Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: My guest tonight, the thirty ninth President of the United States,
Speaker 2: who was also a Nobel Peace Prize winner. His latest
Speaker 2: book is called Our Endangered Values America's Moral Crisis. Please
Speaker 2: welcome to the program, President Jimmy Carter, Sary.
Speaker 1: Nice to see you. Thank you for being rid us.
Speaker 2: The book is called Our Endangered Values.
Speaker 1: It is your twentieth book.
Speaker 2: You have been traveling the world, monitoring international elections, doing
Speaker 2: wonderful missionary work building homes. Sir, I ask you this,
Speaker 2: Why are you busier? Why do you work harder than
Speaker 2: our actual president.
Speaker 3: Well, one reason is that although I have been governor
Speaker 3: of Georgia, I have been President of the United States.
Speaker 3: I have won a Nobel Peace Prize. I have eleven grandchildren,
Speaker 3: and they don't think I'll be a success in life
Speaker 3: until I've been on The Daily Show. And if I
Speaker 3: was president, and if I was president, I couldn't be there.
Speaker 2: I understand, sir, And that's what this show is for.
Speaker 2: Give kids like you a break. We're here to help
Speaker 2: you out.
Speaker 3: Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: How did a.
Speaker 2: Southern Baptist conservative really person become the nemesis of the
Speaker 2: right in this country. There's a certain segment of the
Speaker 2: country that demonizes Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 3: It's a very small segment, a very small segment. Well,
Speaker 3: I told the truth, and this book is damping out
Speaker 3: about six weeks. Nobody's found anything wrong with it. It
Speaker 3: points out, I think in very vivid terms, it's still
Speaker 3: in sale.
Speaker 1: That yes it is.
Speaker 2: And by the way that they have Christmas gift, this
Speaker 2: would make.
Speaker 3: Absolutely And they have been dramatic and unprecedented basic changes
Speaker 3: in America's policies that are deeply concerning to me. It's
Speaker 3: not democratic versus republic, and it's not liberal versus conservative.
Speaker 3: These are radical changes compared to what was done in
Speaker 3: all previous administrations, including George Bush Senior and Dwight Eisenhower
Speaker 3: and Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan and all Democratic presidents
Speaker 3: as well. These are radical changes, and that's what I
Speaker 3: thought I'd devote my time. But it's my first book.
Speaker 3: It's been about political issues.
Speaker 2: A lot of the changes you pegged to the rise
Speaker 2: of fundamentalism, not just in this country but around the
Speaker 2: world over the past thirty years, beginning with the hostage
Speaker 2: crisis in Iran.
Speaker 3: That's true in religion and in politics, and lately what's
Speaker 3: been of great concern, in addition to what I've already said,
Speaker 3: is the merger of the two, the merger of religion
Speaker 3: in politics, because I happen to be a Christian, and
Speaker 3: I think that my religion teaches me that you should
Speaker 3: run downder Caasar the things that are caesars, the God
Speaker 3: and things that are God. And Thomas Jefferson, one of
Speaker 3: our founding fathers, said that we should build a wall
Speaker 3: between the church and state. That wall is being deliberately
Speaker 3: and ostentatiously, not secretly, broken down. So there's been an
Speaker 3: increasing merger in this country, a fundamentalism on the religious side,
Speaker 3: fundamentalism on the political side, and the two have come together.
Speaker 2: Do you have a sense in your mind why that
Speaker 2: hasn't been stopped by the electoral process, Because there is
Speaker 2: I see it everywhere concern over that type of extremely
Speaker 2: for infiltrating itself into the government or these things, But
Speaker 2: every election cycle that comes around doesn't seem to reflect
Speaker 2: that dissatisfaction.
Speaker 3: Well, as a matter of fact, in the year two thousand,
Speaker 3: I think the Democrats won.
Speaker 1: So it ded with like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And two thousand and four the results of election
Speaker 3: were predictably distorted because about nine or ten percent of
Speaker 3: the American people will tell you today did they vote
Speaker 3: for the incumbent president even if they don't agree with
Speaker 3: him or as policies, as long as he is the
Speaker 3: commander in chief of our young men and women overseas
Speaker 3: with their lives in danger. So that the tremendous effect
Speaker 3: of patriotism in this country. I think that patriotic incarnation
Speaker 3: was strongly savaged but also very greatly utilized by their Republicans, and.
Speaker 2: That changes the politics of it.
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