
‘America has no functioning democracy at this moment’ – Jimmy Carter on NSA - sanbor
http://rt.com/usa/carter-comment-nsa-snowden-261/
======
sehugg
The former POTUS's quote "America does not have a functioning democracy at
this point in time" was covered in few U.S. outlets, and initially reported in
the German paper Der Spiegel in the German language.

Perhaps the most visible outlet to include the quote was The Huffington Post,
but they can't be bothered to do their own translation. So they cover it via a
link to The Inquisitr, which can't bring itself to validate the source,
questioning the accuracy of the German newspaper Der Spiegel (which it calls
"Die Spiegel").

Note: Carter made this statement in Atlanta, Georgia, not Germany.

Maybe Carter should have also said "America does not have a functioning news
media at this point in time."

~~~
foobarqux
"Few" is and understatement. Searching on Google News for "no functioning
democracy" yields only two recognizable US outlets: Huffington Post and The
Atlantic Wire.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
[https://news.google.com/news?ned=us&q=America%20has%20no%20f...](https://news.google.com/news?ned=us&q=America%20has%20no%20functioning%20democracy&btnG=Search+News)

Sad.

------
nostromo
I always liked this quote from Carter on his legacy:

"We kept our country at peace. We never went to war. We never dropped a bomb.
We never fired a bullet. But still we achieved our international goals. We
brought peace to other people, including Egypt and Israel. We normalised
relations with China, which had been non-existent for 30-something years. We
brought peace between US and most of the countries in Latin America because of
the Panama Canal Treaty. We formed a working relationship with the Soviet
Union."

~~~
vph
With all due respect to Jimmy Carter, and he is a good man at heart, but he
appears naive as to what is the true core of the USA. The USA has always been
a country of military power. Without military power, the USA would not be what
it is today. Even during peace time with the Soviet and others, the underlying
military power of the US serves as an important factor to maintain that peace.

~~~
jivatmanx
The military-industrial complex was basically created from scratch in WWII
(The U.S's industrial contribution to WWI was a joke). This was never de-
mobilized because the Cold War began immediately after, and Europe was in no
position to defend itself.

~~~
coldtea
> _The military-industrial complex was basically created from scratch in WWII
> (The U.S 's industrial contribution to WWI was a joke). This was never de-
> mobilized because the Cold War began immediately after, and Europe was in no
> position to defend itself._

Actually it was never de-mobilized because the US needed it to play the role
of a world hegemonic power -- to control other places with diplomatic and
military might, grab resources and such. It was its opportunity to step on to
that role, since WWII had destroyed the European colonian empires.

As for Europe, defend itself from what? With the exception of right wing nuts
in power, Europeans didn't feel threatened by the USSR. The people of (non
Eastern) Europe, were half and half in favor of communism (huge following in
Italy, France, Greece, etc. In Western Germany there were lots of sympathizers
too, but the communist party was crashed by Hitler (and then the country was
divided post war). That would also be the case in Spain and Portugal, if it
wasn't for the dictatorships.

~~~
toyg
_> Europeans didn't feel threatened by the USSR._

 _Some_ Europeans certainly didn't, but _many_ of them, in fact, _did_ feel
threatened by the USSR: the ruling classes.

Also, opinions on the USSR were quite divided even on the left, with (Moscow-
sponsored) hardcore Communist parties being on very different terms with it
than traditional Socialist movements.

------
tptacek
But it totally had a functioning democracy when the President had a team of
henchmen breaking into the offices of his political opponents, during an era
where the Joint Chiefs had a plan to depose the President if he was unwilling
to abide by impeachment.

Certainly, democracy must have flourished during the time where the
administration waged an undeclared war in Central America that sponsored death
squads and brokered arms deals with the Iranians, in part as an effort to
undermine the campaign of the preceding incumbent President.

And democracy was no doubt stronger during the era of the Vietnam Draft.

And it absolutely had a functioning democracy during a time when the House had
a committee on "Un-American Activities" that subpoena'd citizens and had them
testify under penalty of perjury --- a penalty that actually imprisoned
Americans --- for merely sympathizing with the aims of Communism.

And surely we had a functioning democracy during the times where voting was
controlled by literacy tests --- "Question 13: Spell Backwards, Forwards" and
dogs and firehoses greeted people who dared challenge enforced, legal
segregation.

The idea that it's never been worse in American, because some government
agency might be reading your Facebook posts, is lunacy; an insult to people
who actually stood up to real malignant government power. It's an easy mistake
to make: it's the availability heuristic. You understand the implications of
worldwide Internet surveillance, but barely remember (if you even knew about
in the first place) HUAC.

I don't know what Carter's excuse is, though; he surely knows about Watergate,
Iran-Contra, HUAC, Tuskegee, COINTELPRO, and the Hoover FBI. Carter is just
being a coot.

~~~
forgotAgain
_But it totally had a functioning democracy when the President had a team of
henchmen breaking into the offices of his political opponents, during an era
where the Joint Chiefs had a plan to depose the President if he was unwilling
to abide by impeachment._

That president was forced to resign after public, televised House hearings
showed the country what was going on.

 _Certainly, democracy must have flourished during the time where the
administration waged an undeclared war in Central America that sponsored death
squads and brokered arms deals with the Iranians, in part as an effort to
undermine the campaign of the preceding incumbent President._

The public Iran contra hearings exposed what happened and sent Oliver North to
jail.

 _And democracy was no doubt stronger during the era of the Vietnam Draft._

Nightly news programs showing the war and giving the count of US deaths led to
protests that ended the war and the draft.

 _And it absolutely had a functioning democracy during a time when the House
had a committee on "Un-American Activities" that subpoena'd citizens and had
them testify under penalty of perjury --- a penalty that actually imprisoned
Americans --- for merely sympathizing with the aims of Communism._

And those public hearings ultimately led to the downfall and disgrace of
McCarthy.

 _And surely we had a functioning democracy during the times where voting was
controlled by literacy tests --- "Question 13: Spell Backwards, Forwards" and
dogs and firehoses greeted people who dared challenge enforced, legal
segregation._

Would those tests have ever ended if they were not publicly known?

 _The idea that it 's never been worse in American, because some government
agency might be reading your Facebook posts, is lunacy; an insult to people
who actually stood up to real malignant government power. It's an easy mistake
to make: it's the availability heuristic. You understand the implications of
worldwide Internet surveillance, but barely remember (if you even knew about
in the first place) HUAC._

You're purposefully trivializing what has been going on. All of the situations
you described were ended by public knowledge of what was going on. In the
current case not only is there no public knowledge, there is the threat of
imprisonment for those who discuss what they know publicly.

 _I don 't know what Carter's excuse is, though; he surely knows about
Watergate, Iran-Contra, HUAC, Tuskegee, COINTELPRO, and the Hoover FBI. Carter
is just being a coot._

Carter has always listened to a different drummer. He's also been willing to
speak for others. In this case he happens to be speaking out for us.

~~~
tptacek
You're romanticizing. It's easy to talk about how public information solved
these crises in hindsight, but in reality the US government did a far better
job of concealing things from the public during the 20th century than it does
now. As a concrete example: the entire Vietnam War was predicated on a lie
that was only fully uncovered in 2005.

------
rayiner
Carter is a nice guy. My dad really likes him. His political views are
actually quite consistent with the prevailing attitudes among my liberal
friends and a lot of what I read on HN. So it's extremely telling that America
dislikes him. The right has an intense hatred for him, and the left is at best
ashamed of him. It's also extremely telling that America, on both sides of the
aisle, loves Reagan, quite the opposite of Carter, someone who espoused a
militarily powerful America that wasn't afraid to get its hands dirty abroad.

Obama seems, to me, to be a democrat for "Reagan's America." Socially liberal,
but as willing to blow up random people in the Middle East as anyone who has
come before him. When Obama killed Bin Laden and ran with that during the 2008
campaign, I could distinctly perceive democrats thinking: "we found our
Reagan." It's no surprise then, that Obama's approval ratings on his handling
of the war on terror are still in the black, and are surprisingly good overall
for someone whose entire presidency has been mired in a terrible economy.

That doesn't seem to me to be a democracy that isn't functioning. It seems to
me to be giving people what they want.

~~~
ace_of_spades
I think you are missing the fact that's media and money telling most of the
people what they should want. It's sad to say but too many don't people think
for themselves... that's why public debates are necessary to help people build
an opinion. I'm just glad that Snowden stepped forward and exposed this system
of ruthless disinformation. I'm optimistic that now is the time where we have
a chance to really make a noise about these problems that we see right now and
get people to listen to more sides of the story and drive change.

~~~
rayiner
I think that's a phat cop-out. The media can steer the public narrative, but
it cannot create predispositions out of whole cloth. I think Americans,
especially those raised in the shadow of the cold war, have a predisposition
towards wanting a militarily aggressive government. And Carter argued against
that, and was reviled for it and seen as weak. I think the media steered that
narrative and maybe made Carter less popular than he would otherwise be, but I
don't think they created that visceral reaction in people: that his actions
showed weakness on the part of America and the gut aversion to showing
weakness. I think that was always there and the media just took advantage of
it.

~~~
ace_of_spades
Alright, I can't much argue against this as I'm not American and only have
been living America for a year in 2005.

However, I do believe that it is hard to underestimate the power of the media
and propaganda that has been and is going on, not only in the US but almost
anywhere in the world. Of course there is some predisposition towards power
and everything that comes with it, but it's fueled, driven and used by the
media and people who control it. And people can change quickly if they realize
that this has gone to far.

Just look at Germany after WWII, it's now one of the least aggressive states
there is and I can tell you from personal experience that there is no
predisposition towards military aggressiveness whatsoever... And we (as I am
German) are still the same kind of people who we have been during Nazi time,
just differently educated or indoctrinated, whatever you want to call this.

Today, I believe we HAVE a chance to change. There is blatantly obvious
mischief going on and they are struggling to hide it. We have a whistleblower
with accurate information (it's funny/telling how not even the Gov is trying
to dispute the facts - they are just redirecting the attention), services and
platforms to distribute that information and I HAVE to believe that we can use
these means to initiate this change. What would be the alternative? Keep on
going? I don't want to know how that would turn out.

------
hga
Carter was the first Democratic President after the Church Commission, and his
CIA director
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_Central_Intelligenc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_Central_Intelligence#Stansfield_Turner_1977.E2.80.931981))
was infamous for his scorn of HUMIT and e.g. firing of 800 in operational
positions in a "Halloween Massacre". I've read that today the CIA has 90% of
its personal stationed in the US, and their loss of fieldcraft skills is
infamous
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack)).

So you might say that his actions in the long term pushed us towards a
dependence on what the NSA does, especially in a "War on Terror" where image
reconnaissance is of limited utility.

~~~
ihsw
Financial necessity pushed us towards what the NSA does -- it's an operational
imperative to cut costs, and processing the world's communications definitely
cuts costs quite a bit.

Maintaining listening posts and other intelligence infrastructure is a
_massive_ economic and political undertaking, and the vacuuming of
_everything_ reduces dependence of third-parties.

------
Roboprog
Carter told the truth (probably due to his background as an engineer and an
actual family-business size businessman). Many people didn't like that.

Carter wanted to do something about the energy crisis and peak oil. Reagan
tore down the solar panels (it's symbolic, OK?). Now we have massive debt and
an attempt at empire to capture remaining fossil fuel resources, as well as a
blossoming police state to wrap a bow around the package.

------
sage_joch
Fun fact: if you start typing "Edward Sn..." into Google News, it will not
auto-complete it. I don't know if there is an innocuous explanation, but it is
consistent with a media that is trying to downplay stories like this.

~~~
roc
I get "Edward Snowden" as the first suggestion after typing as little as
"edw".

edit: I'm in the US; My browsers aren't configured to use google for address
bar/search box searching. I may have explicitly searched for Snowden via
Google at some point, but I don't really use Google for search anymore, so
that feels unlikely.

Searching directly from www.google.com, I get the suggestion at "edw".

Though searching from news.google.com, I don't get an auto-suggestion, even if
I type out "Edward Snowden" in its entirety.

Amusingly, at "ns" I get "NSA warrantless surveillance controversy" as the
first suggestion.

~~~
dllthomas
Google News search box, or browser search bar? I am finding that the former is
behaving like the parent comment said, the latter like you say.

~~~
mladenkovacevic
I get the correct behaviour in both the search bar and the omnibar (edward
snowden girlfriend being the second result).. I should not that I am in Canada
but I've tried both google.com and google.ca (although I am logged in at the
moment so they know where I'm from regardless)

------
jliechti1
I wonder if Jimmy Carter realized it would come to this when he signed the
FISA into law back in 1978.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
Probably a good candidate for a debate on whether the slippery slope is real
or imagined.

~~~
dragonwriter
If you think that FISA in 1978 started a slippery slope to the recent
surveillance abuses, you don't understand what FISA did and what the state of
affairs with regard to surveillance was _before_ FISA.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
Long story short: FISA made legal foreign intelligence surveillance on US soil
and made domestic warrantless wiretaps illegal. Some people would argue the US
Constitution's fourth amendment applies to all men and women, even those that
are the subject of foreign intelligence surveillance. Once that was made
legal, the definition of 'foreignness' has expanded to effectively include
domestic warrantless wiretaps.

~~~
dragonwriter
> FISA made legal foreign intelligence surveillance on US soil

No, it didn't.

Warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance was already legal on US soil; at
least, that was the conclusion of the two federal appeals courts which ruled
on the issue. And, were it an issue where the Fourth Amendment required a
warrant, it would take a Constitutional amendment, not a statute, to change
it.

> Some people would argue the US Constitution's fourth amendment applies to
> all men and women, even those that are the subject of foreign intelligence
> surveillance.

Some people _did_ argue that in the US federal courts before FISA, and they
lost, at least insofar as those courts found that however the Fourth Amendment
might apply to them, it didn't require warrants for that kind of surveillance.
(Note that the Fourth Amendment doesn't require warrants for all searches and
seizures, it requires them to be reasonable, and sets a standard for warrants
when they are issued; it has been held by the courts that warrants are
generally required for reasonableness, but that there are a wide array of
circumstances for which reasonableness does not include a warrant
requirement.)

~~~
eliasmacpherson
I am getting my info from here and it is at odds with what you are saying.
What are the federal appeals courts rulings on it?

(407 U.S. at 321-22). "We have not addressed, and express no opinion as to,
the issues which may be involved with respect to activities of foreign powers
or their agents." [1]

[1]
[http://blogs.georgetown.edu/?id=12001](http://blogs.georgetown.edu/?id=12001)

~~~
dragonwriter
> I am getting my info from here and it is at odds with what you are saying.
> What are the federal appeals courts rulings on it?

 _United States v. Clay_ , 430 F.2nd 165 (5th Cir., 1970), this was reversed
on other grounds, but is important because the relevant part of the holding
was the basis for the holding regarding foreign intelligence surveillance in
the following case, referring to warrantless wiretaps authorized by the
Attorney-General on behalf of the President: "No one would seriously doubt in
this time of serious international insecurity and peril that there is an
imperative necessity for obtaining foreign intelligence information, and we do
not believe such gathering is forbidden by the Constitution or by statutory
provision"

 _United States v. Brown_ , 484 F.2d. 418 (5th Cir., 1973).

 _United States v. Butenko_ , 494 F.2d 593 (3rd Cir., 1974) explicitly found
that the Fourth Amendment did apply, but warrants were not required for
reasonableness of foreign intelligence surveillance, as: "Certainly occasions
arise when officers, acting under the President's authority, are seeking
foreign intelligence information, where exigent circumstances would excuse a
warrant. To demand that such officers be so sensitive to the nuances of
complex situations that they must interrupt their activites and rush to the
nearest available magistrate to seek a warrant would seriously fetter the
Executive in the performance of his foreign affairs duties."

~~~
eliasmacpherson
Thank you kindly, that clears it up. I think then the Supreme Court could
define 'reasonableness' in a different manner than currently interpreted, but
then I don't know much about how that would come about.

------
swombat
Quick! Throw Jimmy Carter in jail! He's a terrorist sympathiser!

~~~
jivatmanx
I often see quotes by Peter T. King in these articles saying things like that,
or like - "no American Muslim leaders are cooperating in the war on terror,",
or "80-85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic
fundamentalists .... This is an enemy living amongst us."

It's interesting to note that he was an actual terrorist financier:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._King#Support_for_the_I...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._King#Support_for_the_IRA)

~~~
walshemj
An hard left ones as well :-)

------
rangibaby
"Carter ran on a platform of "honesty" and was apparently the only president
in American history to actually mean it. See where it got him..."

[http://www.rotten.com/library/history/political-
scandal/wate...](http://www.rotten.com/library/history/political-
scandal/watergate/)

------
StefanKarpinski
Jimmy Carter just gets more and more awesome.

~~~
ihsw
He's the reason we're in the Middle East.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Doctrine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Doctrine)

------
diminoten
This is the stance you must take if you believe Snowden was in the right.

You must believe there is no recourse from within the system for which to
correct it if you believe that acting outside of the system is a valid
strategy.

I applaud Jimmy Carter for being consistent, at least.

~~~
dllthomas
I think, as a general principle, this is dead wrong. One could think an
injustice so egregious that righting it needs to be pursued both within _and_
outside the system, for instance.

~~~
diminoten
You can't believe in a system of government and also act outside of it.

The system is utterly worthless if you don't believe it can correct egregious
errors. It's the mundane errors (parking tickets, etc.) which aren't so
important, not the other way around.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You can't believe in a system of government and also act outside of it.

People do, so obviously you can.

You may believe you _shouldn 't_, but you haven't really presented a coherent
argument as to why that is the case.

~~~
diminoten
Belief is the acceptance of a statement (or system) as being either real or
true. In this usage, we'll consider "belief in a government" to cover the
following, "The acceptance that a system of government is an effective means
by which to manage a group of people living together."

So to believe in a system of government, you must therefore accept that this
system of government is the most effective way by which to manage a group of
people. If you believe this, then you necessarily must believe that to break
the rules of this system of government is to introduce a less effective means
by which to govern a group of people. It's simply the inverse of the belief.

If you believe the US government is an effective method of governing a body of
people, then you must believe that to move outside of the system is to be less
effective at governing a body of people. In its strictest sense, this means
that you believe in every law and every process by which these laws came into
being. In a more realistic sense, you understand that a body of people will
want different things amongst different internal groups, and a government's
job is to balance those wants and needs against one another.

Edward Snowden broke the rules of the system of government. If you believe the
US government is effective, then (because of the argument outlined above) you
believe he has introduced inefficiency, and is making the governing of the
people of the US more difficult.

So when you say "people do [believe in a system of government and also act
outside of it ]" you are incorrect. The act of moving outside of the system
demonstrates, as outlined above, a lack of belief in the system of government
which is being acted outside of.

Anyone who breaks laws as a means of enacting change does not believe in the
incarnation of the system of government for which they're attempting to
change. Martin Luthor King Jr. Oskar Schindler. Timothy Mcveigh. Osama bin
Laden. Every one of them attempted to enact change by working outside of the
system in which they were attempting to change.

It should be an indication to you that you find such an idea to be negative in
the first place when Snowden is brought up. Why exactly do you think it's so
negative that I say he doesn't believe in the US system of government? Perhaps
because what he's specifically done in terms of actual policy change could
have been accomplished without breaking any laws?

~~~
dragonwriter
I think the fundamental problem with your analysis is that it treats "belief"
as a binary rather than continuous valued attribute, which is inappropriate
even for fairly simple claims where belief can be less than absolute, and it
is certainly horrendously inappropriate for complex claims like "that a system
of government is an effective means by which to manage a group of people
living together."

A secondary problem is that you conflate belief that a system is "an effective
means" (your first paragraph) with the belief that it is "the most effective
means" (your second paragraph). These are obviously _very_ different beliefs.

> It should be an indication to you that you find such an idea to be negative
> in the first place when Snowden is brought up. Why exactly do you think it's
> so negative that I say he doesn't believe in the US system of government?

I never said I found it to be negative. Saying that I think the logic of your
argument is _invalid_ is not saying I believe the statement it was offered to
support is _negative_.

~~~
dllthomas
This is much of my objection, better expressed than I was able yesterday.
Thank you.

A part of it that this comment misses, though, is that there's a difference
between "system as described by the text of laws" and "system as it is run on
actual humans." It is entirely possible that the optimum system as run on
actual humans is produced by a set of laws that doesn't match it exactly. One
can still "believe in" that system of laws, in that one believes that it is
the system of laws that should be implemented because it produces optimal
results, while still understanding that actual human behavior will differ
sometimes and that that won't always be a bad thing.

~~~
diminoten
There is no difference between what the laws say and do, and what they should
say and do. Should (ought)/is happens to be a huge philosophical
delineation.[1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem)

~~~
dllthomas
You have to have misworded something here.

Edited to add:

On reflection, I think you may be confusing morality and legality. It is true
that you cannot derive morality without some starting point. However, once you
have picked what you value, it does _not_ follow that legality should match it
precisely. Legality should be such that it optimally produces the most moral
(and best by any other criteria, ideally) outcomes.

------
dllthomas
He should run for President or something.

~~~
melchebo
He'll be 91 years old in 2016..

~~~
dllthomas
Yeah, I might've been serious if I thought he could survive the campaign...

~~~
adventured
I'd like to see him jump into it just to get the TV time. Zero real
campaigning, no intention of trying to win (have to raise a billion dollars to
do that). He should just declare, do the minimum necessary to stay in it as
long as possible, run on a civil liberties platform, and leverage the
publicity of it all to push a message against what's going on.

~~~
dllthomas
That would be pretty amazing.

------
jingo
Who cares? Life in America is great at the moment. It was great yesterday and
it'll be great tomorrow. Carter is living a nice comfortable life. So can you.

How is life outside America? It's either the same or not as good. Count your
blessings. Americans have it good. Land of milk and honey. Take a deep breath
and breathe that glorious American air. Freedom! Love it, live it!

------
shank8
I love Jimmy Carter

------
fnordfnordfnord
Makes the "USS Jimmy Carter" a rather ironic name for the submarine, given its
mission.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_%28SSN-23%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_%28SSN-23%29)

------
rogerthis
[http://electoralmap.net/PastElections/past_elections.php?yea...](http://electoralmap.net/PastElections/past_elections.php?year=1980)

------
rogerthis
I don't trust this Castro brother's friend.

