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Fair Comment
An Unsung Hero of Freedom
Posted Feb. 11, 2003
By Paul Gottfried
As the United States heads toward war against a member of President George W. Bush's "axis of evil," it might do well to consider a newly released, two-volume biography of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon -- Messiah, Volume I (2001) and Volume II (2002). Originally written in Korean by his devoted disciple, Bo Hi Pak, and now available in English, these volumes have a value beyond being a testimony to nearly 60 years of Moon's public ministry. An accomplished writer and longtime career officer in the South Korean army, Pak tells the inside story of the founding of the Washington Times in 1982, the year Pak assumed the mantle of publisher. He reveals for the first time myriad facts about until-now unheralded projects of the Rev. Moon that helped Ronald Reagan and other Cold War conservatives toss the Evil Empire onto the ash heap of history.
Pak has played a leading role in Moon's American enterprises since the mid-1960s, when he was sent here to establish the American Unification Church. In the 1970s, when his leader moved to the United States or began to spend considerable time and money here, Pak expanded his informational and organizational activities. He became publisher of The News World daily in New York in 1976 (later renamed the New York City Tribune) and founder of both the Unification Church-supported World Media Association and a vehicle for academic outreach, CAUSA (in 1980). Such efforts helped create centers for the dissemination of views thematically connected to the church's millenarian focus, the age of peace and spiritual unity that Moon expected to usher in after the passing of a century of war.
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Pak's repeated contention that his subject is an "unsung hero of Soviet liberation" is axiomatic. Even more noteworthy, Moon sank more than $1.5 billion dollars into a Republican-leaning newspaper published and distributed in a left-wing Democratic stronghold and gave the bulk of his support to the Washington Times during and after his conviction and imprisonment.
It is inconceivable that other foreign patrons of American newspapers would have made a similar sacrifice after such unkind treatment by their host country. In 1996 the Washington Times endorsed for president the Republican politician who had gone after its founder 20 years earlier. The continued refusal of Beltway conservatives publicly to acknowledge their steadfast patron is, of course, scandalous.
Paul Gottfried is a professor of humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and the author of After Liberalism.
(via Moonie World)