Tuesday, October 28, 2008

James Dobson's fearmongering, seven days out

In a last ditch effort to GOTV and stop Barack Obama from winning next week, the unreconstructed James Dobson has issued a "Letter from 2012" predicting dire consequences for the US and the world if the election goes as expected. You have to love this -- it's from the Focus on the Family's own website (PDF format).

Supreme Court:
  • Justice Anthony Kennedy, tired of the infighting at SCOTUS, retires; Obama hires überliberal replacement. Justice Antonin Scalia, an arch conservative but also a First Amendment champion, also resigns for "health reasons" allowing Obama to make the liberal majority 6-3. The Supreme Court is in the hands of the left for the next 30 years making any GOP policy reforms impossible.
  • Boy and Girl Scouts of America votes to disband after SCOTUS legalizes gay marriage, and forces it to accept gay and lesbian scoutmasters.
  • Compulsory sex education from grade one (remember, socons oppose any kind of sex education right through to grade twelve).
  • Catholic and evangelical Protestant adoption agencies shut down rather than comply with SCOTUS rulings.
  • Churches shut down because they aren't allowed to turn away gay and lesbian couples who may want to get married.
  • "Don't ask, don't tell" repealed, career chaplains resign in protest.

Education:

  • No more before and after school prayer meetings allowed.
  • Churches no longer allowed to rent schools for meetings, even on Sundays. (Ditto for public parks and libraries).
  • SCOTUS strikes "under God" from Pledge of Allegiance.
  • Home schooling severely restricted.


Women:

  • Hyde Amendment repealed.
  • Nurses fired for refusing to participate in abortions.
  • Doctors who refuse to perform abortions lose drivers' licenses.
  • All forms of pornography legalized, freely sold at supermarket display racks.

Guns:

  • Supremes reverse Heller decision, gun ownership now illegal. Inner city violence explodes as a result.

Military:

  • Obama keeps promise to withdraw from Iraq; Al Qaeda promptly takes over country and imposed Taliban-like rule.
  • At least two terrorist attacks on US home soil; Obama responds by increasing foreign aid to terrorist breeding grounds.
  • Europe: Russia takes over the Ukraine, the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Obama does nothing like a good old fashioned appeaser.
  • Latin America: Obama increases ties to Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.
  • Israel: Iran nukes Tel Aviv, Israel gives up large amounts of territory to Palestinians. Obama only calls for UN to condemn nuclear attack.


And on it goes.

What idiocy. What ignorance. What outright prejudice on the part of James Dobson.

If he thinks this is standing up for Christianity, it only serves to make us Christians look bad. Christianity is a religion of love, this promotes the ongoing Bush-Cheney-Rove agenda of hate and exclusionism and American exceptionalism.

A lot of people seriously believe Obama is weak (and in some areas he admittedly is), but is he really that weak overall? Or will he rise to the challenge of an increasingly dangerous world? I think by first withdrawing from Iraq, the US will be in a better position to defend itself against terrorist attack because an extra 140,000 troops would be on the homefront and not overseas. The money being spent on infrastructure in Iraq would instead be spent in the US, generating jobs and increasing revenues from income taxes paid to Washington, not Baghdad. That too will make America more secure.

Many in Europe still know what war's like. People in the EU will not stand for being invaded -- they'll crush Russia. France and the UK have nuclear weapons and the various military units across NATO can face off against the Russians any day. If the Kremlin thinks they can destroy the Common Market, Schengen's open borders and the overall greatest success in democracy and cooperation in the world's history, they are sadly misguided. America and the EU may be competitors economically but they will stick together if they're bullied by a common enemy -- after all they believe in democracy and Russia does not.

No doctor is going to be forced to perform an abortion. No priest or minister is going to be required to perform a gay or lesbian marriage. As for the Hyde Amendment being repealed -- a 7:2 liberal Supreme Court upheld it in 1978 and there's not a single reason to believe SCOTUS will change its mind on it even if Obama gets back to a 6:3 liberal majority.

Even if the "fairness doctrine" is reinstated, broadcasters (most of which are conservative, not liberal as the right claims) are not going to give equal time to their opponents overnight. They don't want to lose advertising revenue from the hands that feed them. Besides, many of us progressives have migrated to the Internet for our news -- the truthful news -- anyway.

As for the nightmare health care scenario that FOTF enumerates, it's bull. Obama's plan is more of a pay or play system like that in Hawaii or Massachusetts -- nowhere near Medicare in Canada or the NHS in the UK. If people want gold-plated health care they'll still be able to get it; if they want a basic policy they'll be able to afford it.

I never thought I'd live to see the day Karl Rove actually looked good. James Dobson has done precisely that. We truly are living in the last days!

More of this crap is going to come the next seven days. We progressives need to fight it until the last polls close -- tooth, nail and claw.

UPDATE (7:06 pm EDT, 2306 GMT): An earlier version of this post said that David Sweet who represents the ADFW portion of Hamilton in Parliament, and was re-elected last week, was a member of Focus on the Family. He was in fact the Canadian director of Promise Keepers, that bag of nutbags who believes a woman should follow a man in all circumstances. But that group and FOTF are ideological cousins -- and totally against my ideals as to what women in Christianity should be about.

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