Carter: The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God's ideas and God's premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases -- as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world -- it makes your opponents sub-humans, so that their lives are not significant. Another thing is that a fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality. And so this administration, for instance, has a policy of just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them -- which is also a radical departure from past history. So these are the kinds of things that cause me concern. And, of course, fundamentalists don't believe they can make mistakes, so when we permit the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, it's just impossible for a fundamentalist to admit that a mistake was made.Check out the rest.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Jimmy Carter interview in Spiegel
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3 comments:
Interesting...I had been attributing the don't-negotiate-with stance to a low-grade fraternity mentality. You know, they don't measure up to us Dekes, and we want them to know it.
Could be some of both, too.
CKR
Carter's interview in Der Spiegel is very good. Not surprisingly, peanut gallery members of Team Bush are well ... responding the way one might imagine they might respond. In a not so subtle dig, Carter mentions off-hand that the Camp David Accords he brokered with Sadat and Begin have now held up for 27 years and he did not have to suspend the US constitution or advocate for human torture to do this. Breath of fresh air.
I thought it was a terrific interview. And, interestingly, posting this brought a lot of people this way from Technorati. The interview apparently got lots of attention in the rightosphere.
I think it's pretty difficult to argue with the excerpt I posted here.
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