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It was early 1976, as I remember.  As a young lawyer working for a Wall Street law firm, where Cyrus Vance – later to be President Carter’s Secretary of State – was a senior partner, on a whim, I went to a reception to learn about a Jimmy Carter from Georgia who was running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the Presidency.

Carter was supposed to introduce himself to us over a speaker phone, but the connection didn’t work, so his campaign representatives delivered a different “vibe,” as we say these days.   America had just lost its first war, in defense of the nationalists in South Vietnam.  Though nobody wanted to talk about defeat, many Americans knew something had gone very wrong and were uneasy in their consciences.

Somehow, Carter spoke to that unease with reassurance.  People could be good.  There could be reconciliation.  There could be trust in one another.  He won election as President of the United States.

Those sentiments and those ideals are very much a part of the moral foundation that the Caux Round Table advocates for moral capitalism, moral government and moral society.

At the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, it is character and conscience that make the difference for good.  Character, of course, includes both ethical principles and practical wisdom. One without the other can easily become either evil or useless.

A mark of Jimmy Carter’s character was his July 15, 1979, speech to the American people on living up to high expectations of goodwill and trustworthy citizenship.  That speech, derided as his malaise speech, was not esteemed by our movers and shakers, to our great loss as a nation.

Carter forthrightly said:

“You’ve heard more and more about what the government thinks or what the government should be doing and less and less about our nation’s hopes, our dreams and our vision of the future. …

Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?

It’s clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper – deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession.  And I realize more than ever that as president, I need your help.  So, I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of America.”

He invited many to meet with him at Camp David in the hilly Catoctin mountains.  After listening, Carter summarized what he had heard: “Mr. President, we are confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis.”

He continued in his speech:

“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways.  It is a crisis of confidence.  It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.  We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. …

But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.  We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us.  For the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.  Two-thirds of our people do not even vote.  The productivity of American workers is actually dropping and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media and other institutions.  This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning. …

First of all, we must face the truth and then we can change our course.  We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face.  It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans. …

We are at a turning point in our history.  There are two paths to choose.  One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest.  Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others.  That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values.  That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.”

Americans did not listen to Jimmy Carter.  Against his advice, they chose the path of division and not of common purpose.

In our recent presidential election, voters split roughly 50/50 between two bitter and incorrigible rivals – the Democrats and Donald Trump.

As history has shown again and again, a “house divided cannot stand.”

“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.” – Proverbs 11:29

“They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.  The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour.” – Hosea 8:7

Jimmy Carter understood that Biblical wisdom.

My gratitude to Jimmy Carter is for his leadership in providing safe haven in the U.S. for the victims of communism in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.  In 1978, I was part of a small team – the Citizens Commission for Indochinese Refugees – that visited refugee camps in Thailand and returned to Washington asking the Carter Administration and Congress for a new law giving new homes and new lives to those refugees.

When in the camp of Khmer refugees in Chanthaburi, Thailand – some of the very few Khmer who had escaped the Khmer Rouge – more than one refugee told me of the rule of the Khmer Rouge cadres: “If you live, we gain nothing.  If you die, we lose nothing.  So, why not kill you today?”

I asked a Buddhist monk in the camp about the monks in Cambodia. He replied: “All dead.”  I asked about the Buddhist scriptures. He replied: “All burned.”  I asked about the temples.  He replied: “Those not used for schools are destroyed.”

President Carter had added “human rights” to his foreign policy agenda.  Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Patricia Derian supported us, as did Senator Ted Kennedy, responsible for immigration in the Senate.

The 1980 Refugee Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Carter.

Moral government at work, I would say.

Confucius advised: “Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.” (The Analects, Bk 1, 8)

When thinking of Jimmy Carter and of ourselves, whoever we may be and wherever we may live, we can acknowledge the truth spoken by Confucius so many centuries ago: “See what a man does.  Mark his motives.  Examine in what things he rests.  How can a man conceal his character?  How can a man conceal his character?” (The Analects, Bk2, 10)

We recently posted a few more short videos on relevant and timely topics.  They include:

–Three Thoughts on the 2024 U.S. Election

–Social Media – Who’s Responsible?

–Quality Government and Quality Data

–Covenants as a Modern Model for Peace

All our videos can be found on our YouTube page here.  We recently put them into 9 playlists, which you can find here.

If you aren’t following us on Twitter or haven’t liked us on Facebook, please do so.  We update both platforms frequently.

An American federal judge in Texas has just ruled that racist thinking cannot supersede professional best practices where the safety of airline passengers is at stake.

As I wrote several years ago when the virtue-signaling of the woke, diversity, equity and inclusion movement spread like a viral pathogen across American bureaucracies – public and private – invidious racism has no place in a moral capitalism.

We can each be as proud as we want to be of our genetic heritage and the cultures which have nourished our families over generations, but moral standards demand something more than application of genetic codes for appearance and reproductive capacities or cultural traditions when we pass judgment on others.

The issue before the judge was who Boeing may select as a monitor of its safety practices.  The case involved remediation of Boeing’s business model after the crashes of two 737 MAX aircraft.

In settling its case against Boeing for negligence in causing 346 passenger deaths, the federal government insisted on an agreement that Boeing would use standards of diversity and inclusion when choosing an independent monitor of its production of aircraft.

Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the government’s use of the words “diversity” and “inclusion” did not rule out racism and so opened the door to racist criteria in evaluating candidates for supervising the quality of the safety protections used in building airplanes and built into each aircraft brought to market.

I suppose the moral norm of justice is not to use racism to screen out qualified candidates and also not to use racism inappropriately to screen in qualified candidates.  That seems to be the basis for Judge O’Connor’s decision, which is in keeping with the Supreme Court’s refusal to legitimate racism in allocating acceptances for college admissions.

You may read Judge O’Connor’s opinion here.

On the day after the American Thanksgiving holiday, I spent a few hours walking about a pre-capitalist community.  It was the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the coast south of Boston.  The plantation is a recreation of the hamlet erected by the Pilgrims in 1620 after their landing on the coast of what was to become the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

It is a tourist attraction, with some 10 thatched roofed houses built with historical accuracy and staffed with guides dressed in 17^th century style clothing and speaking a bit awkwardly in old English accents to the delight of young children and the amusement of adults.

After walking into three or so of the houses with gardens behind on a cold day, I thought of how did the Pilgrims grow enough vegetables to get themselves through the winter of 1620/1621?  Then, I thought of how many kegs of nails and barrels of flour they had brought over in the small Mayflower sailing ship?  Enough for a winter?  A year?  Two years?

They had no smithy then and so how could they have made or repaired iron tools – saws, hoes, etc.  Could their saws cut down enough trees for boards and firewood?  What if a saw broke?

Suddenly, every aspect of their lives appeared to have been arduous.  Cooking in a dark room. Walls that could not keep out the winter cold.  Did they bring enough woven cloth from which to make new shirts, dresses, pants and warm coats?

They had no shopping mall, no stores, no markets and no factories to provide wage employment.  The only money they had, most likely, was the coin they had brought with them.

I then thought of Adam Smith and his 1776 description of early capitalism in Wealth of Nations.  The Pilgrim lifestyle and its rigors were far inferior in quality of life than the realities he was describing.

That first winter perhaps half the new arrivals died.  Of course, their settlement had no doctors, no infirmaries, no antibiotics, no tubs for soaking baths, no showers, no flush toilets, maybe not much soap for washing.

I decided that I would not want to live that life.  If I were to choose between pre-capitalism and capitalism, I would take the latter in a heartbeat.

Adam Smith was wise: specialization of function, division of labor, the factory system, application of science in the invention of machinery, the manufacture of products, commodities, inventing property rights, holding markets, the creation of wealth, all made for improvements in the human condition.

Here is a chart that summarizes, in graphic form, the human good of capitalism:

Why are we today so concerned about social justice and economic inequality?  Is it not because those who live in poverty today still have lives more likely to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?”  Is not the quality of life a moral good to be sought and appreciated?  And therefore, from an equity perspective, we show concern for the quality of every life.

This appreciation of living with plenty, with opportunities to earn and to learn, with good health, with the manifold advantages of modernity, was especially voiced by Presidents Washinton and Lincoln in their proclamations asking Americans to set aside a day in the month of November to give thanks and not take their lives for granted or as an indulgence in undeserved privilege.

Washington wrote:

“Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26^th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be – That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks – for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation – for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war – for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty, which we have since enjoyed – for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness and particularly the national One now lately instituted – for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.”

Abraham Lincoln wrote:

“The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.  To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God…”

“Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.  Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.  No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.  They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.  It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”

The December issue of The Atlantic magazine brings all of us a timely and important protest over mismanagement of the American elite.

David Brooks’ article is titled “How the Ivy League Broke America.”

Using institutions of higher education to recruit and condition future members of national elites is foundational to modernity.

Napoleon created the Grande Ecoles in France to elevate the French to the heights of Enlightenment reason and excellence.  Hegel and Humboldt did the same in Germany.  The German model of the university came to the U.S. after our Civil War, starting with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Previously, Oxford and Cambridge had executed the same function of providing specialized social capital creation for Great Britain.

Countries around the world now very much want to send their children to the U.S. for higher education.

But what if the American system of higher education has fallen down on the job?  What if its graduates cannot and do not serve the American people well as adult professionals?

This is the question Brooks puts forward in his essay.  He insists that there has been a disgraceful failure in American higher education, failings which need to be stopped and replaced with a better system.

What Brooks writes is relevant to every country.  Higher education opens the gates of a nation’s capacity to build a moral society, moral capitalism and moral government.

You may read my shortened version of his essay here.