{"id":480,"date":"2008-11-15T09:56:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-15T16:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harmonicminer.com\/wordpress\/2008\/11\/15\/dobsons-view-of-the-future-or-wallis\/"},"modified":"2008-11-15T16:07:54","modified_gmt":"2008-11-15T23:07:54","slug":"dobsons-view-of-the-future-or-wallis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.harmonicminer.com\/wordpress\/2008\/11\/15\/dobsons-view-of-the-future-or-wallis\/","title":{"rendered":"Dobson’s view of our future, or Wallis’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before the election, James Dobson created and circulated an imaginary “letter from the future”: “Letter From 2012 in Obama’s America”<\/a><\/p>\n

The ability of the letter to sway the election is gone, of course.\u00a0 We have a little space from the election now, and can take a breath.<\/p>\n

But the letter is still a useful document for staking out some territory about some likely outcomes of the Obama adminstration.\u00a0 For the most part, because these outcomes depend largely on packing the Supreme Court with leftists, and involve known Democrat plans in Congress, there may not be much we can do to avoid these outcomes by political activity, except maybe a successful filibuster of far-left judges.\u00a0 But maybe forewarned is forearmed, and just maybe there is something we can do by the 2010 congressional elections to slow it all down.<\/p>\n

You can read the Dobson letter by clicking the link above: it will download a PDF to your computer, which you can save, print or just view. I have not reproduced it here because it has many formatting features that would be lost, including many footnotes with sources for quotes and policy positions that\u00a0 Obama and others have taken.\u00a0 It is a fairly clear distillation of the warnings given by many in the center-Right about the Obama presidency.<\/p>\n

Jim Wallis<\/a>, of Sojourners, and frequent spokesman for the Christian Left, replies here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The following will only make sense if you read Dobson’s letter and Wallis’ response first.
\n<\/p>\n

The short story:\u00a0 Dobson makes specific predictions based on known policy positions of Obama and the Democrats.\u00a0 That’s why his letter has so many footnotes, to demonstrate that he is operating from facts, not rumors, about the plans Obama and the Democrats have stated publicly, and about known policy and philosophy on the part of current Leftist Supreme Court judges, as well as the stated intents of Leftist organizations to use litigation to force all kinds of accomodations to their radical desires, if they can get a foundational court ruling here and there to make up new law in their favor.\u00a0 The only liberty Dobson seems to have taken is to postulate retirements by Kennedy and Scalia during Obama’s first term, so that the Supreme Court leftist majority is in place fairly soon.<\/p>\n

Wallis’ response is striking in that, while accusing Dobson of fear-mongering and appealing to the worst in people, Wallis does not offer a counter argument to any single assertion in Dobson’s post.\u00a0 That’s right (and you did<\/em> read it, correct?), Wallis does not deny ANY of Dobson’s assertions about either Obama’s intent or the Democrats’ intent.\u00a0 While Wallis’ never actually says so, in reading between the lines, I think maybe we’re supposed to think Dobson is fear-mongering because of the relatively unlikely circumstance of both Kennedy and Scalia retiring early in Obama’s first term.\u00a0 And I hope that’s true.\u00a0 But that has nothing to do with the INTENT of the Left, Obama and Democrats, rather only with their ability to pack the Court with Leftists.<\/p>\n

In other words, if you were to read Wallis’ response looking for places where he says that Dobson got a particular fact wrong, you’d be looking a long time, because he never does that.\u00a0 He’s just mad that Dobson actually said it, by pointing out what would happen if Scalia and Kennedy retire during Obama’s first term.<\/p>\n

He accuses Dobson of “misrepresenting” Obama and the Democrats, but gives not a single example of it, let alone an argument about why any of it is a misrepresentation.\u00a0 Wallis simply asserts that it is a misrepresentation, and then moves on to lecturing Dobson about the hackneyed “seamless garment of life issues”, as if there is some parity between someone being poor, or fighting enemies of America in war, and unborn babies being murdered.<\/p>\n

I wonder what the “misrepresentations” might be?\u00a0 Maybe Obama hasn’t endorsed the Freedom of Choice Act?\u00a0 Maybe he won’t appoint very leftist judges?\u00a0 Maybe he’ll veto the Democrats union card-check legislation?\u00a0 Maybe he’ll leave our forces in Iraq until it is truly stabilized?\u00a0 Maybe Wallis thinks that a very left Supreme Court won’t rule in favor of gay marriage, despite existing examples of exactly such rulings from leftist judges?\u00a0 Maybe Wallis thinks the ACLU wouldn’t sue churches, the Boy Scouts, etc., if the Supreme Court creates a constitutional right to gay marriage?\u00a0 Maybe Wallis thinks that medical personnel won’t be forced to participate in abortions if the Freedom of Choice Act becomes law?\u00a0 Maybe he thinks porn won’t be mainstreamed?\u00a0 (He should think about what NOW appears at grocery store checkouts, on broadcast TV, etc., and compare it to 40 years ago.)\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe Wallis thinks Obama and the Democrats won’t create new gun control laws, hamper home schooling, block talk radio, raise taxes, spend more than they have, etc., but the evidence is simply against him, and he knows it, because those are EXACTLY things that Democrats have tried to do for years, with occasional success.\u00a0 And now they have the keys to the city, and the country.<\/p>\n

Wallis does not name ONE misrepresentation and specifically rebut it.\u00a0 He just claims there are some.\u00a0 He doesn’t name ONE Dobson prediction that is not based on a continuation of current policy plans and announced objectives.<\/p>\n

So, Mr. Wallis, put up or shut up.\u00a0 Can you name anything in Dobson’s letter that is not directly planned by Obama and\/or the Democrats?\u00a0 Is there anything in Dobson’s letter that is not based on trendlines already existing in Leftism, Obama’s past and present policy positions, and the Democrat platform or previous Democrat legislative initiatives?<\/p>\n

The answer, of course, is, “No, there isn’t.”\u00a0 Wallis admits it, in fact.\u00a0 He admits it by not bringing up a single counter example, or a single fact Dobson got wrong in quoting Obamian and Democrat plans and public statements, as well as extrapolations from past legislative attempts and judicial decisions.\u00a0 Read the footnotes in Dobson’s letter.\u00a0 The facts are so clear that even Wallis can’t deny them in detail, so the best he can do is attack Dobson personally and call him a hater.<\/p>\n

If Wallis had even one point that was a counterfactual to one of Dobson’s predictions, don’t you think he would have brought it up?<\/p>\n

Dobson does not claim to be a prophet, and he does not call his letter prophecy, so the Biblical standard of 100% correctness does not apply in evaluating the letter.<\/p>\n

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in an America where HALF of what Dobson predicts comes true, let alone all of it.\u00a0 I will continue to pray for President-elect Obama’s heart to be softened towards the unborn.\u00a0 I will pray that he’ll find the strength to veto the over-reaching of a Democrat congress.\u00a0 I will pray for excellent health and wisdom for all<\/em> the Supreme Court justices.\u00a0 And I will work in whatever ways I can to apply political pressure wherever it will help.<\/p>\n

In any case, the marker is down.\u00a0 Bets are on the table, and the world is watching.\u00a0 There are two groups in the Christian Left, those who really won’t MIND if Dobson is correct, because they want to live in that America, and those who think it’s all a big lie, and isn’t Obama just a nice man who wouldn’t really do such things, and didn’t he just say them so he would get elected (wink wink nudge…\u00a0 gotta please the base, you know)?\u00a0 I wonder if the Christian Left will have the grace to admit just how wrong they were, if even 1\/3 or 1\/2 of Dobson’s predictions come true.\u00a0 It will be interesting to find out if they are merely, uh,\u00a0 “prevaricators, or condemned prevaricators” (to semi-politely rephrase Mr. Clemens).<\/p>\n

Of course, if Dobson is correct, pointing out the lies of the left in the year 2013 may be hate speech.\u00a0 If that happens, see y’all at Leavenworth…\u00a0 if you can find me at all.<\/p>\n

As it happens, I think Dobson is probably overly pessimistic about one thing.\u00a0 All this change probably won’t happen by 2012, if Scalia and Kennedy stay healthy, and the Court remains in a “balance of power” of 4 Lefties, 4 Originalists, and 1 moderate.\u00a0 But 2016 is another story.\u00a0 If Obama doesn’t get a chance to replace Kennedy until even late in a second term, that’s all it will take to tilt the Court so that a Republican president who might follow Obama wouldn’t be able to stop many of the predictions that Dobson made.<\/p>\n

This is one time I really, really, really want to be proved wrong.<\/p>\n

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