Carter’s Accomplishments: The 39th President

Historians are often tempted to devote little time or energy to studying the presidency of Jimmy Carter. If they do pay attention to his one four-year term in office, they routinely dismiss his administration as a failure. But he might merit a second look.

Carter continued at least two agenda items from his predecessor, President Gerald R. Ford, whom Carter defeated in the November 1976 election. Upon taking office in January 1977, Carter embraced both Ford’s affection for deregulation and Ford’s commitment to take an unwavering stance in support of human rights.

In the transportation sector, Carter achieved some milestones of deregulation, as historian Kai Bird writes:

Despite his aversion to political machinations — such as cutting deals with smarmy congressmen — Carter was an effective and extraordinarily productive president. He deregulated the airline industry, making it possible for middle-class Americans to fly.

He was willing to contradict one of his party's major allies: organized labor. The Democratic Party had significant support from labor unions at the time. Carter risked their dissent:

Trade unions opposed his deregulation of airlines, trucking and railroads.

Although deregulation ultimately proved to energize the economy and help working-class families, the move was one factor in Carter’s loss in the November 1980 election. Many union members voted for Carter’s opponent, President Ronald Reagan.

Carter maintained President Ford’s focus on human rights. During the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, this focus must be understood in the context of the Cold War. More and more evidence was coming to light, revealing the ongoing violation of human rights by the Soviet Socialists, spanning decades from the 1930s to the 1980s.

President Ford drew international attention to the question with a document known as the Helsinki Accords. Carter continued Ford’s pattern. A global consensus among many nations emerged, and international sentiment was against the USSR. During Carter’s administration, Kai Bird notes,

The principle of human rights became a cornerstone of America’s foreign policy.

Jimmy Carter was the first president to use his nickname in an official capacity. Rarely, if ever, was he referred to as “James,” but routinely as “Jimmy.” This was a departure from two centuries of precedent.

Gerald Ford was never officially listed as “Jerry,” and John Kennedy was never officially cited as “Jack.” The nicknames were only for the closest friends and family. But Jimmy Carter was known universally by that name.

Some later presidents would follow Carter’s pattern: Bill Clinton was never cited as “William,” and Joe Biden was never listed as “Joseph.”

Although Carter failed to get reelected, and was thereby limited to four years in office, his presidency nonetheless merits attention.

Urban Planning: The Third Way

City planners in the United States and elsewhere have long been subject to the dogma that there are two options for cities. The first option is the automotive city, with rings and spokes of multi-lane limited-access freeways and highways, large multi-lane surface streets as the main arteries, smaller surface streets branching off the larger ones, and many parking spaces. The second option is the walkable city, with generous sidewalks, bike paths, and public transportation like streetcars and subways.

The dichotomy between these two has sometimes become so extreme that when one option is chosen, the other option is not only ignored, but actively discouraged. Planners who choose the automotive option will deliberately omit sidewalks; planners who choose the walkable option will deliberately work to reduce the number of parking spaces and make the driving experience frustrating in other ways.

This binary framework reduces urban planning to “either/or” decisions, simplistic thinking, and in some cases political conflicts.

There is a third way. Most cities in the United States — small, medium, or large — can embrace both of these options simultaneously. A city can be walkable and automotive at the same time. It can have a robust public transportation system and lots of parking at the same time.

There are exceptions: cities whose geographical peculiarities make them less flexible, like San Francisco and parts of New York.

But other cities can take advantage of America’s resources: lots of open land and the ability to generate concrete, steel, and asphalt in large amounts.

An office worker in a city might choose to be the only passenger in her or his SUV driving to work two days a week, bicycle to work another two days per week, and take the streetcar to work on the final day of the work week. City planners can make all of these convenient and equally convenient.

The economics of this arrangement can become self-sustaining: more people will be lured into the city from the suburbs, either for an afternoon shopping trip, or to live in the city permanently. Increased revenue will pay for the infrastructure.

Nixon’s Visit to China: Playing Cold War Communist Powers Against Each Other

The presidency of Richard Nixon, from January 1969 to August 1974, is known for many things. One of them is Nixon’s engagement with China. His visit to China in February 1972 was the first time a U.S. president had set foot in the country. China and the U.S. had no diplomatic communication with each other for over twenty years.

On a surface level, Nixon’s rapprochement with China could be seen as a softening of America's resistance to communism during the Cold War. He was granting diplomatic recognition to a communist regime which was responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese, and was responsible for the egregious violations of human rights and civil rights.

On a deeper level, however, Nixon’s China policy was a clever way to play two communist nations against each other. From 1949, when the communists took over China, the Soviet Socialists had an alliance with China. Mao had a comfortable working relationship with Stalin.

But after Stalin died in 1953, China’s alliance with the Soviet Socialists began to deteriorate. Nixon saw this as an opportunity. When Nixon was in China, the Soviets worried that a close relationship between America and China would leave the USSR out. So Nixon visited Moscow in May 1972. At that point, the Chinese worried that America would develop a good connection to the Soviets.

Nixon was able to play the two communist nations against each other. Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford, recalls:

Our new ties with the Soviets were possible, I believed, only because the Soviet leaders were becoming concerned about developments within the People’s Republic of China. Both Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai were making increasingly antagonistic speeches toward the Kremlin. Nixon sensed that the Chinese leaders feared and distrusted the Soviets. Their long-standing border dispute was a festering sore. Mao had never forgiven the Soviets for mistreating him in the 1950s, and he was concerned about Soviet intentions in the Pacific. Skillfully, Nixon moved to take advantage of the split.

U.S. diplomat Richard Haass sees Nixon’s policy as a kind of balance. Nixon’s goal, according to Haass, was to make China and the USSR feel equally jealous of each other’s relationship with America:

The purpose of the policy developed by Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger was to use China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union and shape China’s foreign policy, not its internal nature.

The timing of Nixon’s visits to China and to the USSR must be understood in the context of the Vietnam War. It was not until 1973 that the final peace documents were signed, and that the U.S. began withdrawing its troops from Vietnam.

Both China and the USSR supported North Vietnam to varying degrees during the war. China’s support for North Vietnam was continued but reduced after 1968, when China began to reserve more soldiers and equipment for anticipated direct combat between the USSR and China.

In cementing China’s split from the Soviet Union, the United States gained leverage that contributed to the Cold War ending when and how it did.

Although China was interested in empire-building in southeast Asia, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, China was not as aggressive in the South China Sea region as it became after 1990 and especially after 2000.

China’s ability to pose a military and economic threat to the nations of the South China Sea regions was limited in the 1960s and 1970s. Nixon’s rapprochement with China cannot be seen as opening the door to the Chinese expansionism that the following decades would see. At the time of Nixon’s visit, lacked the military power and economic power needed to take control of the South China Sea.

A Threat to Tolerance: The Terror and Intimidation of “Wokeness” and Its “Cancel Culture”

Tolerance is clearly expressed in the founding documents of the United States. Without the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, the United States would be a different country, with a different culture and society. When Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” she was thinking of the French author Voltaire, but her words apply more accurately to the United States than to France during the Enlightenment Era.

If tolerance is central to America, then intolerance is a poison to it. Henry Olsen, writing in The Washington Post in July 2020, cites contemporary examples of such narrowmindedness:

The intellectually intolerant mob claimed two high-profile victims Tuesday with the resignations of New York Times editor Bari Weiss and New York Magazine journalist Andrew Sullivan. These are just two examples of the deadly virus spreading through our public life.

The current version of bigotry is often called ‘woke’ or ‘wokeness,’ and at some point in the past may have arisen from a sincere desire for justice. Today it still garners support from people of goodwill who mistakenly assume that this social trend is still a quest for justice, when it is in reality a terrorized weapon of intimidation.

“Today’s ‘cancel culture,’” writes Henry Olson, “stems from a noble goal — ending racial discrimination.” But it is now wielded against people who express themselves on a wide range of topics: it is wielded against them for merely disagreeing with those who generate this version of political correctness.

It has transmogrified into something sinister and inimical to freedom. Battling racism is good and necessary; trying to suppress voices that one disagrees with is not.

Whether it is called ‘wokeness’ or ‘political correctness,’ it is in any case truly intolerant. It is an attempt to police thought, speech, and the written word.

It seeks to do the one thing that America has always sworn not to do: enforce uniformity of thought. Indeed, this principle, enshrined in the First Amendment, is so central to American national identity that it is one of the five quotes inscribed in the Jefferson Memorial: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

The victims of this “cancel culture” — in this case, an editor and a journalist, but there are many more cases — are excluded in the name of inclusiveness, a delicious linguistic contradiction. They are hounded by narrowmindedness in the name of broadmindedness. The “woke” individuals demand that these victims receive no tolerance, because in “woke” thought, it is only by denying them tolerance that the institutions can be truly tolerant.

Weiss’s resignation letter describes numerous examples of her colleagues judging her guilty of “wrongthink” and trying to pressure superiors to fire or suppress her. She explains that “some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name.” Others, she wrote, called her a racist and a Nazi, or criticized her on Twitter without reprimand. She notes that this behavior, tolerated by the paper through its editors, constitutes “unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge.”

Sullivan’s reason for departure is less clear — though he said it is “self-evident.” He had publicly supported Weiss, writing: “The mob bullied and harassed a young woman for thoughtcrimes. And her editors stood by and watched.”

In other words, both Weiss and Sullivan — like so many others — seem to have left their jobs because they were targeted for refusing to conform to its ideas of right thinking.

The founding texts of the United States — The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights — create a framework of liberty in which each individual human being is acknowledged a sovereign and autonomous agent who can think, speak, and write as she or he pleases. This intellectual foundation is detailed in the writings of Thomas Paine and John Locke.

But freedom and individualism are not valuable to those who promote political correctness and wokeness.

The mob even sacrifices people whose only crime is familial connection on its altar.

In an update of Orwell’s famous novel, individuals are pressured to confess to “thoughtcrimes” in media campaigns which amount to show trials. A “show trial” is staged: its outcome is predetermined, and it is a cautionary example to others. So it is with the “cancel culture” of wokeness: there is no chance to be judged innocent, and the purpose of the attacks is to intimidate others into silence.

Such tactics work best when they force people to confess to seek repentance for the crimes they may or may not have committed.

Whether or not the individuals persecuted by wokeness are guilty or innocent does not matter to those who are “woke” — wokeness is the process of terrorizing the masses by making an example of a few isolated individuals. Whether or not the individuals did what they are accused of doing, and whether or not what they are accused of doing is right or wrong, doesn’t matter. The public understands the message clearly: do as you are told, or suffer.

The woke inquisition uses the same tactic, forcing those caught in its maw to renounce prior statements they find objectionable. NFL quarterback Drew Brees surrendered to the roar while noted leftists such as J.K. Rowling and Noam Chomsky are being pilloried for their defense of free speech.

“Wokeness” and “political correctness” are nothing new. They go back centuries and millennia. They’ve been called “chauvinism” and “bullying,” or “bigotry” and “intolerance.”

The reader need simply ask: Are human beings free to speak and write? If so, then the dignity and value of each human life is recognized and honored.

Are people subject to intimidation and fear for what they’ve said and written? If the answer is “yes,” then decency is threatened.

Desegregating Little Rock: Eisenhower Promotes Justice

During WW2, General Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower established himself as a serious advocate of civil rights. During the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 and early 1945, Eisenhower defied directives coming from the Department of War: the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt, ordered that U.S. soldiers be segregated into Black and White units, and that Black soldiers were not eligible for combat duty, for the extra pay that came with it, or for the promotions that often resulted from it.

Seeing what needed to be done, Eisenhower desegregated and integrated his troops. The result was victory.

Eight years later, General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower. During his campaign, he expressed his intentions to desegregate and integrate various aspects of American life. His opponents in the election, nominated by the Democratic Party, argued for segregationist policies.

Once elected, Ike proceeded both resolutely and cautiously. He was resolute in that he would not be deterred from his goal of integration; he was cautious in that he knew that his actions could cause angry backlash from the Democrats, as historian Kasey Pipes writes:

As early as 1953, Eisenhower had written in his diary of the possibility that a “conflict of the police powers of the state and of the nation would set back the cause of progress in race relations for a long, long time.” Almost alone among political leaders of the time, Ike feared that a Little Rock-type eruption could happen. This premonition guided his every move. Thus, from the beginning of his presidency, he moved carefully and cautiously. He wanted to bring about change on civil rights, but he wanted to do so in a way that did not “inflame passions” as he often said. This explains why even after the Little Rock crisis began he moved deliberately. He wanted to exhaust every possible option before resorting to force. Still, when he did try everything else with no success, he didn’t hesitate to use military action to enforce the order of the federal court.

Ike was not dramatic. He was committed to doing the right thing, and his commitment was unshakeable, but also unemotional. Ike was driven by duty, not by passion.

The Democratic Party had made Orval Faubus the governor of Arkansas in 1954. Faubus used his powers to continue his party’s segregationist policies. Ike’s communication with Faubus in 1957 exemplify his tendency to avoid inflammatory rhetoric while maintaining his determined stance:

Eisenhower replied to Faubus on September 5 with a brief and elliptical message: “The Federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command.” Eisenhower intended this to sound like a thinly veiled threat.

After exhausting any chances of persuading Faubus to comply with the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision — a decision made under the watchful eye of Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was an Eisenhower appointee — Ike knew that he needed to ignore Faubus and take his own actions.

To comply with the Supreme Court’s decision, Faubus should have allowed the integration of Little Rock Central High School. But he didn’t. It was Eisenhower’s job to see to it that Black students had access to education in that school.

In September 1957, Eisenhower ordered the legendary 101st Airborne Division, an elite military unit, into Little Rock. The 101st made sure that African American students had access to Central High School and that they were safe. Eisenhower had made it happen: desegregation was advancing.

Black leaders praised Ike’s decision. Martin Luther King Jr. wired the president, thanking him for his support of “Christian traditions of fair play and brotherhood.”

Ike was pragmatic. He avoided drama and passion. He preferred to get things done with as few words as possible, and certainly without inflammatory rhetoric. He also wanted to achieve goals with a minimum of collateral damage. He achieved integration, desegregation, and advancements in civil rights, and hoped to do so with as little trauma and destruction as possible.

While successful and popular, Ike’s calm approach was occasionally criticized, as Kasey Pipes explains:

Eisenhower favored gradual reform while many in the civil rights movement urged dramatic change. He often told his staff that “more than laws” had to be changed in order for America to truly be a just society. Indeed, no less a source than Dr. Martin Luther King believed Ike was sincere in wanting to help the cause of civil rights. But King faulted Ike’s “conservatism” which was “fixed and rigid” and prevented him from moving more quickly and more dramatically to enact civil rights. At Little Rock, the president did not hesitate to defend the order of the federal court. Even still, his preferred approach was to let the local and state authorities find a solution. When it became obvious that Governor Orval Faubus had no intention of solving the problem, Ike solved it for him.

Although MLK didn’t always agree with Ike’s tone, the two of them nonetheless successfully collaborated. MLK and Eisenhower worked together, along with Vice President Richard Nixon, to promote the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and to ensure its passage through Congress.

This was followed by a similar process to obtain passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

The Nature of the Communist Organization: Understanding the Danger

Education is, and has long been seen as, a defense against evil forces: against the forces which would take away ordinary people’s liberty and freedom. A nation whose citizens are well-educated finds a source of strength and protection in those citizens.

It is also true, however, that educational systems can be subverted and used to produce those who endanger the lives, and the ways of life, of their fellow citizens. Although the international communist conspiracy evokes images of downtrodden impoverished workers rebelling against an allegedly exploitative economic system, historian John Stormer points out that self-styled revolutionaries and radicals come from elite and wealthy social groups:

The membership of the first Communist spy ring uncovered in the U.S. Government was not spawned in the sweatshops of New York’s lower east side or the tenant farms of the South. Alger Hiss, Nathan Witt, Harry Dexter White, Lee Pressman, John Abt, Lauchlin Currie and their comrades came to high government posts from Harvard law School.

During the Cold War — roughly 1946 to 1990 — the Soviet espionage network inside the United States promoted the notion that communism and socialism were fervently desired by those in the working classes. It is clear, however, that the energy behind the international communist conspiracy came from well-educated and affluent people. They could use their influence and social networks to recruit spies and gain access to policy makers and opinion makers, as well as access to confidential military and political information.

A report produced by the U.S. Senate explains:

A trite explanation offered by the ill-informed is that communism is a product of inequalities under our social system. Hence, these people argue, if we will alleviate these conditions, we will never have to worry about communism. Since it is manifestly impossible to devise a social system in which everybody will be satisfied, this would mean that we should meekly fold our arms and accept communism in our midst as a necessary evil for which we ourselves are chiefly to blame. In the second place, this approach overlooks the fact that millions of dollars spent on cleverly devised Communist propaganda is bound to have some effect in any society, no matter how relatively contented, especially when supplemented by the activities of thousands of ardent zealots.

Socialism and communism, political ideologies allegedly designed to benefit the lower classes, are most popular among the upper classes. There might be several reasons for this: some wealthy people might sincerely if mistakenly believe that these ideologies would help the poor; others might cynically see an opportunity to gain political power for themselves while pretending to have altruistic motives.

In any case, there is a clear statistical correlation between affluence and an affection for communism and socialism. The Senate report states:

The misery theory of communism runs contrary to actual fact in our country. New York State, for example, has approximately 50% of the total Communist Party membership. Yet it is second in terms of per capita income as well as per capita school expenditures. California is second with approximately 16 percent of the total party membership and yet it is fourth in terms of per capita income and seventh in terms of per capita school expenditures. Similarly, Illinois is third in membership standing with approximately 5 percent and yet it is sixth in per capita income and third in terms of money spent for schools.

While the wealthy may be inclined to promote socialism and communism, the working class, allegedly the beneficiaries of these ideologies, oppose them, seeing better chances for advancement in a system of free enterprise, free markets, and property rights. Those who’ve actually experienced poverty, rather than those who’ve merely read about it, resist the encroachment of communism and socialism. The Senate report continues:

Conversely, Mississippi is lowest in the scale of Communist Party membership but is also lowest in per capita income. The misery theory of communism does not jibe with these figures nor with the fact that such wealthy persons as Frederick Vanderbilt Field, and prominent members of the Hollywood film colony, have been found to be members of the Communist Party. Indeed the misery theory of communism is exactly what the Communists would have us believe, in order to mislead us.

The most vocal and militant proponents of communism and socialism, as well as the disguised versions of those ideologies presented under a veneer of more acceptable domestic political wordings, come almost exclusively from a class of people whose wealth is significant enough to allow them expansive leisure time.

Various celebrities from the movies, TV, and popular music industries routinely promote communism and socialism, while enjoying a lifestyle of chauffeur-driven limousines, lavish travel, and the costliest jewelry and wardrobes. They routinely own several large homes, scattered around the country if not around the world, each of which is worth many times the humble houses of the workers whom they claim to represent.

The ideologies which claim to help the poor are, in reality, the toys of the rich.

The Civil Rights General Becomes the Civil Rights President: Eisenhower Desegregates Little Rock

Several things remained constant when General ‘Ike’ Eisenhower became President Eisenhower. One of them was his commitment, not to talk, but to act on behalf of civil rights.

Eisenhower spoke less, but did more, than his White House predecessors Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, Eisenhower directly opposed President Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. Roosevelt and Stimson imposed a policy of segregation onto the U.S. Army.

As Supreme Allied Commander, Eisenhower wouldn’t and didn’t accept Roosvelt’s segregationist edicts. In late 1944 and early 1945, Ike defied Roosevelt, and integrated various military units as he saw fit. Later, Eisenhower would use the word “justice” to explain such actions, as historian Kasey Pipes explains:

Eisenhower’s career intersected with the civil rights movement at several key points. The first was the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. General Eisenhower, needing more troops, essentially went against war-department policy (drafted by George Marshall) and offered African-American troops the chance to fight at the front. After the war, troops who volunteered to go to the front of the line at the Bulge weren’t eager to go to the back of the bus in Birmingham. This helped build the momentum of the civil-rights movement in the postwar era. As President, Eisenhower found himself again confronted with civil-rights challenges including the two Brown rulings, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Emmett Till murder, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and, of course, Little Rock. The story of the civil-rights movement in the 1940s and 1950s can’t be told without telling the story of Eisenhower.

On September 9, 1957, Ike signed into law the 1957 Civil Rights Act. He’d worked together with Martin Luther King and Vice President Richard Nixon to get Congressional approval for the bill.

Less than two weeks later, Ike ordered the 101st Airborne, a legendary infantry division, to Little Rock, Arkansas. Eisenhower was determined to overrule the Democrat Party there, which, in the person of Governor Orval Faubus, was preventing Black students from attending a public high school.

Ike’s victory in Little Rock was a continuation of the civil rights emphasis which he'd expressed as he was first running for president.

“During the 1952 presidential campaign,” historian William Hitchcock explains, Eisenhower spoke clearly about his support for the civil rights movement, “stating that he would eagerly abolish segregation in the nation’s capital and continue to expunge it from the armed services.”

Eisenhower saw the matter clearly: He’d appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court. Under Warren’s leadership, the famous Brown vs. Board of Education cases, two of them, were decided. As president, it was Ike’s duty to carry out the Supreme Court decisions, which he did in Little Rock, as Kasey Pipes reports:

Little Rock should be remembered as a seminal moment in the civil-rights struggle — perhaps the seminal moment. If integration had failed at Little Rock, it’s hard to imagine it succeeding anywhere. And it would be great if parents, teachers, and journalists would remember that the 101st Airborne soldiers did not arrive on their own orders. Dwight D. Eisenhower had something to do with that.

Little Rock wasn’t the beginning of Ike’s civil rights engagement, and it wasn’t the end, either. Eisenhower wanted to strengthen and solidify the gains made in 1957, and so he pushed for the 1960 Civil Rights Act, which he was able to sign into law before he left office.