President Carter Is Kicking Ass and Taking Names

Former President Jimmy Carter has been making the talk show rounds talking about his new book Our Endangered Values : America's Moral Crisis. Now, when a right winger uses the phrase "moral crisis", you know he's talking about the satanic lefty plot to take your bibles and impregnate your daughters. When Jimmy Carter says "moral crisis" he's talking about the United States Government torturing prisoners, suspending due process, invading countries, and letting fundamentalists make policy.

Here's the transcript of Larry King's interview with Carter this evening. I can not tell you how refreshing it is to have a prominent citizen who is also very religious say things such as this:

A fundamentalist though, as I define in this book, in extreme cases has come to the forefront in recent years both in Islam and in some areas of Christianity. A fundamentalist by, almost by definition as I describe is a very strong male religious leader, always a man, who believes that he is completely wedded to God, has a special privilege and relationship to God above others.

And, therefore, since he speaks basically in his opinion for God, anyone who disagrees with him at all is inherently and by definition wrong and therefore inferior. And one of the first things that a male fundamentalist wants to do is to subjugate women to make them subservient and to subjugate others that don't believe as he does.

The other thing they do, and this is the only other thing I'll add, is that they don't believe that it's right to negotiate or to compromise with people who disagree with them because any deviation from their absolute beliefs is a derogation of their own faith. So, those two things, exclusiveness, domination and being very highly biased are the elements of fundamentalism.

Wow. Carter gets it. He sees it.

I do not believe in God. However, I am mature enough to realize that in a free society anyone is free to believe anything they want. When it comes to matter of personal cosmological views, words like "right' and "wrong" have no meaning. You either believe something or you don't, and there exists no way to prove your view over mine or my view over yours with any real certainty. That's why it's critical to realize that if you want to keep your free society free, you have to keep an eye out for fundamentalists, because they are no mature enough to let people believe things other than what they believe.

Fundamentalism is about consolidating power and thought. That's why it so closely resembles fascism. Carter recognizes this too:

CARTER: Well, I think there's been always maybe for a century some elements of fundamentals. You know, I believe in the fundamentals of my faith. But in the book that I have written I describe in some detail the exact definition of what I consider to be a fundamentalist that I've just outlined just two principles of it.

In my own Baptist faith the right wing began to dominate and fundamentalism came to the forefront beginning in 1949 about 25 years ago and it came to fruition I would guess about five years ago when the leaders of my denomination issued a creed in effect, a state of principles that they themselves drafted and now you cannot be an employee in the Southern Baptist Convention.

You can't be a missionary overseas. You can't be a pastor. You can't be a chaplain in the armed services. You can't be an administrator or teacher in any of the seminaries or higher education institutions unless you accept that creed and that's something that is completely unprecedented and has never happened in my faith before.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a group of people wanting to organize and worship together. But a line is crossed when it becomes about controlling thought.

But yet another, more concerning line is crossed when fundamentalists try to force their brand of religion on society. Carter understands this too:

But this is something that Thomas Jefferson espoused, as you know, when he said build a wall between church and state and I happen, as you know, I'm a Christian and I believe that Jesus Christ ordained this when he said "Render under Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's." So, this breaking down of the barriers between the two is just one of the elements in recent years that causes me concern.

There is a very clear and distinct difference between believing that Adam and Eve rode to work on dinosaurs and trying to force that idea into society by subverting our educational system. In a free society you have the ability to believe whatever you want to believe, but there also exists an obligation in a free society to keep that society free. When one groups decides that their beliefs trump all others, and seek to force those beliefs on society, then that is an active attempt to make society less free.

For example, when you have a situation where fundamentalists are trying to change how science is taught to fit their cosmological views, then society is becoming less free. Jimmy Carter understands that:

KING: By the way, as a Christian, do you believe in creationism?

CARTER: I believe there's a supreme being, God, who created the entire universe, yes. And I am a scientist, as a matter of fact, as you may know, I studied nuclear physics. I helped to develop nuclear submarines. So, I believe in science. I believe we ought to explore the far outreaches of space. We ought to make sure we understand everything we can about the particles that make up the atoms.

I think we ought to discover everything we can about science. It ought to be accepted as proved unless it's discounted. I believe still in a supreme being. But, I don't believe that we ought to teach religious matters in a science classroom, because I think that the two ought not to be related.

They ought to be completely separate. And I don't think anyone, Larry, interferes in full belief in the other. I believe completely in scientific proofs and values unless they're discounted. I believe in a supreme being. But, I don't believe you ought to teach creationism in the science classroom.

Obviously, I disagree with his cosmological stance, but he has every right to have that stance. However, and much more importantly, I totally agree with the principle he is putting forth here: "The two ought not be related". Religion has it's place in society, science has it's place. Religion has thousands of places of worship and hundreds (if not more) of it's own schools; it does not need the public school classroom.

But let us not forget that freedom is as much a matter free thought as it is a matter of honor. When your country is operating secret torture camps, then you disgrace and dishonor the ideals of freedom. Carter understand this too:

I don't think there's any doubt that lately, as John McCain has pointed out, and as 90 of the 100 Senators have approved that our government has illegally and improperly been torturing prisoners, so John McCain and others are trying to have in the law just now being considered we should not be permitted to torture prisoners. This has been a part of our nation's policy ever since I can possibly -- well for more than 100 years at least.

KING: But we didn't -- we didn't have a 9/11.

CARTER: Well but we had the Second World War, which was a lot more destructive for our people. In fact, my own uncle, Tom Gordy (ph), was captured by the Japanese about two weeks after Pearl Harbor and he was a prisoner for four years. He was tortured severely, only weighed 85 pounds when he came out of prison. He was almost dead.

And after that the Geneva Accords were written, which was approved by and even negotiated by the United States and we agreed that in order to protect our own reputation and in order to prevent our own service people from being tortured if they were captured that we would not torture prisoners who were held by us.

That in a radical way is now being rejected by many people in our government and it's not a unanimous thing even within the Bush administration. There's a big debate going on whether the CIA should be permitted or the Defense Department should be permitted to torture people.

I think it's completely wrong. It's completely damaging to our country and it's never been done before. That's just another one of the principles that bothers me.

KING: And the story today on the front page of "The Washington Post" reporting that the CIA set up covert prison systems nearly four years ago with facilities in Thailand, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, a secret prison system. What do you make of that?

CARTER: I was not surprised. In fact, I covered that in my book because there has been a program that was fairly well known that when we were condemned by members of the Congress for what was going on in Guantanamo, we began to move prisoners out of Guantanamo and those others that are captured in the Mideast and put them in countries where torture is alleged or permitted.

And so this was not a revelation. It was very surprising because it's been a policy. And, as you know, just a few days ago the vice president went to the Congress to try to get key Senators to agree not to put in the McCain Amendment but to let the CIA have permission to torture prisoners.

This has never been done in our country and it violates the reputation of our nation and it also I think makes it possible for our own prisoners to be in danger in the future.

The eloquence with which Carter spoke about these things was...uplifiting. We need more people like Jimmy Carter to speak out on the true "moral crisis" in America today.