Interview with President Jimmy Carter: Cuba

In the final episode of a five-part series, former President Jimmy Carter examines human rights and the United States, using Cuba as an example. Learn more about the United States and Cuba in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you missed in history class from
how Stuff Works dot com. In celebration of the reopening
of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum and the
former president's eighty five birthday, we sat down with Nobel
Laureate Jimmy Carter to talk about the highlights of his

(00:21):
presidency and his hopes for the Carter centem Human rights.
How do you think we can honor human rights in
tough economic and tough social times. Well, human rights um
has to be understood in its full meaning, and the

(00:43):
problem is that different nations have different definitions of human rights.
If you walk through a college campus I walked down
the street and you ask Americans name the human rights
are important to you, they would say freedom of speech,
and freedom of religion, and the freedom of assembly, and

(01:04):
the right to choose our own leaders. That would be
natural for them to do because that's basically the rights
that are spelled out in the in the Constitution United States,
and and that's what we think about human rights. If
you go into a poverty stricken country like Ethiopia or

(01:26):
Ghana or mony Bin a fossil and you say, what
are the most important human rights? They would say, a
right to a decent place in whish to live, right
for my children to have enough to eat, right for

(01:47):
me to have a job, right for my family to
have health care, oh, my children to be educated, because
those are the most important things to them that they
don't have. And so human rights have to encompassh both sides. Freedom,

(02:15):
an absence of torture by one's government, and at the
same time the right of people to have a decent life.
So all of those are human rights, and and that's
the umbrella under which the Court of Center operates. We
try to provide peace, which is a human right, by

(02:37):
negotiating to prevent wars by the inner wars. We try
to provide freedom and democracy ah an absence of torture
in prison, and at the same time to alleviate suffering
of people and to give them an ability to raise
more food for themselves. And through programs like Habitat for Humanity,

(03:00):
my wife and I build homes in partnership with poor
founders that never had a different decent place to live.
And we try to concentrate on the right of people
to have a freedom from unnecessary diseases. So that's what
we consider to be the importance and the definition of
human rights in terms of working with difficult leaders and

(03:25):
looking towards the future. And your hope in the current administration,
what do you think will happen with our relations with Cuba.
When I became president, immediately lived at all travel restraints
so Americans could don't go to Cuba without any impediment.
Because I have always felt then and now that we
should lift the embargo against the Cuban people that turns

(03:46):
thirteen million people against us as the ogres as a villains,
and that's the dictators in Cuba blame the United States
for all their problems, which they bring upon themselves. So
I believe that the future will bring about a diplomatic
relations between the United States and Cuba, preceded by an

(04:10):
end to the embargo that hurts the Cuban people, that
doesn't hurt the dictators in leadership capability, and will provide
a harmony between US and the nearest next door neighbor
to us, this ninety miles from Florida, and it is
the Cubans. So my hope is that will see a
reason prevailed, and if we ever do free the Cuban

(04:33):
people as equals. I think that's the best step to
bring about human people demanding democracy and freedom and an
end to military or dictatorship in Cuba. It's the best
way to bring freedom and democracy to Cuba is to
quit punishing the Cuban people. I'm glad to end on

(04:53):
an optimistic Here to learn more about the Carter Center
and its mission of waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope,
is it www dot Carter Center dot org. And as always,
for moral thiss and thousands of other topics, is it

(05:14):
how stuff Works dot com.