Why is Bush the Elder kowtowing to Reverend Moon and the Unification Church again? Here's why, according to an article in Mother Jones
Next month the Washington Times, the conservative newspaper with close ties to every Republican administration since Reagan, celebrates its 25th anniversary. Former President George H.W. Bush will be the headliner.
And the former President deserves the honor. Barbara Bush ought to get a rousing cheer as well. The two of them have been beating the bushes for Reverend Sun Myung Moon for years.
For the Washington Times extravaganza on May 17, Bush will appear in the National Building Museum’s monumental Great Hall. Moon, resplendent as always, will deliver the Founder’s Address.
What is the Unification Church? Often described as a cult and anti-Semitic, the church was founded in the 1940's in Korea. A controversial figure, the Good Reverend Moon moved to the United States in the early 1970's and quickly involved himself in domestic politics - just in time to defend one of the most despised political figures in recent memory and the only American president to resign in disgrace
Moon took full-page ads in major newspapers defending President Richard M. Nixon at the height of the Watergate Controversy, based on the principle that God works through designated central figures throughout history, and that America played a crucial central role in the ongoing Providence of God on the world level...
In 1978, a Congressional subcommittee issued a report that included the results of its investigation into the UC, and into other organizations associated with Moon. Among its other conclusions, the subcommittee's report stated that "Among the goals of the Moon Organization is the establishment of a worldwide government in which the separation of church and state would be abolished and which would be governed by Moon and his followers."
The Bush Family has apparently had a long-standing relationship with the founder of the Unification Church going all the way back to the early Reagan years, when George H.W. Bush was the Vice President of the United States. Here's why Bush the Elder seems to be repaying the favors done by the Moonies
Through the early 80s, while Bush served as Vice President, Moon operatives were building ties with the New Right—flying Hill staffers to junta-ruled El Salvador, and supporting the Nicaraguan contras’ fight against the Sandinista government. The late Terry Dolan, chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) and often credited with pioneering the modern political attack ad, helped Moon burrow into the conservative mainstream.
A Moon group, the Confederation of Associations for the Unification of the Societies of the Americas (CAUSA), contributed $500,000 to Dolan’s Conservative Alliance in the early 1980s. "We're trying to combat communism and we're trying to uphold traditional Judeo-Christian values," James Gavin, special assistant to Moon’s top deputy, Col. Bo Hi Pak, told the Washington Post. "The Washington Times is standing up for those values and fighting anything that would tear them down. Causa is doing the same thing, by explaining what the enemy is trying to do."
Additionally, the article points out the following
- Bush the Elder received $100,000 for a trip to Argentina and Uruguay from the Unification Church.
- His son, Neil Bush - yes, this Neil Bush - received $1 million from a Moon Foundation.
- One of Moon's Washington Times Foundation gave $1 million to Bush the Elder's library in Houston, Texas.
For those of you unfamiliar with the rightwing Washington Times, a bit of history. Until the early 1980's, the Washington, DC area had another wonderful afternoon newspaper called the Washington Star. Many notable journalists (Mary McGrory, Jack Germond, Jules Witcover, and Jane Mayer among them) worked for the paper. Soon after the Star ceased publication in 1981, the Washington Times started publishing, hoping to fill a void as a conservative alternative to the Washington Post. But all they've done is created an outlet for moronic, radically rightwing views.
For the Bush Family to reward such a publication and its shady owner seems par for the course. Utterly disgraceful.