You may find it contradictory that a non-theist like myself would enjoy a book like this.
If so, your own prejudices, or, to use the pop-psych term, "issues" may be showing.
That be as it may, I have developed a tremendous amount of respect for President Carter since he left office. His work for Habitat for Humanity and monitoring elections at the behest of the UN, among other activities, shows his continued concern for America, and indeed, the world.
But more than that, I think he got a raw deal because of the Iran hostage crisis and the economy. I think we realize now how difficult it is to deal with terrorists, and the economy was battered by the huge deficits run up to finance Vietnam. (And look for the current deficits from the Bushite adverturism to cause the same problems, possibly doing the same thing to a Democrat elected in 2008 as happened to Carter.) I never voted for Carter; I was yet to be disillusioned by the Republican Party and was a supporter of Reagan. It hurts to write that down. (I've thought recently that perhaps the shrinkage of my income from $100K plus a year to $10k or less had more to do with that transformation than anything.)
Carter makes many points in the book, and I only want to mention a few of them. The biggest point, and the reason I have come to respect him even more, can be summed up in one word: Tolerence. I have always believed that anyone should be free to believe anything they want. I don't care if you worship the sun god Apollo or are a fundamentalist Christian, it is your right. (I gave up the seven best years of my life defending your, and my, right to believe what we want.) Carter points out that many problems in the world today, and especially in America, are the result of the intolerence towards others viewpoints. The current administration has often accused people of not being patriotic if they criticize the Iraqi war or the Patriot Act. The terrorists that hate us do so because of their hatred of the Jewish state and our support of Israel's right to exist - blatant religious intolerence.
As John Kerry did in the 2004 election, Carter takes the Bush administration and its fundamentalist backers to task for opposing stem cell research. Doonesbury recently ran a strip wondering if the thousands of people whose lives have been ended or disrupted by Desert War II keep Bush awake at night; the last panel tell us no, that's not it, its the cry of the stem cells. I'm not going to belabor the issue here, I just don't see how anyone capable of logical thought can oppose using stem cells that will be destroyed anyway for research.
Carter talks about other science-related issues such as teaching evolution in the schools. Here's a quote: "The existence of millions of distant galaxies, the evolution of species, and the big bang theory cannot be rejected because they are not described in the Bible, and neither does confidence in them cast doubt on the Creator of it all." Now that's Christian belief that I can respect.
Another issue that is discussed in depth is the growing acrimony between the parties, primarily caused by the fundamentalists taking over the Republican Party. How can anyone take Pat Robertson, who stated on the 700 Club that "God doesn't hear the prayers of Jews," or Jerry Falwell, who on the same program said that "Jews can't go to heaven unless they become Christians" and implied that feminists and gays were somehow partly responsible for 9/11. (What the hell kind of Kafkaesque logic is that?) But those are the kind of people running the GOP and appointing federal judges.
America had lost a lot of international respect since Bush took office. (Remember when the Germans, Russians, etc. stated that there were no weapons of mass destruction? It wasn't feminists and gays that caused 9/11, it was our own hubris and the rivalry between our intelligence agencies.) President Carter discusses another issue: our abandonment of the Geneva Convention. Just because the terrorists we are fighing act like mad dogs doesn't mean we should follow into the abyss of madness.
There have been times during the last six years that I was ashamed to be an American; none more so than when the abuse of Iraqi prisoners came to light. It is unbelievable that supposedly professional military personnel could behave so inhumanely. If the shoe had been on the other foot, we probably would have responded with nuclear-tipped cruise missles.
There are many other issues discussed intelligently by President Carter. No matter where you lie in the political spectrum, you should read this book.
(By the way, it's interesting how many issues also appear in Catherine Crier's book.
Copyright (c) 2006 Lone Wolf Reviews
