Carter's Weil Lecture

On October 22nd, former President Jimmy Carter gave the Wheel Lecture on Citizenship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We now present that lecture and excerpts from a question and answer period that followed. Tonight, I'm grateful to come as part of the Wheel Lecture Ship. To talk for a few minutes about a subject that affects us all, and that's American citizenship. Even foreign students who are here are interested in the subject. And I've had it time to think about this from the time I was a colored student, and then a young naval officer on an old battleship, and then a submarine officer and then a young husband and father, then a businessman, farmer, then a US, rather, Georgia senator, and then a governor, and in present of our great country, and now as a professor and also a

rare lecturer. And the gamut of questions that relate to citizenship is quite wide. My task tonight is not to give a lecture, but to outline a few, perhaps, provocative points that would encourage the audience to ask questions which would be open to you after just a few minutes. We Americans are blessed, I think, by young and above all other people. God has been good to us. He's given us a nation with almost unlimited natural resources, minerals, water, rich farmland, good climate, access to warm oceans on both sides, friendly neighbors to the North and South. An evolutionary form of government that started out with some basic defects, built on slavery

and the deprivation of young people and women of a chance to vote, but with a built-in opportunity to correct and to improve a sense of entrepreneurship, a willingness to compete, but perhaps belated understanding that we owed others a guarantee of equal opportunity. I'm proud to be a southerner, and to have come through the civil rights days in a way that legitimate leave makes all of us proud, but also reminds us of what held us back so long, like a millstone around the neck of people who lived in North Carolina and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, and Mississippi. Days still did bring a memory of shame and short-sightedness and selfishness, when the essence

of American citizenship was not quite understood. And many of my best friends, my peer group, were among those who didn't understand, and we were taught, perhaps the hard way. And we learned how to use the blessings of liberty, the blessings of freedom, the blessings of opportunity best by sharing them with others who had in the past been deprived. And it added a new element of citizenship, which we had not, at that time, comprehended. We still have a lot to learn about superiority, and looking upon others as inferior. It's not so much a domestic problem now, but it's an international problem.

Because as a temptation since we have been blessed so greatly by God to think that we are special chosen people, superior in intellect, superior in moral standards and values, superior in the eyes of the Creator, compared to black and brown and yellows, people who live in other countries. It's hard for us to realize that they have human needs equal to ours, that they want peace as badly as we do, that they want a better life for their children, including food, which most of them lack, and are placed asleep at night. They want the children to be educated. They want to be free of oppression, incarceration without trial, torture and prison murder by their own government.

And when we talk about the blessings of citizenship, we can't just so narrowly define the word, as we did prior to the 1960s and 1950s, when citizenship blessings were for white folks. It didn't bother us much, and the blacks couldn't vote, and now it doesn't bother many Americans very much, that there are still people on earth who don't share our great blessings, somehow we feel we deserve it, and they don't. But the meaning of human rights is not something that we can constrain, and it almost requires us to go to a foreign country, frozen and I've just been to Panama, to Peru, to Argentina, to Brazil, which just a few short years ago, when I was present, we're all living on a military dictatorship, and the people didn't have a right to assemble, they didn't have a right to vote to choose their own leaders.

There was no freedom of the press in three of those countries, and in Argentina, every day hundreds of young people, your age, would disappear, never to be found, there's still places like that on earth. We talk about environmental quality, we're primarily talking about air pollution, water pollution, there may be a toxic waste site that we know exists somewhere in North Carolina, and it's an obligation to us as world citizens to learn about how land is eroding, how populations are exploding, how productivity of food is dropping away, how all prices of skyrocketed, how a family to keep warm and to cook food must destroy their own forests, which then implements the erosion of land further, and a more production and more starvation, and

as a sociological fact of life that the poor or family is, the more children they want to have, to provide them some element of security in their own age, in the old age. So the point I would make tonight in my opening remarks is that citizenship ought to be defined in a narrow and a selfish and an exclusive way, and to repeat myself again just as we didn't understand our obligations two or three decades ago, in dealing with the racism in the South, we still have not yet been willing to face our obligations, which still existed deprived of people on earth. It's not right to assume that the Soviet people comprise an evil kingdom that they don't want peace just as much as we. So my question is twofold or twofold. One

of is, are we going to use our great blessing for our own benefit? Are we going to assess our lives still in the embryonic stage for many of our young people here? It's a how can I use what I have for others? And the second question is kind of embarrassing in the last year or two years, or however amount of time you want to set aside. What have I done in a truly sacrificial way for anyone else? Something that cost me without direct personal benefit

to enhance the quality of life of others. That's what I see as citizenship. And I'm concerned when I detect an excessive element of dormancy among our student bodies. Where is the vitality of the dynamism, the aggressiveness, the innovation, the activism on the part of students for peace, nuclear arms control, human rights, environmental quality, the well-being of others. In the past, this was an essence of mandatory change forced upon a complacent adulthood with

students, the civil rights days, students, earth days, students, Vietnam, students. And it's not an accident because at the student age level is when freedom is truly present. And you can't imagine looking two or three or four years in the future, how serious that freedom is going to be attenuated and taking away from you when you get your first job as a teacher, as a lawyer and a large law firm, as a doctor and a hospital. You're not going to be free to take an unpopular position. You don't want to get the school principal angry with you. I'm looking at you as kind of a weird character. And you don't want to displease the senior lawyers and a law firm. So now the time to search your heart, then say, what can I do not just in a sacrificial way, but in an exciting, dynamic, expansive

way, what can I do to make sure I'm not already old at the age of 20 or 18? Well, my task is finished. I've tried to express my heartfelt opinion in such a way that it might provoke some questions. And now if you do have any questions, I would be glad to hear them. And I've been told the microphone is on my right. And I will, I presume that question can be heard by the audience. And I'll try to respond as best I can, calling, as I always have in my life, my recent life on two islands that they help me with the difficult questions. Mr. President, with the changes in the heads of state in both Egypt and Israel, what changes have occurred between the two countries as well as the Middle East as a whole since

the 1979 Camp David Accords? The treaty between Israel and Egypt has survived some very difficult challenges. The first one was the assassination of President Anwar Sedan. The second one I would say was the attack by Israel on the Iraqi nuclear power plant. The third one was the annexation of the Golan Heights. A very traumatic experience in the life of Israel was a withdrawal off their people from the Sinai region and the dismantling of settlements. And more recently, the invasion of Lebanon. In all these cases, any one of which could have been the death now for the Israeli Egyptian peace treaty, it has survived. I think a major portion of that credit has to go to the leaders who served. President Mubarak, whom I know quite well and knew him as a president when I was president and when he was vice president, I think has faithfully cured out the commitments of President

Sadan. The only thing that I think of that would cause the abrogation or rejection of a treaty would be if Israel annexed the West Bank in Gaza. I think in that case, Egypt would say the treaty is no more because it was predicated upon the Camp David Accords which in effect would prevent that action by Israel. In the case of Israel, I think the recent election has been a very promising thing. Obviously, Prime Minister Perez is not completely free to act as though he had a majority government who had put together his own coalition. And now the Cabinet members are, as you know, almost equally divided. He has a very tenuous hold on the Prime Minister's ship and is not at liberty to make bold innovations toward peace, concerning the sensitive issues of West Bank, Gaza, and Palestinian rights. But I think that there is still prevailing in the Middle East, what Sadat often said. And that is, a genuine desire on the part of the people for peace, the people of Israel,

the people of Egypt, the people of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and including the Palestinian people. The obstacle is the leaders who are reluctant to change previous promises or commitments or campaign statements. And also the fact that there is no coalition that is brought about to start addressing their differences. That cool, cool, lessening force must come in my judgment from the United States of America. And it's got to be at the top level, the President or the Secretary of State. President Carter, many people say that if the rescue attempt in April of 1980 to rescue the Iranian hostages had succeeded, it should still be President today. Did the Soviet Union detect the presence of the rescue mission in Iran and did they exert any pressure for us to withdraw?

That's a very interesting question and the answer is very easy. The Soviets know anyone else ever detected the American presence in Iran until after all of our people were completely free of Iran and on a way to a neutral country. I think what you presuppose at the beginning is possibly correct. No one knows what would have happened if something else had not happened. But I think had we been successful, which was how likelihood in getting the hostages released with the mission effort, I would have had a great boost politically and I think that I would have prevailed. That's just a personal thought. But the Soviets never knew about it, never threatened. There was never any use of the hotline on that evening. And I think that the reason for calling our forces out was very sound in that the men in charge on the ground, highly competent, deeply dedicated, highly patriotic, well trained, said we cannot go forward with only five helicopters. The mission would not be successful. And only then did I reluctantly say, okay, you can withdraw.

Freedom of religion to me is one of the basic values that is concerned with our right as a citizen. During your presidency, I felt you were open with your religious beliefs, but that you did not force them onto other people. Now, it appears there are some elected and appointed officials in our country who are trying to impose their will and beliefs on the public. Do you see that as a trend that religion is becoming too involved in politics? And if so, what can we as citizens do to keep this from becoming too overpowering? Well, I'm very, I'm a very devout, Southern Baptist, and I believe from the bottom of my heart in separation of church and state. And the recent trend that I have detected is very deeply troubling to me when right-wing television evangelist aligned with major political leaders in the Republican Party have tried to define what is a proper American, what is

a proper religion, what is a proper Christian. And I could see back in my days as a candidate and then as a president, the adverse consequences, if that effort was carried to conclusion, because there was a desire to say, if you are for negotiating with the Soviet Union or communist nation, you're not a Christian. If you are for the confirmation or ratification of the Panama Canal, it is you're not a Christian. If you are for the establishment of a Department of Education, you're not a Christian because the public school system, they say, is a focal point for so-called secular humanism, whatever that means. It means that deprivation, it means that the replacement of God with self-serving human beings. And there is a claim that this is what the public school system is doing on the part of these people I've just named

to you. As a matter of fact, this was forced upon President Reagan as a candidate. Not unwillingly, he adopted the promise that if he was elected president, he would abolish the Department of Education. He's not been able to do it. But that's still in his goal. And part of that also is the allocation of public funds to tax exemptions for the support of private schools, which would be a devastating blow to the public school system at all levels throughout this country. There's also, there's also attempt to amend the Constitution, as you know, to authorize mandatory prayer in schools. I believe in prayer quite often, and have all my life, I need it, and I use it, and did it more than I was president otherwise, but I would not be in favor, but I would not be in favor of a state, even in a state

like North Carolina, writing a prayer or telling the teachers, you can force all the kids in your school to pray together. And if there's a little Jewish kid in the school or Catholic kid, or someone who has no faith, they have to get out of the room. They don't have to pray, but they have to get out of the room. To me, this is an obnoxious encroachment on freedom and violation of the basic principles of our culture. And just one more point I'd like to make, and this is a kind of a torturous thing for me to say. It kind of grieves me to have to say it. I'm an evangelistic Christian. I'm not bragging, but I have gone to represent my church, both in foreign countries, and in this country, just to try to convince people that they should believe in Jesus Christ, and should become Christians. But by I'm strongly against defining the United States of America as a Christian nation. This is a nation where people should worship as they

choose, and not have government tell them. So I'm strongly opposed as you can tell to melding government and religion. I'm for separation of church and state. I might add, so there won't be any misunderstanding of me that in my service as governor and president, I never found an issue which I thought created a conflict between my beliefs as a Christian, on the one hand, and my duty is one of the constitutions of Georgia or the United States. And so I have never felt the constraint of trying to define for anyone else what they should believe in a religious fashion, and I have never felt any constraint in being in public office, and still continuing my own beliefs as a Christian in about this. Mr. President, what means do you believe the United States should use to promote human

rights in Nicaragua, and also if diplomacy and economic incentives do fail in the country continues to evolve towards its totalitarian dictatorship? To what extent do you believe the United States should support if any of the countries? This is one of those very complicated issues concerning Nicaragua, on which President Reagan and I have a very short difference of opinion, and where I can't swear that my position is right in his room. When the, so most of the government was there, with exception of the regime in El Salvador, it was probably the most repressive. And the people of Nicaragua almost rose up overwhelmingly to get rid of Samoza. We tried to encourage him to have democratic elections on the Organization of American States, our United Nations supervision, and let his popularity be tested. In preface to that he advocated, came first to Miami,

then went down to South America as you know where he was assassinated. And to replace him came in a group of young revolutionaries, some of whom were Marxists, some of whom were Catholics, some of whom were Protestants, some of whom were, you know, the business leaders, some of whom were school teachers and doctors. It was just a group of young people who had prevailed. And we helped them form a junta or a ruling group. They were put together primarily by the other democracies in this hemisphere, Colombia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, to some degree, Panama. And they said these are people that we think are well balanced and who can manage Nicaragua's affairs during this transition period. And the junta members came up to Washington. I met with him in the White House in the Oval Office. And they went to the Congress and made that presentation. They were cross-examined by the members of the Congress, House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans. As a result

of that, the Congress voted to give them $65 million in aid, approximately, that may not be the exact figure. And in the process also, Nicaragua received great benefits from the other democracies. Mexico and Venezuela sold them oil for only $10 a barrel when the price was $25 or $30 a barrel. And so forth, we tried to help them get started, overcome the ravages of the revolution, and arranged it so they wouldn't have to turn to Havana and Moscow to find trading partners and those who would help them rebuild the country. That was my premise, and I still think it was a right approach. But then I went out of office. President Reagan came in. He has a deep philosophical hatred of people like the Sandinistas. And he cut off all aid, which was his privilege within the bounds of congressional oversight. And he also decided to launch, he also decided to launch a military campaign to overthrow the Sandinista government. And he's tried to do this through a secret

use of a intelligence agency and also to build up a military force in Honduras that would threaten the Sandinistas with invasion. And in that process, he's also blocked every effort by the so-called Contradora group, that is, the other democracies, to bring about a resolution of differences in Nicaragua by peaceful means, by negotiation. So this is before we stand right now. A few weeks ago, as you know, the Sandinistas said, okay, we accept the entire proposal of the Western democracies, of the hemispheric democracies. We accept the Contradora proposal. At that point, our American administration said, oh, no, that's not perfect yet. Let's make some changes in it. And we're not going about a process to change it. So I think the Sandinistas have great defects. They have a long way to go to bring about democracy and human rights. As a matter of fact, though, it's not a

communist nation. There's more free enterprise in Nicaragua than is in Great Britain. More people own their own factories and hotels and stores and so forth, and do in England. To what extent do you feel that there were approaching a time when we have a problem of generational history in that we have young voters today for whom Vietnam was not a reality, for whom President Kennedy is not a memory, for whom their own parents were not products of the Depression, but in fact, a generation removed. And what this speaks to in terms of where we're headed as a country in being sensitive and caring to people less fortunate than ourselves and more hurting than ourselves. It's hard to know where we're going. That's the basic question you ask. What are we going

to do next? How are young people of a college age going to remember the things that were so traumatic for us? I'm not hastened to add that I don't think that the violence that took place on the campuses was proper. I think the civil rights movement was better handled through peaceful means as Martin Luther King, Jr. preached. I was at the University of Georgia last week. It was the first day I'd had a chance to teach over that since I left the White House, and I'd been looking forward to it. Just shortly before I was there, there were two separate teenage suicides in the suburbs of Athens, caused by the students concerned about the nuclear threat to our survival. That same day, I was brought a lot about my chief secretary from a 15-year-old child in Texas that said that she heard Amy make a comment about nuclear weapons, that she was thinking about taking her own life because of the threat of a nuclear holocaust. I think that this kind of concern is excessive. Obviously, I think

that our nation will not be in a nuclear confrontation or a holocaust. I don't think it will exchange nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union, but it is an adequate cause for students to demand progress on the nuclear arms of program for control, reduction, and ultimately elimination. My hope is that after this election, it won't be necessary that no matter which president takes office next January, that they will see this as an opportunity to place their role in history with a nuclear arms agreement with the Soviet Union. I think the human rights question is one is still deeply of concern to me. Our nation is now smuggling up to South Africa, and in effect endorsing apartheid, you probably saw in the newspaper the other day that the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bishop Tutu, when I asked a question about it, said that this was the worst threat to human rights in South Africa, from an outside force, was

apparent endorsement by our country of the apartheid policies of that government, something that should bring about some deep expressions of concern on the college campuses of today. Another very important question would relate to Central America. I probably get as many questions in my class as an emery about Central America and the Coraguan sand and nations and so forth as any other subject. There is. In fact, perhaps all of them put together. And so peace is another issue. So I think that there's not just a matter of looking back and resurrecting problems off the Great Depression, or Vietnam, or the assassination of Kennedy, but it's looking forward to what our country is going to be in the future. Is it going to be a nation of strength? Yes. Peace. Yes. For human rights in a champion, as a champion. Yes. Control of nuclear weapons? Yes. If we don't have a nuclear arms agreement, let's make don't you that everyone on Earth knows that there is no obstacle in the White House, that all the obstacle is in the Kremlin. That's what college students, I think, can do with great effectiveness. But when they are silent, it kind of removes a heart of America's

pre-expression of concern. And I'm not here to demigrate on a criticized college student. Certainly not my purpose tonight, but to point out that there's a vast realm of exciting beneficial activism there that's not being filled. This has been the speech and some questions and answers from former President Jimmy Carter doing his October 22nd appearance at UNC Chapel Hill. I'm Feminine Henderson for WUNC.