Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis by Jimmy Carter
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Book Reviews of Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
Book Review: Faith-based Politics with Sanity
Summary: 4 Stars
An interesting and thought provoking journey through spiritually-based politics. Mr. Carter's thoughts and ideology stands in contrast to our current political climate where the politics of religion has taken the place of sound political judgment.
Mr. Carter speaks from a strong Christian background while also recognizing and embracing a strong separation of church and state. As a non-Christian, non-religious, thinking individual, I found his views both spiritually uplifting and politically sound.
Mr. Carter examines a wide variety of topics, beginning with faith and extending to international relations. He moves almost effortlessly among these topics, demonstrating how his faith led him to, or away from various decisions that had significant impact on world affairs. He provides opinions and advise on current world situations, including the Iraq war, diplomacy, economics, and the military.
A very insightful, and enjoyable, read!
Book Review: Rescue us from fundamentalism
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is warning against fundamentalism and the in-human lack of compassion that seems so deeply rooted in the American sub-culture that holds sway over Bush's White House. Are you a Christian who is concerned about poverty? The USA's policy of pre-emptive war? Gleeful disregard for nuclear proliferation? Torture? The environment? Carter lays out a passionate case that those concerns are in line with Christian values. Carter does not cede the definition of `Christian' to the pro war, pro death penalty, pro torture, anti ecumenical crowd who insist that they alone can articulate what it means to be a Christian. This is a courageous book by a very thoughtful manBook Review: Thought provoking and inspiring
Summary: 4 Stars
thought provoking and heart felt look at the whittling away of the line between "Right and Wrong". If I understood it right, President Carter asks us to stand up and make a difference in our community, and to simply do the right things in life. I found it to be a very inspiring read.Book Review: Right Idea - Wrong Title
Summary: 3 Stars
Former President Carter has written down his thoughts about our current administration. Essentially, America has become a global bully. The big, muscular high school jock who beats up on others or threatens to do so, and then, like President Bush, says, "Bring it on."
Perhaps the current administration is somewhat justified in breaking any treaty or agreement in hunting down an enemy that can never be reasoned with, that can never be negotiated with and that usually does not wear a uniform. Perhaps the current administration and its supporters believe that some "evil empires" need to be annihilated, so the question needs to be asked: "Why not just annihilate them?" The answer is simple: greed.
Mr. Carter rightly points to the preemptive war doctrine currently in place as unheard of in our country's history. But the formula is simple: defense contractors need to move inventory. Find a target, move some inventory in the way of bombs, bullets and vehicles and hold the area. Then you contact your other friends and bring them in to rebuild infrastructure that had just been blown up. A win-win situation. For added security, you also bring in "contractors," the new word for mercenaries.
What Mr. Carter does not mention is the greed and it's all about me attitude of too many people in America. The Enron and Global Crossing mentality where there's no such thing as too much money, even if retirees have to pay with their 401Ks.
Mr. Carter deserves praise for his work toward peace, notably the Camp David agreement. His Carter Center has been helping people around the world in the area of health. He does show what one man can do and he gives impressive examples.
He is inconsistent and perhaps a bit confused about adding his religious beliefs to the mix. During his Presidential campaign, he refers to his making a mistake by mixing politics and religion. It wasn't his fault that reporters asked him a question about his faith to which he truthfully replied. They were the ones who blew it out of proportion to discredit him.
I think Mr. Carter would have had a better book if he connected American values in government with American values among the average American population. He rightly points out that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, but what can people honestly do? When a run for President is clearly about how much money you have and/or how many special interest groups line up behind you, what can or should the average person do?
The moral crisis in this book, according to Mr. Carter, is that America's government has dropped negotiation in favor of bombs and bullets, that it does not do enough to help the poor, that it is alienating current and potential allies by running around and shooting first and, on occasion, asking questions afterward (What do you mean you found no WMD's?), and that by not honoring certain agreements, it is helping nuclear proliferation and increasing the threat to the environment.
Our values are endangered, but they are endangered at all levels of American society. Everyone wants to live like a king. But Americans as individuals can and have been generous.
It may be that enough people in government will rise up and say, "Kill them all is not the answer." But as long as enough people in government believe that is the answer, little will change. Meanwhile, the American people will only have varying degrees of bad to vote for in the next election. But, as a fellow Christian, I join Mr. Carter in prayer that a better way can be found. That American government finds a way to address its legitimate defense interests in a way that is consistent with long-held principles.
Book Review: A "highwayscribery" Book Report
Summary: 3 Stars
At highwayscribery we like to say Carter's the best mistake America ever made.
His book "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis" is something of a radical tract done in a civil way. The treatise, a searing indictment of the Bush administration, provides left-wing viewpoint with the "cover" of Carter's being a good Christian. He prays, but he still thinks things stink (stunk); much the way the guy with dreadlocks and drum in the street has been saying for, oh, ever now.
Not everybody loves Carter, and this literary, frontal assault made him no friends among the screeching heads.
Which is why people in other countries do things like invite him to monitor the fairness of their elections and give him Nobel Peace prizes. Because then we'll have to pay at least a little attention to him.
The book provides a nice (Christian) insider's view of how fundamentalists slowly assumed leadership of Christian movements in the U.S. and committed them to political action. Very similar, Carter points out, to what we are grappling with in the Muslim world (and everywhere else).
Rather than go back over the book we'll discuss how the Bush crowd bungled the whole business with North Korea by way of example.
According to the book, Carter had then-President Clinton's blessing to work out a deal with Kim Il Sung, dad of the current leader, Kim Jong Il. What he got was a commitment by North Korea to cease its nuclear program at Yongbyon and permit International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to ensure that spent fuel stayed spent fuel.
Sung died and Jong kept the old man's word. In South Korea, Kim Dae Jung held out a whole bouquet of olive branches to the northern nemesis and gained the Nobel Peace Prize for 2000.
Peace, compromises and olive branches.
Then came W.
"North Korea," Carter writes, "was publicly branded as part of an `axis of evil,' with direct and implied threats of military action against the isolated and paranoid nation, and an official policy was established that prohibited any direct discussions with the North Koreans to resolve differences."
Things fell apart, of course. IAEA inspectors got booted from the Korean peninsula and N.K. dropped out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a document Bush has never cared much for either, according to Carter.
Everybody hated everybody and nuclear testing ensued; the diplomatic equivalent of the middle finger, but more dangerous than a mere symbol. Now this nut has the bomb.
What happened? Here's the former prez: "The primary obstacles to progress are a peremptory United States demand that North Koreans renounce all nuclear activity and a decision that communication between our two countries will be accepted only within six-nation forum, while Pyongyang leaders have insisted on resumption of bilateral discussions and a clear statement from Washington that American leaders have `no hostile intent' against them."
Bush wouldn't give them that and so we got nothing.
You can't just talk to people you like around the world. You have to talk to those you don't like. That is the essence of diplomacy. The news out of Pyonyang was the essence of its failure.
Anyway, Carter's book is blessed with things you didn't know, but should. He's been there when a lot of stuff has gone down, sat in the meeting as it were, and the eyewitness expertise lends weight to the argument and a degree of fascination to the account.