My post at the Plum Line today is about a brewing states'-rights battle in Alabama, where the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Roy Moore, has ordered probate court judges in the state not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of a federal court's order, because Moore believes Alabama law is superior to federal law. You may remember Moore, who got removed from that position for defying court orders to uninstall the two-ton Ten Commandments monument he had placed in the court building, then regained the position in a 2012 election. Since the echoes of desegregation are obvious, I took a look back at some of what George Wallace was saying at the time, and came across his 1963 inauguration speech. Here's an excerpt:
Today I have stood, where Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and again down through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny...and I say...segregation now...segregation tomorrow...segregation forever.
Wallace also said, "We give the word of a race of honor that we will tolerate their boot in our face no longer." You see, it was all about freedom. That's the colorful history that sets a context for this argument about whether Alabama should have to follow the tyrannical edicts of the Supreme Court of the United States.