I found this post on Blogesque through John Gorenfeld’s site. It details how the Rev. Moon’s speeches are often sanitized when translated into English. His translators take out some of the nuttier things he says in order to make them more palatable to non-Moonies. Specifically, he provides a more accurate translation of Moon’s speech before the American Clergy Leadership Conference in October of last year and points out that nearly half the speech was redacted in the version that appeared on the Moon website. Among the crazy or creepy things left out:

I am the founder of [the] Washington Times. I can get all the secrets and details of your life if I want.

I met all the great saints in the spirit world: Socrates, Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, Confucius. I received messages from the spirit world. They all want to marry Korean women so I did it, I helped them to do that. Was it a good thing? What I mean is – Jesus’ bride, Mohammed’s bride, Confucius’ bride – they are all alive on earth now because I married them with wonderful ladies.

The last one refers to an absolutely mind-boggling full page ad that Moon took out in newspapers around the world on July 4, 2002, an ad I had a good deal of fun with here. In that ad, Moon claims to have been at a meeting in the “spirit world” of most of the prominent men in world history. Jesus, Confucius, Buddha, Muhammed, they were all there. So were Marx, Lenin and Stalin, representing the Communist Boys and Girls Club, apparently. All of these people were in agreement, you see, that Moon was the coolest cat ever. Hell, it even included a letter from God himself. Makes you feel pretty lame for the references you put on your resume, doesn’t it?

It’s easy to dismiss Moon as the complete nutball that he obviously is. But he’s a very smart and very dangerous nutball, and he has put himself in a position to exert perhaps more influence over the American political system than any other single person. Through an enormous array of front groups, he has spread around literally billions of dollars to buy influence in the American government and it has worked beautifully. The first President Bush has actually been paid millions to travel on Moon’s behalf and talk him up in other nations. The current President Bush sent a letter praising the work of Moon’s group that was read before Moon gave the speech that is translated above, and he has picked numerous Moon followers to work in his administration. Under the “faith based initiatives” program, the Bush administration has handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Moon groups and followers to promote their absolutely bizarre notions about sex education. In addition, Moon has over the last few years also began buying influence in the civil rights community, including prominent leaders like Walter Fauntroy.

I am not being the least bit alarmist when I say that Rev. Moon is perhaps the most dangerous man in the US. He may well be more of a threat to our way of life than even Osama Bin Laden and his followers. The Islamic radicals can set off bombs and kill people, but Moon, whose views can accurately be described as theofascist, has his tentacles on our system from within. For more, visit my archive of articles on Moon and John Gorenfeld’s site.