Jimmy Carter Condemns Bush, Israel, and the Religious Right Nutballs [View All]

[Mir]

Jimmy Carter is, in my opinion, the lost soul of our country. A humane and entirely decent man, he gives his opinions on some of the madness that is existing in the world today in an interview with Der Spiegel.

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"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."

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,431793,00.html