Also, unlike our current leaders, Carter and McGovern, a presidential candidate who believed peace preferable to war, both served during wartime. McGovern served as a bomber pilot in WWII. Carter served in the Navy and would have liked to make a career of the military, but duty called, and when his father died he went home to take over the family peanut farm.
But, also unlike the current administration, Carter believed in war as a "last resort." The deep thinkers who have experienced war know as General McArthur did that "Its destructiveness on both friend and foe have rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes." As General Zinni, former Head of Central Command for U.S. Forces in the Middle East said "It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot, and are hot to go to war, see it another"We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started""
Also, while Bush, Cheney, and everyone around them avoided Vietnam, and none of their children are fighting in the current wars, Carter's oldest son volunteered to serve in that war.
In response to the gasoline shortage that occurred during his term of office, Carter had solar panels installed at the White House. He also mandated higher fuel efficiency standards for all automobiles. The first thing Reagan did when he came into office was get rid of the solar panels. He also did away with the mandatory fuel efficiency standards for cars. Perhaps, if Carter's initiatives had been followed and expanded, American kids, now, would not be dying to ensure oil companies profits.
Jimmy Carter belonged to the Southern Baptist Church most of his life. He quit that church in 2000 when a new "Baptist Faith and Message" statement was adopted. It deleted the premise that "the sole authority for faith and practice among Baptists is Jesus Christ, whose will is revealed in the Holy Scriptures," substituting Southern Baptist leaders for Jesus as interpreters of biblical Scripture. He also decried the church's continuing treatment of women as inferior to men and the take over of the church leadership -- a concern shared by former Republican senator and Episcopal priest, John Danforth -- by the Republican Party. He believes very strongly, and says the Baptist Church of his time believed very strongly, in the separation of church and state.
Carter's book is a condemnation of the increasing mix of church and state, and the push by the religious right to make America a Theocracy. He argues against the fundamentalism, sometimes militant fundamentalism, and the lack of tolerance of both those in Christian churches, and radical Islam. Fundamentalism, he believes, divides rather than unites us. A premise of fundamentalism is "I am right and worthy, you are wrong and condemned." It follows, then, that since you are less worthy than me, you matter less than I do. That kind of attitude can lead, ultimately, to genocide, just as it did in Germany when Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and others were "less worthy." Fundamentalism, he says, embraces "rigidity, domination, and exclusion." Characteristics he does not consider Christian.
Carter, while personally opposed to abortion believes in obeying the law of the land. He notes that In 2002 in America, 47% of women with unintended pregnancies resorted to abortion. The most prevailing common factor was poverty. During the 1990's (Clinton years when poverty decreased) abortion fell to a 24 year low of sixteen per thousand women of childbearing age. There are fewer abortions in nations with access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care and enough income to meet basic needs. In Belgium and the Netherlands only seven abortions occur among each thousand women of child-bearing age. In some predominantly Roman Catholic (and poor) countries where all abortions are illegal, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand!
Perhaps, if the Christian right truly desires to end abortion, they should concentrate on raising the minimum wage, eradicating poverty, and fighting for universal health care.
I, myself, have always wondered why the militant "right to life" people -- people of "faith" -- have so little faith in their God that they, apparently, believe that if God truly wants a baby to be born he is too powerless to change the heart of a woman so that she will not be able to go through with an abortion.
I personally, believe He does that frequently.
They also might want to take the blinders off when it comes to sex education. According to Carter's book, Approximately 60% of American teens have sex before 18. Statistics for Canada and industrialized European nations are about the same, but, because American teens are deprived of practical sex education, American girls are five times as likely as French girls to have a baby and seven times as likely to have an abortion. They are seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands, and five times as likely to have HIV/AIDS as those of the same age in Germany.
The most effective approach to AIDS prevention in Africa was explicit sex education and the use of condoms. Our hypocritical leaders, who did not practice abstinence themselves when young, and whose children, apparently, also do not practice abstinence,expect the rest of the people in the world to do what they themselves did not do. They want "abstinence only" programs of sex education and disease prevention administered in poor nations. Who does not believe abstinence by young teens is a good idea? Who would not prefer adoption as a way of dealing with unplanned pregnancies? But preaching "abstinence only" is not a practical way of dealing with the actual problem, any more than "just say no" was an effective way of dealing with the drug problem.
The Democratic position that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare" is, in my mind, the most "Christian" view. Especially since the very people who are so determined abortions must be outlawed are frequently the ones most against any kind of help to the mother or the child once it is born.
And, concerning the death penalty in the 1970's one in a thousand Americans was in prison. Rehabilitating criminals was a priority and a matter of pride among some governors. Jimmy Carter had a female parolee working for him. A wonderful black woman, she had been convicted of murder. It was later proven she was completely innocent. But in today's climate of "compassionate conservatism" she would likely have been executed. Carter, himself, says if her victim had been white, she almost certainly would have been executed.
Now that religious fundamentalists have taken over both the churches and the government, vengeance and punishment rather than rehabilitation is the rule of the day. Seven in a thousand citizens are now in prison, the highest incarceration rate in the world, most for non-violent crimes. And, as far as the death penalty being a deterrent is concerned, the murder rate in America is five times that in advanced European countries, none of which have the death penalty. Southern states carry out over 80% of the executions, but have a higher murder rate than any other region. Texas has the most executions but also the highest homicide rate - twice that of Wisconsin the first state to abolish the death penalty.
Carter points out that in the Bible, Jesus does speak out about both divorce and adultery, but he does not say one word about either homosexuality or abortion - the "sins" fundamentalists tend to focus on. Yet the Baptist church leads all churches in the rate of divorce at 29%, while it condemns both homosexuality and abortion. Adultery is not exactly unknown in the church, either, as periodic sex scandals in the church serve to remind us.
But, also unlike the current administration, Carter believed in war as a "last resort." The deep thinkers who have experienced war know as General McArthur did that "Its destructiveness on both friend and foe have rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes." As General Zinni, former Head of Central Command for U.S. Forces in the Middle East said "It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot, and are hot to go to war, see it another"We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started""
Also, while Bush, Cheney, and everyone around them avoided Vietnam, and none of their children are fighting in the current wars, Carter's oldest son volunteered to serve in that war.
In response to the gasoline shortage that occurred during his term of office, Carter had solar panels installed at the White House. He also mandated higher fuel efficiency standards for all automobiles. The first thing Reagan did when he came into office was get rid of the solar panels. He also did away with the mandatory fuel efficiency standards for cars. Perhaps, if Carter's initiatives had been followed and expanded, American kids, now, would not be dying to ensure oil companies profits.
Carter's book is a condemnation of the increasing mix of church and state, and the push by the religious right to make America a Theocracy. He argues against the fundamentalism, sometimes militant fundamentalism, and the lack of tolerance of both those in Christian churches, and radical Islam. Fundamentalism, he believes, divides rather than unites us. A premise of fundamentalism is "I am right and worthy, you are wrong and condemned." It follows, then, that since you are less worthy than me, you matter less than I do. That kind of attitude can lead, ultimately, to genocide, just as it did in Germany when Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and others were "less worthy." Fundamentalism, he says, embraces "rigidity, domination, and exclusion." Characteristics he does not consider Christian.
Carter, while personally opposed to abortion believes in obeying the law of the land. He notes that In 2002 in America, 47% of women with unintended pregnancies resorted to abortion. The most prevailing common factor was poverty. During the 1990's (Clinton years when poverty decreased) abortion fell to a 24 year low of sixteen per thousand women of childbearing age. There are fewer abortions in nations with access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care and enough income to meet basic needs. In Belgium and the Netherlands only seven abortions occur among each thousand women of child-bearing age. In some predominantly Roman Catholic (and poor) countries where all abortions are illegal, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand!
Perhaps, if the Christian right truly desires to end abortion, they should concentrate on raising the minimum wage, eradicating poverty, and fighting for universal health care.
I, myself, have always wondered why the militant "right to life" people -- people of "faith" -- have so little faith in their God that they, apparently, believe that if God truly wants a baby to be born he is too powerless to change the heart of a woman so that she will not be able to go through with an abortion.
I personally, believe He does that frequently.
They also might want to take the blinders off when it comes to sex education. According to Carter's book, Approximately 60% of American teens have sex before 18. Statistics for Canada and industrialized European nations are about the same, but, because American teens are deprived of practical sex education, American girls are five times as likely as French girls to have a baby and seven times as likely to have an abortion. They are seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands, and five times as likely to have HIV/AIDS as those of the same age in Germany.
The most effective approach to AIDS prevention in Africa was explicit sex education and the use of condoms. Our hypocritical leaders, who did not practice abstinence themselves when young, and whose children, apparently, also do not practice abstinence,expect the rest of the people in the world to do what they themselves did not do. They want "abstinence only" programs of sex education and disease prevention administered in poor nations. Who does not believe abstinence by young teens is a good idea? Who would not prefer adoption as a way of dealing with unplanned pregnancies? But preaching "abstinence only" is not a practical way of dealing with the actual problem, any more than "just say no" was an effective way of dealing with the drug problem.
The Democratic position that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare" is, in my mind, the most "Christian" view. Especially since the very people who are so determined abortions must be outlawed are frequently the ones most against any kind of help to the mother or the child once it is born.
And, concerning the death penalty in the 1970's one in a thousand Americans was in prison. Rehabilitating criminals was a priority and a matter of pride among some governors. Jimmy Carter had a female parolee working for him. A wonderful black woman, she had been convicted of murder. It was later proven she was completely innocent. But in today's climate of "compassionate conservatism" she would likely have been executed. Carter, himself, says if her victim had been white, she almost certainly would have been executed.
Now that religious fundamentalists have taken over both the churches and the government, vengeance and punishment rather than rehabilitation is the rule of the day. Seven in a thousand citizens are now in prison, the highest incarceration rate in the world, most for non-violent crimes. And, as far as the death penalty being a deterrent is concerned, the murder rate in America is five times that in advanced European countries, none of which have the death penalty. Southern states carry out over 80% of the executions, but have a higher murder rate than any other region. Texas has the most executions but also the highest homicide rate - twice that of Wisconsin the first state to abolish the death penalty.
Carter points out that in the Bible, Jesus does speak out about both divorce and adultery, but he does not say one word about either homosexuality or abortion - the "sins" fundamentalists tend to focus on. Yet the Baptist church leads all churches in the rate of divorce at 29%, while it condemns both homosexuality and abortion. Adultery is not exactly unknown in the church, either, as periodic sex scandals in the church serve to remind us.
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