Jimmy you will have with you always

Rabbi Shmuel Boteach has written an interesting essay on why Jimmy Carter isn't an anti-semite, but a disturbing something else, a clueless moralist:

Jimmy Carter is not so much anti-Semite as anti-intellectual, not so much a Jew-hater as a boor. The real explanation behind his limitless hostility to Israel is a total lack of any moral understanding .... Carter wants to do what's just. His heart's in the right place. He just can't figure out what the right is. He is, and always has been, a man of good intentions bereft of good judgment. He invariably finds himself defending tyrants and dictators at the expense of their oppressed peoples. Not because he is a bad man, but because he is a confused man.

Carter's confusion is rooted in the unreliable "underdog" theory of morality, mixed with a heavy dose of white guilt. Carter's book title is not only an insult to Israel, but, as Boteach points out, an insult to black South Africans as well. The Palestinians cannot be placed in such company - they don't deserve to be.

(BTW, what Boteach says about the 70s really is true: it sucked big time. The leisure suits were made with polyester. What a horror :)
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POSTSCRIPT: Here's further comment on Jimmy Carter's book, from another disillusioned Emory University professor.

One sub-lie, constantly repeated by Carter, of the Big Lie of the Middle East, is that the decline of Christians in Israel/West Bank is due to ... Israel! In reality, Christians have been in decline over the whole region for most of the last century, for obvious reasons having nothing to do with Israel: see this from the Boston Globe - not the most Israel-friendly newspaper in America either.