Jimmy Carter wore are sweater; but Ronald Reagan wore a suit.
Jimmy Carter wanted to say “wicked” and “sin” to the American People but had doubts and thought he might be misunderstood; Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire and didn’t blink at Reykjavik.
Jimmy Carter believed in the strength of noble ideas and had a “preference for … societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights” but didn’t want to intimidate anyone. He wanted to wage an “honorable” war “against poverty, ignorance, and injustice.”
Ronald Reagan thought a fragile democracy should be well-defended and fought the injustice of the Communists and those who “regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives … would trade our freedom for security.”
It seems that the pilgrim Jimmy Carter focused on man the sinner, but the pilgrim Reagan, as Margaret Thatcher said, addressed “the better angels of our nature.”
It seems they had different answers to the question, “what is man”?
Man is insignificant to God, and lower than angels but more than the sparrows…. According to Psalm 82 “I have said, ye are gods.” We are judges; we make choices. We are to judge justly. Are not the “better angels of our nature” those who “do justice to the afflicted and needy” and deliver them “out of the hand of the wicked”? (And see John 10:34) This suggests not only a “war” on poverty, but on the wicked that oppress….
I wonder. Did Carter’s idea of humility make him doubt strength? I doubt that Carter was right in merely preferring freedom and doubting the goodness of a free America. Certainly strength shouldn’t be limited just to limit strength. Must the defense of human rights be done only by the example of the weak? Is it wrong for the righteous to intimidate the wicked and prevent oppression? Is it wrong to judge people as righteous or wicked? And if righteousness exalteth a nation, does it also keep it from being strong? Is it not rather that the righteous are “strengthened” by “righteousness”? Should not the righteous count the cost and prepare to defend the oppressed? to face the wicked? Are not the prepared stronger than the unprepared?
I think Carter was a sincere humanitarian with a preference for freedom but doubted the goodness of righteous strength, or at least the goodness of using American strength. Reagan had the faith not to trade freedom for security.
I don’t think Carter was comfortable as Commander in Chief. Carter was comfortable in his sweater.
