I'm reading Jimmy Carter's new book, "Our Endangered Values".

I love Jimmy Carter. I think he is the best ex-president this country has ever had or ever will have.

I'm not a Christian. I'm not any other major religion either. I don't know what I am. But that doesn't matter.

I love Jimmy Carter.

I have always believed that the teachings of the various religions in the world are good things. They are good guidebooks on how to live your life and how to interact with the world.

Somewhere along the line in the last ten years or so (perhaps longer, behind the scenes), religion, mainly fundamentalist Christians in this country, have stopped applying religious teachings inwardly to themselves and begun applying them outwardly, telling everyone else what and how they should be.

In this book Mr. Carter says of the fundamentalist trends in all major religions, "Increasingly true believers are inclined to begin a process of deciding: 'Since I am aligned with God, I am superior and my beliefs should prevail, and anyone who disagrees with me is inherently wrong,' and the next step is 'inherently inferior.' The ultimate step is 'subhuman,' and then their lives are not significant."

It's a scary world out there. When a prominent religious leader can blithely call for the murder of another human being and people just shrug, we are rapidly approaching "inherently inferior".

Every person over the age of fifteen in America, regardless of religious affliation, should be required to read this book.

We desperately need to hear Mr. Carter's message.