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: A bit disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
Even though I am biased towards Jimmy, I was a little disappointed by this book. While some sections are very succinct and Jimmy is clearly writing from the heart, for $15 one would expect a little more analysis and explanation of the major issues of the day.Book Review: A Gloomy Book that doesn't reveal anything we don't already Know
Summary: 2 Stars
Although I agree with Mr Carter's values, and believe he may be the best living president, I didn't like this book because it describes what is wrong with America, yet doesn't give any advice on how to correct it.
What a depressing read. I believe Mr Carter could have written a better book if he would have added advice on what people that share his views could do to improve the situation. Am I to believe there is nothing that we can do? Is that why he has a look of dispair on the front cover?
Book Review: Head like a Hole
Summary: 1 Stars
Let us regard 39th POTUS James Earl Carter, regarded by some as our most 'Zen' president, with a Zen-like Koan:If Jimmy Carter makes a fatuous anti-American "moral" pronouncement in a room and there's nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?
I say it does: it sounds like "pfffffft".
Now, Carter is widely regarded among respectable 'mainstream' opinion & the Nobel Peace Prize Commission as a kind of Saint-in-the-Box, chiefly for his work cobbling together hovels for derelicts with Habitat for Humanity. His Good Works & Noble Deeds elevate him to a realm where he ought to remaine immune from critique or reprisal.
To criticize Jimmy Carter is the secular Left's equivalent of dumping a cauldron of boiling dung on Mother Theresa. So I'm here to say Goodbye to all That, and Dump Merrily Away.
Carter was, undeniably, America's Worst President of all Time. Even taking America's Most Corrupt President---arguably Ulysses S. Grant---carving off the top of his skull, removing his brain, and replacing it with that of a slightly retarded Lemur---the lemur-brained Grant would still be a better president than Jimmy Carter.
I'll go one farther: Carter makes Bush II look like Napoleon Bonaparte (pre-Waterloo).
In a saner age Carter would have hauled off in a dog-cart into the blighted Utah nuclear test grounds, smeared with honey, and left buried up to his tonsils for the fire ants. These Mad Days the Little Troglodyte from Plains wins the Nobel Prize (chiefly for his work as a Useful Idiot in condemning Bush's foreign policy abroad, but still).
Why do I harsh Carter's vibe so mercilessly? Consider the 'Carter Record':
1) Carter gutted funding to the CIA & military at a time when our Cold War nemesis the USSR was seen as militarily & geo-politically ascendant. In his first month in office, Carter cut the defense budget by $6 billion, and unilaterally removed US nukes from South Korea---chiefly on the premise, one Carter came to hold dearly, that there are no Strangers, only Dictators we haven't yet hugged.
For this act of moral clarity, Carter still receives Christmas cards from Kim Jong-Il.
2)Carter, no sissy when it came to human rights, signed an Executive Order prohibiting its CIA wet-ops from, well, getting 'wet' with their targets. IE, no whacking. No Licenses to Kill, just Harsh Language. This was a great pass for future uber-terrorists in diapers, men like Abu Nidal, who repaid us our charity with bodybags and smoldering ruins.
3)Carter turned over the US-built & financed Panama Canal to Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, mentor to another Carter buddy Manuel Noriega. As a direct consequence of Carter's Canal turnover, emergent US rival China now controls both ends of the strategically critical Canal.
4) Carter worked feverishly like some modern Tantalus at signing the SALT II accords, drastically cutting the US nuclear arsenal---with smaller cuts on the Soviet side, of course. This just prolonged the Cold War, and drove a stake (at least until Reagan was sworn into office) through the heart of the one strategy that had been a success against the Soviets: spending the Rooskies under the table.
5) Carter cut off CIA & military support Shah Reza Pahlevi of Iran, formerly a staunch US ally, considered one of the "twin pillars" of US foreign policy in the Middle East. The result: the Shah was deposed, American hostages were taken, and the guy who took 'em, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is now President of an Iran champing at the bit to get nukes. Carter still thinks Ahmadinejad is a better dude than Bush.
6) Another Carter brainstorm: a covert $40 BILLION initiative to train Pakistani & Afghan Islamic militants, ostensibly to counter the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan---an invasion which, ironically, was sparked in part by Carter's failure to intervene in Iran on behalf of the Shah. We all know how the whole "let's train Islamic fundies to fight the USSR" thing turned out.
7) Warned that the American people were in a "malaise", when in fact they were simply tired of double-digit inflation, unemployment, negative GDP growth, and particularly sick of looking at Jimmy Carter.8) Carter embraced tyrants, thugs, & murderers that hated the US---men like Khaddafi, Castro, Chavez, & the little weasel with the 3-day growth in Palestine who croaked of AIDs---while condemning US allies.
He does so to this day; does so, in fact, in "Our Endangered Values". Carter boasted of Venezuela's election transparency, a whale of a claim even the European voting monitors couldn't swallow, providing Hugo Chavez with a brace of international confidence. A few weeks ago Chavez took total power in Venezuela and is now called, oh, something like El Supremo. Look: men make mistakes. Some men, like Henry Kissinger, make a career of doing so.
But where Kissinger's plan was to line up his enemies and simply bore them to death, Carter believes the hype, or hucks it like a snake-oil hawker: he is a withered, Evil, shrunken, Gollum-like cave-gnome who thinks any problem best nuanced into oblivion, watered-down with bromides, and tied up in a neat little bow with finger-lickin' good pseudo-Christianity, though Carter conveniently neglects the Commandment that runs something like "Thou shalt not speak Pap of your Native Land on Foreign Shores".
Carter wants to position himself as a kind of wizened, kindly old patrician rebel waiting in the wings to whisper sage advice to those he considers worthy of leading the Republic. But in fact he is a despicable, demented old Walloon, capable only of offering up out of his rags a filthy truckle of mad rabbit attacks, 'managed decline', crashed rescue helicopters burning in the Persian desert, and double-digit stagflation.
1 Star because the book burns well.
JSG
Book Review: America is not a country
Summary: 1 Stars
Mr. Carter should know that "America" is the name of a continent and not the name of a country. He should have titled his book "Our Endangered Values: United States'moral crisis".
We, the "other americans" (the citizens of the American continent)don't have the moral crisis of the United States (we don't invade foreign countries, for instance).
Having said that, I want to tell that I admired Mr. Carter for his great contributions to world peace.
Book Review: Noise From the Liberal Peanut Gallery
Summary: 1 Stars
Carter was a politically-correct loser. No one wants to hear his religious moralizing, fundamentalist or no. We didn't want him then, we sure don't want him now. The best thing that happened to Jimmy Carter was Ronald Reagan. Carter needs to be quiet and go back to raising peanuts, a job he can handle.