Focusing on the Fear of an Obama Presidency

Some evangelical Republican, an anonymous writer calling himself "Christian 2012", obviously had a lot of time on his hands earlier this week. Instead of getting out in the streets to knock on doors or hitting the campaign office to do some phone banking for John McCain and Sarah Palin, they sat down and put their creative energies to work to come up with a fifteen page missive titled "Letter From 2012 in Obama’s America".

But the group who is circulating the letter, Focus on the Family Action, is not anonymous. Its leader, Dr. James Dobson, is one of the most influential evangelical leaders in the country, and was purported to be instrumental in the behind-the-scenes decision making that lead to the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. You might imagine, then, that Dobson's political influence and huge email list makes this more than your ordinary chain letter.

If you’re a fan of science fiction, you’re pretty familiar with the format the writer chose, where they take you forward in time and describe the changes that have taken place between now and then. If you decide to click on the link above and read the whole thing, you will quickly figure out that the writer is no optimist.

The letter itself is preceded by an introduction which rambles all over the place in an effort to state that the letter is not a “prediction”, but "a ‘what if?’ exercise", using the past performance of Barack Obama , liberal judges, and the liberal leadership of congressional Democrats as a basis for the doomsday scenarios the writer presented.

The next fifteen pages (can you believe that? I can rant with the best of them, but FIFTEEN PAGES?) read like something out of a political Mad Max and the Thunderdome:

Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more.

He predicts a 6 to 3 Supreme Court, with a liberal majority that decimates laws on marriage, religious speech in the public square, abortion, pornography and gun ownership, using extreme examples and the slipperiest of slippery slope arguments to illustrate what could happen in each instance. For example, this segment:

Homosexual weddings:

“The land of the free”? Church buildings are now considered a “public accommodation” by the Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples. If they refuse, they lose their tax-exempt status, and they are increasingly becoming subject to fines and antidiscrimination lawsuits.

was one of many that leaned on homosexuality, while this segment:

Freedom of Choice Act:

Congress lost no time in solidifying abortion rights under President Obama. In fact, Obama had promised, “The first thing I’ll do as president is sign the “Freedom of Choice Act” (July 17, 2007, speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund).

This federal law immediately nullified hundreds of state laws that had created even the slightest barrier to abortion.22 States can no longer require parental involvement for minors who wish to have an abortion, waiting period, informed consent rules, restrictions on tax-payer funding or restrictions on late-term abortions. The act reversed the Hyde Amendment, so the government now funds Medicaid abortions for any reason. As a result, the number of abortions has increased dramatically. The Freedom of Choice Act also reversed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, so infants can be killed outright just seconds before they would be born. States whose laws were overturned challenged the law in court but it was upheld by the Obama Supreme Court. “The land of the free”? There is no freedom for these infants who are killed by the millions.

pulled no punches, throwing out the image of dead babies as an instant heart tugger.

I’ll have to give it to my man, he didn’t miss a beat, ticking off everything on the list, from religious freedom to home schooling to gun ownership to healthcare. He had a special emphasis on the future of terror:

Iraq:

“The home of the brave”? President Obama fulfilled his campaign promise and began regular withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, completing it in the promised 16 months, by April 2010.31 All was peaceful during those months, but then in May 2010, Al-Qaida operatives from Syria and Iran poured into Iraq and completely overwhelmed the Iraqi security forces. A Taliban-like oppression has taken over in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of “American sympathizers” have been labeled as traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The number put to death may soon reach the millions. Al-Qaida leaders have been emboldened by what they are calling the American “defeat”and their ranks are swelling in dozens of countries.

His mention of talk radio and the prosecution of the Bush administration officials was predictable, but it was this diatribe about the future of Christian literature that had my jaw dropping:

Christian books:

After the Supreme Court legalized same “sex marriage,” homosexual-activist groups targeted three large Christian book publishers that had publications arguing that homosexual conduct was wrong based on the teachings of the Bible. The activists staged marches and protests at Barnes & Noble stores around the country, demanding the stores remove all books published by these “hate-mongering” publishers. Barnes & Noble resisted for a time, but the protests continued, there was vandalism and secret defacing of books, and eventually the cost was too great and Barnes & Noble gave in. The same thing happened at Borders and other chains. Then they staged a massive nationwide computer attack on Amazon.com, with the same demands, and the same result. As a result, those evangelical publishers could no longer distribute any of their books through any of these bookstore chains. Any Christian publisher that dares to print works critical of homosexual behavior faces the same fate. As a result, several Christian publishers have gone out of business.

If you haven’t gotten it by now, homosexuality seems to be at the bottom of just about every problem these Christians followers face. Near the end, the writer revisits his opening theme with a leap in logic that defies the laws of…well, of logic.

Many brave Christian men and women tried to resist these laws, and some Christian legal agencies tried to defend them, but they couldn’t resist the power of a 6-3 liberal majority on the Supreme Court. It seems many of the bravest ones went to jail or were driven to bankruptcy. And many of their reputations have been destroyed by a relentless press and the endless repetition of false accusations.

Forty eight months is obviously longer than I thought. You can barely pay your car off in four years these days. Half the people who go to a four year college take at least five years to graduate. Although, if you need psychiatric help, like this guy does, four years might be long enough for an intensive treatment regimen to begin to help him regain his mental equilibrium.


Is this guy serious?


Who does this pseudo Christian think he is? Does he realize that his religion is not built on the idea of fear, but the very same “hope” that Barack Obama espouses? Are we seeing the beginnings of a “Christian Jihad” in the making?

I might have to start my own organization – “Focus on Fake Christians” – to help Mr. Anonymous “Christian From 2012” understand that the purpose of religion is individual salvation, not political organization.