On Wednesday, a Republican Senate candidate — who believes that his personal interpretation of the New Testament supersedes the U.S. Constitution — argued that NFL players who kneel during the national anthem pose a dire threat to rule of law in the United States.
“It’s against the law, you know that?” the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who gained national fame by repeatedly refusing to honor federal court orders, told Time magazine Wednesday. “It was an act of Congress that every man stand and put their hand over their heart. That’s the law.”
Here, the likely next senator from the Yellowhammer State — who was removed from the bench for rejecting the legitimacy of a Supreme Court ruling that contravened his moral intuitions — was ostensibly arguing that an obscure section of the U.S. code detailing proper etiquette during the national anthem overrides professional athletes’ First Amendment rights.
“If we don’t respect the law, what kind of country are we going to have?” the man who argued that duly elected American Muslims must not be allowed to serve in Congress asked.
“If we disobey this,” the lawless demagogue, whose campaign has been endorsed by nearly every Republican senator because he will (probably) vote for regressive tax cuts, concluded, “what else are we going to disobey?”
