55bmw Jimmy Carter Was Right About Materialism but, Alas, Wrong About Us

Halfway into his presidency, Jimmy Carter’s back was against the wall. It was July 1979, the height of the energy crisis, and the beleaguered president went on national television to deliver not a speech55bmw, but a kind of sermon.

The address — called “Crisis of Confidence” — challenged Americans to acknowledge personal failings that he believed were compounding very real public problems.

“Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption,” said Mr. Carter, who died Sunday. “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.”

The dangers of a society’s growing ever more covetous of bigger and better and more seemed obvious enough to Mr. Carter, who grew up in rural Georgia and lived in public housing as a young adult. By appealing to our better angels, he believed he could inspire in all of us a sense of thrift that would help heal America’s ills: environmental degradation, dependence on foreign energy, the power of special interests and political extremism.

For a fleeting moment, Americans listened. Mr. Carter’s approval ratings jumped 11 points within hours.

But partisans smeared the address — they almost immediately called it the “malaise speech” — and pilloried Mr. Carter, saying he was blaming Americans for problems that they hadn’t created and that presidents were supposed to solve.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Among national universities, Princeton was ranked No. 1 again, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. Stanford, which tied for third last year, fell to No. 4. U.S. News again judged Williams College the best among national liberal arts colleges. Spelman College was declared the country’s top historically Black institution.

Calls for school crackdowns have mounted with reports of cyberbullying among adolescents and studies indicating that smartphones, which offer round-the-clock distraction and social media access, have hindered academic instruction and the mental health of children.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.55bmw