Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. Previously, he served as Chief Speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/24/wingnuts.boxer.erickson.art.jpg caption="California Senator Barbara Boxer (L) and conservative blogger Erik Erickson (R)."]
With only the benefit of thirty-odd years on the planet, I’m no expert – but I’m guessing that on the short list for “history’s greatest monster” there would be names like Hitler, Stalin and Mao. But probably not Jimmy Carter.
That’s precisely what one local elected official and prominent conservative blogger called the 39th president of the United States this week.
Erick Erickson serves on the city council in Macon, Georgia – Carter’s home state. He is also the managing editor of the influential RedState.com blog, a post which garnered him the ranking of the 69th “most influential conservative” in the Telegraph newspaper. Here’s his post:
Does anyone really care that History’s greatest monster, the man who laid hands on, endorsed, and applauded many of the most heinous regimes of the last part of the twentieth century, has left the Southern Baptist Church?
And he did so now because of, among other things, the role of women in the church?
That, like most of what Jimmy Carter says, is simply attention getting pablum by an senile old leftist.
The man is an unrepentant anti-semite and leftist. About the only part of the Bible he likes to take literally is the part about the Jews killing Christ. That gives him his anti-semetic justification.
Other than that, Carter wants to be free to live as he wants, not as God wants him to.
Good riddance.
Even more bizarre is the occasion which provoked this outburst against the 84-year-old former president. Several years ago, Carter announced that he was leaving the Southern Baptist Church due to the conservative denomination’s opposition to having women serve as pastors and its stated adherence to the idea that women must obey their husbands (that’s the biblical literalism that Erickson is griping about). Carter recently reiterated his decision in an op-ed for the British Observer, and it was this bit of old news that provoked Erickson’s blogging bile.
We all have our favorite and least favorite presidents – my tastes run to Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt – but none of them, however flawed, ranks even close to history’s greatest monsters. Jimmy Carter was an imperfect executive for our country, a man who was far-sighted on some fronts and naive on others. But most detractors give him points for personal decency and his post-presidential commitment to charities like Habitat for Humanity. And I haven’t even gotten to that Nobel Peace Prize, an award that aims to honor the opposite of humanity’s monsters (yes, Arafat was a slip on that front). In this post, Erickson is not only consumed with hyper-partisan-hatred; he commits a sin he might usually associate with the left – a complete lack of historic perspective.
On the left, the longtime liberal California Senator Barbara Boxer had an awkward moment in the sun at a committee hearing on energy and the environment this week, when she ran afoul of Black Chamber of Commerce President Harry Alford by indulging in a classic bit of liberal condescension. Alford called her on it forcefully and the result was an exchange that quickly circulated around the Internet. Click here to watch – a transcript of the choice cuts are below.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER, D-CALIF.: We will quote John Grant, who is the CEO of 100 Black Men of Atlanta: "Clean energy is the key that will unlock millions of jobs, and the NAACP's support is vital to ensuring that those jobs help to rebuild urban areas." So clearly, there is a diversity of...
HARRY ALFORD, PRESIDENT, BLACK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: Madam Chair, that is condescending to me.
BOXER: Well...
ALFORD: I'm the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and you are trying to put up some other black group to pit against me.
BOXER: If this gentleman were here, he would be proud that he was being quoted.
ALFORD: He should have been invited.
BOXER: Just as he would be proud...
ALFORD: It is condescending to me...
BOXER: Just so you know, he would be proud that you were here. He's proud, I'm sure…
ALFORD: Proud.
BOXER: …that I am quoting him.
ALFORD: All of that's condescending and I don't like it. It's racial. I don't like it.
BOXER: Excuse me.
ALFORD: I take offense to it.
BOXER: OK.
ALFORD: As an African-American and a veteran of this country, I take offense to that.
BOXER: Offense at the fact that I would quote...
ALFORD: You're quoting some other black man. Why don't you quote some other Asian or some...
BOXER: No.
ALFORD: I mean, you are being racial here.
By attempting to counter Alford’s testimony with statements from the CEO of 100 Black Men of Atlanta and the NAACP – neither of which have any special expertise in the slated subject of global warming and its impact on jobs – Boxer indulged in a liberal equivalency, countering one black voice with black voices of her own, rather than dealing with Alford as an individual.
It’s an extension of the still-persistent idea that race is necessarily an indicator of political beliefs, and that conservative African-Americans are outliers at best. When Alford called her on it, Boxer was caught like a politically correct deer in the headlights, stammering about how “proud” the NAACP and 100 Black men of Atlanta would be at being included in the congressional record.
It’s a reminder that we still have more growing to do on all sides before the dream of another Nobel Peace Prize winner from Georgia is fully achieved – that individuals will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Avlon.