According to the annual Freedom House survey of democracy and liberty around the globe, there was almost no increase in freedom during Carter’s presidency. Instead, both Iran and Nicaragua, principal targets of Carter’s human rights policy, became human rights disasters; the Soviets cracked down on human rights activists Anatoly Scharansky and Aleksandr Ginzburg; and Carter’s foreign policy weakness encouraged the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. The aftershocks of Carter’s foreign policy failures reverberated most powerfully in the Islamic fundamentalist terrorism we have today. It was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that created the mujahadeen, who revived the idea of jihad. More important, the fall of the shah in Iran gave Islamic fundamentalist radicalism an enormous state sponsor and inspiration and made being an American ally in the Middle East seem more dangerous than being an American foe. Carter’s idealism failed in confronting communism during his presidency and later in confronting communist North Korea. Carter idealism–if it can be called that–in the Middle East would have us side with the terrorist PLO rather than the democratic Israel, and would have us on a perpetual merry-go-round of talks aimed at appeasing Arab dictators rather than toppling them or challenging them to reform and cease sponsoring terrorism.
Steven F. Hayward
The Real Jimmy Carter, page 230.
[One can claim, with reasonable ability to defend the thesis, that Carter was a “nice guy” and had “good intentions”. But the results of his policy are just like the “nice guys” who have “good intentions” and want infringe our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. They fail. They fail because they are naive. “Bad guys” exist. Bad guys take advantage of the weak. It is, as George Orwell said, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
Guns in the hands of the common person allow them to sleep peaceably in your bed at night because they can do their own violence when it becomes necessary to defend themselves and other innocent life. It is hopelessly naive to believe removing the power to do violence from the innocent will ever make the world a better place. At every level from the individual through city, state, and national level the means and the will to defend the innocent will always be a requirement for a safe and just society.
H/T to Davidwhitewolf who donated the author signed copy of The Real Jimmy Carter to the Boomershoot raffle. The inscription reads “Dear Boomershooter, Thanks for supporting the 2nd Amendment, Boomershoot 2010, and Project Valor-IT, [signed] Steven F. Hayward. I put many raffle tickets in the bucker for this book but someone else got it. They brought it to me afterward and asked me to blow it up for them. “Huh? Didn’t you read the find print on the jacket cover? It says, ‘How our worst ex-president undermines American foreign policy, coddles dictators, and created the party of Clinton and Kerry’?” Nope. They hadn’t read the fine print. I said that I would be glad to take the book and even blow it up for them if they really wanted that. But I would rather read it and use it as a source of quotes. They agreed and gave it to me.–Joe]