And 2000 years later, the majority of people condone the violence of kidnapping and the persecution of small religious groups like the Unification Church.  Putting Sun Myung Moon in jail is a cause of celebration for most people.  The media favors those who have used force on others such as Rick Ross and Steve Hassan and puts them on national TV as experts.  The result is that Americans trust the media who create an atmosphere of intolerance that leads to children burned to death at Waco.  Hassan writes how the Unification Church members and their leader are evil and dangerous.  He is the darling of the media who, like Augustine, cause great "damage" to our nation.  Like Augustine, they see that peaceful people need to be regulated and jailed for the good of society.  Then they quote Jefferson to rationalize their violence and harassment.  Their motivation and desire is for a stable, healthy society, but they fear anything that is not the status quo. 

They fear other points of views and lifestyles that differ too much from what is "normal."  Celibate monks spread eagled on a floor in front of the chief priest in a deserted monastery is now normal.  But bowing to a Korean man who tells them to have many children and witness with more passion than any other church is just too much.  The absolutes in a Catholic monastery are normal.  The absolutes of pacifism in a Hutterite community in North Dakota are normal.  The absolutes in the Unification Church are weird and dangerous.  Steve Hassan and Craig Maxim are just busybodies like some annoying fly that won't go away or some dog barking at birds and chasing cars.  Hassan and Maxim are just the latest in a long line of Augustines who justify their intolerance and coercion with high sounding words.  It is like Communists arguing for total control and blasting America for its greed and corruption.  Yes, America has problems, but the Communists have far more problems.  Yes, the Unification Church has made mistakes, but they have never made mistakes as great as Steve Hassan has made.  They have never used force on anyone. Steve has.  Steve has tried to brainwash someone and use mind control on people who are locked in room and can't leave until they agree with Steve.  He is their leader and by God, they won't leave until they bow to Steve as their enlightened one and denounce their former leader.  Steve is like Augustine who thinks jail time for Moon and his followers would be wonderful for society and, of course, it would be the very best thing for the dreaded "Moonies" who will be given a breather from the hypnotic Dr. Evil who controls their minds.  The whole thing would be laughable if it wasn't that Moon did go to jail and children went up in flames because Hassan and his yapping friends whipped up men with tanks to crush a peaceful group worshipping God in a way that was different than Hassan's Judaism that he now has embraced and Maxim's fundamental Christianity.

Maxim has a picture in his website showing him picketing a mass wedding given by Moon. He has Hassan standing next to him.  They have signs saying they are ex-moonies and proud of it.  Let's look at the logic of this.  Maxim thinks Hassan is going to burn in hell because he does not believe in Jesus.  Hassan does not think Jesus is the Messiah and many of Maxim's heroes in the Christian Right are dangerous like Moon.  Moon teaches that everyone will go to heaven and is hugging Jerry Falwell.  Out of these three guys who sounds and looks the most impressive?  Hassan and Maxim have an inferior ideology and favor coercion.  Moon and his so-called mindless followers have not made it their life's work to get Hassan and Maxim in jail.  They are busy teaching that God loves everyone who will end up in heaven and that it is evil to initiate violence.  Moon teaches tolerance; Hassan and Maxim teach intolerance.  It doesn't matter that the motivation of Tom Brokaw at NBC NEWS is well meaning when they lift up Hassan and Maxim. 

It doesn't matter that Hassan and Maxim say they are so sensitive and love people so much in their crusade against Moon.  What matters is the result.  And the result of the bigotry and ignorance and paranoia of Hassan is the same as the result of Augustine's motivation.  It is the decline of America.  Moon is not dangerous. He is the savior of America who teaches what America must do to become great again and not fall.  Hassan and Maxim and all those in the media, academics and government who send in the tanks are the dangerous people.  Persecution is the one of the worst evils one can do.  Killing Jesus, Joseph Smith and Martin Luther King is at the top of the list of the cause of the fall of nations.  Hassan and his buddies are dupes of Satan.  Augustine's legacy is a terrible human history of violence against "rabble rousers" and "enemies of the state" who turn out to be many people from Jesus to Sun Myung Moon.

Grant does not know the magnitude of the damage Christians like Augustine did to the Roman Empire.  He doesn't know the magnitude of the crime of killing Jesus in Israel.  He doesn't know the magnitude of America jailing Sun Myung Moon.  Some good and God-centered people like Jerry Falwell have learned from history and befriended Moon.  Even the President of the United States, George Bush has seen that Rev. Moon is good.  Tom Brokaw and Steve Hassan just can't believe it.  They are intellectual dinosaurs.  Eventually everyone will climb out of the dark pit Hassan and his fellow persecutors live in and see the light.  Eventually everyone will accept the basic teachings Jefferson wrote in America's founding documents and Baden Powell wrote in the Boy Scout Manual that teaches tolerance for other's religious beliefs.  God's will was for Augustine and the early Christians to not get the police to throw those they didn't approve of in jail.  Rome fell because of it and America continues to decline because of it.  Hassan apparently had a jerk in the church tell him that it is all right to kill his parents.  He is upset that someone witnessed to him and didn't say the name of the church.  He is livid that he worked long hours and didn't get a degree or big bucks in his pocket.  So what?  That's life. 

Religions have asked many things.  Does it make any sense for any of the many former Jews to bitch relentlessly because they left and found Jesus and feel they almost lost their eternal soul?  Would it be right to harass the Jewish community by calling them dangerous and making a crusade of calling Moses a charlatan?  Would it make any sense for a person to make a crusade of calling the Pope a charlatan because he kept thousands of people from having children and wearing boring black robes all their life?  Maria in the Sound of Music asks permission to marry a man.  Hassan and Maxim and Time Magazine see deadly mind control when people are just being religious.  And they have the right to do that and shouldn't have to spend time defending themselves in court against the likes of Margaret Singer.

The key to understanding the Fall of Rome and therefore to understanding how to build happy and ever improving societies is to deeply understand the magnitude of the truth Jefferson and the Founding Fathers of America wrote in their precious documents.  They wrote against the diabolical books such as Augustine's City of God and Rev. Moon is teaching America to restore those values instead of accepting the satanic junk Hassan and Singer teach in their books.