Sun Myung Moon Reunited with the Souls of Hitler and Stalin

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon's first church built with Won Pil Kim out of U.S. military ration cartons in Pusan, South Korea in 1951. Photo from The Washington Times

Korean Cargo Cult founder Sung Myung Moon is dead at the age of ninety-two.

Moon, who reported a teen age vision of Christ, founded his Unification Church in 1954 and parlayed it into a multi-billion dollar empire in manufacturing, real estate, media and Republican politicians.

Americans may remember his addled followers hawking roses on the street and their plastering of U.S. cities with their “One Nation Under God” signs. He was known to perform mass weddings of his followers in sports arenas around the world.

He made a bid for the mainstream by buying the Washington Times newspaper in 1982, which provides an outlet for countless right-wingers to publish their screeds while losing money every year, for the benefit of such fans as Ronald Reagan. Moon spent billions keeping the paper afloat, but what’s a couple of billion when you’re fighting Communism and other devils. He did the same thing for Jerry Falwell when his paleo-fundy Liberty University faced bankruptcy.

Moon was convicted of tax evasion and conspiracy in 1982 and served thirteen months in the Federal Prison in Danbury Connecticut, but his Cold War theocracy and colorful business dealings never interfered with his connections to public figures such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jung Il, Mikhail Gorbachev, King Abdulla, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and numerous Senators and Congressman, who found that Moon’s money spent just fine.