OpinionJournal - Jimmy Carter's Siren Song: Will "Nice Baptists" bring America together? Don't bet on it.

re: John Wilson: "...Yet there is more than that underlying the rhetoric of Mr. Carter's proposal. What's on display here is a persistent fiction in public discourse, a phony account of our common experience. First comes an exaggerated emphasis on discord, then the promise that--at last!--someone is proposing to transcend division, to work for the good of us all. /You can find this same script, for example, in Bill Moyers's manifesto "A New Story for America" in the Jan. 22 Nation magazine. There, we are given "the real political story, the one most politicians won't even touch: the reality of the anonymous, disquieting daily struggle of ordinary people. . . . The leaders and thinkers and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people."/Really? A look at any newscast will remind us that we haven't reached the Promised Land. Nevertheless, Americans of every stripe routinely work together for a dazzling array of common goods. And while Christians all too often fall short of the example set by the one whose life is supposed to be their model, still, every day and in every city Southern Baptists and Methodists and Willow Creekers and Pentecostals join hands with fellow believers--and with those who don't share their faith--to feed the hungry, to shelter the homeless and to provide disaster relief all over the globe. Many, like my wife, volunteer for hospice organizations and spend some of their time each week with the dying..."...