The Wisdom and Prophecy of Jimmy Carter’s ‘Malaise’ Speech

The trends he saw emerging two generations ago now bear their poisonous fruit in our body politic.

Carter’s central insight was that even if the country’s political branches could deliver peace and prosperity, they could not deliver community and belonging. Our nation depends on pre-political commitments to each other, and in the absence of those pre-political commitments, the American experiment is ultimately in jeopardy.