carter and moral authority
Ala my last Newsvine article on Jimmy Carter (which is sadly no longer extant in digital form) and his views on the mid-east, this one too highlights the writings of Alan Dershowitz, who has been a vocal critic of Carter’s ever since the publication of his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. Dershowitz recently wrote a piece for FrontPage magazine (also discussed here, here, and here) highlighting the ambiguous and tenuous moral ground on which Carter stands, especially, and perhaps most ironically, regarding the Middle East. An influx of money from Arab sources- many of whom have continually spouted virulent antisemitism- has become a defining aspect of Carter and his foreign policy initiatives:
Recent disclosures of Carter’s extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?
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They were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews “the enemies of all nations,” attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States’ own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a “fable.” (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.
One of the reasons this is so disquieting is not that Carter has continually lobbied against the interests of the state of Israel- it would be expected given his foreign-policy track record and generalized political stance, but that Carter has recently attempted to elevate himself as a moral authority- specifically against the perceived immorality of the Bush Administration. It is one thing to have an opinion on geopolitics, but it is entirely another to do so while at once having your objectivity in serious question, and then proceed to write books lamenting the loss of America’s moral foundation.
This is not a special kind of hypocrisy in politics. Numerous politicians from every stripe, from socialist to fascist, have been proven utterly fraudulent across history. It is not a special kind of hypocrisy in American politics either- certainly Ted Haggard and Jessy Jackson can both fully understand what it means to espouse a viewpoint that is in complete contradiction to one’s actions. The Bush White House has certainly proven that it is not exempt from these sorts of people, and the Clintons before him literally swam in individuals with precisely the same lack of a moral calculus.
But there is something to be said about the kind of political climate that has been fomenting under the relentlessly hostile assaults on the Bush Administration since January 2000, namely, that the party that most benefits from moral hypocrisy of this kind is simply not the right. As the dominant party since 2000, the notion that the Republican party could manage to pull off such duplicitous a stance and at once get away with it is ludicrous- one need only point to the severity of many political scandals within the Republican party to see how the scrutiny that inevitably comes with power has revealed major lapses within the right. But there has been a distinct and disturbing lack of accountability for the left, which has spent most of the past 7 years on moral and ethical offense, rather than having to answer questions about their own lapses.
This isn’t to suggest that a leftist position would somehow exempt someone from any accountability regarding ethical and moral issues, merely that the severity of punishment (and the dogged attempt to uncover moral lapses, both real and imagined) has, by and large, not been applied to the left (especially the extreme left) in any practical way for much of the past few years, and this has resulted in a “culture of corruption” far more prevalent in the left than the right. It isn’t a matter of intrinsic moral authority, rather, a practical one of scrutiny in the public eye versus a decided lack thereof as the minority power in the debate. It is significantly easier to climb onto a moral high-horse while at once espousing (whether by word or deed) completely opposite ideas if one takes a vehemently anti-Bush stance than it is the opposite- and this is a problem.
Because, you see, the left is in dire need of moral accountability- perhaps more so than the right. The right has spend the past 7 years being battered by an endless barrage of ethical/moral accusations, and has emerged from that maelstrom beaten and broken (perhaps rightly so). But the accountability vacation that individuals such as Jimmy Carter have enjoyed has not only fomented a culture that sees no need for consistency and a strong moral foundation, but has built itself on the notion that it is a champion of such ideas, while at once eschewing them from the conversation entirely. This is extremely dangerous, especially in light of recent advances by the left into positions of political power.
Jimmy Carter’s hypocrisy is thus tied to Nancy Pelosi’s. It is precisely the kind of environment fostered by each that makes it simply easy for Pelosi to visit state actors that have abused their authority to murder countless people in the name of “peace” and “better relations”. It is the culture that allows Dan Rather to make it to the air with astonishingly false claims against the Bush Administration, or obviously manipulated pictures of Beruit burning making it into the feeds of the AP. The fact of the matter is that much of the leftist position, both practically and philosophically, has managed to garner a false air of authenticity and authority, and as such, those individuals that promote it have often had that legitimacy foist upon them, whether they deserve it or not. When the left is not in actual power, there is little practical consequence of this lapse. Now that they are gaining power, this has changed the equation significantly.
One hopes that the newfound power that the left has gained in recent elections will turn the eye of public scrutiny somewhat more in their direction and that the system, as it were, can fix itself. The consequences if it doesn’t will be an upswing in political and personal scandals- which do little other than enrich those who benefit from them, and can only harm the United States, not help it.
