The political left in America is like a deranged passenger on a jetliner who repeatedly attempts to storm the flight deck and crash the plane, but who the crew and other travelers are limited in their ability to restrain due to obscure regulations (whose full implications were unforeseen when they were implemented) which give the unhinged would-be saboteur the right to move about the cabin freely.

So it is with the left’s perversion and abuse of the First Amendment – and with certain influential Americans whose egos supersede all concerns apropos our national security.

Last week it was announced that Nobel Peace Prize-winning former President Jimmy Carter had scheduled a meeting with terrorist group Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria on April 18. The Carter Center (the former president’s left-wing think tank) said that this is calculated “to support and provide momentum for current efforts to secure peace in the Middle East.” (Reuters, April 10, 2008)

Curious, since the current administration frowns upon the trip and has made every reasonable effort to persuade Carter to abandon the idea, the excursion would seem to fly in the face of “current efforts to secure peace in the Middle East.” It has been repeatedly asserted by establishment media news sources that Carter will make the trip as a private citizen – not in his capacity as a former President of the United States.

This is unadulterated twaddle, of course. There is no such separation in the political sense; Carter, his globalist cohorts, Hamas and the media are all aware of this. Suggesting otherwise is deceptive, propagandistic and a profound insult to Americans’ intelligence, about which elites such as Carter display a marked agnosticism at best.

It would be disingenuous to declare that Carter has never helped anyone in his life; his work with Habitat for Humanity and related efforts have certainly aided individuals and families and raised Americans’ awareness relative to poverty and homelessness.

When dealing with the likes of Carter, however, one must take into account how much of his action has been toward legacy-building, how much arrogance, and how much foolishness. He was an architect of the Camp David Accords (signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin) in 1978 which resulted in the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty signing in 1979. In spite of having resulted in assassination of the moderate Sadat, the developments still stand as some of the nobler legacy items left by an American president in recent decades.

One does not have to be a stupid individual in order to be a fool, however – and Carter is a fool. As with George H.W. Bush, Carter was ousted in favor of Ronald Reagan for plain poor performance, and despite his work in the Middle East, his foreign policy helped set the stage for heightened Islamofascist aggression against America. His namby-pamby handling of the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979 was nothing less than sickmaking.

“‘I feel quite at ease in doing this,’ Carter said. ‘I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process.’” – Associated Press, April 13, 2008

Only a fool willingly comes to the table with terrorists, let alone doing so with expectations for an equitable result. Yet Carter, in his arrogance and wearing his undeserved status as an elder statesman has continued to do so. His history of sympathizing with retrograde cultures and political ideologies has become as legendary as the Camp David Accords themselves.

He referred to Israel’s policies affecting Palestinians as “apartheid” in 2007, which of course drew applause from terrorist leaders and radical pro-Palestinian groups around the globe. On April 11 2008, Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a statement which read, in part: “Jimmy Carter does it again.  His decision to meet with the head of the terrorist group Hamas is one more example of the destructive role the former President is playing with regard to issues affecting Israel and American interests in the Middle East.” He went on to say that “it would be better for all if Mr. Carter would permanently remove the Middle East from his agenda.”

Indeed, it would be better for all if Carter would permanently remove himself from international politics.

“As president, Carter led the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. ‘That was a totally different experience in 1980, when the Soviet Union had brutally invaded and killed thousands and thousands of people,’ he said, rejecting the idea of boycotting the Beijing games to protest China's crackdown in Tibet.” – FOX News, April 13, 2008

There’s consistency for you – like the communist overlords in China don’t kill people en masse when it suits them. Savvy political pundits have pointed out in recent days that the Democrat presidential candidates appear to be all for alienating certain politically significant nations, this despite their promises to “repair the damage” the Bush administration has done to the U.S. abroad. This imprudence is a common thread that has run through Democrat foreign policy for decades.

Carter’s arrogance has no definable bounds. Despite his trademark mild, gentlemanly countenance, Carter’s elitist, autocratic tendencies – to which insiders have attested were quite present during his administration – have led to his divergence from executive decorum exhibited by demeaning criticism of the Bush administration and its policies in the Middle East. For years now, the “private citizen” has been flying around the world giving meaty-lipped testimony in international circles to the gross deficiencies of America.

Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Obama was shrewd enough to declare that he would not meet with the Hamas leader given the opportunity. He knows of course that by the time he is sworn in (should this dangerous travesty actually come to pass), Khaled Meshaal will already have been legitimized by Carter. Terrorist power players around the world will also have had their beliefs as regards America’s weakness further validated.