Politics & Power Quote by Mike Rogers

“Decency” is doing a lot of political labor here: it sounds moral, modest, unarguable. Rogers frames Alabama not as a regional outlier but as the baseline, folding the state into “the vast majority of Americans” to preempt the usual coastal caricature of Alabama as backwards or uniquely extreme. That move isn’t just about pride; it’s about legitimacy. If Alabama equals mainstream America, then critics aren’t just attacking a local choice - they’re sneering at the country’s core.

The sentence is built like a soft shield. “Respect and value” doubles down on virtue without specifying any concrete behavior. “Meaning of decency” stays safely abstract, a placeholder term that can be filled with whatever a listener already believes: traditional religiosity, family norms, public decorum, even censorship framed as protection. The real pivot is “public institutions that reflect the common values of our society.” That’s a claim about ownership. Institutions - schools, libraries, courts, agencies - aren’t presented as neutral arbiters or pluralist spaces; they’re instruments meant to mirror a presumed consensus.

Subtext: dissent is indecent, or at least outside the “common.” If public institutions should “reflect” shared values, then anything that feels unfamiliar (certain books, curricula, speech, identities) can be cast as an intrusion rather than part of the public. The rhetoric flatters the audience as decent people while quietly redefining democracy as majoritarian mood rather than messy coexistence. It’s persuasive because it never names the fight, only the virtue, letting listeners supply the enemy.