Voice of reason: Former President Jimmy Carter has been making the media rounds touting his new book, “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis,” published this month by Simon & Schuster. Now, while Carter is an avowed born-again Christian, he does not believe that his personal beliefs should be imposed on others, especially through the laws and institutions of the United States.
Carter, who turned 80 this year, has a soft-spoken style that is well-reasoned and full of conviction. In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, he lays out the main principles covered in his book. Here are a few of them:
- Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of “preemptive war,” an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.
- Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public awareness of casualties.
- Instead of reducing America’s reliance on nuclear weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of “first use” of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.
- Our government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America’s working families. Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).
- I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many houses of worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly intertwined in ways previously thought unimaginable.
- As the world’s only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal point around which other nations can gather to combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We should be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in need.
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