PRAISE FOR THE ANTIDOTE
Jesse Lee Peterson has rejected the poison of hate, blame, and victimhood in his own life, and has been encouraging men and their families to do the same for twenty-five years. The Antidote distills a quarter century of wisdom into one bold, powerful, and compelling book. I urge you to read it. DAVID LIMBAUGH
Jesse Lee Peterson is a courageous figure in todays race-baiting America. In The Antidote, he takes on racial myths and knocks them down and provides solid solutions in the process. BEN SHAPIRO, NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF BULLIES
Jesse Lee Peterson is one of the very few people I have ever met and one of the very few writers I have ever read who can truly be described as fearless. Against the legion of race hustlers who have enslaved many of our fellow citizens in a pathology of dependence and rage, he speaks the liberating truth of forgiveness and love. The Antidote is a courageous book: typical of the man. ANDREW KLAVAN, BESTSELLING NOVELIST AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR
The race-baiting policies of Obama and his cohorts has ruined lives, polarized the nation, and set race relations back decades. In this extraordinary book, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson not only sketches out what went wrong and why the Left has failed black Americans, but he also sketches out a way forward: a path back to sanity not just for the black victims of political opportunism and ill-advised socialist policies, but for the entire nation. This is an absolute must-read. PAMELA GELLER, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN FREEDOM DEFENSE INITIATIVE AND AUTHOR OF THE POST-AMERICAN PRESIDENCY AND STOP THE ISLAMIZATION OF AMERICA
the ANTIDOTE
HEALING AMERICA FROM THE POISON OF HATE, BLAME, AND VICTIMHOOD
REV. JESSE LEE PETERSON
THE ANTIDOTE
Copyright 2015 by Jesse Lee Peterson
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Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-942475-00-2
eBook ISBN: 978-1-942475-01-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peterson, Jesse Lee, 1949
The antidote : healing America from the poison of hate, blame and victimhood / Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-942475-00-2 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-942475-01-9 (ebook)
1. African Americans--Social conditions. 2. African Americans--Psychology. 3. African American young men--Social conditions. 4. Parent and child--United States. 5. African American families. 6. African American neighborhoods. 7. Community life--United States. 8. Anger--Social aspects--United States. 9. Blame--Social aspects--United States. 10. United States--Race relations. 11. Peterson, Jesse Lee, 1949- 12. African American clergy--Biography. I. Title.
E185.86.P527 2015
305.896073--dc23
2015015816
To my grandfather, Sabbath, and my grandmother, Rosa Lee. At a time when life was hard for you and those like you, you provided me with a living example of how to work, deal with people, and most of all, love. Your gift will always be a part of me.
CONTENTS
by Dennis Prager
FOREWORD
Given the nature of my work as a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, and given the moral essence of my message, I have been able to meet some of the best people in America. By best, I mean good (as in kind, just, honest), intelligent, and wise.
Jesse Lee Peterson, whom I have known for about twenty-five years, is one of these. He is, first of all, one of wisest people I have ever met.
In prior eras, wisdom was far more valued than in our time. When I was in college, fools in my generation came up with the slogan, Never trust anyone over thirty. That meant that wisdom no longer meant anything. In the past, the wisdom of the ages was the accumulated insights into life over millennia. It was believed that in order to lead a good life people needed to learn from the past from those older than them and from those who had left us insights and have since died.
But if nothing and no one over thirty is to be trusted, wisdom no longer counts for anything.
So, when I say that Jesse Peterson is one of the wisest people I have ever met, it obviously means something only to those who value wisdom.
I do. In the short time I will spend on earth, I want to soak in every great insight and idea I can. Having Jesse Peterson in my life has therefore been a gift from God. Now, with this book, multitudes of people can receive his gift of wisdom.
In the thirty-three years I have been broadcasting, I have interviewed probably a thousand authors. I have interviewed virtually every major thinker who speaks English. Yet, a full hour that I interviewed Jesse Peterson stands out as one of the most significant hours I ever broadcast. It was mesmerizing radio.
However, as good, kind, and wise as he is, he possesses one other trait that makes him particularly rare.
There are many admirable traits that a good person may possess honesty, integrity, compassion, among others but there is one trait that very few good people have. That trait is courage.
One of the great tragedies of the human condition is that all the goodness that people have in their hearts and express outwardly adds up to very little without courage. There were undoubtedly many good Germans. The reason the Nazis prevailed was that few had courage. The same holds true whenever evil takes over a society. It is rarely an absence of decent people that enables the triumph of evil. It is that few of those decent people have courage.
And here is where Jesse Lee Peterson stands out.
Jesse is fearless. Or to be more accurate, he does not allow fear to govern his behavior or speech. I have no idea whether or not he has fears. I only know that fear plays no role in his work. He answers to God and his conscience.
To be honest, I have a fear that what I have written here will sound too good to be true. Can anyone be this extraordinary? The truth is that he is better than what I have written.
And now, thanks to this book, far more people will get to know this man his autobiography is riveting as are his brilliant, frank, and courageous insights into perhaps the most intractable problem in American life: the black underclass.
There are a number of excellent books about black America. But if you read only one book about what ails large segments of contemporary black America and the only way to cure that ailment this should be the one.
There is wisdom on every page. Jesse is unflinchingly honest, willing to openly confront painful realities despite a political and cultural environment that wishes to pretend otherwise, and either ignores or severely punishes those as candid as he is.
The Antidote should be read and much of it memorized by every American. Black America is its subject; but it is really about the nature of truth, of men and women, of fathers and mothers, about human weakness, about anger, and about redemption through letting go of that anger. It is, for those who still value it, immeasurably wise.