Who Is Paul M. Weyrich?

Weyrich is a convert from Roman Catholicism to the Melkite Greek Church (Uniate Church in Communion with Rome), and is a Proto-Deacon of that confession in the Diocese of Arlington. He often speaks at Christendom College.

A former Congressional aide, Weyrich in 1973 teamed with Edwin Feulner and, bankrolled by Joseph Coors, founded the Heritage Foundation—a peculiar mélange of the British Fabian Society, London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, and, most importantly, the "free trade" and "drug legalization" institute known as the Mont Pelerin Society, which made Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. a major target.

Leaving Feulner in charge of Heritage, Weyrich went on to launch a host of "single issue" institutions:

1. He founded the Free Congress Foundation, which, unlike Heritage, could act as a political action committee;
   
   
2. he convinced Jerry Falwell to found the "Moral Majority" in 1979 for Christian right organizations;
   
   
3. through the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation and affiliated Krieble Institute, he helped launch the organized-crime-linked "oligarchs" in Russia, bending Russian policy with the Freedom and Democracy Institute of Russia and Project Democracy's International Republican Institute;
   
   
4. in 1979, with former Colgate Palmolive ad man, Southern Baptist Edward McAteer, Weyrich co-founded the Religious Roundtable, a conveyor belt from the "Old Right" to the "New Right"; and,
   
   
5. during 1981-82, Weyrich was treasurer, and now Executive Committee member, of the Council on National Policy.

Weyrich, in February 1998, was appointed to a five-year term on the Amtrak Reform Council. In 1998 he became its vice-chairman; in its final report, he suggested the same disastrous "privatization" policy that has famously ruined the national rail system of Margaret Thatcher's and Tony Blair's Britain.—Scott Thompson