This is an opinion column.

There’s no one alive who can remember when Alabama and the federal government weren’t at odds over something. Our state motto is “We dare defend our rights,” but it should really be, “Don’t you tell us what to do.”

And this struggle has cost Alabama.

About the time I graduated high school, Alabama briefly brought back chain gangs as a form of punishment — for no better reason than public officials here believed it was badass and a majority of Alabama voters were eager to reward their 19th Century thinking.

A few sensible lawmakers argued that shackling mostly black men in forced servitude along the interstate highway might not be a clean break with Alabama’s past. It could give the wrong impression to out-of-state business developers and Yankee tourists on their way to the beach, they said.

But Gov. Fob James — whose grooming habits suggested he was unconcerned with his own image, much less Alabama’s — was undeterred.

The state quickly ran into issues.

There were obvious — but for Alabama, unforeseen — hazards in chaining together men with behavior control problems and then giving them bush axes and sling blades. The highway right-of-way turned into a bloody gladiatorial fighting pit, and a state prison guard had to shoot an inmate who tried to hack to death another prisoner.

Civil libertarians and civil rights groups sued the state. The roadside bloodsports made the case a sure win. James relented and Alabama settled the lawsuit — but not before people got hurt, and not before Alabama suffered another self-inflicted wound to its reputation.

It was dumb. It was cruel. And it fit an old pattern of Alabama public policy.

Slavery, segregation, mental health, prison overcrowding, anti-immigration laws, religious displays in state courthouses — Alabama history is a cycle of learning all lessons the hard way, stubbornly refusing to reform, and then being forced into compliance by the federal government.

But Alabama’s new abortion law — which sets up yet another struggle in the courts — could break that cycle, steal the locus of control back from the federal government, and send America in a frightening direction.

Historic costs

This tension between Alabama and the federal courts began under Reconstruction and grew so strong during the civil rights movement that people began calling U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson Jr. the “real governor of Alabama” — something that drove his former law school classmate George Wallace mad with jealousy.

The conflict was deeply personal and dangerous. After Wallace told a crowd that Johnson needed a “barbed wire enema,” somebody tried to firebomb the judge’s home. Years later, when Wallace tried to make amends, Johnson relayed a message: “If you want to get forgiveness, you can get it from the Lord.”

Both men are long dead, but the mutual antagonism between Alabama and the federal courts lives. The ceaseless need for judicial helicopter parenting should be embarrassing. But no matter if Alabama has any shame, it is also expensive.

When the state loses one of these lawsuits, it must pay the plaintiff’s legal fees, and those costs are mounting. Since 2013, Alabama has had to pay more than $3.7 million to the ACLU alone.

And that figure represents only what Alabama paid for their lawyers. When asked for the state’s defense costs, officials have argued those figures would be too difficult to determine.

The opportunity costs are much easier to figure.

As AL.com’s Anna Claire Vollers reported this week, the $3.7 million Alabama has paid the ACLU would be enough to pay 33 new educators in schools suffering a crippling teacher shortage. Or 44 state troopers on Alabama highways where patrol cars are sparse.

Instead, that money paid for what exactly?

Defending barbaric prison conditions, draconian immigration laws and obstinate same-sex marriage fights.

And anti-abortion crusades.

When the Alabama Legislature passed yet another abortion bill this week — a bill so restrictive that it would require victims of rape and incest to have their rapists’ babies — the ACLU shared a copy of it’s last check from Alabama. That one cost us $1.7 million.

The message was clear: We’ll take your money again if we have to.

During the debate Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers accused their Republican colleagues of picking another fight with the courts. (Republicans did not dispute this, and in fact, confirmed it.) The bill, Democrats said, was blatantly unconstitutional and would only cost the state more money.

But that bill is only unconstitutional if the United States Supreme Court says it is, and there’s another, more frightening scenario that could lie ahead: What if, this time, Alabama wins?

Something’s different this time

This struggle and this power dynamic between Alabama and the federal government has existed so long that many people here have accepted it as an immutable fact of life.

But it’s not.

It’s like looking at a glacier and seeing it as a fixed, eternal thing: It was here when I was born, it was here when my grandfather was born, and it’ll be right there when I’m long gone.

But, no. It moves, and as the world gets hotter, it melts. And lately, this ice floe has been giving up a lot of water. The judicial branch has been shifting, in favor of Alabama, and it’s already having an effect on the rest of America — because of Alabama.

The first victims were voters.

In 2010, Shelby County decided it was tired of living under the Voting Rights Act, which required it to get approval from the U.S. Justice Department to ensure new election practices were not racially discriminatory. The county sued the Justice Department and in 2013 won at the Supreme Court.

No sooner had the court gutted the Voting Rights Act than Alabama approved Voter ID requirements. At nearly the same time, Gov. Robert Bentley attempted to close state drivers licenses offices in majority African-Americans counties — just the sort of things the Voting Rights Act had prevented.

And it wasn’t just in Alabama: Across the South more than 800 polling places closed ahead of the 2016 election. And 10 of the 11 old Confederate states passed Voter ID laws.

And that was while Obama was president.

When President Trump took office the Justice Department shifted its attention to running undocumented immigrants out of the country. Under the leadership of Alabama’s Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division saw its caseload cut by more than 60 percent. This, more than anything to do with Russia or the special counsel, is Sessions’ legacy.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has been busy packing the courts with judges more open to an Alabama point of view — especially on the Supreme Court. Now Alabama has a chance to force its will on the nation, instead of the other way around.

And its first target is abortion.

You could see it in the Alabama Legislature this week. Gone was any pretense that Republican lawmakers were protecting mothers or public health. There wasn’t any code language or subterfuge. This abortion bill, its sponsors said, is a weapon for a new Supreme Court majority to kill Roe v. Wade.

Alabama lawmakers believes the rules have changed, and they might be right.

As one lawmaker said in Alabama Statehouse this week, “It ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.”

For as long as anyone can remember, the federal judiciary has protected Alabamians from Alabama. But with the courts shifting in the state’s direction, who’s going to protect America from Alabama?

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

Want access to the best analysis and in-depth reporting about Alabama each week? Sign up for the weekly Reckon Report newsletter and follow Reckon on Facebook and Twitter. Follow Whitmire on Twitter and Facebook, too. And Instagram.