Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis

As a believing Christian, Carter takes on issues that are under fierce debate -- women's rights, terrorism, homosexuality, civil liberties, abortion, the death penalty, science and religion, environmental degradation, nuclear arsenals, preemptive war, and America's global image.

Amazon.com Review
Even at his most irate, Jimmy Carter projects cool, communicating with a poise that commands attention while gently signaling to opponents that they better do their homework before mounting any sort of debate. Perhaps that's why the former president, Nobel Peace Prize-winner, and bestselling author ranks as one of the planet's most respected voices in the areas of human rights, diplomacy, and good government. And when a clearly agitated Carter suggests America is on a slippery slope, globally speaking, as he does throughout Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, it's wise to pay heed even if the book's overriding Christian perspective may trip cautionary bells in secular readers.

More a set of loosely connected essays than a single, precise argument, Our Endangered Values outlines Carter's worldview while pondering what he posits are key problems looming in the 21st century. Thematic touchstones such as the war, environmental negligence, civil liberties, the rich-poor divide, and the separation of church and state form the book's backbone, with Carter filtering each through the prism of his own vast experience. He doesn't much like what he sees. Though much of the data Carter presents to support his arguments is familiar, it's worth repeating that "the rate of firearm homicides in the United States is nineteen times higher than that of 35 other high-income countries combined." That "In addition to imprisonment, the United States of America stands almost alone in the world in our fascination with the death penalty, and our few remaining companions are regimes with a lack of respect for basic human rights." That when it comes to sharing the wealth with poor nations "Americans are the stingiest of all industrialized nations. We allow about one-thirtieth as much as is commonly believed [or] sixteen cents out of each $100 of the gross national income." America: land of the free, home of the brave? Try global bully with a bad attitude and reckless sense of entitlement.

Carter spends significant time contextualizing his own spirituality, as if to underscore the urgency of his message that fundamentalism in any form is bad, especially when it encroaches on government. Indeed, Carter persuasively links fundamentalism to harmful policy, the subjugation of women, general xenophobia, and a host of other ills occurring all around him. And while George W. Bush in particular and the current administration in general take fewer clips on the chin than might be expected, Carter's arguments for common-sense change are deeply resonant nonetheless. --Kim Hughes

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

A Respected Christian Gives our Nation a Much Needed Warning, 2008-09-08
In this very readable, wide-ranging and meaty book, Ex-President Jimmy Carter, ruminates, and worries about the erosion of American values as the erosion continue to sink the nation into the quick sand of arrogant, corrupt, mean-spirited, short-sighted and politically motivated partisan leadership as practiced by both the present conservative government and current fundamentalist's Church leaders.

Taking on his own Baptist church and the Bush administration as the first and most obvious test case, Carter expresses more than just a little impatience with the self-righteous and arrogant hypocrisy of those who feel like their mere alignment with God is sufficient to make them and their beliefs "superior and right," and everyone else's "inferior and wrong." He notes that it was this very same set of attitudes, that forged an unholy marriage between church and state during the century of racial discrimination.

His present concern is that there are still those who want this marriage to continue to work and are busy using its license to twist our nation's morality and ideals into a narrow-minded channel where the "self-appointed, self-anointed, and self-selected "chosen few" can continue to ply their proven Neanderthalian brand of witchcraft in the name of "the lord" -- and do so in the post-Modern world.

The problem that worries Carter most is that this kind of "unholy mischief" has been raised to a whole new level, and has been expanded well beyond race and now infects both the church and our government at the highest levels -- so much so that it has begun to tear at the very foundation of the nation's institution, and is beginning to destabilize it at its very moral core.

Once a nation of freedom, equality, tolerance, peace and the last resort defenders of human rights everywhere - all qualities Jesus would have admired -- America has now become the nation that stifles freedoms at the slightest pretext, rolls back equality, practices "progress through war," and thumbs its nose at human rights.

The ex-President and devout Christian has a long list of the new anti-American evils being committed in the name of permanently welding God and country into a single potent unit despite that doing so would violate the very Constitution these pseudo-patriots and crypto-religionists profess to love and uphold.

That all true patriots are now beginning to see the outlines of their dirty work and have begun to sing from the same sheet of music should worry not just President Carter, but us all.

Five Stars.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Right Idea - Wrong Title, 2008-06-23
Former President Carter has written down his thoughts about our current administration. Essentially, America has become a global bully. The big, muscular high school jock who beats up on others or threatens to do so, and then, like President Bush, says, "Bring it on."

Perhaps the current administration is somewhat justified in breaking any treaty or agreement in hunting down an enemy that can never be reasoned with, that can never be negotiated with and that usually does not wear a uniform. Perhaps the current administration and its supporters believe that some "evil empires" need to be annihilated, so the question needs to be asked: "Why not just annihilate them?" The answer is simple: greed.

Mr. Carter rightly points to the preemptive war doctrine currently in place as unheard of in our country's history. But the formula is simple: defense contractors need to move inventory. Find a target, move some inventory in the way of bombs, bullets and vehicles and hold the area. Then you contact your other friends and bring them in to rebuild infrastructure that had just been blown up. A win-win situation. For added security, you also bring in "contractors," the new word for mercenaries.

What Mr. Carter does not mention is the greed and it's all about me attitude of too many people in America. The Enron and Global Crossing mentality where there's no such thing as too much money, even if retirees have to pay with their 401Ks.

Mr. Carter deserves praise for his work toward peace, notably the Camp David agreement. His Carter Center has been helping people around the world in the area of health. He does show what one man can do and he gives impressive examples.

He is inconsistent and perhaps a bit confused about adding his religious beliefs to the mix. During his Presidential campaign, he refers to his making a mistake by mixing politics and religion. It wasn't his fault that reporters asked him a question about his faith to which he truthfully replied. They were the ones who blew it out of proportion to discredit him.

I think Mr. Carter would have had a better book if he connected American values in government with American values among the average American population. He rightly points out that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, but what can people honestly do? When a run for President is clearly about how much money you have and/or how many special interest groups line up behind you, what can or should the average person do?

The moral crisis in this book, according to Mr. Carter, is that America's government has dropped negotiation in favor of bombs and bullets, that it does not do enough to help the poor, that it is alienating current and potential allies by running around and shooting first and, on occasion, asking questions afterward (What do you mean you found no WMD's?), and that by not honoring certain agreements, it is helping nuclear proliferation and increasing the threat to the environment.

Our values are endangered, but they are endangered at all levels of American society. Everyone wants to live like a king. But Americans as individuals can and have been generous.

It may be that enough people in government will rise up and say, "Kill them all is not the answer." But as long as enough people in government believe that is the answer, little will change. Meanwhile, the American people will only have varying degrees of bad to vote for in the next election. But, as a fellow Christian, I join Mr. Carter in prayer that a better way can be found. That American government finds a way to address its legitimate defense interests in a way that is consistent with long-held principles.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Not What You Think, 2008-04-18
A frequent comment made in many reviews (all excellent, it seems to me) is, "It's not what you think." I have great regard for Jimmy Carter, but the book's title "put me off." Finally, however, with the frequency with which the reviews praised it, I thought that I must give it a try. And surprise: "It's Not What You Think." Do read it; you'll be pleasantly surprised.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Timely Observations, 2008-04-05
Thoughts of a deeply religious man, who was a former Naval Officer and who also bore the burdens of our nation's highest office. Simple truths, well spoken.


1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

A great man, a slightly disappointing book, 2008-03-05
It's been a long time since I started and finished a book in one night - and I never expected former president Jimmy Carter's book to be such a fast read.

The more I find out about this man, the more I admire him. I was only 6 when he became president - and I knew three things about him. He was a former farmer, he had a brother named Billy and (later) he was the president during the Iran hostage crisis.

Since I've gotten older and since he's gone on to do many admirable things on the world stage, I've come to move him high up on my list of great people.

"Our Endangered Values" only reinforces that belief. These are essays on many of the issues that trouble me as I look at the horribly wrong direction our country is headed - and I now know that Carter is even more worried than I. (I didn't think that was possible!) He, of course, has been intimately involved in many of the most pressing issues of our time, and has met many of the world leaders involved.

Most of the book is tied into his Christian faith in some way, most powerfully, I think, when he talks about the rise of fundamentalism in the world. Not only Islamic fundamentalism, which seems to jump to mind first, but also Christian fundamentalism - a trend I find almost as scary. Maybe more so, at times, because I feel it affecting our country every day, and not in positive ways. He points out that fundamentalists of any faith have the following in common: They are led my authoritarian males who have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers, they believe the past is better than the present, they are convinced that they are right and that anyone who contradicts them is ignorant and possibly evil, they are militant in fighting against any challenge to their beliefs...hmmm - sound remarkably like the idiot in the White House!

By the end of the book, I found myself almost feeling worse for Jimmy Carter than for our country. Those institutions and people in which he had such faith are failing him and are heading down paths he is no longer willing to follow.

Carter writes with great emotion, and clearly refutes neoconservative arguments on abortion, the death penalty, the war in Iraq. (I was appalled by this fact: 90% of all executions are carried out in just four countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States. In fact, our nation and Somalia (which has no organized government) are the only two that have refused to ratify the International Covenant on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits execution for crimes committed by children. Nice company we're in.)

I found myself moved by his dismay and amazed by some of his facts, but I didn't finish the book with any sense of purpose. He does not offer much of a solution to the problems that are facing our country. He very clearly writes against what we should not be doing but doesn't really tell us what we should be doing to stem this tide.

I guess I can always look at my "Bush Countdown" clock for that...

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