Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you missed in history class from
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. In celebration of the reopening
Speaker 1: at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum and the
Speaker 1: former president's eighty five birthday, we sat down with Nobel
Speaker 1: Laureate Jimmy Carter to talk about the highlights of his
Speaker 1: presidency and his hopes for the Carter Center. Do you
Speaker 1: think the United States does a good job protecting human rights? Sometimes?
Speaker 1: In general? We do. In the days before I became president,
Speaker 1: there was a policy of America to go to bed
Speaker 1: with all the dictators and to step out any sort
Speaker 1: of ball demand. But will prushed people for freedom and
Speaker 1: equality and democracy because our major American corporations would have
Speaker 1: contracts with the owners off the Couple of Minds, and
Speaker 1: they still iron Minds and the banana plantations and so forth,
Speaker 1: so they can make more profits on those things in
Speaker 1: pineapple and all. And they didn't want to see the
Speaker 1: economic benefits endangered by the dictators offended to us being overthrown.
Speaker 1: And a lot of those dictators military were educated at
Speaker 1: West Point or Anapolis where our so they knew American
Speaker 1: customs and they spoke English well, and so it was
Speaker 1: just natural for our country to protect them and not
Speaker 1: let them be overthrown by radical people who demanded human rights.
Speaker 1: They were called communists and so forth. And if the
Speaker 1: dictator was sometimes endangered because the people were became too strong,
Speaker 1: the United States were sending marines into that country to
Speaker 1: protect the dictators, and so I thought that was a mistake.
Speaker 1: So we began to promote human rights, particularly the right
Speaker 1: of people to demand MHM, the ability to choose their
Speaker 1: own leaders, which leads to democracy. When I became president,
Speaker 1: most of the country's in Latin American, South America, Central
Speaker 1: America with dictators Oh now there's not a single dictatorship
Speaker 1: in South America or Central America because human rights were
Speaker 1: protected by America and we encourage the people to express
Speaker 1: themselves through free elections to choose their own governments. All
Speaker 1: of those democracies are not what we do with defines democracy.
Speaker 1: They are not the measure up to our particular standard.
Speaker 1: The fact is their all democratis now. So that's one
Speaker 1: definition of human rights and that we have not in
Speaker 1: the past protected. I hope we will continue to in
Speaker 1: the future. And in the last administration, we had horrible
Speaker 1: violations of human rights uh saying abou grabbed prison and
Speaker 1: in Guantanamo where we had people arrested, taken to prison,
Speaker 1: never given a chance to have a lawyer, never being
Speaker 1: informed about what the charges were against them, never being
Speaker 1: able to have their families visit them in prison, never
Speaker 1: having any hope of ultimately going to trial, and that
Speaker 1: to some degree is still going on. I hope that
Speaker 1: person Obama will be able to do away with that,
Speaker 1: and I believe he will. At the same time, we've
Speaker 1: seen a great restraints placed inside the United States on
Speaker 1: the freedom of American people to be not nature not
Speaker 1: endangered by intrusion our own privacy, people listening in on
Speaker 1: our telephone conversations, or American citizens being arrested and accused
Speaker 1: of certain crimes under the under the patriotide, within which
Speaker 1: they can be deprived of legal counsel or to confront
Speaker 1: their accusers, or to even know what the crimes are
Speaker 1: that are raised against them his accusations, and held in
Speaker 1: isolation from their own families. We've have been done that
Speaker 1: a few American fatilers. So the judicial system, the High courts,
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals, and the Spin Court have been correcting
Speaker 1: those mistakes perpetrated under the administration of President George W. Bush,
Speaker 1: and I think that personal Obama is trying to undo
Speaker 1: those mistakes. But America has a chance or temptation sometimes
Speaker 1: to slip in its commitment to human rights when it's convenient.
Speaker 1: All when security so called is is it threatened or
Speaker 1: on the terrorists threats. But almost in very body, that's
Speaker 1: proven to be a mistake. And one of the great
Speaker 1: things about our democracy is that we have an ability
Speaker 1: to correct our own mistakes with changes in leaders and
Speaker 1: also with the stability provided by the judicial system of
Speaker 1: our country have an ultimate voice when there is a
Speaker 1: dispute between the executive branch that is a president and
Speaker 1: the Congress. So that is now correcting very rapidly the
Speaker 1: mistakes that we've made in the recent past. Be short
Speaker 1: of Tune in every Wednesday in September for more of
Speaker 1: our interview with President Carter. To learn more about the
Speaker 1: Carter Center and its mission of waging peace, fighting disease,
Speaker 1: and building help, visit www dot Carter Center dot org and,
Speaker 1: as always, for moral miss and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stafforks dot com.