[Mb-hair] Fw: Carter's book

[Nathan Sanders]

Interesting review of Jimmy Carter's latest book....


Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 11:48 AM
Subject: Carter's book



"New York Review of Books"
Volume 53, Number 2 · February 9, 2006


Review

Jimmy Carter & the Culture of Death

By Garry Wills

Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
by Jimmy Carter
Simon and Schuster, 212 pp., $25.00

In 1972, I was asked by New York magazine to survey Southern reactions to 
the
attempted assassination of George Wallace. On my list of people to call was
Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. When I called his press secretary, Jody 
Powell
(a name I had never heard before), I was told it would be better for me to 
come
to Atlanta than to talk on the phone. (Powell was drumming up attention for
his man, with a view to his running for president.) When I arrived there,
Powell had arranged for me to fly with Carter in his little state prop plane 
to Ti
fton, a small South Georgia town where there was a meeting with local 
sheriffs.
The sheriffs were unhappy with Carter's liberal racial policies, and Powell
obviously thought it would be good for his reputation nationally to be seen 
as
standing up against regional prejudice.

Carter used all his local ties to defang the critics—the sheriffs did not
openly turn against him—and I was impressed. On the flight back, he said he
wanted to drop off in the town of Plains and see how his peanut business was
doing—a homey touch the press would be treated to ad nauseam over the next 
two
years. I do not remember any mention of his local church while we were in 
Plains.
In fact, I cannot recall that religion was brought up in all our hours
together. Perhaps he thought that was not something New York magazine 
readers would
respond to. At any rate, I was surprised when, four years later, so much was
made of his religion as he ran for president. It began when he was asked, 
while
visiting Baptist friends, if he thought of himself as "born again." He 
answered
yes—not surprisingly, since the Gospel of John (3:5) says that one must be
born again to enter the kingdom of heaven, and Saint Paul says that baptism 
is
being reborn into Christ (Romans 6:4). Reporters did not know this as a 
basic
belief of Christians—they treated it as an odd cult claim.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------

That led to his second-most-famous remark of the 1976 campaign. Carter was
asked in a Playboy interview if he thought he was a holier-than-thou person
because he was born again. He answered that, no, in fact he had committed 
lust in
his heart—again quoting the New Testament (Matthew 5:28). That did it. For
much of the Carter presidency, the line of some in the press (and, as I know
well, in the academy) was that he was a religious nut. I followed him in the 
1976
race and heard a reporter ask Carter why he constantly brought up religion. 
He
replied that he had made a determination never to bring up religion in the
campaign. But the reporters kept asking him about it, and he had to answer 
them
or be criticized for dodging the issue.

His attendance at church was not announced; we reporters had to ferret that
out by ourselves. Carter is an old-fashioned Baptist, the kind that follows 
the
lead of the great Baptist Roger Williams—that is, he is the firmest of
believers in the separation of church and state. Unlike most if not all 
modern
presidents, he never had a prayer service in the White House. His problem, 
back
then, was not that he paraded his belief but that he believed. All this can 
seem
quaint now when professing religion is practically a political necessity,
whether one believes or not. There is now an inverse proportion between
religiosity and sincerity.

Carter rightly says in Our Endangered Values that the norms of religion and
politics are different. His religion, at any rate, places its greatest 
priority
on love, of God and one's neighbor, even to the point of self-sacrifice. But
a president cannot make his nation sacrifice itself—that would be 
dereliction
of duty. The priority of politics is justice, and love goes beyond that. But
love can help one find out what is just, without equating the two. That is 
why
none of us, even those who believe in the separation of church and state,
professes a separation of morality and politics. Insofar as believers—the 
great
majority of Americans—derive many if not most of their moral insights from 
their
beliefs, they must mingle religion and politics, again without equating the
two.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

In his new book, Carter addresses religion and politics together in a way
that he has not done before, because he thinks that some Americans, and
especially his fellow Baptists, have equated the two in a way that 
contradicts
traditional Baptist beliefs in the autonomy of local churches, in the 
opposition to
domination by religious leaders, and in the fellowship of love without 
reliance
on compulsion, political or otherwise. In 2000, these tenets were expressly
renounced by the largest Baptist body, the Southern Baptist Convention, 
which
removed a former commitment to belief that "the sole authority for faith and
practice among Baptists is Jesus Christ, whose will is revealed in the Holy
Scriptures." What was being substituted, Carter writes, was "domination by 
all-male
pastors." As a leading spokesman, W.A. Criswell, put it: "Lay leadership of
the church is unbiblical when it weakens the pastor's authority as ruler of 
the
church." The Southern Baptists, Carter laments, have become as authoritarian
as their former antitype, the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The Southern Baptist
Convention has severed its ancient ties with the Baptist World Alliance.

The marks of this new fundamentalism, according to Carter, are rigidity,
self-righteousness, and an eagerness to use compulsion (including political
compulsion). Its spokesmen are contemptuous of all who do not agree with 
them one
hundred percent. Pat Robertson, on his 700 Club, typified the new "popes" 
when
he proclaimed: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and 
the
Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing.
Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." Carter 
got a
firsthand taste of such intolerance when the president of the Southern 
Baptist
Convention visited him in the White House to tell him, "We are praying, Mr.
President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion."

Such attitudes are far from the ones recommended by Jesus in the gospels as
Carter has studied and taught them through the decades, and their proponents
have brought similar attitudes into the political world, where a matching
political fundamentalism has taken over much of the electoral process. Such
dictatorial attitudes defeat the stated goals of the fundamentalists 
themselves. On
abortion, for instance, Carter argues that a "pro-life" dogmatism defeats 
human
life and values at many turns. Carter is opposed to abortion, as what he 
calls
a tragedy "brought about by a combination of human errors." But the
"pro-life" forces compound rather than reduce the errors. The most common 
abortions,
and the most common reasons cited for undergoing them, are caused by 
economic
pressure compounded by ignorance.

Yet the anti-life movement that calls itself pro-life protects ignorance by
opposing family planning, sex education, and informed use of contraceptives,
tactics that not only increase the likelihood of abortion but tragedies like
AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rigid system of the 
"pro-life"
movement makes poverty harsher as well, with low minimum wages, opposition 
to
maternity leaves, and lack of health services and insurance. In combination,
these policies make ideal conditions for promoting abortion, as one can see
from the contrast with countries that do have sex education and medical
insurance. Carter writes:

Canadian and European young people are about equally active sexually, but,
deprived of proper sex education, American girls are five times as likely to
have a baby as French girls, seven times as likely to have an abortion, and
seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands. Also, 
the
incidence of HIV/ AIDS among American teenagers is five times that of the 
same
age group in Germany.... It has long been known that there are fewer 
abortions
in nations where prospective mothers have access to contraceptives, the
assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at 
least enough
income to meet their basic needs.

The result of a rigid fundamentalism combined with poverty and ignorance can
be seen where the law forbids abortion:

In some predominantly Roman Catholic countries where all abortions are
illegal and few social services are available, such as Peru, Brazil, Chile, 
and
Colombia, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand. According to the World 
Health
Organization, this is the highest ratio of unsafe abortions [in the world].

A New York Times article that came out after Carter's book appeared further
confirms what he is saying: "Four million abortions, most of them illegal, 
take
place in Latin America annually, the United Nations reports, and up to 5,000
women are believed to die each year from complications from abortions."[*]
This takes place in countries where churches and schools teach abstinence as 
the
only form of contraception—demonstrating conclusively the ineffectiveness of
that kind of program.

By contrast, in the United States, where abortion is legal and sex education
is broader, the abortion rate reached a twenty-four-year low during the 
1990s.
Yet the ironically named "pro-life" movement would return the United States
to the condition of Chile or Colombia. And not only that, the 
fundamentalists
try to impose the anti-life program in other countries by refusing foreign 
aid
to programs that teach family planning, safe sex, and contraceptive 
knowledge.
They also oppose life-saving advances through the use of stem cell research.
With friends like these, "life" is in thrall to death. Carter finds these
results neither loving (in religious terms) nor just (in political terms).
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carter finds the same rigid and self-righteous—and self-defeating—policies
at work across the current political spectrum. The pro-life forces have no
problem with a gun industry and capital punishment legislation that are, in 
fact,
provably pro-death. Carter, a lifelong hunter, does not want to outlaw guns
and he knows that Americans would never do that. But timorous politicians,
cowering before the NRA, defeat even the most sensible limitations on 
weapons
useful neither for hunting nor for personal self-defense (AK-47s, AR-15s, 
Uzis),
even though, as Carter shows, more than 1,100 police chiefs and sheriffs 
told
Congress that these weapons are obstacles to law enforcement. The NRA 
opposed
background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists 
and
illegals, and then insisted that background checks, if they were imposed, 
had
to be destroyed within twenty-four hours. The result of such pro-death
measures, Carter writes, is grimly evident: "American children are sixteen 
times more
likely than children in other industrialized nations to be murdered with a
gun, eleven times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times 
more
likely to die from firearms accidents." Where are the friends of the fetus
when children are dying in such numbers?

Carter observes that "the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research
reports that the rate of firearms homicide in the United States is nineteen
times higher than that of 35 other high-income countries combined" (emphasis
added). In the most recent year for which figures are available, these are 
the
numbers for firearms homicides:

 Ireland 54
 Japan  83
 Sweden  183
 Great Britain  197
 Australia 334
 Canada 1,034
 United States 30,419
  [emphasis added]

Once again, Carter finds no support for the policies that make such a result
possible in the US, in terms of either a loving religion or a just society.

Capital punishment is also a pro-death program. It does not protect life. It
aligns us with authoritarian regimes: "Ninety percent of all known 
executions
are carried out in just four countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia—and the
United States" (emphasis added). Execution does not deter, as many studies 
have
proved. In states that abolished it, Carter writes, capital crimes did not
increase:

The homicide rate is at least five times greater in the United States than 
in
any European country, none of which authorizes the death penalty. The
Southern states carry out over 80 percent of the executions but have a 
higher murder
rate than any other region. Texas has by far the most executions, but its
homicide rate is twice that of Wisconsin, the first state to abolish the 
death
penalty. It is not a matter of geography or ethnicity, as is indicated by 
similar
and adjacent states: the number of capital crimes is higher, respectively, 
in
South Dakota, Connecticut, and Virginia (all with the death sentence) than 
in
the adjacent states of North Dakota, Massachusetts, and West Virginia
(without the death penalty).

How can a loving religion or a just state support such a culture of death?
Only a self-righteous and punitive fundamentalism, not an ethos of the 
gospels,
can explain this.

It is in foreign affairs that Carter finds the most self-righteous, rigid,
and self-defeating effects of a religio-political fundamentalism. It is the 
gap
between rich and poor in the world that presents the main threat to our
future, yet American policies increase that gap, at home and abroad. We give
proportionally less money in foreign aid than do other developed countries, 
and our
ability to give is being decreased by our growing deficit, incurred to 
reward
our own wealthy families with disproportionate tax cuts. Carter points out 
that
much of the aid announced or authorized never reaches its targets. This
reflects a general smugness about America's privileged position. We are 
dismissive
of other countries' concern with the world environment, with nuclear
containment, and with international law. Carter gives specifics gathered 
from his world
travels and from the experts' forums he regularly assembles at the Carter
Center in Atlanta.

We have, for example, declared our right to first use of nuclear weapons. We
have used aid money to bribe people against holding us accountable to
international law. We have run secret detention centers where hundreds of 
people are
held without formal charges or legal representation. We have rewarded with 
high
office men who, like Alberto Gonzales, say that the Geneva Conventions on
treatment of prisoners are "obsolete" or even "quaint," or who, like John 
Bolton,
say that it is "a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international
law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so."

The result, as Carter writes, has been to turn a vast fund of international
good will accruing to us after September 11 into fear of and contempt for
America unparalleled in modern times. We undermine the inspection teams of 
the UN
and the IAEA with the result that we blunder into Iraq on bad information
gathered from self-serving hacks buttering up our officialdom. On the eve of 
our
attack on Iraq, Carter published an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times 
arguing in
terms of the just war tradition that a preemptive and unilateral invasion 
was
unjustified. Going to war was not a last resort (inspections could have
continued to contain Saddam until the proof of WMDs, or the lack of them, 
could be
established). War was not authorized by international authorities for
eliminating nuclear weapons, but was an opportunity seized in order "to 
achieve regime
change and to establish a Pax Americana in the region." It did not promise
proportional violence with a clear hope of providing better conditions than 
the
ones it was remedying. Carter's was a calm and moral judgment about the war,
which most Americans now believe was the right one. In retrospect, a 
majority
think the war was a mistake. We should have listened to Carter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

We pretend we are against nuclear proliferation, yet we spur it on when
others see our disregard for the very international agreements that promote 
it:

The end of America's "no first use" nuclear weapons policy has aroused a
somewhat predictable response in other nations. Chinese major general Zhu 
Chenghu
announced in July 2005 that China's government was under internal pressure 
to
change its "no first use" policy: "If the Americans draw their missiles and
position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I 
think
we will have to respond with nuclear weapons."

We attack terrorism not by cooperation with other countries' security teams,
which often have better information on worldwide terrorist activities than 
we
do, but with unilateral and preemptive uses of force that just increase
terrorism. This is a new culture of death: "The US National Counterterrorism
Center," Carter writes, "reported that the number of serious international 
terrorist
incidents more than tripled in 2004. 'Significant' attacks grew to more than
650, up from the previous record of 175 in 2003."

We claim to be spreading democracy in the Middle East, but a Zogby
international poll in 2005 showed that an overwhelming majority of Arabs did 
not believe
that US policy in Iraq was motivated by the spread of democracy in the
region, and believed that the Middle East had become less democratic after 
the Iraq
war. The approval rating of America plummeted at the very time we were
supposedly bringing the blessings of freedom there—it stood, Carter notes, 
at "2
percent in Egypt, 4 percent in Saudi Arabia, 11 percent in Morocco, 14 
percent in
the United Arab Emirates, 15 percent in Jordan, with a high of only 20 
percent
in [our friend] Lebanon." These developments have taken place as America
enacted a retreat from earlier commitments, under both Republican and 
Democratic
presidents, that parallels what Carter describes as the retreat of 
evangelicals
from earlier fidelity to gospel values such as life, compassion, tolerance,
and inclusiveness.

Carter is a patriot. He lists all the things that Americans have to be proud
of. That is why he is so concerned that we are squandering our treasures,
moral even more than economic. He has come to the defense of our national 
values,
which he finds endangered. He proves that a devout Christian does not need 
to
be a fundamentalist or fanatic, any more than a patriotic American has to be
punitive, narrow, and self-righteous. He defends the separation of church 
and
state because he sees with nuanced precision the interactions of faith,
morality, politics, and pragmatism. That is a combination that once was not 
rare, but
is becoming more so. We need a voice from the not-so-distant past, and this
quiet voice strikes just the right notes.

Notes

[*] Juan Forero, "Latin American Women Mount Campaign to Legalize Abortion,"
The New York Times, December 3, 2005, page A8.





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