Abstract

Minority Report

In 1979 former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, proposed a scheme for saving the ancient régime in Nicaragua. It consisted of Somocismo and relied on the preservation of the National Guard as the core of order and continuity. A similarly compassionate and Baptist scheme, involving a military coup in Iran, was contemplated as a last-ditch rescue of the Pahlavis' "White Revolution," but again it was realized that events had pressed too hard and too rapidly. All his pious efforts in the service of empire were useless to Carter, he was rewarded by former U.S. representative to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick's book "Dictatorships and Double Standards," which accused him of appeasing Third World revolutions, and human rights, even as a slogan, went over the side for a decade.