I enjoyed reading Jimmy Carter’s little book on Our Endangered Values. It wasn’t a very good book, though. It’s sloppy and poorly constructed, and fails to stick to its knitting. Still, I found it inspiring in places.
As far as I can tell, Jimmy Carter set out to make two points. First, there is a frightening trend to marry a particular set of religious beliefs and institutions with a particular political party and its policies and institutions. Such marriages are bad, in large part, because they endanger our national values, not only freedom of religion, equality, scientific progress and so on, as well as the neglected but historically American values of negotiation, pluralism, and compromise, but the Christian values of tolerance, stewardship, humility, charity and peace. Or at least this particular marriage of conservative, fundamentalist protestants and the Republican party does.
Which it does. And it’s moving to read Mr. Carter’s experience, as a southern Baptist and a conservative Democrat, of that marriage, and his bewilderment at being excluded both from his own religious tradition and the political mainstream. He documents some interesting details that I hadn’t known, and his perspective is fascinating, and far from my own—as a non-Christian and as a lefty Democrat, I am used to being excluded from the mainstream, to the point where it’s hard for me to remember that I am not actually much further from the mainstream than Mr. Carter, these days. I mean, I grew up during Mr. Carter’s presidency, and remember thinking that Mr. Carter and his colleagues were trying to push the liberals out of the light, and they pushed back and lost. Now it seems like Mr. Carter has no attackers on the left anymore, not (I think) because his basic policy positions have changed, but because the center has moved.
The problem is that Mr. Carter can’t help going into too much detail about things that are not directly related to his point. You see, I think it’s terrific that he’s pointing out that his views are solidly in the tradition of his church, and of American culture generally. But when he veers off into the details of nuclear non-proliferation and his experience with North Korea, as fascinating as it might be, he’s left that point. Or, at least, he hasn’t convinced me that nuclear non-proliferation is really an essential American value. I mean, sure, we would rather that Iran and North Korea not have nukes, nor yet India and Pakistan, or France for that matter, and yes, this Administration and its allies have done a remarkably lousy job with that issue, but so what? I mean, the value there, as far as I understand it, is the obligation to work for peace (or for the Prince thereof); the details of nuclear non-proliferation are a long way from that. Of course, at the moment I’m perplexed that people think that the Ayatollah is so much crazier than Mao or Stalin (or Netanyahu or Musharref or whoever the BJP may give The Button to) that we have to start another war. But that’s a digression.
Digression: I’m perplexed that people think that the Ayatollah is so much crazier than Mao or Stalin (or Netanyahu or Musharref or whoever the BJP may give The Button to) that we have to start another war. I mean, I don’t want Iran to have Da Bomb, but I don’t want Israel to have the bomb either, and certainly not Pakistan. Is Iran really that much more of a threat to actually use the thing? Doesn’t deterrence work anymore? End Digression.
Anyway, I think Mr. Carter would have been much better off limiting himself to a few basic ideas—stewardship, humility and peace on the religious hand, and compromise, progress and equality on the other—and writing short essays showing how the allies in government and religion have abandoned those principles. The examples should be as brief and as close to the point as possible, without giving up specificity and punch. I know Mr. Carter thinks its obvious how nonproliferation is connected to those ideals, but I think it would have been more effective closer to home.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Andrew Sullivan has been talking about your digression somewhat; his main points seem to be (a) the Ayatollah has explicitly said things like “if we could wipe Israel off the map, we would”; and (b) it’s not clear how well deterrence works against a culture that glorifies suicide and/or death at the hands of the enemy. When the best thing you could possibly do is be slaughtered in battle, what’s to deter you from fighting?
The threat of capture followed by long-term internment in a prison system which revels in violating the Geneva Conventions, where you will be isolated, humiliated, degraded, beaten, and tortured, but probably not killed. That might deter some folks. How’s it working so far?