The Republican Right's Moonie Problem
- From: Harry Hope <rivrvu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:29:13 -0400
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/80446/
March 21, 2008
The Republican Right's Moonie Problem
by David Neiwert
A number of folks -- notably Ezra Klein
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=03&year=2008&base_name=wright_and_falwell
and Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/17/wright/index.html --
have already pointed out quite adroitly that while the media have had
little compunction about whipping up a phony controversy about Barack
Obama's "pastor problem", there's almost nothing that white
evangelical pastors can say that might bring down similar approbation.
John McCain's "spiritual advisers" Rod Parsley and John Hagee really
are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this.
As Glenn puts it:
The phrases "anti-American" and "America-haters" are among the most
barren and manipulative in our entire political lexicon, but whatever
they happen to mean on any given day, they easily encompass people who
believe that the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks, devastating
hurricanes and the like.
Yet when are people like Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, Inhofe and other
white Christian radicals ever described as anti-American or
America-hating extremists?
Never -- because white Christian evangelicals who tie themselves to
the political Right are intrinsically patriotic.
But the Republican right's biggest problem with having "America
haters" as leading exponents of movement conservatism is someone who
not only has claimed to be a spiritual mentor but is also a major
financier of Republican causes: the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
As John Gorenfeld explains in delightful and excruciating detail in
his new book Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington
Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0979482232?tag=firedoglake-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0979482232&adid=1ES8VWXSZ368AZM7E7NJ&;
Moon has a long history of saying ugly things about the United States
and about Americans.
And yet simultaneously, the largesse he spreads about the conservative
movement has won him all kinds of friends, influence, and defenders,
if not followers.
Certainly, there is no one in the mainstream media who bothers to
mention this, let alone play endless tape loops.
Here are some of the things Moon has said over the years, as Gorenfeld
has detailed:
The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate
the world. I will go beyond the boundary of the U.S., opening up the
toll gate, reaching out to the end of the world. I will go forward,
piercing through everything ...
When we are in our battle against the whole nation of the U.S. --
if you are truly in love with this nation, and if you love this nation
more than anyone else, this nation will come into God's possession,
and Satan will have nothing to do with it. ... With that as the
bullet, we can smash the whole world.
Individualism is what God hates most, and Satan likes best.
God likes the idea of a monarchy, because it removes the cycles of
election after election which can obscure the focus and direction of
the nation.
The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate
the whole world.
The time will come when, without my seeking it, that my words must
serve as law.
We will be able to amend laws, articles of constitution, if we
wish to do so.
Telling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a
person, but if you tell a lie to do a good thing ... that is not a sin
.... Even God tells lies very often.
I have met many famous, so-called famous, Senators and
Congressmen; but to my eyes they are nothing. They are weak and
helpless. We will win the battle. This is our dream, our project. But
shut your mouth tight.
After the demise of communism and the destruction of democracy,
all that will remain will be the True Family and True Children system,
centered upon True Parents [Moon's title for himself and his wife].
That is what is happening now.
America may boast of its virtues to the world, but look, democracy
is now reaching the end of its rope. People thought democracy is the
final anchor of the free world, but it is reaching its end. So what is
left? America has been telling the weaker nations that they have to
accept democracy, forcing them to receive so-called democracy. But
look at America. It is rotten, top to bottom. There is nothing to be
proud of, not their way of walking or talking or thinking.
When you hear me putting America down, your ears are not pleased.
But if we continue living in this hub of the satanic world, this New
York-DC area, we are in the darkness.
When Clinton and his policies come into being, the first
opposition must come from Christianity. But Christianity has lost its
center and its hope. For that reason, they have lost their power, and
that is why Clinton was allowed to win the election. It was the
failure of Christianity. This nation which is supposed to be Christian
has been turned into almost a model nation for Satan, losing
everything precious. People are losing their own identity, losing
brotherhood, losing their own parents, and losing God. This nation has
really become a playground for Satan.
Those "patriotic" conservatives have not fled screaming from Moon for
saying these kinds of things.
They have not denounced him.
They have not even discussed them -- nor, for that matter, have the
media.
No, they not only continue to sturdily defend him and his many
operations -- most notably the Washington Times Moon's newspaper,
which has employed many leading conservative pundits -- they
positively embrace him, mostly because of his money.
The most significant of these has been his embrace by the Bush family.
George H.W. Bush has appeared at major Moon-sponsored events and taken
large sums of his money.
Neil Bush has toured with him and also enjoys his considerable
largesse. http://www.alternet.org/story/29054/
And President Bush has gone so far as to name a former Unification
Church leader -- Josette Sheeran -- as his undersecretary of state for
economic, business, and agriculture affairs.
But have the mainstream media dealt with any of this?
Er, no.
In fact, when the subject of the Bush clan's ties to Moon have come
up, people like the New York Times' David Brooks -- who got his start
as a pundit at the Washington Times -- call it a "bizarre assertion"
and an instance of the "paranoid style in American politics."
Obviously, you don't get to watch Moon's "hateful" and "anti-American"
remarks being replayed endlessly on CNN and Fox, nor watch every media
outlet in the nation obsess over whether Republicans should repudiate
him.
Funny how that works, isn't it?
____________________________________________________
From The Washington Post, 11/24/97:
In a series of sermons delivered this year, Rev.
Sun Myung Moon, has expressed deep disdain for
American society and its failure to embrace his
religion.
Moon's sermons are filled with derisive, angry
references to America. "God hates the American
atmosphere," Moon declared last fall. "Satan
created this kind of Hell on the Earth. . . . I
don't like fallen America. It is heading for
destruction in the very near future."
"America is the kingdom of extreme individualism,
the kingdom of free sex," Moon said in a May 1
speech at his mansion in suburban New York. "The
country that represents Satan's harvest is
America. . . . America doesn't have anywhere to go
now."
American women, Moon said in a speech last fall,
"have inherited the line of prostitutes. . . .
American women are even worse because they
practice free sex just because they enjoy it."
In the May sermon, Moon returned to the theme of
America as a lost nation, a place that tolerates
homosexuals, whom he compared to "dirty
dung-eating dogs." "Especially American people,"
Moon said, "if they truly love such dogs, they
also become like dung-eating dogs and produce that
quality of life."
"Moon is down on America and American
membership," said John Stacey, 23, who left the
church earlier this year. "He's always saying
Americans are stupid and lazy, they're evil."
But Moon, who has persevered despite two jail
sentences in Korea for disturbing the peace and
one in the United States for tax evasion, does not
give up easily. Despite budget cuts and anemic
circulation, the Washington Times -- as well as
Unification's other large projects in this country
-- continues to draw large subsidies.
So much for the "mainstream" moonie Washington
Times and Insight.
Harry
"I never gave anyone hell. I just told the truth
and they thought it was hell."
Harry Truman
.
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