A NEW PART OF THE MACHINE

I had heard about Grover Norquist's Wednesday meetings but I hadn't heard of any others until I got The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America by John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge from the library. Paul Weyrich, founder of the Free Congress Foundation and the Heritage Foundation, also leads the Coalitions for America Wednesday lunch meetings. These are focused on the culture war. Here's how John and Adrian describe it (p. 17):

"The atmosphere here is more inquisitorial than at Norquist's meeting. Rather than a forum for activists and staffers to pool their plans, Weyrich's lunch gives leading politicians and people from the administration a chance to justify themselves to the assembled barons of the conservative movement."

And here's what the Free Congress Foundation says about itself:

"Washington is full of "think tanks," places that produce books and papers about particular policy questions. So what’s different about the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation?
Free Congress Foundation is politically conservative, but it is more than that: it is also culturally conservative. Most think tanks talk about tax rates or the environment or welfare policy and occasionally we do also. But our main focus is on the Culture War. Will America return to the culture that made it great, our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western culture? Or will we continue the long slide into the cultural and moral decay of political correctness? If we do, America, once the greatest nation on earth, will become no less than a third world country."