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(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
One committee member, said Sowell, “clearly implied that the prize was meant as a criticism of the Bush administration whose ‘threat of the use of power’ he contrasted with Carter’s ‘principles that conflicts must resolved as far as possible through mediation and international cooperation.’ Another member of the Nobel Prize committee was even more explicit that the award ‘should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken.’”
Jeff Jacoby called the Nobel committee a “smug little group of Norwegian politicians” who “chose Carter for the Nobel Peace Prize in order to take slap at a superpower willing to go to war, if necessary, to depose a vicious tyrant.” He called upon Carter “to turn the prize down” to “show that he cares more for the honor of the United States than for personal glory.” Cal Thomas suggested that the Nobel prize be renamed the “Ignominious Appeasement Award.”
The commentators focus on Carter’s record as president to make their case. They cite his willingness to take the word of Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro and to believe the North Korean government’s promise to freeze their development of nuclear weapons. They recall his decision to turn over the Panama Canal to an unstable Panamanian government. They blame him for setting the stage for the fall of the Shah of Iran and what Sowell called the “weak-kneed hand-wringing over Iran’s seizure of American hostages.”
Jacoby also mentions how “during the run-up to the Gulf War in 1990…Carter actively tried to sabotage President George H. W. Bush’s efforts to win U.N. Security Council approval for armed action to liberate Kuwait. Without notifying Bush, Carter wrote to the heads of state of each member of the Security Council, urging them to vote against the U.S.-drafted resolution.” Jacoby adds, “Lobbying foreign governments to subvert the diplomatic efforts of a sitting president is something ex-presidents simply do not do. But Carter not only did it, he (later) even boasted of it.”
Fair commentary, I would say. The facts are the facts. Carter’s is a dismal record. I applaud the comments of those who have made the case about both him and the Nobel committee that applauds his willingness to side with America’s adversaries. Indeed, adding anything at this time might seem like piling on. But let me make a few comments anyway, because there are Catholic Jimmy Carters.
What do I mean by that? Well, I don’t know this for sure, of course, but I suspect that Carter is a genuinely good man, who takes his Christian beliefs seriously. I think he would be a good neighbor and fellow parishioner. He would be there to drive elderly people to the doctor’s office and lug stuff around to set up the Christmas Fair. I think his years of volunteering for Habitat for Humanity attest to that. From all appearances, he really does work on these projects to build homes for the poor, unlike the politicians who pose with a hammer for the cameras for a few minutes.
Yet, consider what his perception of Christianity does to his view of the world. It leads him into seemingly reflexive condemnations of the United States, what Jeane Kirkpatrick called the “blame America first” frame of mind. Surely, if it is presumptuous to assume that this country is always in the right, there is something unbalanced about always perceiving us as the villains in the piece. We can’t be in the wrong all the time.
And that is what the Carter-types tend to do, including Carter-type Catholics. You know the people I mean: the folks who applauded the activism of the Berrigans, members of the Catholic Worker movement and Pax Christi, for example. Check the record. They wanted to ban the bomb; they called our soldiers “baby killers” in the Vietnam war; they regularly march outside the U.S. Army’s School for the Americas, because of its effort to suppress Marxist movements in Latin America; they condemned the U.S. invasion of Panama and are prominent among the groups who want to prevent an invasion of Saddam Hussein. In all seriousness, I can’t think of a single time since the end of World War II that the Catholic left has backed an application of American military power. This is a syndrome that deserves attention. We are within our rights to ask why.
Am I saying that they are Communist agents, “infiltrators”? No, I am not. Over the years, there have been people who have tried to convince me that there has been a Communist subversion of the Church. But I just can’t buy it, even though, I concede, it is no harder to imagine a Communist infiltration of the CIA – which we know has taken place – than of the Church. My belief is that there are other, more plausible, explanations. In fact, by and large, I am willing to accept that, for both Jimmy Carter and the Catholic left, it is a sincere, but misguided, interpretation of Christ’s words about loving even “those who hate us” and turning “the other cheek” that leads them to make the case for America’s enemies.
But conceding this does not mean that we cannot be critical of what this perception of Christianity leads to. As the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. And surely it would be a hellish situation on earth if we had listened to the Catholic left over the last 50 years. Can anyone sincerely argue that the world would be a better, more Christian, place if the United States had not opposed Soviet expansion? That life throughout Latin America would be better today if Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had had their way? That the downfall of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the liberation of the satellite nations of Eastern Europe have not brought moral progress to the world?
Sometimes a wisecrack is an excuse for serious thinking. But not always. I have always thought this one makes a profound point. “America and the other capitalist countries of the world use border guards to keep people from sneaking into their countries; Communist governments used them to keep their people from getting out.”
