Paul Weyrich has spoken, and he sounds a lot like Pat Buchanan, at least when it comes to economics. His latest outburst, for all the talk of “less government,” basically presents the worst that conservatives have to offer.

Here are some doozies:

The need to restore American manufacturing and labor. Unless we want to become a Third World country, we need to make things. We have to stop the movement of all our manufacturing to China and other foreign countries. If that requires tariffs, starting with tariffs to protect industries of strategic importance, so be it. More, we need the well-paying jobs manufacturing offers to ordinary people. Many conservatives see labor as an enemy. I think that view is outdated although union’s leadership continues to be a part of the leftist coalition which opposes everything we believe in. Instead of thinking of labor as the unions, we need to see it as people: as average Americans who want to be able to give their families a middle-class standard of living on one income, so mom can stay home and take care of the kids. You cannot do that with retail or most other “service” jobs. It requires manufacturing jobs. The next conservatism must find ways to preserve and re-create such jobs.

But wait, as they say on the late-night advertisements, there’s more:

The next conservatism of course will favor free enterprise. But is enterprise truly free if there are no limits on its scale? Now, big business outsources jobs overseas as fast as it can. Would small businesses that are anchored in their communities do that? I think maybe not. Are local entrepreneurs free if they have to compete against huge chains of big box stores? I am not sure they are. The next conservative economics needs to define free enterprise more broadly, looking not just at the danger from government but also at the threat from vast corporations, many of them multi-nationals that could care less about America’s future. Traditionally, conservatives have favored things that are local and small in scale. Those are roots to which the next conservatism should return.

In other words, individuals should be forced by the state to purchase goods made in countries and in situations that meet Paul Weyrich’s approval. Whatever light brush with libertarianism that the Republicans had with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign is gone completely. In its place, we have militarization, war, and fascist economics.