Not much is happening with the political/media/student club at Liberty University.
The 3 or 4 hundred dollars this student group would get again as an officially recognized club certainly isn’t worth it. Even with 11 thousand other students on campus, the students who originally formed the club have a proverbial bullseye painted on their backs.
Scared is a common sense position to take.
They have certainly figured out they are in a private environment where the owners and administrators answer to no one.
This school had no trouble taking money from the founder of the Moonies to stay afloat. Sun Myung Moon is a convicted felon who calls himself the Messiah. Some day when you have time, read what he has to say about the US and democracy. In 1995 Jerry Falwell Sr. was quite happy to take 3.5 million from the Messiah. The legacy hasn’t changed, ask Liberty U’s CEO and VP of Operations, Ron Godwin. Is he still in good standing with The Unification Church?
Liberty U countered filed with the IRS against Americans United today.
The exact quote is from freshman Brian Diaz who wants the opportunity to explore politics as more than one or two issues. I hope pragmaticism trumps idealism and students welcom Americans United and College Democrats of America taking the verbal abuse and threats from Falwell and his staff.
I commend students and their advisors for drawing world wide attention to this brand of US fundamentalism once again and reminding people how fused Liberty U is a political party. Diaz:
“We’re scared about being reinstated and then having the administration look over our shoulders and tell us we can only endorse pro-life candidates,” Diaz said. “Making an articulate vote isn’t based on one issue, it’s based on all the issues. The message we’re trying to send is that we don’t have to agree with a candidate on every issue but we need to look at all the issues and make the best choice.”
Sent. Heard. Rejected by administration. Cut your personal losses and move on. Double bind, no win.
I wonder if more reputable Christian colleges will quietly step up and offer these students an opportunity to complete their degrees.
The disbanded club still plans to issue a statement.
I’d like to see every one of these students tell Liberty U no thankyou, we have nothing to apologize for, see ya.
” . . .where the owners and administrators answer to no one. . . .”
———————
Answer to no one. I can’t believe that. Here is a Christian (supposedly)
University saying it is accountable to no one unless it sees fit to do so.
Just where does God enter the picture? How can these “leaders” pray
with a clear conscience particularly when they trample on the rights of
others in their tutelage? How do they justify their actions to themselves and others and still hold their heads high?
The university therefore is no greater than an institution for
training parrots of discipleship and filling empty heads with
their own brand of Christianity.
If I had ever endowed such a university, I’d pull every cent and dollar
back out before sundown on the day of learning such a thing.
I’m just so at my wits’ end I can’t write any more right now.
I hope you can sense the measure of my anger.
Here’s the link to the piece by the investigative reporter who uncovered Falwell taking Moon’s cash. http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon3.html
(btw, Jerry also received a large loan from Moon).
But Fawell didn’t simply show his lack of discernment by taking Moon’s money. Jerry also traveled to South America and helped Moon inaugurate his youth recruiting front, the Youth Federation for World Peace(YFWP).
When Moon was convicted of tax evasion on overwhelming evidence, Falwell and LaHaye(who also took Moon’s cash and worked for one of Moon’s front organizations) helped organize Christian ministers to support Moon. The ministers fell for the Moon organization spin – they were lead to believe that Moon had co-mingled church and personal funds as many small town preachers do, so Moon got these “ministers” hopped up into believing that the feds would come for them next.
There was a lot of evidence, but the main reason the preachers said they supported Moon was because many of them kept personal and church funds together but the thing is, they weren’t defrauding the government. They ignored the longtime Moon official, Michael Warder’s testimony in court that he tried to use the funds in the Moon account for Church business and was told by Moon’s top accountant(who went to jail also) that the account was ONLY to be used as Moon’s personal money.
Many former Moon followers will tell you and his history shows that Moon does not feel bound by man’s or US laws and the laws of God he claims to be abide by are as Moon makes them. He claims to be God incarnate, that Jesus failed and now serves Moon’s dead son in heaven. Moon claims his words are God’s.
The Cash
The Unification Church has also been found found guilty by the highest courts in Japan for swindling its citizens out hundreds of millions of dollars, targeting widows. Moon used the swindled widow’s money to fund the likes of Falwell, Lahaye and large strategic portions of the conservative movement’s infrastructure, including the Washington Times.
Here’s what Moon’s daughter in law said about the tax conviction.
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif148.html
There was no question inside the church that the Reverend Moon used his religious tax exemption as a tool for financial gain in the business world.”
“No matter what the lawyers said in court, no one internally disputed that the Reverend Moon commingled church and business funds. No one had any problem with it. How often had I heard church advisers discuss funneling church funds into his business enterprises and political causes because his religious, business, and political goals are the same: world dominance for the Unification Church. It was U.S. tax laws that were wrong, not Sun Myung Moon. Man’s law was secondary to the Messiah’s mission.” end
Godwin? Read all of this while keeping in mind that in Moon’s way of thinking, when he says his job as “messiah” is to “restore” Christianity, he means to make them a political force influenced by his organization.
http://tinyurl.com/lzhtqt
Torontonian:
You are incredibly articulate when you are angry. Well said, my friend, well said.
Y – thank you.
Whew. Unbelievable. I’ve read John Gorenfeld, I had not read the article by Robert Parry. A lot there I didn’t know. That Falwell would boot stomp his own people finacially is sickening.
These current students don’t have a clue who and what they are up against. I hope they get out intact. Again, thank you.
Moon used the swindled widow’s money to fund the likes of Falwell, Lahaye and large strategic portions of the conservative movement’s infrastructure, including the Washington Times.
Let me be more precise. The swindled money goes into the pool that funds those things. He makes money many ways, of course. Daniel Junas believes he received some funding from Mitsubishi. Moon has had ties to shady characters all over the world as you know. When Carter stepped in and cut support for torture regimes in South America, the Unification Church picked up the slack.
Falwell of course jibber jabbered about taking an “unrestricted” donation from anyone. He used Billy Sunday’s “the devil had the money long enough” to rationalize what he was doing.
…but Jerry danced for his cash by helping Moon. That’s Moon, someone who preaches Christ failed to get the job done, a job Moon says Christ knew had to be done. The UC is not kind to Christ’s mother either.
James Whelan, the first editor of the WT explains how it works.
http://tinyurl.com/yqqbmz
“They (the Moonies) are subverting our political system. They’re doing it through front organizations–most of them disguised–and through their funding of independent organizations–through the placement of volunteers in the inner sanctums of hard-pressed organizations. In every instance–in every instance–those who attend their conferences, those who accept their money or their volunteers, delude themselves that there is no loss of virtue because the Moonies have not proselytized. That misses the central, crucial point: the Moonies are a political movement in religious clothing. Moon seeks power, not the salvation of souls. To achieve that, he needs religious fanatics as his palace guard and shock troops. But more importantly, he needs secular conscripts–seduced by money, free trips, free services, seemingly endless bounty and booty–in order to give him respectability and, with it, that image of influence which translates as power.”
I’m running a (real) contest to rename Liberty University, in light of its asinine action regarding the college Democrats. The winner will receive 1 copy of “The Big Book of Irony” (2007, St. Martin’s Press) by John Winokur. The deadline for entries is 12:01 a.m. Monday June 8.
Submit your entries as a comment at:
http://blogs.roanoke.com/rtblogs/dancasey/2009/06/02/contest-no-2-lets-rename-liberty-u-to-just-about-anything-but-liberty/