What the Carters can teach the country about sticking together

Sometimes someone utters an expression in one context, and implies or invites a different meaning in another.

An example relevant to this column’s recognition of the lengthy marriage of former President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is President Abraham Lincoln’s expression that a house divided against itself cannot stand. As we know, when he gave the “house divided” speech in 1858 he was referring to a nation divided by slave and free states. Yet he borrowed the expression from biblical references (including Luke 11:17) that referred to both the divisions in a national civil war ("any kingdom divided by civil war is doomed") and a domestic family civil war ("a family splintered by feuding will fall apart.")

Ironically, centuries later we have a statement that again notes the civic tension of a house divided. This time it was the reaction to one politician’s idiocy by another politician that perhaps unconsciously took the first's idiotic idea and made it constructive — and the theme of this column.

The statement came from Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweeted on President Day that there should be a "divorce" dividing up the country between red and blue states. While I will reserve for later in this column Republican Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah’s characterization of Greene’s comment as “evil” (as reported by MSNBC on February 21), here is the rest of his comment to her tweet:

"This rhetoric is destructive and wrong…We don’t need a divorce, we need marriage counseling. And we need elected leaders that don’t profit by tearing us apart. We can disagree without hate. Healthy conflict was critical to our nation’s founding and survival."

Cox is right-on regarding the need to disagree without hating one another, and that healthy conflict was critical to our nation’s founding and now is to our survival. The Anti-Federalists may have disagreed with the Federalists who wrote the opinion piece called "The Federalist Papers," arguing long ago for the adoption of our Constitution, but both sides recognized the need for civil, even sometimes sharp, discourse. While ideally discourse should be civil to be healthy, sometimes even shouting out during a speech, or even literally ripping up a speech, can be healthy — witness our historical civic ancestors even today in the House of Commons.

Yet it was Cox’s statement, “we don’t need a divorce, we need marriage counseling” that was either intentional in its potential for dual meaning or a fascinating Freudian-like slip.

Yes, Governor Cox, we do need marriage counseling, both as a divided civic nation and as families divided against themselves.

Luckily, we still have — albeit I don’t know for how long — a wonderful example of a couple who have shown us an ideal, modesty in public life and majesty in what their private life reveals. As 98-year-old former President Carter is in hospice care we may only have a brief period of time to savor the Carters’ 75 years of marriage while he is still alive. Although as we know, we can never be sure what really happens behind proverbial closed doors in any marriage — and luck plays a huge role along with commitment — the evidence is strong that they have had a remarkable marriage that can be an antidote to today’s what I call “fractured fairytales,” of short-term relationships.

While he served as President and won the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter has referred to marrying Rosalynn as "a pinnacle of my life" and said "The best thing I ever did was marrying Rosalynn."

While I don’t share the Carters’ evangelical brand of Christian faith, I admire them for more than their joint work for Habitat for Humanity and other charitable work. Two notes in that CNN article stand out: First, "they" were a team that translated a loss for a second Presidential term into action to help others; and second, a close friend of theirs noted that "the former President trusted Rosalynn 'above and beyond everybody else."

What a wonderful legacy to pass to our country, one couple at a time.

Returning to Governor Cox’s use of the term “evil” to refer to Rep. Greene’s suggestion to essentially bust up the country along ideological lines, I see his point. Our Declaration of Independence seems to speak in terms consistent with recognizing "evil" when it conspicuously notes that our "unalienable rights" are "endowed by their Creator." Although a stretch, perhaps it is accurate to say that dividing up our country is an evil action against what our founders called "the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God."

In what seems to have been our founders’ language, I pray for the Carters, and give thanks for their giving us such a wonderful legacy.

Reach Larry Little at larrylittle46@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: What the Carters can teach the country about sticking together