It was a bucket list thing. I had always wanted to visit Plains Georgia, the home of President Jimmy Carter. Sadly, I did not get there until he was already in Hospice care last month with TV crews hanging around like vultures, waiting for him to die. Jimmy Carter, as many have said, has been the best ex-President we’ve ever had. Not only has the Carter Center been at the center of negotiating all sorts of conflict resolutions, something for which Jimmy got the Nobel Peace Prize (and not just for the accord between Egypt and Israel, involving Sadat and Begin), but also because he has been involved, along with Clarence Jordan of Koinonia Farms just up the road in Americus Georgia with Habitat for Humanity, building homes for poor people who need them, and quietly teaching Sunday School week by week at the little Baptist church seen below. All of this is the manifestation of Jimmy’s deep and abiding Christian faith.
And why you may ask was Jimmy at that little church, when there was a big old beautiful Baptist Church right downtown in Plains? That’s because the latter church was a supporter of segregation for decades, a very unChristian approach to racial relations.
A train runs right through the tiny downtown of Plains, a true one stoplight town in south Georgia. And here at the old train station is where Jimmy launched his campaign for President. Only in America could a peanut farmer from south Georgia, who by the way also became Governor of Georgia before becoming President, become President of the U.S. It is an amazing and improbable story (see the Wiki article for full details about his life and public service—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter).
I picked up that signed copy of Jimmy’s speech when he won the Nobel Prize.
Gone are the days of bi-partisanship like that shown by President Carter during his time. Gone are the days when there were strict limits on money from political action committees and other dark sources influencing candidates and elections. Gone are the days when there was civility and you didn’t see ridiculous attack ads full of distortions and even lies about the candidate being opposed. And all of this has to do with what was called in a famous book. The Closing of the American Mind. Think about these things. We should have listened to that greatest of Republican Presidents, Abraham Lincoln when he said ‘if we do not hang together, we shall all certainly hang separately’.
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