Review: Our Endangered Values–America’s Moral Crisis (Hardcover)

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Civil Society, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

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5.0 out of 5 stars Impeaches Neo-Conservatives with Common Sense,

December 23, 2005
Jimmy Carter
This book should be read together with Cornel West's Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism Peter Peterson's Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (Plus) [slams both Right and Left–the Right for claiming that Jesus is pro-war, pro-rich, and a selective moralist; the Left for not embracing faith and God as part of the politics of America]; and David Callahan, The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead There are many, many other books that support President Carter's wisdom, and my point in mentioning just a few of them early in this review is to stress that we are indeed in a national crisis, and this one book by President Carter provides us with a pensive pause from which we might then begin to take action.

The introduction is nothing less than an implicit (NOT explicit) manifesto for the impeachment of the current Administration and its political neo-conservatives and their extremist fundamentalist right-wing Christian religious zealots (who, coincidentally, are aligned in the Middle East with extremist Jews and completely corrupt energy and construction companies that profit from war).

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: Also in support of President Carter, these books just out:
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century

Consider this one sentence from the introduction: “Most of our political leaders have extolled state and local autonomy, attempted to control deficit spending, avoided foreign adventurism, minimized long-term peacekeeping commitments, preserved the separation of church and state, and protected civil liberties and personal privacy.” The only thing President Carter does not include here that I would is “and respected the separation of powers and particularly the Congressional prerogatives of declaring war and controlling the public purse.”

This book is nothing less than a national-level sermon on what is wrong and where we need to go. I have often thought over the years that President Carter was too far ahead of his time. He paid heavily for being honest about the need to deal with future growth issues and national malaise in the 1970's. I am struck, not only by how right he was, but by how he may be just what we need now, returning him to the Presidency in 2008, especially if he asks John McCain to be his Vice President and commits to both a coalition cabinet announced in advance, and a platform with just three planks: restore the integrity of the individual vote (by ending gerrymandering, campaign contributions, and lobbyists; reinstate the League of Women Voters as the debate managers, open to all parties; move voting to week-ends to accommodate the working poor); restore morality in both governance (end our support of 44 dictators) and business (end subsidies, tax breaks, and predatory capitalism); and balance the budget (end both debt and trade deficits, in part by localizing energy, transportation, agriculture, and production).

President Carter nails it when he states in his conclusion that the greatest challenge we face is the growing chasm between the rich and the poor on earth. He is at one with C. K. Prahalad (The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks) )when he observes that “extremely poor people demonstrate remarkable intelligence, innovation, and effectiveness.” I had no idea of the extraordinary results the Carter Center has been achieving around the world–unlike other Presidential Centers that focus on glorifying their subject, the Carter Center has been focused, in relative anonymity, on actually saving the world.

He concludes that what defines a great Nation is not its economy or its military, but its “demonstrable commitment to truth, justice, peace, freedom, humility, human rights, generosity, and the upholding of moral values.” Implicit throughout the book is also the need to return to a separation of church and state, and our traditional respect for providing our citizens with accurate information, welcoming dissenting voices, and accommodating free and open debate on controversial issues.

Edit of 11 Dec 07: See also:
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All

President Carter does not, in any way, shape, or form, call for the impeachment of this current Administration, nor does he comment on the Democratic Party as an alternative. My own view is that the Democratic Party cannot be trusted as an alternative–they are as corrupt as the Republicans (I am a moderate Republican dismayed by the current “coup d'etat” engineered by the neo-conservatives). My own view is that President Carter's vision for the future of American will not happen unless we first do two things:

1) Insist that anyone who wishes to be elected or re-elected in 2008 to Congress campaign as an Independent, and strive for a coalition Congress led by Independents with Democratic and Republican incumbents not up for re-election as minorities; and

2) Devise a coalition Executive team, ideally led by President Carter, to win in 2008 with the sole and explicit objective of restoring the integrity of the individual vote so that the common sense of the people might hold sway over all the other decisions that face us.

I am mighty impressed by this book and the wisdom in this book. Other candidates for President pale in comparison to this author. It would be a mighty fine sign of divine providence if we were to have a chance to bring Jimmy Carter back as president, but not as a Democrat–as an Independent American.

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: Lou Dobbs on CNN is calling for all Americans to consider re-registering as Independents, and Jim Turner, Naderite #1, led Naderites for Gore 2000, is seeing signs of 100 million who have opted out on partisan politics, coming back for the big one.

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Review: Infinite Wealth–A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Force Structure (Military), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Survival Manifesto for Anyone with A Brain,

February 11, 2001
Barry Carter

First off, this book made the cut above another ten or so options on the fringes (the amazon reviews helped). It was a good choice. The author captures the essence of many other books as well as real-world experience with two fundamental points that every manager and every employee–including fast-food employees and others in “drone” jobs–needs to absorb: first, that the existing bureaucratization of the economy at every level is costing so much as to place those companies in jeopardy during the forthcoming economic shake-out, and second, that the sooner every individual begins the process of inventorying their personal capabilities and creating the networks for offering their personal services and knowledge via the Internet to all comers, the sooner they will be able to share in the profits associated with their direct individual contributions to the new economy.

The Department of Defense acquisition and contracting examples are especially shocking because they show, so credibly and in detail, how we have institutionalized multi-billion dollar waste.

This is a special book. It is by a practical man who has drawn very personal and transformative lessons from the school of hard knocks, and whose recounting of those lessons have value for anyone who expects to work for a living today and in the future. This is not a “get rich quick” book as much as it is a “get rich together or get left behind” book.

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Review: Preventive Defense–A New Security Strategy for America

5 Star, Diplomacy, Force Structure (Military)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Fully Half of the Right Answer–Bi-Partisan and Serious,

August 30, 2000
Ashton B. Carter
The authors provide a coherent discussion of fully half of the security challenges facing us in the 21st century. They wisely avoid the debate swirling around the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)-but deserve credit for their predecessor “offset strategy”-and simply note that the absence of “A List” threats gives us an opportunity to strengthen and maintain our traditional nuclear and conventional capabilities against the day when a Russia or China may rise in hostility against us. The book as a whole focuses on the “B List” threats, including Russia in chaos, a hostile China acting aggressively within its region, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and catastrophic terrorism. They note, correctly, that most of the spending and effort today is focused on responding to the crisis de jure, some but not enough resources are applied to preparing for the future, and virtually nothing is being done against the latest concept, that of “shaping” the environment through “forward engagement.” Perhaps most importantly, they introduce the term “defense by other means” and comment on the obstacles, both within the Administration and on the Hill, to getting support and funding for non-military activities with profound security benefits.Although others may focus on their discussion of Russia and NATO as the core of the book, what I found most helpful and worthwhile was the straight-forward and thoughtful discussion of the need for a new national strategy, a new paradigm, for dealing with potentially catastrophic terrorism. Their understanding of what defense resources can be applied, and of the impediments to success that exist today between state & local law enforcement, federal capabilities such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and defense as well as overseas diplomatic and intelligence capabilities, inspire them to propose several innovative approaches to this challenge. The legal and budgetary implications of their proposals are daunting but essential-their proposals for dealing with this one challenge would be helpful in restructuring the entire U.S. government to better integrate political-diplomatic-military-law enforcement operations with judicial and congressional oversight as well as truly all-source intelligence support.

Interesting side notes include 1) the early discovery in US-Russian military discussions that technology interoperability and future collaboration required the surmounting of many obstacles associated with decades of isolated (and often secret) development; 2) the absence of intelligence from the entire book-by this account, US defense leaders spend virtually all of their time in direct operational discussions with their most important counterparts, and there is very little day to day attention to strategic analysis, estimative intelligence, or coordination with diplomatic, economic, and law enforcement counterparts at home; 3) the difficulty of finding a carrier to send to Taiwan at a time when we had 12 carriers-only four appear to have been “real” for defense purposes; and 4) the notable absence of Australia from the discussion of security in Asia.

The concept of Preventive Defense is holistic (requiring the simultaneous uses of other aspects of national power including diplomacy and economic assistance) but places the Department of Defense in a central role as the provider of realigned resources, military-to-military contacts, and logistics support to actual implementation. Unfortunately the concept of Preventive Defense has been narrowly focused (its greatest success has been the dismantling of former Soviet nuclear weapons in the Commonwealth of Independent States), and neither the joint staff nor the services are willing to give up funds for weapons and manpower in order to make a strategy of Preventive Defense possible.

This resistance bodes ill for the other half of the 21st Century security challenge, what the author's call the “C List”-the Rwandas, Somalias, Haitis and Indonesias. They themselves are unwilling to acknowledge C List threats as being vital to U.S. security in the long-term (as AIDS is now recognized). I would, however, agree with them on one important point: the current budget for defense should be repurposed toward readiness, preparing for the future, and their concept of preventive defense, and it should not be frittered away on “C List” contingencies-new funds must be found to create and sustain America's Preventive Diplomacy and its Operations Other Than War (OOTW) capabilities. It will fall to someone else to integrate their concept of Preventive Defense with the emerging concepts of Preventive Diplomacy, International Tribunals, and a 21st Century Marshall Plan for the festering zones of conflict in Africa, Arabia, Asia, and the Americas–zone where ethnic fault lines, criminal gangs, border disputes, and shortages of water, food, energy, and medicine all come together to create a breeding ground for modern plagues that will surely come across our water's edge in the future. On balance, through, this book makes the top grade for serious bi-partisan dialogue, and they deserve a lot of credit for defining solutions for the first half of our security challenges in the 21st Century.

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