Guest Post by Morbo
Tearing apart David Brooks’ asinine columns in The New York Times is never a challenge, but Thursday’s was especially child’s play in one regard.
Brooks attacked Kevin Phillips’s best-seller American Theocracy, writing in part:
Needless to say, Phillips’s book is rife with bizarre assertions. He writes that “many Orthodox Jewish females cannot even study the Torah,” that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon “has been close to the Bush family,” that the American Revolution was “in many ways a religious war.”
I’ll leave the Torah and the Revolution to others and focus on the claim that Moon is close to the Bushes. This is no bizarre assertion. It is a fact.
Consider the following:
* Former President George H.W. Bush addressed a Moon gathering in July of 1996. According to reports in the British press, he was paid $1.5 million for a single speech.
* A Moon front group called Free Teens has received millions in taxpayer money from President George W. Bush’s “faith-based initiative.” The group claims to run an “abstinence-based” sex ed program for young people, but it’s really just standard right-wing claptrap.
* A separate Moon group, Service for Peace, got $80,000 from the Corporation for National and Community Service in December to support service projects in conjunction with the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. The Bush administration has also given Moon groups tax money to run marriage improvement seminars.
* After the 2000 election, with the results still in dispute, Moon groups put on a series of alleged “unity rallies” rallies nationwide that were really pro-Bush events.
* The Moon-owned Washington Times continues to push the administration even as the president’s approval rating sinks lower and lower.
I’m not saying the Bushes have Moon over for Sunday dinner. But the fact is, Moon paid daddy Bush big bucks for a speech, and junior has reciprocated by throwing tax money at Unification Church projects. Given Moon’s bizarre views — he wants to merge all religions under his church and run the world as a theocracy — I’d say that’s too close for comfort.