Put him on his shield

By Alan Caruba

Paul Weyrich died early Thursday morning. I knew the man only through his writings as a columnist and I was always a bit envious of how prescient he was.

Two months before the November election he wrote that, “the loser might very well be the lucky one.” I suspect John McCain might agree as he and the rest of us gaze at the chasm of indebtedness into which the alleged “leaders” of our nation have plunged us and future generations.

Back in September, Weyrich was warning that, “The problems include a very weak American dollar; a trade deficit that will come to roughly $700 billion at year-end” along with “a ballooning Federal budget that has gone from $2.1 trillion to $3.6 trillion in just eight years—a whopping growth of 76%; a national debt of $9.6 trillion, closing fast on $10 trillion with a debt ceiling placed at $10.6 trillion and which cost the American taxpayer $230 billion in interest alone last year.”

Weyrich was a Conservative with a capital “C” in a nation whose best years occurred in the 1980s when another Conservative, Ronald Reagan, was in the White House. After that, it has been downhill on a toboggan to the poorhouse. Sadly, the Republicans who took control of Congress in 1994 and began so splendidly fell prey to whatever it is about Washington, D.C., that causes people to lose their minds.

The George W. Bush legacy will ultimately be less about 9/11 and more about the most profligate spending spree in the history of the nation.

Weyrich began his political life as a volunteer for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign and, for more than four decades, he rose to become a leader in the conservative movement as chairman of the Free Congress Foundation and as the first president of the Heritage Foundation.

Weyrich stayed true to his conservative principles and was always ready to champion them. That’s why he could write that “successful administrations over the past forty years all bear a share of the responsibility” for the present financial crisis.

“There is no free ride in this world,” wrote Weyrich. “And government at all levels, not only in Washington, has failed to understand this.” Who failed us? WE failed us because ultimately the Constitution identifies us, the People, as responsible for those whom we select and the kind of governance we accept.

Now, like an honored warrior, it is time to put him on his shield and consign him to the God in whom he believed and to history which he distinguished with his life.