He Ain't Heavy, Nor My Brother

During the Civil War (they still call it the War of Northern Aggression down there), confederate soldiers from other states derisively called the confederate troops from Alabama "Yellowhammer." Of course, once Alabama's troops led the South to victory over the North and full and permanent independence, Alabamans proudly adopted the name.

Oh, wait. The South lost the Civil War. (My sister-in-law, who lived in Richmond, Virginia for a few years, looked at the boulevard with statutes of all the great confederate generals and called it "Losers Row," but I digress.)  Alabama is known as the Yellowhammer State anyway.

None of that really has anything to do with the news out of Alabama today, but I hate to let a good state nickname story go to waste.

The thing is that Alabama has a history of what you might call intolerance and scorn for the niceties of constitutional law.  You may remember (if you're old enough), George Wallace's inaugural address in 1963 when he was sworn in as Governor.

Today I have stood, where once 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 time again 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 today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.

More recently, Alabama gave us Roy Moore.  While he was Chief Judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, he arranged for a 5,280 pound granite monument of the 10 Commandments to be placed in the rotunda of the state's judicial building.  The US District Court ordered the monument removed.  The 11th Circuit ordered it removed.  The Supreme Court denied Moore's cert petition.  The other Judges had the monument removed to avoid a $5,000/day fine.  And Moore was removed from office for flagrant disregard of the orders of federal courts.  (Full story here.) 

And now there's Alabama's new Governor, Robert Bentley.  He was sworn in Monday.  Apparently, he went right from the inauguration to Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr., was once pastor.  That was fitting, I suppose, on Martin Luther King day. But then, the Birmingham News had the story.

It seems that while explaining that even though he's a Republican, he plans to be Governor of all the people, and while explaining that he thinks King "was one of the greatest men that has ever lived," well, somehow he let loose that he may be governing everyone, but you know, we're just not all . . . . Ah, here's the Birmingham News.

"There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit," Bentley said. ''But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister."
 
 Bentley added, ''Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

Glad to know, I suppose, that he'd like to welcome me into his family.  But a bit disheartening, I'd think, if I were a Yellowhammer, to be told right off the bat that there are the folks he's related to and then there are the rest.  And that I was one of the rest.

According to Jay Reeves of AP, Bill Nigut, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said,

His comments are not only offensive, but also raise serious questions as to whether non-Christians can expect to receive equal treatment during his tenure as governor.

And Nigut added that 

[I]t sounded like Bentley was using the office of governor to advocate for Christian conversion.
"If he does so, he is dancing dangerously close to a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids government from promoting the establishment of any religion."

But you know, it's Alabama.  Where the Tuscaloosa.

Holier than who?

Jonathan Turley this morning reports and links to this story you may remember from March 2008. Aisha Ibrahim Kuhulow, a 13-year-old Somali girl was stoned to death in a football (I assume that means soccer) stadium in Kismayo by order of the radical conservative Islamists who control the town. Her infraction? Premarital sex. The evidence? She reported having been raped by 3 men in an effort, unsuccessful, to have them charged.

This is not a post about the horrors inflicted by radical Islamist law or in the name of whichever god to whom one might pray or pay obeisance. It's not a post about the treatment of women or of children in Islamic society. It's not, in fact, a post about anything to do with Islam or Islamists or religion or the religious at all. It's not even a post about a strife-torn, anarchic, sometime nation where people live without rules except those imposed by whoever happens to be in power in this or that town this afternoon.

It could be about any of those things, and perhaps another day I'll talk about some of them. But not today.

This is a post about us, you know, the civilized ones, the ones who are outraged by this sort of thing, the ones who condemn this as evil and barbaric, the ones who say we must stop it lest it spread. It's a post about who we are.

And it's about slippery slopes.

It was just three years ago, in Roper v. Simmons, that the Constitution stopped permitting the execution of juveniles. It was just a year ago, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, that the Constitution said that unless there's a homicide, there can't be an execution (Obama thinks that's wrong, by the way). According to Refuge House, it was just 1993 that marital rape became a crime in all 50 states. The Supreme Court is going to decide this year (Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida) whether the Constitution will begin prohibiting LWOP sentences for juveniles who have not committed homicide. In Florida, there are six children doing LWOP who were 13 or 14 at the time of their crimes. (Story here.)

Statistics compiled by the National Center on Crime and Delinquency, indicate that with about 5% of the world's population, the United States has about 23% of the world's incarcerated people. Not surprisingly, we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

Do we, officially, stone children to death for being raped? No. Do thousands watch while we do that? Well, we don't do that, so I guess not.

But when it's not quite official? Well, you might look here or here or here or; hell you can find more on line yourself.

What we, who think ourselves enlightened, see as civilization and progress is damned recent. And held up by a mighty slender reed. And it's worth remembering that the folks who ordered the killing of Aisha Ibrahim Kuhulow thought they were the enlightened, civilized ones, doing God's will.