The Failure of Christian Political Strategy and The Danger of Legal Positivism
In the Focus on the StrategyDVD,
using audio and video clips of Christian leaders, Bob Enyart presents
seven lines of evidence that our national ministries have endorsed
legal positivism, elevating man's rules and the Constitution
above God, and giving them precedence above eternal laws such as
thou shall not murder. Bob demonstrates that this legal
positivism is eroding even the personal morality of Christian believers.
On Nov. 2, 2005 Family Research Council gave us an example of
raw legal positivism when
Gary Bauer defended Judge Samuel Alito
for voting to uphold Partial Birth Abortion for process reasons,
because it was his job as a judge. However, God cares about the
souls of judges as much as others; and a judge who upholds the murder
of the innocent is no less guilty before God than a criminal who kills
his victim. Whereas Peter said to the leaders of his day, "We must
obey God rather than men," our Christian leaders have lost their way,
and now openly embrace legal positivism. This humanist
theory requires obedience to the Constitution, even when that obedience
results in violating God's eternal, moral commands including
Thou Shall Not Murder.
Flip Benham,
national director of OSA,
produced this one-hour DVD,
Focus on the Strategy, which ends with four specific
recommendations for Christians to implement as we seek to influence
our culture and government.
10 Years of Solid, Pro-Abortion Rulings
on 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals
KEY
EX
Extremist pro-abortion ruling
PC
Mainstream pro-choice ruling
EX: In 1995 Alito voted to keep it easy to get a
tax-funded abortion by claiming rape, even when no crime had been
reported to police
(Blackwell v Knoll).
EX: In 1997 Alito voted to prevent parents from suing
for the wrongful death of a fetus, ruling that he could find no legal
protection for an unborn child from the malpractice of a doctor, and
by extension from a criminal act
(Alexander v Whitman).
EX: In 2000 Alito voted to keep legal Partial Birth
Abortion in NJ, for process reasons
(Planned Parenthood v NJ).
EX: In 2001 Alito ordered NJ taxpayers to give
$522,992.84 to Planned Parenthood attorneys for their fight against
NJ’s PBA ban (which he upheld on appeal in 2002,
PP v NJ Atty Gen).
EX: In 2004 Alito forced a Chinese father to return
to China to face the government that forcibly killed his eight-month
old unborn child
(Chen v. Aschcroft).
PC: Also, in 1991 Alito refined the new concept
of “undue burden” which restricts anti-abortion laws
(Planned Parenthood v Casey),
and in 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court
adopted
Alito’s refined standard.
Focus on the Family has now
explicitly admitted their commitment to
legal positivism in their February 2006 Citizen Magazine. Dr. Dobson
actually approves of a ruling to keep
partial birth abortion legal on process grounds.
His justification is that the legal process takes precedence over
Do Not Murder. The Focus article,
Alito’s Abortion Rulings,
was written by Bruce Hausknecht, Dobson’s Judicial Analyst who had
attended Bob Enyart’s live presentation there of Focus on the
Strategy.
“New Jersey enacted a statute prohibiting partial-birth abortion,in which a baby is partially delivered feet-first and its brain matter removed… Alito joined his other panel colleagues in following the Supreme Court precedent, overturning the New Jersey statute [keeping PBA legal]. Once again, Alito made clear in a concurring opinion [2000] that the Stenberg decision controlled the result in the New Jersey situation. … Does the fact that Alito voted for a pro-abortion position in three out of the four cases indicate that he endorses a legal right to abortion on demand? Hardly. …an appellate judge… is to follow the statutes and the Constitution and apply Supreme Court precedent… Thus Alito faithfully and dutifully performed in each of these cases, reflecting his judicial restraint and faithfulness to the true role of judges.”
This open letter
to Dr. James Dobson ran in the Colorado Springs Gazette May 3, 2005.
An Open Letter, with Love and Respect, to Dr. James Dobson:
In desperation, some members of Denver Bible Church held a peaceful
protest at Senator Salazar’s Dairy Queen. The goal was to oppose his
support for the killing of unborn children, but mostly to expose the
result of your quarter-century strategy of getting judges who respect
life by electing pro-life Republican presidents.
On Justice Sunday, you were outraged by your own judges! Dr. Dobson,
you listed the 11th Circuit decision against Terri Schiavo as an example
that the judiciary is “out of control.” But all six of the justices
nominated by our pro-life Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush I, and
Bush II), voted against your position! All six (including William
Pryor whom President Bush recess-appointed last year to avoid a
Democratic filibuster) voted not to save Terri’s life and against our
side. All six!
It is time to admit that your strategy has failed. Republicans
nominated 58 percent of the federal judiciary [Ft. Collins’
Coloradoan.com April 28], which you rightly expose as firmly against
family values. The Moral Majority/Christian Coalition/Focus on the
Family 25-year strategy of getting anti-abortion judges through
Republican victories has utterly failed; and now George W. Bush is
keeping his word by living up to his very first campaign promise to
ignore abortion when nominating judges. It was a Republican Supreme
Court which legalized abortion, and a Republican-nominated judge even
wrote Roe v. Wade. The current Supreme Court keeps abortion legal with
seven of the nine current Justices nominated by Republican presidents.
The judge who wrote the 9th Circuit ruling against the words “under
God” in the Pledge was nominated by a Republican president. In 2002 a
New York federal judge ruled that a convicted child sex offender could
not be stopped from attracting children with balloons in a public park.
That judge was nominated by George Bush Sr., and this compares to the
current Republican U.S. Supreme Court which decided in favor of the
child-porn industry against families and law enforcement, making it
harder to prosecute those who sodomize children for profit. Will you
please publicly expose that the vast majority of the justices nominated
by our pro-life Republican presidents are pro-choice and refuse to
uphold traditional biblical morality?
Our biggest successes are mostly hollow. We have spent most of a
decade fighting to ban partial-birth abortion, which is tantamount to
Germans banning Zyklon-A only to have Zyklon-B used in the
extermination camps instead, while today’s abortionists simply use a
different method on late-term babies and have not canceled a single
abortion as a result. And the “pro-life” justices on the Supreme
Court have never declared an unborn child’s fundamental right to life,
but rather criticize Roe only because abortion should not be a judicial
but a legislative issue; this very position undermines the safety of
children as though any subdivision of government could have the right
to decriminalize murder. The judges that we pretend are conservative
actually are only committed to process, not to Christian values, so
that when Clarence Thomas dissented from overturning the Texas sodomy
law that mercifully opposed harmful behavior, we touted him as supporting
Christian values, yet he wrote that if he were a state legislator he
would vote to overturn the “silly” law [see SupremeCourtUS.gov].
Dr. Dobson, respectfully, you are outraged by your own judges. Those
in the womb when Reagan campaigned for president have now graduated
from college, and the de facto Focus political strategy has
packed the Federal judiciary with pro-choice Republican judges. You
have a heavy weight as America’s evangelical leader in the war against
injustice, but you must come to terms with this failed strategy. We
recommend the strategy you declared a decade ago but have since
abandoned. Back then you repeatedly pledged, as stated on your program
in March of 1995, “I am committed never again to cast a vote for a
politician who would kill one innocent baby.”
While most of our leaders are unable to think through to victory, your
previous politically astute strategy can indeed eventually overturn
legal abortion and protect family values. Sadly, George W. Bush is
proud of the pro-choice judges he packed the Texas Supreme Court with,
and has put on the federal judiciary. Without Christian leadership
upholding your old pledge, Republican presidents use us conservative
Christians, and the compromise tremendously weakens our side. You
noticed that during the battle for Terri Schindler most religious
conservatives in the media stated, “this all could have been avoided
if Terri had left a written directive.” With those words, the pro-life
community crossed the line to support assisted suicide, starving to
death people who are not dying, as long as there is a Living Will.
Our pro-life leaders have become weak after a quarter-century of
compromise, not compromising on Republican-party politics, but on
Thou Shalt Not Murder, all in vain hope of thereby making progress
toward victory.
Federally, Republican-nominated judges issue most of the
anti-Christian rulings in America. We have to stop focusing on code
words that are a recipe for surrender, such as demanding strict
constructionists, original intent, and constitutionalists (by which
Justices upheld Article I in the Dred Scott ruling that black people
were property). Such terminology is another part of the failed
strategy which obscures our true demand, for judges who fear God and
oppose the killing of the innocent. Thus, the issue is not the
Democratic filibuster, but the failed Christian political strategy that
has packed the federal judiciary with pro-choice Republican judges.
Please, Dr. Dobson, take up your pledge again, and provide the
leadership we desperately need.