341 CHROMCLESnindividual as they are understood in the West. WhilenMoon’s theology borrows from Christianity, in an admittedlynunusual manner, Moon’s concepts of leadership andnsociety are Confucian with a strong emphasis on socialnconformity and loyalty. Rational criticism or internal disagreementnon methods causes the Korean leadership to losenface and is tantamount to sedition or revolution. As is truenfor much of the Orient, new ideas or criticism are betternoffered through back-door channels at a propitious moment.nNonetheless, Moon fully utilizes the advantages afforded bynthe First Amendment and the Western legal tradition whennthey protect his freedom to operate in America. Within thenleadership of the movement these fundamental Westernncivic norms are seen as mere expedients to build a totallynnew culture and political system.nConservatives and liberals who collaborate with Moonnmight do well to look more deeply at what he believes andnthe actual practices of his movement. Ronald Reagan andnWalter Mondale have more in common with each othernthan with Moon. Anti-Communists should be repulsed bynMoon’s overt “theocratic socialism” with its model of thentotal state. Free enterprisers might consider Moon’s positionnon the state, individual choice, private property, and legality.nTraditional conservatives might well look into the messianicnclaim, the assertion of Korean cultural and racial superiority,nas well as the movement’s family practice. Moon’s religiousnand political views are repugnant to conservatism, even if hisntotalist claim is anti-Communist.nSome say it is unfair to label Moon a totalitarian. After all,nhe does not torture or execute people. The members arennot locked in Church jails. True enough. Nonetheless,nMarx never jailed or executed anyone, and even Lenin andnthe AyatoUah began with ideas and organization. Thenquestion to be asked is, where are the ideas headed, andnwhat is their goal? There is little question that Moon wouldnhave no ethical conflict with running a regime as absolutistnas the Ayatollah Khomeini’s. Moon believes, as do hisnfollowers, that his authority, purpose, and decisions are thenwill of God. Those of a different persuasion are of the devil.nMoon’s claims to authority make papal infallibility seemnweak in comparison.nLiberals who identify with Moon’s movement as anreligious or racial minority might’ do well to probe thenunpublicized assertion of racial superiority and the totalnfailure of the movement to understand the dignity of thenperson, the due process of law, and the freedom ofnexpression, in other than a cosmetic, public relations sense.nSacrificing human life for the will of God is ingrained innmembers from the first lectures, and Western ethical or legalnangst is derided as symptomatic of a lack of clearly definednsocial purpose and definition.nMost people concerned with ideas like the financialnsupport and publicity that traveling with Moon makesnpossible. The problem is that association with Moonnlegitimizes his theology and his messianic claim, both ofnwhich are odious to virtually all serious thinkers, not tonmention the average citizen. If Americans who would benopinion leaders take Moon’s money or the publicity fornappearing in his publications, they undermine the ideas theynpurport to believe in. They, then, are the ones whose ideasnare a sham.nSELLING HEIDEGGER SHORT by Thomas MolnarnIn Martin Heidegger’s existentialism, two centuries ofnGerman philosophy have culminated in an unexpected,nalmost scandalous way. Since Immanuel Kant, at least, thisnphilosophy was bent on finding proofs that Being is unknowable,nor that it is not God but the World Spirit, History,nthe Will to Power, the Proletariat, whatever. Heideggernwent back to a tradition before Socrates, which meansnbefore discursive reason, and attached himself to Being. Notnto this or that to be (Seiende), but to Being itself (Sein).nEliminated were Plato, whose Being, Heidegger maintains,nis an idea, Aristode, whose being is energy, and of coursenChristianity, whose being is God. (“I Am Who Is,” Yahwensaid.)nHeidegger appeared thus as the thinker who demolishednthe Christian God and Christianity itself, a good enoughnreason for the post-1945 intelligentsia to raise him to thenpedestal occupied by Nietzsche. Even more deserving thannthe erratic and often self-contradicting hermit of Sils-Maria,nHeidegger accumulated a number of advantages: unlikenThomas Molnar is visiting professor of religious studies atnYale University and the author of The Pagan Temptationn(Eerdmans).nnnNietzsche, he could be cast as a Herr Professor—anmagician with meta-etymology in a semantically sensitivenintellectual milieu, obviously a “pagan,” he was so Olympiannthat he could despise Sartre as an amateur philosopher.nThe one thing standing between Heidegger and apotheosisn(or its equivalent, the Nobel Prize) was his short Rektorat atnthe University of Freiburg during the Third Reich. He wasnRektor for less than a year, but his inaugural discourse andnshort exhortatory texts in the student paper established himnas a bona fide National-Socialist.nWhy, then, has he been adulated for four decades, whennhis past ought to have turned him into a nonpersOn in thenpostwar climate (which, in this respect, has persisted)? It isnobvious to anybody who can read that Heidegger was annantimonotheist, anti-Christian, and anti-Jew; yet the intelligentsianloved him and treated his every word like thenpronouncement of an oracle. His affair with Hiderism wasnincontrovertible and documented, and, in a sense, he neverndenied it. A whole library of articles has appeared betweenn1945 and today, saying essentially this: True, Heideggernpraised the National-Socialist ideals, gave the Hitler salute,nand never recanted. But he was not a racist, nor did henbelieve in biological superiority; he may have been an