Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Paul Michael Weyrich (/ˈweɪrɪk/; October 7, 1942 – December 18, 2008)[1][2][3][4] was an American conservative political activist and commentator associated with the New Right.

[citation needed] In 1973, persuading Joseph Coors to support it financially, Weyrich and Edwin Feulner co-founded The Heritage Foundation as a think tank[5] to counter liberal views on taxation and regulation, which they considered to be anti-business.

Figuring prominently in this effort was Weyrich's right-hand man, Laszlo Pasztor,[13] a former leader of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party in Hungary, which had collaborated with Hitler's Third 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," author Martin Lee wrote in 1997.

It also 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.

Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates said this was, "apparently for his divisive behavior in attacking GOP pragmatists".

[17] From 1989 to 1996, he 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.

[5] In his 2009 book "The Next Conservatism" which he co-wrote with William Lind, Weyrich argued that conservatives "should be fighting to return to family structures of the 1950s" which is a goal that has been picked up by leaders after him.

They called the webpage "The New New Electric Railway Journal",[23] and Weyrich wrote numerous op-ed columns in favor of proposed light rail and metro systems.

As a key figure of the New Right—Harper's Magazine noted that he was "often described by his admirers as 'the Lenin of social conservatism'"[26]—Weyrich positioned himself as a defender of traditionalist sociopolitical values, states' rights, marriage, anti-communism, and as a staunch opponent of the New Left.

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.Weyrich was a supporter of voter suppression, saying in 1980: "I don't want everybody to vote.

In October 1997, 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.

"[32] 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[33] and bar them from serving in the military altogether.

...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.

[37] 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.

[39] 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 FCF,[40] 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.

Weyrich publicly rejected accusations that he wanted America to become a theocracy, saying: Some political observers may see the presence of religious conservatives in the Republican Party as a threat.

(Interview at 1:40)Frustrated with public indifference to the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal,[44] 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.

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.

Faced with public school systems that no longer educate but instead 'condition' students with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness, they have seceded.

In the evangelical magazine World he wrote: ... [W]hen 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.

[46] After the fall of the Soviet Union, Weyrich made many trips to Russia and was a supporter of a close Russia-United States relationship.

[47] Weyrich and his wife, Joyce Anne (née Smigun), who resided with him in Annandale, Virginia, had five children and 13 grandchildren.

[citation needed] On December 18, 2008, Weyrich visited Inova Fair Oaks Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia for routine tests, and died there at age 66.