Those Christians who resist the inclination toward fundamentalism and who follow the nature, actions, and words of Jesus Christ should consider peopl… - Jimmy Carter

Theologian Paul Tillich maintained that there is a profound difference between anxiety and fear. Anxiety, he wrote, grows out of the awareness of our own fragility, uncertainty, and impending death. By contrast, fear is of a specific, identifiable threat or object that can be faced or endured with courage. Tillich said that we should strive to change overwhelming anxiety into fear, with which we may deal more effectively. Our guilt and anxiety are relieved when we realize that God has already accepted us and loves us as we are.

Our fourth major goal, I want to mention briefly, is our welfare system and our tax system. In both of these cases, tinkering is not going to be enough. They must be thoroughly redesigned. Our present welfare system robs the taxpayers who support it, discourages the people who administer it, and sometimes degrades the people who really do need help. It's an extraordinarily complex and difficult problem, even more so than I had expected. Two weeks ago I outlined the principles that must underlie the reform of the system, and we will have legislative proposals ready by the end of this summer. We've already begun to move in this direction by simplifying the food stamp program--eliminating the purchase requirement and reforming the eligibility rules. As for our tax system, it, too, must be reformed through and through. Our tax system was once relatively simple, fair, and progressive. It isn't any more, because it's been changed so much over the years--often for the benefit of those who are rich enough to hire their own lobbyists in Washington. The process of redesign is well underway, and we intend to submit legislation to the Congress for a fair and simple income tax system this year.

The civil rights of handicapped persons is not the only element of the laws that have been put into effect. We have got more than a hundred different programs in the Federal Government already for the handicapped. They are administered by many different agencies. There are a lot of different kinds of definitions for the handicap of the same person, and that means that many of you who have sought for a long time to take advantage of these programs, which the Congress and my predecessors in the White House have passed, have often had to go to four or five or six different agencies to get the simple treatment or opportunities which you deserved under the law. It's time for us to change that, and one of the very good benefits of the reorganization authority that Congress has now given me is to bring all those programs for the handicapped together into one agency so you can understand them and take advantage of them.