A Look Back To the Future of Liberal Change

As we go into the new year, America is standing at the precipice of a new era, the era of CHANGE. Change is a very vague term, and the president elect seems to be backing off some off some of those promises of change that he made during the campaign. So the question we all want to know is what the heck does he mean by change?

Sometimes the best way to look ahead is to look at the past. Thirty-two years ago America Was in a similar place, we were about to inaugurate a very liberal President who promised change. Below is a look at that president's policies after one year:

Warning: What Liberal Change Looks Like After One Year By Ben-Peter Terpstra

"Candidate Jimmy Carter said he stood for change." - Associated Press, 11/3/1976

Goodness. What a difference a year makes. In fact, a year after Carter's inauguration night, even some Democrats were rolling their eyes. Come, now: Let's revisit history, shall we?

Before President Jimmy Carter's January1977 inauguration:

November 3, 1976: "What Will Carter Presidency Look Like?" An AP news analysis, by Louise Cook reminds literates that "Jimmy Carter said he stood for change. He left a long list of promises" like Whatshisname.

Consider. "A streamlined bureaucracy"? Yes. "A new tax system"? Yes. "A pared-down defense budget"? Yes. "Comprehensive national health and welfare reform"? Yes. Change, change, change. But -- okay, whatever -- here's the most interesting point: "In the campaign, Carter did not spell out specifics on most of his major programs, talking instead about general goals."

Revealingly, Georgia's AP writer affirms, "Carter billed himself as a candidate of the people, and outsider running against Washington insiders who are pawns of special interests, who've turned the government into a ‘horrible, bloated bureaucratic mess.'" Boy that sounds awfully familiar. Therefore, Carter was planning to (a) restore integrity; (b) restore openness; and (c) restore sensitivity "in the same soft-spoken, preacher tones he uses to teach his Baptist Sunday school class" supporters hope.

Today's history lesson: Never trust a thin, effeminate, sandy-haired peanut farmer and his band of change-hungry volunteers. On the charitable side, though, Carter knew how to look after his own interests. Or number one. "In 1973 and 1974, Carter used his governorship to expand his contacts with politicians, businessmen and journalists."

Roughly a year after Carter's reign began:

January 11, 1978: Change is here. Robert De Fina's paper for the Center for the Study of American Business informs literates that the "cost of regulations to be more than $65 billion" in 1977 and that private "businesses must pay 18 billion to fill out government forms." Under Carter, a global cooling hysteric, "billions more are spent to pay for new equipment and employees to meet many other federal regulations."

In this economic context too, "the 65 billion regulatory bill is passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices" and this "cost averages $307 for every person." Americans feel their empty pockets, and they don't like the feeling.

Apart from penniless businesses, citizens are also discovering that the ungodly "expense of regulations is more than the federal government spends on health care each year" and that "it uses 73 percent of the amount spent for national defense." Further, it is "more than one-third of the total amount spent by private industry for new plant and equipment."

And, in all seriousness, the world's largest pharmaceutical group openly admits before Congress that their company now "spends more time filling out government forms" for President Peanut "than it does performing research on cancer and heart disease."

January 12, 1978: As it turns out, Carter is peanuts. Wilfred Burchett, an Australian Communist, receives a waiver to gallivant around America's colleges and universities. "Integrity"? "Sensitivity"? One writer points out in The News Tribune that he is -- I quote -- the "professional communist propagandist who worked insidiously on our prisoners of war in Korea and later in Vietnam" and that he has "been identified under oath before the Soviet KGB" for some unfathomable reason. Oh, yes and "his record is despicable" What's more, "The New York Post has published a devasting exposure of his record."

Summarily, then, Carter made headlines for (a) attending a whites-only church and (b) allowing white KGB-approved preachers to freely preach. In the meantime, Moscow is happily "airlifting weapons and supplies to Ethiopia" and "filing false flight plans when stopping to refuel in countries," according to an aerial subterfuge report.

Since, Carter's inaugnaration the jubilant communists have really taken to "flying over countries that lie between the Soviet Union and Ethiopia" for some reason beginning with "C."

On this day too, William Buckley is challenging President Carter's belief that -- I quote -- "Our concept of human rights is preserved in [Red] Poland." The erudite founder of National Review responds:

What is preserved in Poland is not our concept of human rights. What is preserved is 1) Soviet colonialism; 2) the supremacy of the state; 3) the abolition of property; 4) the abolition of intellectual and political freedom; and 5) the perpetual insecurity of any human rights - save only the right to practice one's religion, which the Soviet Union found it could no more control than it could, domestically, the consumption of vodka.

But the real news of the day is Cambodia. Millions of lives are sitting in the balance. Well? In John D. Lofton's "Eye on Washington" report he asks the adult questions:

But why in the world should the United States be so passive when what is being talked about here is one of the most brutal, systematic, widespread slaughters of human beings in the history of the world?

Why has the Carter administration, and its U.N. ambassador, Andrew Young, stood silently by waiting for some other nation to request that the United States investigate the mass murders in Cambodia?

But that's how change looks like after one year. Change, in a liberal nutshell, is peanuts.