The right to fight
Neuhaus, Richard John
The right to fight RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS FOR ONE view of what happened in 1980 and what it means for elections to come, you go to talk with Paul Weyrich. Weyrich heads up the Committee for the...
...You can avoid conflict and stay in the house or you can be a man and go out and take your chances.'' The tone is very personal...
...But one suspects that on this and many other occasions those who claim to cringe are delighted that Paul Weyrich says out loud what they only think or whisper in their closets...
...In '76 we got five percent of the black vote while in '80 it was fourteen percent, that's a three hundred percent increase...
...He is personally open to different ways in which the abortion question might be resolved-whether by legislation short of a constitutional amendment or by returning the question to the states...
...however much he has helped to move the northeasternestablishment in a conservative direction, Paul Weyrich obviously relishes the prospect of an ex-Senator Moynihan...
...William Buckley is definitely of the northeasternestablishment...
...Big corporations are as bad as big government...
...Despite the flaunting of his non-U background and viewpoint, despite his harsh words for intellectuals, Weyrich certainly does not wish to imply that he is an illiterate incapable of understanding anything other than computer feedouts on opinion polls and voting returns...
...The cavalry has not yet arrived...
...It is a schizoid counterpoint between a call to man the barricades and to join in a victory dance...
...But he has not thought about it very much...
...On the other hand, they're so trendy that maybe they'll read the signs of the times and switch sides...
...More than other New Right leaders, Weyrich is disdainful of the Old Right's devotion to republican governance...
...He knew how the world worked and I'm like him, I'm a political mechanic and I make no apology for it...
...But the claim must still be made...
...Weyrich insists he is ecumenical but he is not sure he wants to be that ecumenical...
...Once again, there is the tension of portraying your side as an unstoppable juggernaut while simultaneously telling your people that they are beset on all sides...
...But of course they won't give me any credit for being sincere...
...He says the hard core constituency of the New Right numbers about four-and-a-half million, but the "church network" is over and above that number...
...I have no doubt there will be exceptions in the law, for rape and incest and things like that...
...Here, if the stories of the New Right are to be credited, have been hatched the schemes that have revolutionized American politics...
...Those are vicious lies by people who don't know me, who've never even talked with me...
...They're libertarian in their approach and I'm not a libertarian...
...Still, who actually did the defeating and electing remains in doubt...
...We're beginning to see the change and it can change a lot more...
...The New Right is the hyped-up version of the Old Right, departing, however, from the attachment of at least some older conservatives to consensus and civility...
...I'm not an intellectual, but they don't know a thing about precincts and neighborhoods, and they don't want to know.'' This line takes Weyrich back to the question of class, of the right schools, and of the aristocratic networks so far removed from Racine, Wisconsin...
...BUT HOW MUCH real impact did the church network have on the 1980 election and how important will it be in 1982 and 1984...
...Some of our own people are making the big mistake of thinking the essential job was done in 1980...
...This line, promoted by "conservative establishment-type journalists and politicians" is, according to Viguerie, sheer rot...
...Jerry Falwell calls John Paul, "the best hope we Baptists ever had...
...Weyrich's views on collusion" among the several establishments can sound very leftist...
...That's not a very pleasant prospect, but you can't always be giving in to threats...
...He believes there is also a natural convergence of interests with groups such as the "Good News" movement in Methodism and expressions of similar discontents among Presbyterians and other Protestant "mainliners...
...With so many things in need of fixing, however, a political mechanic has little time for prolonged introspection...
...Having taken credit for Reagan's election, Viguerie's peroration to the Roundtable returns to the outsider-insider problematic: "So, just like Jimmy Carter gave religious conservatives the back of his hand and ignored them, we see the same thing happening in the Reagan administration . . . We cannot let down...
...By providing the language and passions of a religious reading of the cosmic drama the leaders of the Religious New Right lend ' potency to the apocalypticism of the New Right...
...That's when I decided they're just not real...
...If we didn't know the pope agrees with us, we, at least we Catholics in the New Right, would have serious conscience problems...
...How about the "neoconservatives," people like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, the crowd around Commentary and Public Interest...
...His answers do not help much, however, in the caring and compassion department...
...I don't know if they'll do that...
...What is most clear about Paul Weyrich is that, against all those who he believes despise him and his kind, this son of immigrant, blue-collar Racine, Wisconsin, is determined to exercise his right to fight...
...In discussing the factors that elected Reagan, Weyrich urges that the larger process be kept in view...
...The evidence suggests that if all the other variables are isolated the one faction that can convincingly claim the strongest victory record in 1980 is the pro-life movement...
...We've taken an important step in the right direction but the victory is far from being complete or secure...
...So they end up using all the expertise for their own ideological purposes...
...Does Paul Weyrich believe that in doing so he is advancing the highest purposes of his religious faith...
...I would never be working counter to the church's official position...
...The mechanic quickly comes to the rescue: "Maybe we should have a task force on that...
...He is bullish on the future of the "church network," giving the impression that it is a rapidly expanding subsidiary of the New Right conglomerate...
...Determine the direction of the compromise" is what Paul Weyrich sees himself doing in the larger political arena...
...And the liberal intellectuals have a hard time being as smart as the ordinary American who has long since seen Communism for what it is...
...I know too that, however it's settled, we're not going to get everything we want...
...That's all right with us...
...Some of Weyrich's allies say they cringed at that...
...Reagan is not the answer, he is not a man of strong character...
...Maybe Reagan will still surprise us but I am convinced he's not the kind of leader who would go down with the ship...
...if Ronald Reagan keeps his promises, war might be more likely...
...The Republican party is . . . a tradition maintained by effete gentlemen . . . who play games with other effete gentlemen who eall themselves Democ-rats effete gentlemen who eall themselves Democ-rats...
...The church network is really a coalition and I believe that coalition was the critical factor in most Southern states in 1980...
...The liberals talk about compassion for minorities, but their compassion is really condescending, it's patronizing...
...At the same time, Weyrich has to maintain his credibility as a political analyst by not overstating the strength of his forces...
...Of course we were happy when Reagan was elected, but that just gets us started on the job that needs to be done...
...Doesn't Moynihan get some credit for his long-standing support of tuition tax credits and other helps for voluntary education...
...He looks surprised by the question and makes some perfunctory'exploratory responses along the lines of transferring agricultural technology and ending patterns of dependency (the last is a safe response on any subject that smacks of welfare...
...He exults in his role as a political mechanic of interest group conflict...
...There is none of the bonhomie, whether real or pretended, that surrounds a Richard Viguerie or a Falwell...
...It is left unclear how a president could govern except through association with the power structures...
...Laissez-faire is not enough, there has to be some higher yalue in a society...
...They are the people who had long suspected that the country was going to hell in a handbasket but, until now, didn't think there was much they could do about it...
...As Paul weyrich looks ahead to contests to come, his prognosis might be described as Upbeat Armageddon...
...They're passionately anti-Communist...
...Sure, people say we're not compassionate...
...I've set up task forces on a number of questions where our people have been kind of weak in the past...
...He's the Ralph Nader or William Sloane Coffin of our side.'' Remarks such as Falwell's might hurt Weyrich's ego just a little, but Weyrich knows that leaders who need to broaden their base do not want to be too closely identified with persons who tend to polarize...
...it's the only way to make government responsive, to make sure that people keep promises after they're elected...
...That's not a very pleasant prospect, but you can't always be giving in to threats...
...The problem here is that for so long the liberals have claimed important issues as their own, and we often made the mistake of believing them...
...In that sense I feel a lot closer to William Jennings Bryan than to the Tories of whatever stripe...
...While making this ambivalent claim to having elected Reagan, New Right leaders typically neglect to mention that many of them supported other candidates for the nomination such as Philip Crane and John Con-nally (vigorously promoted by Viguerie...
...An important difference between the '' church network'' and the rest of the New Right, according to Weyrich, is that "the church people are often uneducated when it comes to the economic issues.'' ' 'They are motivated by the social issues, like abortion and prayer in the schools, and also by defense issues...
...But Weyrich also gets mad...
...Falwell's base is so large, and so largely removed from the control of the circle over which Weyrich would preside...
...He is currently writing a book on the meaning of the Religious New Right in American politics baby fat and keenly alert to enemies on every side...
...He mentions a professor at Chicago who has "sound" views on global poverty...
...As a Christian, I already have a gospel and I'm not going to exchange it for an economic theory...
...On both scores the liberals are fifteen years behind in their perception of reality...
...In agreement with Falwell and others, Weyrich describes the "church network" as being largely made up of people who had never been politically active...
...He laces his conversation with the reminder, "I am not an intellectual...
...It is not simply that the Old Right is disdainful of political plumbing...
...On these questions Weyrich takes a somewhat different line from that of the preachers on the right...
...Again he sounds the New Right refrain that they have been fighting so long just to get into the game that they haven't had the luxury of time to think up positive alternatives to the programs they oppose...
...On issues that he feels most strongly about, such as abortion, Weyrich thinks the fight has just been joined...
...One must ask how Reagan got to be the Republican nominee, not simply why people voted this way or that on November 4,1980...
...policy on world hunger and economic development...
...The bedrock of political effectiveness is making coalitions," says Weyrich...
...More typical is the statement of James Robison of the Roundtable, "It would be vanity for any group to try to claim they were responsible for what happened...
...A big factor here is that the liberal hierarchy clearly disagrees with the pope...
...We have got to continue to man the barricades...
...But ideas cannot be permitted to get in the way of the cause...
...Today, however, Weyrich is prepared to sin on the side of overconfidence...
...The global neighborhood is put on notice that Paul Weyrich is not going to be pushed around any more...
...Everything we're doing is trying to help people who the liberals and their policies have been stepping on...
...But such public flaunting of political muscle is atypical, for the preachers know that much of the public still thinks it unseemly for clergy to be too overtly involved in the compromising political tasks of promoting and defeating candidates...
...He is sometimes called the hard center of the hard core of the hard right...
...The expansion of the "church network" is not limited to Roman Catholics...
...There can be no such thing as an entirely free market...
...If Reagan keeps his promises, Moynihan will be irrelevant, he'll be just one more "So...
...The two senate races most clearly decided by the church network elected Catholics in overwhelmingly Protestant areas...
...Is Paul Weyrich "using" religion to advance the ambitions of the New Right...
...IN DISCUSSING the Religious New Right, its impact on the 1980 elections and its future, Weyrich refers simply to the "church network...
...The liberals hate the social issues...
...his family background is definitely immigrant, blue-collar, Republican, and Catholic...
...And blacks are starting to catch on to that.'' Weyrich has strong hopes for the "movability'' of the black vote...
...It is almost always combined, especially when speaking of Republicans and the "Old Right," with the modifier "Northeastern...
...It's not enough," he says, "to be against the present social programs...
...It's the American bishops who are doing that...
...There's nothing that I can think of politically that is going to get me hotter than the statement that Reagan received a broad base of support and therefore it isn't the conservatives that he's really indebted to...
...But Weyrich shares with other New Right leaders the odd posture of being a power broker by virtue of being an outsider...
...Then, lest one infer that the New Right has been fulminating on issues it does not understand, he adds, "You know there are a lot of experts out there on the so-called liberal issues who are really on our side...
...But his votes are terrible, really terrible...
...Weyrich does not dissent from the suggestion that he was the person critical to the recruitment of Jerry Falwell to the New Right...
...There is nothing chic or svelte about him, and he wants it understood that he has little use for everything that he is not...
...Toward that end, "the need for a vital active religious movement has never been more crucial, because all we have done to date is to earn the right to fight...
...You just make concessions...
...This alliance between religion and politics didn't just happen, although you might get that impression from the surprise that the liberal media have been showing," says Weyrich...
...He is visibly upset when the discussion turns to conservatism and compassion...
...People in my own church [he mentions prominent names] and even some bishops have said I'm insincere on abortion, that I really don't care about the unborn, I just want to exploit the issue politically...
...And don't forget that Denton [Alabama ] and Don Nickles [Oklahoma ] are both Catholics...
...vote in the Senate for tuition tax credits.'' Moynihan is on the ' 'hit list'' of several New Right groups...
...He and his operations are moving into more spacious quarters at a "better" address in Washington...
...Catholics in this country do not differ with the views of Moral Majority on most issues," says Weyrich...
...We love them...
...In any case, establishment is a very dirty word in Weyrich's lexicon...
...If it's private, it's better for the people involved, it's more economical, and it gets government out of doing what it can't do well, even if it had the mandate to be doing it, which it doesn't...
...It is important that he believe this interpretation...
...Here I agree even with some liberals, but we disagree on what those social responsibilities are and how you translate them into policy...
...Then, for the first time, a self-deprecatory near-smile as he admits the obvious, "You know I haven't given that much thought...
...Why do the moral majorita-rians and their New Right allies come across as the moral meanies...
...The "we" in question is the Republican candidate...
...Weyrich recalls a Washington meeting with Buckley and other conservatives in 1971 when he was just a kid excited to be on the fringe of the conservative big time...
...The sense of being betrayed is essential to sustaining the New Right, and there is no betrayal more bitter than betrayal by a friend...
...That may be diffidence, or it may be an excuse for not examining the ambiguities of his cause...
...But who are all these people who are supposed to be so compassionate...
...He is a compromiser and a ratifier of other people's decisions...
...We are meeting at the CSFC headquarters in an obscure little lane called Library Court, behind the Library of Congress...
...In speaking to a Roundtable seminar, Richard Viguerie makes a similar point...
...He is from Racine, Wisconsin...
...Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is mentioned...
...Yet like other New Right leaders, Weyrich admits the cause is handicapped by its failure to communicate caring and compassion...
...Why should the Russians go to war when Carter and the other liberals are ready to give them what they want without war...
...As often as not they were not even registered to vote...
...Most of them are probably too locked in to their positions...
...He emphasizes the role of direct mail and other techniques in making end runs around the establishment's party procedures...
...and he defiantly wears each of those items as though it were a medal...
...Direct democracy is not just an expedient until we get into power...
...Ronald Reagan did not go directly from the moviemaking business to the White House...
...Weyrich looks hopefully to the conservative leadership in, for example, Missouri Synod Lutheranism...
...That is the approach customarily taken also by Falwell who uses every occasion to repeat that Moral Majority does not endorse candidates, it only "educates" the people to the issues and then trusts them to be smart enough to draw the proper inference when they get to the polling booth...
...My father was a blue-collar worker and he didn't have much education but he was smart, the smartest man I've ever known, a lot smarter than these people...
...The market has to be responsive to social responsibility...
...The taxi driver had never heard of it, but in some political circles Library Court is legendary...
...If preventing war is your highest goal, it's not hard to achieve...
...But if we rearm to the point where the Soviet Union might see itself becoming a second-rate power again, then they might make a preemptive strike to prevent that...
...THE INTERESTING RETICENCE of Weyrich and others in not claiming credit for Reagan's election is related to the New Right's ambivalence about giving the impression that their people are in power...
...Undoubtedly...
...But just as Falwell distances himself from Weyrich, so Weyrich seems nervous about an independent streak in Falwell...
...Is he among the neoconservative thinkers for whom Weyrich has a grudging respect...
...On nuclear war, for example, he is assertive: "Of course there may be a greater chance of nuclear war with real conservatives in power...
...We don't need Moynihan for that...
...So, if Ronald Reagan keeps his promises, war might be more likely...
...Then look at our background...
...There will be a compromise, but it's not their role to compromise...
...Pope John Paul is on our side and the people are on our side, so the American bishops will increasingly discover that the vise is tightening both from the top and the bottom...
...I've been pro-life long before it became a big issue...
...Perhaps the moving contributes to his nervousness...
...I'd say there's a fifty percent chance of the Communists going to war rather than becoming a second-rate power...
...The problem is reaching Catholics with the message and Weyrich thinks Senator Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, a strong Catholic and military hero, might be just the person to do that...
...Weyrich is 39-years-old and the father of five children...
...There is a belligerency about Paul Weyrich, as though he were over-compensating for not being from the right place or the right class or the right schools...
...WEYRICH SUBSCRIBES to the axiom often attributed to John F. Kennedy, "Don't get mad, get even...
...For some of the Old Right free market theory is their gospel...
...In listening to Weyrich's analysis of the impact of the ' 'church network'' several distinctions should be kept in mind...
...Carter was right, you know-you could almost certainly count on him to prevent nuclear war...
...The Republican party is not built on principles, it's a tradition maintained by effete gentlemen of the northeas-ternestablishment who play games with other effete gentlemen who call themselves Democrats.'' And, of course, both parties are in a conspiracy against the American people...
...They just haven't had a political power base on which to operate...
...Even pro-life activists who reject the agenda of the Right in all its forms are often prepared to make at least a tacit alliance on the issue of abortion...
...WHAT SHOULD BE U.S...
...Paul Weyrich is a wonderful man,'' Jerry Falwell has said, "but you have to realize he's pretty far out...
...But those who don't begin to come over are in for hard days...
...And while Weyrich is not indifferent to the need to broaden bases, he wants it understood that his strong suit is sharpening the issues...
...The Old Right is as elitist as the liberal intellectuals...
...That's part of my job, to bring them together and plug them in to where the decisions are made...
...We have to develop our own experts...
...We're the kind of people who get things done...
...there was a little intervening period of time between the Detroit Convention of 1980, where he was the near-unanimous choice of the Republicans, and 1965...
...We have to find new ways of caring...
...The day of our meeting, Weyrich is surrounded by packing boxes stuffed with files...
...Weyrich-an Eastern rite Catholic-has also done "I would never be working counter to the church's position...
...That's very important for the future '' According to Weyrich, the "church network" was also important though not the decisive factor in places such as Iowa, South Dakota, and Indiana...
...It's the American bishops who are doing that...
...As troubled as they are about the outsider-insider dilemma, however, the temptation to lay claim to maximum influence is hard to resist...
...Further growth depends upon the Religious New Right being able to expand beyond its fundamentalist base...
...When Weyrich speaks of the "church network," then, he means the New Right as it has expanded into the Religious New Right and is reinforced at points by pro-life activism...
...First, to assure others that they are a force to be reckoned with and, second, to give the impression that they are being betrayed by somebody who should be a friend...
...I have no reason to doubt that either...
...Unlike the ' 'bright boys'' of the Old Right, they have not treated him condescendingly and perhaps they have even helped the cause...
...Not until he was the odds-on favorite to become the Republican nominee did the establishment get behind him...
...I care about the weak more than some of them do...
...Nonetheless, New Right leaders see the pro-life movement as a plus for them...
...He indicates a grudging respect for the neoconservatives...
...Real free enterprise is more just because it takes the Christian idea of stewardship seriously and it permits the development of talents.'' Weyrich is not enthusiastic about Milton Friedman and other conservative monetarists...
...And liberals will try to make those exceptions so broad that they're really loopholes and we're back at abortion on demand...
...Many pro-lifers are adamant that theirs is not a conservative but a liberal cause, their goal being not to restrict but to expand the definition of the human community that is to be afforded societal protection by including the unborn in that definition...
...He mentions Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Alabama...
...Our fight is not for Reagan or for the Republicans, we fight on principle, not on person or party...
...Of course he or anyone else who tries to do that will have to compete with the hierarchy...
...Weyrich makes clear that he does not suffer gladly deviants from his hard line...
...Yes, that's definite, we should...
...Another factor in all this, the right-to-life or pro-life constituency, is more complex...
...How about using people connected with existing organizations dealing with world economic development...
...Moynihan is smart and his rhetoric is very good sometimes...
...The Religious New Right is the New Right moving into an expansive constituency that identifies its concerns primarily in religious terms...
...They're the only sincere ones, they're the only ones who care...
...My convictions on this are strongly shaped by my Christian belief...
...Weyrich does not always make it easy to recognize the tenderness of his moral sensibilities...
...True, in the flush of the November, 1980, victory Falwell boasted publicly that ninety percent of the candidates favored by Moral Majority had won...
...Reagan is tainted by association with the establishment...
...With an almost touching urgency he presents himself as being tough...
...The fact is that they're hypocrites, pretending to speak for the Catholic church when all the time they're undercutting the teaching of the pope...
...He likes the "mediating structures" proposal that has gained some currency in recent years-that public policy should enable families, churches, voluntary associations, and neighborhoods to make the decisions and deliver the services where they best understand the needs...
...Maybe he would help out...
...It was Weyrich who, on a network television show the very night of the 1980 election, put George Bush on notice that, if he didn't toe the conservative line, he would be washed up by 1984...
...Returning to the subject of compassion an agitated Weyrich describes the outrageous slanders directed his way...
...Then, succeeding in looking quite fierce, "But I tell the right to life people that they have to take the hard line, the pure line-tough, no exceptions at all...
...They too are part of the northeastern-establishment, but here the criticism is more subdued.' 'I don't know how much real difference they make, but they helped to make our ideas -respectable in the Northeast, even with some liberals...
...It's like having a bully in your neighborhood who won't let you go out of your house...
...Weyrich resents more deeply that they are disdainful of plumbers, political and otherwise...
...some creative interpretation of John Paul's positions in order to turn him into a New Rightist...
...It's a necessary part of the political process...
...They're in bed together...
...Weyrich heads up the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC) and has lines into almost everything that operates under the banner of the New Right...
...He is short and endomorphic-well, chubby, laden with RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS is Senior Fellow at the Council on Religion and International Affairs in New York City, and an editor of Worldview magazine...
...In almost every case you could mention, grivate care is what government policy should support...
...We're not the products of third-generation wealth...
...Paul Weyrich does not need to be so disingenuous...
...On some questions Weyrich is not so modest about not having the answers...
...I've been dreaming and working on this for years...
...Thus northeasternestablishment, like damnyankee, becomes one word...
...We could still lose...
...Of course I care about the people who are treated unfairly...
...In practice if not in theory, the New Right tends to favor direct democracy over the gentility of republican governance...
...I don't favor free enterprise in the sense that we should bail out Chrysler or other big businesses...
...For the last five years or more it has, under the auspices of Paul Weyrich, been the meeting place for the high councils of the New Right...
...They were talking about a move in Congress and I asked, 'Where's your head count?' They looked at me like I'd just done something vulgar in public, as if I were a heretic...
...For fifteen years it was only the conservative movement, the hardcore conservative movement in America, that supported Ronald Reagan...
...The bishops are part of the old liberal elite...
...Where a New Right attack was not allied with the right-to-life forces, as in the case of the attack on Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, the attack failed...
...Their role is to be absolute, one hundred percent, and in that way they'll determine the direction of the compromise...
Vol. 108 • October 1981 • No. 18
