Gone South: Talibama Dreaming
By Harvey Jackson
01-26-2005
“Some time ago a crazy dream came to me ...”
— Bob Dylan
The other night I dreamed that Roy Moore was elected governor.
And the Big Mules, the supporters of the status quo, the rich and powerful who want to stay that way, rejoiced. They figured that Gov. Moore would expend so much energy putting up monuments, defining marriage, and taking the choice out of “pro-choice” that he wouldn’t have time for mundane matters like making rich folks pay their fair share of what it takes to run the state.
Rejoicing ratcheted up a notch when Gov. Moore picked John Giles as his finance director. Having spent years with the Christian Coalition collecting anonymous donations from anonymous donors and using that money to convince folks who ought to know better that except for undisplayed commandments, feminists and gays, God likes Alabama the way it is, Giles was their guy. Shouts of joy echoed in the halls of agri-business, beneath the bowers of the pine-plantations, in the boardrooms of banks, the inner sanctums of insurance companies and at country club brunches.
Then Moore appointed Rep. Gerald Allen as Minister of Cultural Correctness and with Justice Tom Parker’s blessing, the acrid smell of burning books filled the air.
Didn’t bother the Mules much. They’re not readers anyway.
And Mules weren’t bothered much, or surprised, when Moore took the next logical step and issued a proclamation, an executive decree, that here in the “Heart of Dixie” church and state are one, the same, pluribus becomes unum.
Talibama.
Which was fine with the Mules, for they knew that the payoff was coming.
And sure enough, a few days later the governor told the Legislature that all taxes should be abolished.
And they were.
And the Mules rejoiced.
Meanwhile, Moore and Giles discovered that running a church-state ain’t cheap, especially when you add in the cost of monuments, gay re-education centers, and policing pregnant women to make sure they stay pregnant.
So the governor took another logical step.
Reasoning that if church and state are one, then one can do what the other did and vice versa, Gov. Moore, on advice of his finance director, ordered the church-state Legislature to pass a bill requiring everyone who files a federal tax return declaring income earned in Alabama — be they corporation or critter —to tithe, to pay 10 percent of that income to the church, which (as you recall) is also the state.
And the Legislature obeys, it being Biblical and all that.
And Gov. Moore signs it.
And the Big Mules stopped rejoicing, for under the “Moore tithing plan” the poor actually paid less than they paid before and the rich paid more.
You see, with all their exemptions and other breaks, few if any Big Mules were taxed 10 percent of anything. But abolishing all taxes abolished tax exemptions — can’t be exempted from what you aren’t paying anyway — and tithing is exemption-free. (Try telling the Lord that you will pay Him 10 percent of what you earn minus depreciation on that tractor or truck).
And the Mules cried foul, reminded the governor as to how taxes were abolished.
And the governor said, “this ain’t a tax, it’s a tithe for the church.”
And the Mules said, “but a church can’t force us to tithe.”
And the governor, “sure it can, ‘cause it’s also the state (remember?) and the state can force its citizens to do all sorts of things.”
(Meanwhile your everyday-garden-variety Alabamian was happily paying tithes because that is what good religious folk do, especially when it is costing them less than before.)
And when all these tithes were collected, Moore and Giles found that the church/state had enough in the treasury to feed the hungry, comfort the widow and orphan, attend the sick, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, rescue the perishing, care for the dying — all the things churches are supposed to do — and enough left over to build roads, catch criminals and put them away (so they can be visited), and run schools where all God’s children could get the best evolution-free 19th century education money can buy.
Then, from over among the Big Mules, came a voice.
“Now just a damn minute. Doesn’t the Constitution of the United States say that church and state must be separate?”
“Uh Huh,” said other Big Mules.
And lawyers started getting phone calls.
And I woke up.
http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2005/as-insight-0126-hhjacksoncol-5a25q1806.htm Harvey H. Jackson is a professor and chairman of the history department at Jacksonville State University.
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