Arrogance and Jimmy Carter – Truth Oracle

Recently I have been watching the flurry of news about the New York Times and several other papers revealing the tracking of banking information. I found the arrogance of the news papers absolutely astonishing. The Times admitted that not only could they find no evidence of abuse of the program, but also that it had actually been effective. Well, that’s just great. So what was the point in revealing it? Well, because there were “what if” concerns. In other words, this could be abused, so lets reveal it.

Well, that’s real genius reasoning as far as I am concerned and whenever the subject of genius comes up I tend to look to Jimmy Carter. Back in the Carter years we were constantly told of how he had the highest IQ of any president. If you are ever wondering what the correct moral or practical path is, for any given situation, ask yourself: What Would Jimmy Do? After making that determination, do exactly the opposite. You can then bask in the calm cool glow of knowing with virtual certainty you have done the right moral or practical thing.

As an example, lets just look at today’s column in the Washington Post by Mr. Carter. In it he bemoans that the US today has created 81% more secrets in 2005 than in 2000, citing as his source the “watchdog group” Openthegovernment.org. Obviously Mr. Carter tends to be the last to know about these things but I can only imagine how interesting it would be to inform him that we are currently engaged in a war, when we weren’t in 2000. Naturally one would expect more intelligence gathering during a war so hence more things classified as secrets.

He then goes on to cite how the great nations of South Africa and Jamaica are opening up their records to identify orphans, and bad land use planning. Gee, that’s really great. I suppose if one day the world starts depending upon Jamaica to be the policeman, instead of us, all that will have some meaning. Until then, so what?

Mr. Carter seems to pretty much want a world where nothing is hidden and everything is out in the open. That’s really a neat idea and it seems to be one the Times would endorse. Lets just get it out in the open and have no covert anything.

So, if you are wondering what to think of the Times revelations, or even what to think about Jimmy Carter, then consider this: there is a reason neither of the two are very good at helping the US win wars. Their unique abilities seem to lie in defeat. Jimmy Carter has relentlessly brought defeat through his arrogance. From North Korea, all the way back to Desert One. The Times is about to be a key player in whatever defeat we may suffer in our current engagement.