Sunday, December 10, 2017

Some Unnoticed Ironies In The Roy Moore Imbroglio

Republican Roy Moore, sometime teen fetishist running for Senate in Alabama, is best known for his resistance against the Federal government, trying to keep the Ten Commandments displayed in his courtroom against the Separation of Church and State.

Separation of Church and State came in the 1940s from an Alabama Democrat klansman nominated to the Supreme Court by FDR.
Separation was a crucial part of the KKK’s jurisprudential agenda. It was included in the Klansman’s Creed (or was it the Klansman’s Kreed?). Before he joined the Court, Justice Black was head of new members for the largest Klan cell in the South. New members of the KKK had to pledge their allegiance to the “eternal separation of Church and State.” In 1947, Black was the author of Everson, the first Supreme Court case to hold that the first amendment’s establishment clause requires separation of church & state. The suit in Everson was brought by an organization that at various times had ties to the KKK.
In a second irony. Moore is runing to replace Jeff Sessions, a Republican who made his name prosecuting the Alabama Klan, sending one of their members to his execution and fining the Klan millions of dollars, effectively bankrupting them.

You've come a long way, Alabama.

You're also exquisitely beautiful.

2 comments:

ligneus said...

I didn't know all that, excellent points. A few of my friends will get this.
[A few of my friends! I kid myself, I only have a few friends! I had more before Trump's election, I suppose I'm not alone in that.]

tim eisele said...

"is best known for his resistance against the Federal government"

I think I need to take issue with this. This statement implies he was a private citizen being oppressed by the government. He was not. He was an employee and agent of the government, who was using the power of government to push his personal agenda, and claiming that a restriction on government did not apply to him. And, once he ostentatiously refused to follow explicit directions from his employer to obey this restriction, he was fired.

He is no champion defending the citizenry from government overreach. Government overreach is exactly what he wants.