On to the Bad Old Days

LITTLE ROCK — NO SESSION of the Arkansas legislature would be complete without some damfool piece of legislation being disinterred from the historical woodwork. Next year’s oh so-solemn proceedings haven’t even officially begun and already Embarrassment No. 1 is in the hopper. It’s a bill that would require federal agencies to get the local sheriff’s approval-in writing-before daring to conduct any kind of search-and-seizure mission here in the (once) Sovereign State of Arkansas.

Why do we have this slightly dizzying sensation of Deja Vu? Probably because this proposal from state Senator Denny Altes of Ft. Smith and Lost Causes brings back the Bad Old Days-specifically the Furious Fifties and Seggish Sixties. Which is when demagogues of every reactionary tendency roamed these latitudes from ever-calculating Orval Faubus, our own nigh-Eternal Incumbent in the Governor’s Mansion, to crude Lester (Ax Handle) Maddox of Atlanta, Ga. And every variety of the species in between.

Together they left Southern history littered with their leavings-Massive Resistance, the Southern Manifesto, Interposition and Nullification and other such futilities and delusions. They were all hollow at the core, though the styles of their proponents might differ. Arkansas’ own J. William Fulbright with his intellectual pretensions argued the case for segism with his characteristic high popalorum while agitators like Asa Carter, George Wallace’s speechwriter, contributed the low popahirum. (“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”)

Nowadays one encounters such holdovers from those unsettled times only rarely-a defeated candidate for the Legislature here, an unreconstructed Confederate there. They may be the last vestiges of what were called the Secesh during The War. They still materialize now and then-like Marley’s Ghost clanking up Scrooge’s steps bearing the chain he forged in life, link by link, yard by yard, dead weight by dead weight. Which is what all those grand manifestoes amount to now, dead weight, not that they made much sense then. Jim Johnson’s body lies a-buried in his grave, but his spirit goes slouching on in proposals like Denny Altes’ latest brainstorm, which is really more of a fast-fading drizzle.

However diverse their rhetorical level, the glorified snake-oil salesmen of the Bad Old Days used the good name of States’ Rights to cover a multitude of sins, including defiance of the Constitution. They might have loved a law that required the FBI to check with the local sheriff’s office-say, the one in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where those three civil rights workers were killed-before investigating a federal crime.

Thank you, Denny Altes, for bringing to mind that whole ghastly affair-indeed, that whole sad era. For we forget our history at our own peril. Michael Schwermer, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are names that need to be remembered, indeed engraved in the Southern memory, and their murder never forgotten. Or its lessons.

It’s hard to conceive of any American with an historical consciousness, or conscience, who wouldn’t recognize what a bad idea Mr. Altes’ latest proposal is. Even if he assures us that, should his bill became law, federal lawmen could still stop a crime in progress (whew!),and that, if the local sheriff himself was the one under federal investigation, the FBI could get the needed permission from the state’s attorney general. Like, say, Bruce Bennett, who was Arkansas’ attorney general in 1964? Don’t make us laugh-wryly. Because ’tain’t nothin’ funny about it. It was said of General Bennett, who made a cause and obsession of harassing the NAACP, that he knew more people and less law than anybody in the state. Maybe the senator from Fort Smith could call his bill the Bruce Bennett Memorial Act.

BY NOW even Senator Altes must realize what an embarrassment his bill is, since he says he probably shouldn’t have filed it this year, just as he filed a separate but equally nutty proposal for the 2011 legislative session. Some folks never learn. If he’s sincere when he says he shouldn’t have filed this bill, the senator should waste no time withdrawing it, and so spare both himself and the state further embarrassment.

Other than making trouble where none now exists (between the federal government and local law enforcement in Arkansas), it’s hard to see any purpose in such a provocation in the guise of legislation. In the unlikely event the Legislature actually passed Senator Altes’ misbegotten proposal, it’s even more unlikely the thing would hold up in court, the Constitution and laws of the United States being the supreme law of the land.

This kind of embarrassing thing should have happily ended with the Bad Old Days, or even with the Confederate States of America. But some of us seem stuck in an historical time warp. And while it’s easy enough to have a little fun with their delusions, it is important, it is imperative, that we all remember just how poisonous nostalgic little games like Senator Altes’ can prove. They may not deserve to be taken seriously, but they should be. We ignore them at our peril.

The best critique of recurrent delusions like Denny Altes’ may have been delivered by George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

There’s a reason Professor Santayana’s observation has become cliché. It remains relevant. Especially whenever the Arkansas legislature prepares to begin its regular, biennial session, and some legislator introduces the by now almost mandatory damfool bill. This year it’s Denny Altes. Who says the Ledge doesn’t have its traditions? This one it would do well to skip.