← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 20134 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2005-09-11
2005-09-11 06:07 | User Profile
Paul Weyrich’s Ordeal (Reprinted from the issue of August 18, 2005)
One of the most distinguished conservative leaders in America needs our prayers. As I write, Paul Weyrich is scheduled to have both his legs amputated.
I first met Paul in 1980, when he was one of the chief figures in the emerging “New Right,” whose aim was to make a conservative movement that would be independent of the Republican Party. With Howard Phillips, he was known as one of the most original strategists of the movement. Both men were remarkable for their keen intelligence, scorn of the Republican habit of compromise, and fierce humor.
They weren’t interested in getting half a loaf. Both were real conservatives, immune to “neoconservative” distractions and seductions. Liberals loathed and feared them, while “respectable” conservatives tried to ignore them. (I couldn’t interest National Review in covering them even when they were making headlines in the liberal press.)
In recent years they have moved in somewhat different directions. Paul has urged conservatives to defer hopes for political victory and, in effect, to secede from American cultural life, concentrating on religious concerns. I last saw him a few years ago when he told me over lunch of his efforts to help Russian Christians shake off the heavy legacy of Communism.
Since then, he has been suffering from worsening health. I knew he was confined to a wheelchair, but I was shocked and saddened to hear of this drastic surgery.
It is heartening to know that in this hour of pain and peril, Paul has his Catholic faith, which he has served so well in public life, to sustain him.
2005-09-11 06:23 | User Profile
This sucks. I wish him the best.
2005-09-11 08:06 | User Profile
Yes it does. The man known i.a.w. his lead role in the birth of the "New Right" was certainly one of the most friendly figures of establishment conservatism to us, re: William Lind. It sounds extremely serious to me actually, what ever it the condition is.
2005-09-11 18:01 | User Profile
I for some reason thought Paul embraced Greek Orthodoxy as a young man. Perhaps I was misinformed.
I never really differentiated between Paul, Howard and the so-called movement conservatives. Did they not all try to pitch the contradictory notion of big government foreign policy and small government domestic policy? Maybe less so in recent years.
Still, one hates to see a person suffer in such a way. Let's storm heaven with prayers for mercy.
2005-09-11 18:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Okiereddust]Yes it does. The man known i.a.w. his lead role in the birth of the "New Right" was certainly one of the most friendly figures of establishment conservatism to us, re: William Lind. It sounds extremely serious to me actually, what ever it the condition is.[/QUOTE]
Probably diabetes. He has my prayers.
2005-09-11 23:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno] With Howard Phillips, he was known as one of the most original strategists of the movement.[/QUOTE]Howard Phillips????
Howard Phillips the Jew???
The founder of the Constitution party....a false flag operation.
2005-09-12 08:31 | User Profile
Diabetes is a rotten disease. I feel sorry for anyone forced to endure it.
2005-09-12 08:48 | User Profile
My prayers go out and have gone out to Paul Weyrich. He and I had a flurry of e-interaction in 2003, around the 20th-anniversary of the shoot-down of Korean Airlines flight 007, aboard which was his friend Congressman Lawrence Patton McDonald.
Mr. Weyrich let on that he was very, very ill and might not live. This was over two years ago; so, he's been sick for some time.
Personally, I like the man. He has gravitated more and more to the Buchanan/America-First camp in recent years, and seems sick to hell of the neocons. He's connected to the nines, so "can't" rock the boat too hard; but he tries whenever he can.
Regardless of ideological wrinkles, he's a decent and very smart man, with a good heart. I hope he pulls through this with some measure of dignity and renewed health. Can't imagine having my legs amputated.