The wrong side of history?

I have heard the phrase "being on the wrong side of history" quite a bit lately from our president and those around him. I am perplexed by how someone can use their best guess about how future generations will evaluate their current actions to guide their current actions? Pragmatism, making decisions based on what you think will work, is a foolish enough guessing game, but I realize those who don't believe in moral absolutes have nothing but pragmatism to guide decisions.

However, this "being on the wrong side of history" notion goes even further into the ridiculous as it allows the decision maker to do what may look pragmatically or statistically foolish today and justify it based on their best guess about how those in the future might look back and evaluate it.

Ok, I realize no pragmatist wants to believe in absolute truth or be obligated to standards outside of their own best thinking. However, isn't their a big inconsistency when you start saying "whatever those in the future look back and think would have been right is right", haven't you just created a morality of sorts, even if it is purely based on your guesses about what those in the future will think?

Let me take a guess at how this has happened - I think they realized that sometimes their wants and desires regarding decisions that need to be made now, can't be justified pragmatically, so by throwing "being on the wrong side of history" into the decision making mix, it allows for any decision, even those that look pragmatically unjustifiable, to be made in the name of those who will look back and evaluate the decisions at some point in the future.

I have no help for the pragmatists, accept to warn them that all men will one day be judged, at the end of history, by God. No matter how you justify or implement pragmatism, the word of God is true and eternal, and it warns us of the dangers of doing what seems best over what God says -

Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death.

"Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved."