On July 15, 1979, the now-late President Jimmy Carter delivered what modern-day commentators and pundits today call the “Malaise Speech.” They still do not understand who Carter was and what he shared so plainly during his address to the nation.

What has struck me in the six days since Carter died at age 100, on December 29, 2024, is how outraged and confused the news commentators and politicos remain about a U.S. president who dared talk about our country’s “lack of meaning” and overt worship of consumerism. (This sounds a lot like Viktor Frankl to me.)

Forty-five years later, not much has changed in our country. We are a country fueled by consumer spending, measuring 70 percent of economic activity. In that, there still is little meaning.

Carter was and is still right about the underlying truth, and people are afraid of the truth still.

As the nation gets ready to honor his legacy with his upcoming funeral events, I find his words still speak honestly about larger issues we have never changed: “In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”