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SOURCE: Wikipedia, captured 2020-09-18
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Paul Michael Weyrich (October 7, 1942 -- December 18, 2008) was an American religious conservative political activist and commentator, most notable as a figurehead of the New Right.
Paul Weyrich co-founded the conservative think tanks
the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation ("Free Congress Foundation," now American Opportunity), and
the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Paul Weyrich coined the term "moral majority," the name of the political action group Moral Majority that he co-founded in 1979 with Jerry Falwell.
Weyrich was born in Racine, Wisconsin, to Virginia M. (née Wickstrom) and Ignatius A. Weyrich. Paul Weyrich's father was a German immigrant. Weyrich attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison for two years. Paul Weyrich was active in the Racine County Young Republicans from 1961 to 1963 and in Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. Paul Weyrich spent his early career in journalism as a political reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper, as political reporter and weekend anchor for WISN-TV (Milwaukee), and in radio as a reporter for WAXO-FM (Kenosha), WLIP-AM, and as news director of KQXI (Denver).
The Goldwater Institute, established in 1988 with the support of former Senator Barry Goldwater, is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC, co-founded by Paul Weyrich).
In 1966, Paul Weyrich became press secretary to Republican Party U.S. Senator Gordon L. Allott of Colorado. While serving in this capacity, Paul Weyrich met Jack Wilson, an aide of Joseph Coors, patriarch of the Coors brewing family. Frustrated with the state of public policy research, they founded Analysis and Research Inc. in 1971, but this organization failed to gain traction.
In 1973, persuading Joseph Coors to put the money in, Paul Weyrich and Edwin Feulner founded The Heritage Foundation as a think tank to counter liberal views on taxation and regulation, which they considered to be anti-business. While the organization was at first only minimally influential, it has grown into one of the world's largest public policy research institutes and has been hugely influential in advancing conservative policies.
The following year [1974], again with support from Coors, Weyrich founded the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC), an organization that trained and mobilized conservative activists, recruited conservative candidates, and raised funds for conservative causes.
The CSFC, founded by Weyrich, "became active in eastern European politics after the Cold War. Figuring prominently in this effort was Weyrich's right-hand man, Laszlo Pasztor, a former leader of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party in Hungary, which had collaborated with Hitler's Reich. After serving two years in prison for his Arrow Cross activities, Pasztor found his way to the United States, where he was instrumental in establishing the ethnic-outreach arm of the Republican National Committee."
Under Weyrich, the CSFC proved highly innovative. It was among the first grassroots organizations to raise funds extensively through direct mail campaigns.
Over the next two decades, Paul Weyrich founded, co-founded, or held prominent roles in a number of other notable conservative organizations. Among them, Paul Weyrich was
a co-founder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization of state legislators;
a co-founder of the Council for National Policy, a strategy-formulating organization for social conservatives;
The Council for National Policy (CNP) is an umbrella organization and networking group for conservative activists in the United States. It has been described by The New York Times as "a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country," who meet three times yearly behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference.
"The Nation" has called the Council for National Policy a secretive organization that "networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy." It was founded in 1981 by Tim Francis LaHaye as a forum for conservative Christians seeking to strengthen the political right in the United States. The Council for National Policy has been described as a "pluto-theocracy."
co-publisher of the magazine Conservative Digest; and
National Chairman of Coalitions for America, an association of conservative activist organizations.
The Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC), reorganized into the Free Congress Foundation, also remained active.
After Paul Weyrich's death in 2008, the Free Congress Foundation (FCF) was headed by former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore. Under Gilmore's leadership, the Free Congress Foundation was refocused on economic issues and not social issues. Eventually, the entire organization was renamed to American Opportunity, and is now based in Alexandria, Virginia.
Under the auspices of the Free Congress Foundation (FCF), Paul Weyrich founded the Washington, D.C.-based satellite television station National Empowerment Television (NET), later relaunched as the for-profit channel "America's Voice" in 1997. That same year, Weyrich was forced out of the network he had founded when the network's head persuaded its board to force out Weyrich in a hostile takeover. Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates says this was "apparently for Paul Weyrich's divisive behavior in attacking GOP pragmatists." From 1989 to 1996, Paul Weyrich was also President of the Krieble Institute, a unit of the FCF that trained activists to support democracy movements and establish small businesses in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
By 1997, the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation were two of the top five biggest and best funded conservative think tanks.
After the Second Vatican Council, Paul Weyrich transferred from the Latin Church of the Roman Catholic Church to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and was ordained as a deacon.
The Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC), founded by Paul Weyrich in 1974, was one of the first organizations to tap into evangelical Christian churches as places to recruit and cultivate activists and support for social conservative causes. In 1978 Paul WeyrichChristian Voice, founded by Reverends Dr. Robert Grant and Richard Zone in 1978, was an American conservative political advocacy group known as part of the religious within U.S. politics. Christian Voice was headquartered at the Heritage Foundation in the 1970s and 1980s, and was then located in suburban Washington, D.C., in Alexandria, Virginia.
Evangelical minister Pat Robertson, who later formed the Christian Coalition, furnished some early financial resources for the Christian Voice.
Paul Michael Weyrich, the leader of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and the chief architect of the Christian right movement which the Christian Voice was a part of, met with Grant in 1976 and agreed to let Robert Grant set up headquarters for his future organization at the headquarters of the Heritage Foundation.
Weyrich, a member of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, then recruited former Nixon administration official Howard Phillips, a Jew who converted to Evangelical Christianity,and was known for leading crusades to "defund the Left," and direct mail king Richard Viguerie, a Roman Catholic to help develop Grant's organization.
Paul Weyrich abandoned the Christian Voice in 1978 after Robert Grant announced that the Christian Voice was "a sham" that was "controlled by three Catholics and a Jew" [Paul Weyrich, Terry Dolan, and Richard Viguerie (the Catholics) -- and Howard Phillips, the Jew (who converted to Evangelical Christianity)].
In contrast with many conservatives, Pal Weyrich had a long history of ardent support for rail mass transit. Paul Weyrich opposed "bus rapid transit" (a particular type of bus transit with higher capacity but also higher costs than ordinary bus transit), and instead supported rail transit as a more effective alternative. In 1988 Paul Weyrich co-founded a quarterly magazine on the subject of urban rail transit, called The New Electric Railway Journal (TNERJ), which until 1996 was published by Free Congress Foundation (FCF), and Paul Weyrich was its publisher. Paul Weyrich wrote an opinion column for most issues and contributed a few feature articles. FCF discontinued its affiliation with TNERJ in 1996, but the magazine continued being produced, under a different publishing company, until the end of 1998, with Weyrich listed as "Publisher Emeritus." In early 2000, about a year after the last magazine was published, Weyrich and William S. Lind (who had been the magazine's associate publisher until 1996) launched a website where they could continue to post their views and news about rail transit. They called the webpage "The New New Electric Railway Journal," and Weyrich wrote numerous op-ed columns in favor of proposed light rail and metro systems. Paul Weyrich also supported bringing back streetcars to U.S. cities.
Weyrich also served on the national board of Amtrak (1987-1993) and the Amtrak Reform Council, as well as on local and regional rail transit advocacy organizations.
As one of the key figures of the New Right -- Harper's Magazine wrote that Paul Weyrich was "often described by his admirers as 'the Lenin of social conservatism'" -- Weyrich positioned himself as a defender of traditionalist sociopolitical values of states' rights, marriage, anti-communism, and a staunch opponent of the New Left. Consequently, many of Paul Weyrich's views were controversial.
In Thy Kingdom Come, Randall Balmer recounts comments that Weyrich, whom he describes as "one of the architects of the Religious Right in the late 1970s," made at a conference sponsored by a Religious Right organization, that they both attended in Washington in 1990:
In the course of one of the sessions, Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren (no women attended the conference, as I recall). Let's remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.
Bob Jones University had policies that refused black students enrollment until 1971, admitted only married blacks from 1971 to 1975, and prohibited interracial dating and marriage between 1975 and 2000.
In its October 27, 1997 issue, The New Republic published an article "Robespierre of the Right -- What I Ate at the Revolution" by David Grann, which portrayed Weyrich as highly effective at creating a conservative establishment but also a volatile and tempestuous figure. Weyrich, supported by Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, sued the magazine and others for libel; the case was dismissed, then remanded in January 2001, then dropped by Weyrich.
Weyrich abhorred "Political Correctness, which we more accurately call 'Cultural Marxism,'" seeing it as a deliberate effort to undermine "our traditional, Western, Judeo-Christian culture" and the conservative agenda in American society. In 1999, writing that Paul Weyrich believed "we have lost the culture war," he suggested "a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture.... we need to drop out of this alien and hostile culture, and find places, even if it is where we physically are right now, where we can live godly, righteous and sober lives."
In response to a 1999 controversy covered by the press concerning a group of Wiccans in the United States military who were holding religious rituals and services on the grounds of the bases they were assigned to, Weyrich sought to exempt Wiccans from the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and bar them from serving in the military altogether. Weyrich, as President of the Free Congress Foundation, led a coalition of ten religious right organizations that attempted a Christian boycott on joining the military until all Wiccans were removed from the services, saying:
Until the Army withdraws all official support and approval from witchcraft, no Christian should enlist or re-enlist in the Army, and Christian parents should not allow their children to join the Army. ...An Army that sponsors satanic rituals is unworthy of representing the United States of America. ...The official approval of satanism and witchcraft by the Army is a direct assault on the Christian faith that generations of American soldiers have fought and died for. ...If the Army wants witches and satanists in its ranks, then it can do it without Christians in those ranks. It's time for the Christians in this country to put a stop to this kind of nonsense. A Christian recruiting strike will compel the Army to think seriously about what it is doing.
According to TheocracyWatch and the Anti-Defamation League, both Weyrich and his Free Congress Foundation (FCF) were closely associated with dominionism -- a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their understandings of biblical law. TheocracyWatch listed both Weyrich and the FCF as leading examples of "dominionism in action," citing "a manifesto from Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation," The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement which "illuminates the tactics of the dominionist movement." TheocracyWatch which calls it "Paul Weyrich's Training Manual," and others, consider this manifesto a virtual playbook for how the "theocratic right" in American politics can get and keep power.
The Anti-Defamation League identified Weyrich and the Free Congress Foundation as part of an alliance of more than 50 of the most prominent conservative Christian leaders and organizations that threaten the separation of church and state. Weyrich continued to reject allegations that he advocated theocracy, saying, "This statement is breathtaking in its bigotry," and dismissed the claim that the Christian right wished to transform America into a theocracy. Katherine Yurica wrote that Weyrich guided Eric Heubeck in writing The Integration of Theory and Practice, the Free Congress Foundation's strategic plan published in 2001 by the Free Congress Foundation (FCF), which she says calls for the use of deception, misinformation, and divisiveness to allow conservative evangelical Christian Republicans to gain and keep control of seats of power in the government of the United States.
Dominionism is a controversial term, with many conservatives and religious writers dismissing it as a left-wing term to tar people they disagree with.
Weyrich publicly rejected accusations that he wanted America to become a theocracy:
Some political observers may see the presence of religious conservatives in the Republican Party as a threat. My former friend Kevin Phillips [author of American Theocracy], who in the early days of the New Right was so helpful, now acts as if a theocracy governs the nation. Phillips was the architect of President Richard M. Nixon's Southern strategy, which worked brilliantly until Nixon did himself in. Now that the South does have the upper hand in the Republican Party Phillips is bitter about it. I see no theocracy here. As someone who has helped the religious right transition to the political process, I would have nothing to do with something akin to Iran translated into Americanize.
Weyrich also often made an issue out of what he claimed were his fellow conservatives' behavior and abuse of power. Paul Weyrich encouraged a grassroots movement in conservatism he called "the next conservatism," which he said should work to "restore America" from the bottom up. Illustrating his point, Weyrich drew a comparison between "how the Christian church grew amidst a decaying Roman Empire" and "how the next conservatism can restore an American republic as a falling America Empire collapses around us."
Paul Weyrich advocated a revival of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, with the aim of identifying and removing communists from the media, which he contended still harbors infiltrators from the former Soviet Union:
From what Igor Gaidar told me, we needed to have revived these committees with a focus not so much on Hollywood but on the media itself. We know that one New York Times reporter, who always portrayed Stalin as Good Old Uncle Joe, was in fact a Communist and operated for decades on the Times staff. Were there any more? How about the Washington Post? ... Why not reconstitute these two committees and let them work hand in glove with the FBI. That is what happened before 1965. J. Edgar Hoover would often suggest good targets to be investigated.
In a 2006 interview with Michele Norris of National Public Radio about the 2006 Mark Foley scandal, Weyrich expressed his views regarding homosexuality:
Weyrich: It has been known for many years that Congressman Foley was a homosexual. Homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex -- the idea that he should be continued, or should have been continued as chairman on the Committee for Missing and Exploited Children, given their knowledge of that is just outrageous (Interview at 1:08).
Norris: Now, before we go on, I think I can say, Mr. Weyrich, that there are quite a few people who would take exception to the statement that homosexuals are preoccupied with sex.
Weyrich: Well, I don't care whether they take exception to it -- it happens to be true.
Norris: That is your opinion.
Weyrich: Well, it's not my opinion, it's the opinion of many psychologists and psychiatrists who have to deal with them. (Interview at 1:40)
Frustrated with public indifference to the Lewinsky scandal, Weyrich wrote a letter in February 1999 stating that he believed conservatives had lost the culture war, urging a separatist strategy where conservatives ought to live apart from corrupted mainstream society and form their own parallel institutions:
I believe that we probably have lost the culture war. That doesn't mean the war is not going to continue, and that it isn't going to be fought on other fronts. But in terms of society in general, we have lost. This is why, even when we win in politics, our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies we believe are important.
Therefore, what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture.
What I mean by separation is, for example, what the homeschoolers have done. Faced with public school systems that no longer educate but instead 'condition' students with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness, they have seceded. They have separated themselves from public schools and have created new institutions, new schools, in their homes.
I think that we have to look at a whole series of possibilities for bypassing the institutions that are controlled by the enemy. If we expend our energies on fighting on the "turf" they already control, we will probably not accomplish what we hope, and we may spend ourselves to the point of exhaustion.
This was widely interpreted as Weyrich calling for a retreat from politics, but he almost immediately issued a clarification stating this was not his intent. In the evangelical magazine World he wrote:
... When critics say in supposed response to me that 'before striking our colors in the culture wars, Christians should at least put up a fight,' I am puzzled. Of course they should. That is exactly what I am urging them to do. The question is not whether we should fight, but how. ...In essence, I said that we need to change our strategy. Instead of relying on politics to retake the culturally and morally decadent institutions of contemporary America, I said that we should separate from those institutions and build our own.
By 2004, Weyrich was reportedly more hopeful, given trends in public opinion and the reelection of President George W. Bush. In spite of his initial support for Bush, Paul Weyrich often disagreed with Bush administration policies. Examples of their disagreement included the Iraq War, immigration, Harriet Miers, and fiscal policy.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Weyrich made many trips to Russia and was a supporter of a close Russia-United States relationship.
Weyrich was diagnosed with a spinal injury known as arachnoiditis, resulting from a 1996 fall on black ice. From 2001 until his death in 2008, Paul Weyrich's injury left him in a wheelchair and in chronic pain. Complications from that fall required a bilateral, below-the-knee amputation of Paul Weyrich's legs in July 2005.
Weyrich died on December 18, 2008, aged 66, at Inova Fair Oaks Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia. Paul Weyrich was at the hospital for routine tests, and the cause of death was not released. In addition to his spinal injury and amputations, Weyrich suffered from type 2 diabetes. Paul Weyrich was interred in Fairfax Memorial Park in Fairfax, Virginia, on December 22, 2008.
Weyrich and his wife, the former Joyce Smigun, who resided with him in Annandale, Virginia, had five children: Dawn Ceol of Haymarket, Virginia, Peter Weyrich of Alexandria, Virginia, Diana Pascoe of Honolulu, Hawaii, Stephen Weyrich of Fairfax Station, Virginia, and Andrew Weyrich of Fairfax County; and thirteen grandchildren.
"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
"We are different from previous generations of conservatives... We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of this country." -- Soloma, John. Ominous Politics: The New Conservative Labyrinth (1984), Hill and Wang Publ., New York
"The real enemy is the secular humanist mindset which seeks to destroy everything that is good in this society." -- "The Rights and Wrongs of the Religious Right," Freedom Writer, Institute for First Amendment Studies, October 1995.
"Christ was crucified by the Jews... He was not what the Jews had expected so they considered Him a threat. Thus He was put to death." -- Indeed, He is Risen!, April 13, 2001
"We have to stop the movement of all our manufacturing to China and other foreign countries. If that requires tariffs, starting with tariffs to protect industries of strategic importance, so be it."
"If we want to stop or at least reduce outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries, we should tax outsourcing. In my view, that would be a good new tax."
"I asked Yegor Gaidar why it was that he thought free-market efforts in the Soviet Union were being trashed by American media when the reality was far different from what I was seeing. He replied with a stinging answer, one I never will forget. He said, 'Well, the Soviets spent millions of dollars infiltrating your media. Just because the Soviet Union went away doesn't mean these people have gone away. They are still there.' Of course, I knew this."
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