*UPDATED* Jimmy Carter, American Revisionist

It is most appropriate that as Jimmy Carter preens and prattles on in the public forum, attempting to defend and give credence to the mindless drivel he has espoused, is occurring in the same week that David Duke, et al, are attempting to give credence to their drivel and patently absurd, Holocaust revisionist ‘theories’ in Tehran. Mr Carter, the Iranians and the Holocaust revisionists are all sharing what they desperately want- a public forum that bestow a kind of credence on their respective- and calculated- causes.

President Carter’s posturing is harder to understand, of course. As a former president and mediator of the Camp David Accords, he has to know what others are pointing out. As in the aftermath of former President Clinton’s interview with Fox News, Mr Carter had to know the record would be examined and he had to know he would be excoriated (which is why he preemptively defended himself and said in his book that ‘there really wasn’t apartheid in Israel’).

In fact, Mr Carter gambled and lost.

He thought opposition would come mostly from the Jewish community (and justifiably so). Clearly, he did not count on the personal rejection and the revulsion to his ideas that are coming from the American heartland.

The CBS News blog post, Jimmy Carter’s Foolishness About Israel, pokes Carter in the eye, not so much because of what he wrote but because of the basic premise that underlies his deceit.

Carter, like all Israel bashers, proclaims his courage. Please. It takes courage to criticize Israel? The world is teeming with Israel-haters. No other nation in the world — not Russia, not Saudi Arabia, not Cuba — is the subject of so much concentrated calumny. In Europe, as Melanie Phillips recounts in her dazzling book Londonistan, Israel is cursed not just among the rabble but at elegant dinner parties and embassy soirees. And while it’s true that in the United States Israel enjoys high levels of support, it is also routinely castigated (and nearly always by people who imagine they are defying some powerful cabal). What is amazing is that even a former president of the United States confuses freedom of speech with freedom from criticism for the content of that speech.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali picks up on a theme that Jimmy Carter studiously avoids. When she describes the horrors of the Holocaust to her half sister, she elicits the predictable response:

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: “It’s a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed.”

She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.

Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn’t want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.

Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it.

…What’s striking about Ahmadinejad’s conference is the (silent) acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this?

Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations, the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed — that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.

The world needs to be informed again and again about the Holocaust — not only in the interest of the Jews who survived and their offspring but in the interest of humanity.

Jimmy Carter wants to pretend that the Arab world (and the Palestinians in particular) are moral equals that come to the negotiating table with the same sensibilities and vision of humanity that the rest of us have. That is patently false. In Societies, cultures and religions are measured by the values they build upon and not by what they destroy…, we quoted a Saudi blogger

Imagine that in the West, you had a school system which sat the children down each day and fed them a tumbler of whisky. They might not like it at first, but they would eventually get used to it. Later on, they would start to look forward to it. By the time they left school, a fair proportion of them would be alcoholics. Perhaps not a problem if they kept it to themselves, but the ones who went out and drove over people or otherwise killed them would start to be a concern. So you would have to start a program of drying-out clinics, to cure them. And they might be successful, although there’s no such thing as a cured alcoholic, just one who hasn’t had a drink for a length of time. And you might just question the wisdom of spending money and effort creating alcoholics, only to have to spend more money and effort to cure them later.

Clear enough?

What Jimmy Carter finds so repulsive about Israel (and the Jews, for that matter) is that the Israeli make moral distinctions and moral decisions, every single day. The left finds that intolerable because making decisions predicated on morality is antithetical to everything the left holds sacred. Making decisions based on morality is a knife in the heart of moral relativism- that all moralities are equal. The Jews are particularly despised, because once more they have proved that morality and decisions- actions- predicated on moral behavior will always trump the kindergarten, ‘can’t we all get along’ crowd.

Jimmy Carter, isn’t much different than Ted Haggard, the disgraced minister caught up in a sex and drug scandal. Mr Carter, like Haggard, appears to be using his Christian faith as a defensive shield, in the hope that his ‘Christian faith’ make his beliefs more valid and truthful. He also believes that his faith can be used offensively, in the hope his professed faith will mitigate his own shortcomings and will deflect much condemnation of his deliberate deceit as plows ahead, imposing moral and intellectual bankruptcy on all who will listen.

David Duke too, talks of his ‘European Christian heritage,‘ as if that might make his reprehensible and repulsive racist and bigoted ideologies more palatable to the masses.

The moral relativists are as silent on the Holocaust revisionists as they are on openly declared war on Jews by many Arabs. They have to be, because if they were not, they would be exposed as frauds. Better a dead Israeli or Jew that defends morality than a dead, genocide espousing Palestinian. To the Left, that murderous Palestinian- admittedly through no fault of his own- taught to hate from birth, has to be equal in morality to the Israelis and everyone else.

That is like saying the murderer who teaches his child to kill is the moral equal to the doctor who teaches his child to heal.

President Carter wants to leave a legacy that will overshadow his failures. He appears to truly believe that his attempts at self aggrandizement, that bastard stepchild of the Left’s obsession with ’self esteem,’ are in the best interests of the nation. As such, he believes that his deceit and fraud and are acceptable foundations upon which to build his vision of Utopia, as embodied by the United States. Those that disagree with his vision- and moral relativism- are his ‘victimizers.‘ Of course, it is just coincidence that Mr Carter’s victimizers are the same ones who persecute David Duke.

Mr Carter shrewdly believes that if he can convince Americans that they are very smart, because ‘they learned everything they needed to know in kindergarten‘ (the kind of reality the Leftists must accept in order to maintain their charade), his legacy will be vindicated. Mr Carter does not want to deal with the truth that there are some very bad people that genocide in schools, in the media and from the pulpits in the Middle East anymore than he wanted to believe the Soviet Union was indeed an ‘evil empire,’ whose ideology deliberately caused the death of tens of millions. Mr Carter is counting on his sounding so reasonable, and on appearing so hurt by the suggestion that his ideologies might actually be seen for what they are, that they will deflect attention criticism. Mr Carter’s America is made of clay, to be shaped and molded into the legacy he desires and as he sees fit. Mr Carter does not trust Americans or the values and ideologies that made America great.

In a poignant and passionate post, Do The Right Thing, Dr Sanity sees a very different America than does Jimmy Carter or David Duke. Her America is a moral America, defined by holding dear and defending real morals and values

So much do we love the freedom and values of this country, we have always been willing to put our lives on the line, not only to insure that the blessings of liberty will be passed onto our own children, but to pass it on to all people; all races; all religions.

When faced with touch choices, America has almost always chosen to do the hard thing; to take the more difficult course; the road less travelled–because more often than not, it is the right thing to do. And it makes all the difference.

There are many people in this country who always demand that we take the easy path. Those are the same people who put enormous stock in opinion polls and make decisions based on how popular they are likely to be. Somehow they have forgotten–if they ever knew to begin with– that doing what needs to be done, the right thing, is not always the popular thing. The hard choices and the sacrifices necessary to see them through, are beyond the moral, intellectual, or physical capacities of such people–unless they can feel the polls are with them–then it magically becomes very easy.

Real values are timeless. The European countries that excoriate us now for our interventionism, did not complain when we intervened on their behalf. Is freedom only merited by western Europeans? Is that what we really believe?

Gagdad Bob too, addresses good, evil and morality. In his must read, The Unthinkable Goodness of America, he writes

Who, in the 1930’s, could imagine that there were people so evil that they would systematically round up all the members of a particular religion and exterminate them in gas chambers? Even now, it is beyond the imagination. Yes, we know that it happened, but on another level it didn’t happen, because it’s too inconceivable. Our minds won’t go there. We cannot imagine the mentality of a person who would herd women and children like cattle into gas chambers. Being charitable, one wonders if this isn’t the cognitive “point of entry” for certain Holocaust deniers — it’s too evil to have happened, so it didn’t happen.

He goes on, speaking of Hamas, Hizbollah, Fatah, et al:

They are so evil, that many people just don’t see it. Or they make excuses for it, and imagine that there is something that can justify their twisted theology. Many particularly morally loathsome individuals on the left, such as Jimmy Carter, actually sympathize with them.

Obviously, talk of the threat makes people uncomfortable, as they would prefer to imagine that we live in a safe world governed by reasonable agents. Rumsfeld is absolutely correct that “there’s a tendency for a lot of people to be dismissive of [the threat] and to ridicule it. Churchill’s phrase about the gathering storm — there was a storm gathering, but there were people in Europe who didn’t believe it and who didn’t take the periodic storm clouds and the squalls as a real threat. They thought they were transitory and, of course, paid an enormous penalty in treasure and life for their failure to understand the nature of that threat. I worry we are in a gathering storm and we do not, as a society, accept it. Many of the elites of our society, the key opinion leaders, are unwilling or unable to accept what an awful lot of people believe to be the case. The penalty for being wrong can be enormous.”

Again, they do not see it because they cannot imagine how evil our enemies are. I was thinking about my son playing at the park with the other children. There are millions of people all over the world who would enjoy nothing more than to put a bullet in his head — to mow the children down with a machine gun or suicide bomb, just because they are Jewish or “infidels.”

That isn’t hyperbole. In our inherent goodness, we have enabled Mr Carter. There is a gathering in Iran who are obsessed with the ideas Gagdad Bob highlights. We have often noted that those who seem so obsessed with denying the Holocaust are the same people who think exterminating Jews is a good idea. There are those (including Jimmy Carter’s beloved Palestinians) who openly proclaim that they are willing to ‘finish the job Hitler started‘- or rather, they are willing to start the job Hitler never got around to, despite the avalanche of records and testimony by Germans complicit in the genocide.

It is interesting to note that Holocaust revisionists do not deny the mass execution of the mentally handicapped, gays, Gypsies and other ethnic groups by the Germans. Only the Jews merit that distinction. It is also interesting to note that Holocaust deniers are not troubled by the death of 45 million plus non Jewish souls because of the reign of death wrought on Europe by Hitler. To most Holocaust deniers, Hitler was a ‘misunderstood’ hero- ‘misunderstood’ of course, because of the Jews. The Arabs, always ahead of the curve, as we noted are at the fore of Holocaust denial and ‘understanding’ Hitler. Mein Kampf is a perennial best seller in the Arab Middle East. So advanced are Arab culture, society and political ideology, that they have abandoned all attempts to modernize and succeed, so that they might remain world leaders in obsessive and frenzied anti Jewish sentiment. In fact, anti Jewish hatred and bigotry is the only endeavor in which Arabs excel- and that is the reality Jimmy Carter needs to obfuscate and deny. If he accepted those realities, Mr Carter would to admit that moral relativism is not only a mirage, but in fact poses a real threat to our value system. While we may not be perfect, we are always improving and self correcting, unlike those who oppose what we stand for.

Mr Carter has gone so far as to declare the Rwandan massacres to be of less import than the Israeli ‘persecution’ of Palestinians.

That is how deep Mr Carter’s bigotry and self serving need to redefine his failures into a credible legacy, goes.

If the world sees the petty hubris, selfishness and deceit of Jimmy Carter as representative of American values, we have fallen far, indeed.

*UPDATE*

Betsy connects a few more dots. In The “Specious Vacuity” of Jimmy Carter, she lays out with some precision just how “Carter has been willing to twist facts..” She pointedly notes Mr Carter’s reluctance to subject his ideas to debate, and how Mr Carters excoriation and condemnation of Israel seems to be in direct proportion to the amount of money the former President receives from leaders of the very dysfunctional Arab world.

The list of his Arab contributors goes on and on. I’d like to see the next TV interviewer talking to Carter about his book read this list and then ask him how he maintains objectivity about Israel while raking in money from Arab countries who hate Israel. And, that intrepid interviewer could also remind audiences of Carter’s long, enthusiastic embrace of Yasser Arafat and Palestinian terrorists.

Of course, Mr Carter ignores the role the very dysfunctional Arab world plays in Middle East realities. In his world, bought and paid for by Arab despots, it is the Israelis and their commitment to democratic ideals that are the source of all woes. Mr Carter, like many in the Arab world, have chosen to see the world through lenses of denial and mass psychosis.