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My guest tonight, the thirty ninth President of the United States, who was also a Nobel Peace Prize winner. His latest book is called Our Endangered Values America's Moral Crisis. Please welcome to the program, President Jimmy Carter, Sary.
Nice to see you. Thank you for being rid us.
The book is called Our Endangered Values.
It is your twentieth book.
You have been traveling the world, monitoring international elections, doing wonderful missionary work building homes. Sir, I ask you this, Why are you busier? Why do you work harder than our actual president.
Well, one reason is that although I have been governor of Georgia, I have been President of the United States. I have won a Nobel Peace Prize. I have eleven grandchildren, and they don't think I'll be a success in life until I've been on The Daily Show. And if I was president, and if I was president, I couldn't be there.
I understand, sir, And that's what this show is for. Give kids like you a break. We're here to help you out.
Thank you for that.
How did a.
Southern Baptist conservative really person become the nemesis of the right in this country. There's a certain segment of the country that demonizes Jimmy Carter.
It's a very small segment, a very small segment. Well, I told the truth, and this book is damping out about six weeks. Nobody's found anything wrong with it. It points out, I think in very vivid terms, it's still in sale.
That yes it is.
And by the way that they have Christmas gift, this would make.
Absolutely And they have been dramatic and unprecedented basic changes in America's policies that are deeply concerning to me. It's not democratic versus republic, and it's not liberal versus conservative. These are radical changes compared to what was done in all previous administrations, including George Bush Senior and Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan and all Democratic presidents as well. These are radical changes, and that's what I
thought I'd devote my time. But it's my first book. It's been about political issues.
A lot of the changes you pegged to the rise of fundamentalism, not just in this country but around the world over the past thirty years, beginning with the hostage crisis in Iran.
That's true in religion and in politics, and lately what's been of great concern, in addition to what I've already said, is the merger of the two, the merger of religion in politics, because I happen to be a Christian, and I think that my religion teaches me that you should run downder Caasar the things that are caesars, the God and things that are God. And Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers, said that we should build a wall
between the church and state. That wall is being deliberately and ostentatiously, not secretly, broken down. So there's been an increasing merger in this country, a fundamentalism on the religious side, fundamentalism on the political side, and the two have come together.
Do you have a sense in your mind why that hasn't been stopped by the electoral process, Because there is I see it everywhere concern over that type of extremely for infiltrating itself into the government or these things, But every election cycle that comes around doesn't seem to reflect that dissatisfaction.
Well, as a matter of fact, in the year two thousand, I think the Democrats won.
So it ded with like that.
Yeah, And two thousand and four the results of election were predictably distorted because about nine or ten percent of the American people will tell you today did they vote for the incumbent president even if they don't agree with him or as policies, as long as he is the commander in chief of our young men and women overseas with their lives in danger. So that the tremendous effect
of patriotism in this country. I think that patriotic incarnation was strongly savaged but also very greatly utilized by their Republicans, and.
That changes the politics of it.
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