Talk:Freedom Leadership Foundation

I picked the Allan Tate Wood website as a source, merely because (1) it was easy to find and (2) I wanted to demonstrate that I am free of COI. But while he may be an accurate source about FLF activities, his grasp of Unification Church theology is poor.

For example, he completely misunderstands the church's teaching about role and function of the human conscience.


 * It attacks the validity of the individual conscience. It explicitly denies the individual's capacity to make morally responsible existential decisions. Somewhere along the line in the theology, love of God is translated into blind obedience to Moon and his representatives in the hierarchical chain.

Rev. Moon has actually said that conscience "comes first", even before God. [] And "never do anything that goes against your conscience" [] In 1995 he even gave an entire speech entitled, "Strengthen the Power of Your Conscience". 

He has also said, "I am a very scientific man and I don't want any blind faith." Likewise, he chided the Japanese church leaders (then held up, as Wood correctly noted, as a models for American leaders): "You think you have authority and can just order members around. This is not true; you simply made it up." (paraphrase) --Uncle Ed (talk) 15:54, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The trouble is that a self-published piece by an organisation's former leader does nothing whatsoever to establish notability & does not meet WP:RS, and should not be used for anything beyond description of himself (not the FLF) per WP:SELFPUB. HrafnTalkStalk 16:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there any evidence that this organization was anything more than an early, and long-forgotten, example of astroturfing? HrafnTalkStalk 16:06, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict - Hi, Steve!) Not that I can find; Wood seems to regard FLF's entire purpose as "convincing senators and congressmen that there was substantial grass roots support for a hard line stand in Asia". But one church sister wrote a letter to Fred Schwarz:


 * Earlier this summer I had the opportunity to attend your seminar in Washington, D. C. The impact of that weekend on me has led to the formation of a college chapter of The Freedom Leadership Foundation, which I’m sure you have heard from. In the beginning we taught a course called “Communism–a New Critique” at the Free University on our campus. There we used much of the invaluable information that we presented at the seminar. From this we have been able to sell about ten copies of You Can Trust the Communists and hope to make this a basic text for our course. This fall our purpose on campus will be twofold. Not only do we intend to continue our educational work but also we want to initiate positive action as a solution to some of the problems on campus.


 * Many of the church's "arms" or adjunct organizations, as documented in popular accounts such as I've found, seem more like campaigns or (dare I say it?) intentions. Maybe the thing to do with them is to collect them into a comprehensive article. I have no objection to merging FLF into something like Unification Church-related organizations. --Uncle Ed (talk) 16:15, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Here's a mention of the FLF by the Washington Post: Church Spends Millions On Its Image Washington Post September 17, 1984. "In May, a church political group called the Freedom Leadership Foundation paid for four Republican Senate staff members -- including aides to Sens. Steve Symms (R-Idaho), Robert W. Kasten Jr. (R-Wis.) and William L. Armstrong (R-Colo.) -- to fly to Central America where they met with government leaders and U.S. Embassy officials in Honduras and Guatemala and joined the official U.S. observer delegation to the Salvadoran election." I'm still not sure that there is enough for an article. BTW Allan, like some others who have left the church and become critics (but not our exucmember), seems interested in telling people how great and important he was in the church. I don't know how we survived if all of our best leaders left. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 16:08, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Another option would be to merge FLF and CAUSA into Unification Church political involvement. -Exucmember (talk) 16:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That sounds like a good idea to me. I don't think this will ever be a very interesting article by itself. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:57, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

There is also List of Unification Church affiliated organizations. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I support a merge of this article to that one. I will go ahead and add it to the list with sources right away. Steve Dufour (talk) 19:32, 7 December 2008 (UTC)