You want to know when the cracks in the foundation started showing? It wasn’t last week. It was back when I was a young man, watching the most powerful man in the world, the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, decide that strength was a sin and weakness was a virtue.
It started with the Panama Canal.
That wasn’t just a ditch, my friend. That was a monument to American muscle. Men died digging that thing. We moved mountains. We connected oceans. It was the physical proof that if America wanted to do something, the goddamn earth moved out of the way. And what did Carter do? He gave it back. For a dollar. He practically wept an apology for our greatness, handing over a strategic asset like it was a used toaster at a yard sale. It was the first time I saw a leader look at our power and decide he was ashamed of it.
Then, he built the monster: The Department of Education.
Before him, schools were local. You learned to read, write, and do math. Carter federalized it. He created a bureaucratic tumor that took control of the money. And what happened? Student loans became a government racket. Tuition costs didn’t just go up; they exploded. 20%, 30%, 150%. They turned education into a debt trap for the youth, a mortgage on a life that hadn’t even started yet.
And the curriculum? That’s where the real knife went in. That’s when the schools stopped being designed for boys—for energy, for competition, for drive—and started being designed for girls. Sit still. Be quiet. Share your feelings. They didn’t just change the testing; they changed the spirit of the classroom. They started the long, slow process of drugging the boyhood out of the American male.
Then came the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Christ. 444 days of national humiliation. Our people, blindfolded, paraded on TV while Carter sat in the Rose Garden wringing his hands. And when he finally tried to move? The failed rescue. Helicopters crashing in the desert sand. Not because our soldiers weren’t brave, but because the leadership was hollow. He was the weak link. A weak leader invites the wolves, and the wolves were at the door.
And then, the “Malaise” Speech.
He went on television, wearing that goddamn cardigan sweater, and he lectured us. He told us that we were the problem. That America was suffering from a “crisis of confidence.” He didn’t offer a solution; he offered a scolding. He told us we were greedy, that we consumed too much, that our values were bad. He turned “Us vs. Them” into “The Government vs. The People.”
And here’s the kicker, the part that really grinds my gears. The unwritten rule of the presidency is simple: when you leave, you shut the hell up. You let the new guy drive. But Carter? He broke the code. He’s spent forty years talking shit about every man who sat in that chair after him. A bitter, self-righteous old man who couldn’t hack the job but loves to criticize the ones who could.
Here’s the philosophy, boiled down to the bone:
The Federal Government is supposed to be the Father. Logical. Protective. Strong. Stoic. The one who secures the perimeter and keeps the wolves away. The Local Government? That’s the Mother. Emotional. Nurturing. Community-based.
Jimmy Carter failed us because he tried to be the Mother. He ruled with emotion, with guilt, with apology. He failed to be the Father. He failed to protect the house.
He looked at American strength and saw a crime. I look at Jimmy Carter and I see the first man who taught us to hate ourselves.
And that is a legacy you can’t scrub off.
