A friend of mine sent this the other day about Carter’s book. I thought it was interesting:

Hey Jonah, I’m reading Carter’s book right now. I’m shocked by how Christian it is. A running theme is that not only are the Muslims being oppressed by the Jews, but so are the Christians. I know Rich and others have mentioned that odd line about the treatment of the Samaritans in the age of the Pharisees, but I’m still astonished that it’s not being talked about more. Carter’s book, at least to me, seems like a pretty obvious attempt to turn Christian America against Israel, and I think the wink-and-nod line about the Samaritans makes that clear. Sure, Carter couches his words in his typical “all I care about is peace and justice” rhetorical cloth (particularly in the first half of the book, where he assures us he really does accept the idea that Israel might be, you know, a democracy), but it’s hard to conclude a third of the way in any thing other than the fact that Carter shares a constitutional aversion to the Jewish state, well on par with the likes of Buchanan, et al. In some ways, Carter’s distaste for Israel is even more conspicuous than Buchanan’s. After all, the editor of The American Conservative hardly claims to be a liberal. But one has to wonder why someone as putatively liberal as Carter is so so willing to the give the benefit of the doubt, on virtually every controversial issue or accusation inhered in the conflict, to the illiberal party (that being the party of theocracy, cultural conformism, terror, etc.). Putting Carter’s Jew problem aside for the moment, I think his book also points to a broader contradiction within left/liberal circles, a problem of sensibilities really. Why is it that a group of people who espouse all kinds of “live, let live” attitudes are so frequently giving the benefit of the doubt to the most rancid illiberalisms across the globe — I can include a long list here of dictators, regimes, etc. that so-and-so liberal/leftist has said something kind about, but I won’t. The far left, the University left that is, has somewhat of an excuse. A good chunk of them aren’t liberals any way and, in fact, are quite serious in their belief that our liberal notions of free government and justice and universal human rights norms, etc. are really just top-down oppressive ideas/tools/justifications handed down to us by the most flagrant historical violators of free governance, justice and human rights – you know, guys like Bush, Cheney, John Ashcroft, George Washington. I know the argument ends up defeating itself the moment it begins, but at least it doesn’t admit to being “liberal.” Then, of course, there’s just the large swath of useful idiots who’ve spent their entire life in pampered bubbles, thus enjoying the luxury of never having to be confronted with real injustice, oppression, poverty and horror, the kind of stuff they’re now in the business of excusing or ignoring for the sake of bigger, badder horrors like an affirmative-action-free campus or a non-bisexually-friendly neighborhood street party. I know their ignorance doesn’t excuse them, but at least you can understand where they’re coming from. (I could have ended up in similar shoes.) But what of men like Carter, a man who’s worked in government, knows how jacked-up (Marine word, btw) it is, how far away from the conventional liberal-left understanding of participatory politics it really is, a man who’s seen the world, worked with the tyrants face-to-face, spoken with the dissidents, set up meetings with virtually all competing sides of all major conflicts, monitored their elections on the ground? How does a man like that keep on sympathizing with the bad guys at the end of the day? Is it really just pragmatic politics on his part, another realism? Or is there a real, active sympathy there (with Castro, Chavez, Arafat, Assad, you name it)? I think the latter gets more at the truth, which is to say Carter really isn’t the kind of liberal he makes himself out to be. And all the intelligent, informed self-avowed liberals like him aren’t really the liberals they say they are either.