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PASTOR'S REPORT, July 16, 1979
Page 8
Though some observers said Mr. Carter "sounded like a Baptist preacher"
giving the type of campaign "sermon" that won him one primary after another
on his road to the White House, he didn't address the real moral and
spiritual crises affecting the nation which have resulted in the lifting
of God's blessings from it--the shocking divorce and illegitimacy rates,
the morass of drug and alcohol addiction, especially among the young, the
abominable crime statistics (on an upward swing now again) as well as the
tidal wave of social legislation which runs counter to the laws of the God.
Mr. Carter appealed to for help at the end of his speech. All such real
crises lay outside the purview of his 33-minute address.
:1r. Carter counselled the American people to "have faith"--but not in God.
Instead, he said, "We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our
ability to govern ourselves and faith in the future." The President also
spoke a "smooth thing" (see Isaiah 30:10) when he appealed: "Whenever you
have a chance, say something good about our country."
Government to the Rescue
The President referred to the "isolated world of Washington" and said that
"the gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide."
Yet, ironically, it is to be the government which will rescue the nation
from its energy dilemma. The President called for the establishment of an
Energy Security Corporation as well as an Energy Mobilization Board. The
latter would cut through red tape--government red tap� generated by con
flicting government agencies--to order completion of energy projects such
as refineries and pipe lines.
In response, a vice president of Mobil Corporation said: "It's sort of an
irony that we need a government-created board to break government bottle
necks." An official of Getty Oil added: "It's incredible that you have to
create a whole new bureacracy just to sweep up after the old one."
The new layer of bureacracy is to preside over a ten-year crash program to
produce alternate and synthetic fuel sources, and will be--at $142 billion-
the "most massive commitment of funds in our nation's history," said Mr.
Carter. Nearly all the money will be raised by taxing the so-called "wind
fall profits" of the oil companies.
The president appealed to the American public to rally around him in unison
to win the energy war, but it is all too clear that unlike World War II,
in which the government mobilized resources through the War Production
Board, there is no clearly perceived enemy. Many people blame "Big Oil"
for the gas shortages, others (and more correctly) Big Government, with its
ham-stringing restrictions on the market. And now the government is trying
to focus the blame away from itself and almost solely on OPEC.
Far from a unified approach, the ambitious new energy program
is
bound to
divide the nation even further. An all-out effort to strip-mine the coal
from Montana and the shale oil from Colorado is bound to anger environ
mentalists. Protracted court battles will ensue. And those concerned
over the environment certainly have a case when it comes to the matter of
synthetic fuel production. The cost is immense, both in dollars and in the
i�pact upon land and water.