Stephen L Carter Rules About The Rules Summary

Stephanie Maxfield
Professor T. Cortina
English 1A
1 October 2014
Integrity: Politics, Faith, and Jimmy Carter.
We often find ourselves in situations which prompt certain questions; questions we often try to carefully navigate around (or avoid all together). It is here where we note that a difference exists between those individuals who hold fast to their personal beliefs during multifarious situations, and those who do not. Inarguably, Life provides us with plenty of opportunities to decisively exercise and demonstrate virtuous qualities: specifically integrity. Integrity requires us to remain honest and decisively act upon moral and ethically sound reasoning. Sounds easy enough, right? Yet we live in a society where this seemingly obvious

Through varying disciplines and perspectives, we evaluated how aspects within our American culture were created in response to the socio-political factors present throughout history (2).
In Stephen L. Carter’s “The Rules about the Rules, Carter argues that in order to achieve enduring integrity, one must continuously choose to act discernibly upon one’s highest principles and moral values- instead of ignoring them. To demonstrate how Stephen L. Carter’s three step definition of integrity does not have to remain void of political perspectives (3), I have chosen my portrait of integrity to be on Former President Jimmy Carter.
Former President Jimmy Carter was born and raised on a Georgia peanut plantation during a time where sharecroppers, racism, and segregation still existed. Yet despite his position of privilege, his character remained astoundingly honorable. Despite the socialization of unscrupulous behaviors common at time, Carter was raised to honor his obligations to his faith, to his family, and to his fellow man- irrespective of race. The fact that he and his brother and sisters grew up contributing to the daily chores of the farm coincides with Stephanie Coontz’s claims of how (in previous eras) females were raised with aspirations for domesticity and how the males matured early enough to handle their roles as providers (4).

L. Carter’s “The Rules about the Rules” (page 184-185). Carter demonstrated his ability to simultaneously exercise his personal wants and desires in a moral or ethical manner throughout his life as we know it; as a naval officer, as a political actor, as a humanitarian, as a peace-keeper, as a family man, as a devout Christian, and especially as a peanut farmer. Jimmy Carter raised the bar for politicians and citizens across the board by often resorting to “a bit soul-searching” himself during times of political crisis. Demonstrating that there are alternatives to the hypocrisy S.L. Carter states occurs often among both the American people and our political actors.