spied on ordinary Americans on a massive scale. Now that they're caught, they say, "Oh, it's not so bad. See, we were doing because of, you know, terrorism and stuff." I just don't believe it. If they had been honest in the first place and told the country what they were doing, then that would be one thing, but they have their hand caught in the cookie jar and are just trying to deflect some heat.

When Reagan ran against Carter in '79, I switched my support to Reagan in alignment with my father, but we were wrong. Carter took the blame for a sour economy and the Iranian hostage crisis. That's why he lost the election. Reagan paid off Iran with weapons to get the hostages back and then spent his way out of the recession. All he did was spend, spend, spend. He paid off the Iranians and paid off private companies to build more bombs.

Carter was special in that he kept on working for the country even out of office. He was not afraid to state his opinions about world issues, even if these opinions sometimes made him unpopular with certain groups like the pro-Israel lobby. I am convinced he spoke from conscience more than any of these other Presidents we have had. I listen to these other Presidents speak and I read quotes from these guys and it seems to me they are calculating every word, even down to the punctuation they use, based upon political factors. They're good at politics, maybe better than Carter on politics, but not so good at ethics.

Is ethics without value? Many people think so, including those that are in positions of authority today. I think having ethics is what distinguishes a great leader from a mediocre one. People do respect ethics. Otherwise all our heroes would be villains, but they're not, are they? Our heroes are people who did what they thought was right. I think ethics bestows a generous reward on those that practice it, because ethics, more times than not, coincides with the wisest course of action. Intelligent, educated fools scoff at ethics and think they know better at their peril, because the world's complexity defeats even the most cunning. It is wise to walk in the way of righteousness and to refuse those opportunities to steal what seem to be trifling advantages.