It is with sadness that we learned of the passing of Ed Feulner at 83, the founder and long-time president of the Heritage Foundation and overall legend within the conservative movement. You can read the Heritage statement here.
We will have plenty more to say about his amazing legacy in the coming days, but for now I want to leave you with a clip from a recent article he wrote for National Review for our William F. Buckley centennial issue about what prompted him to start Heritage:
From that 1964 encounter with Bill, I learned a life-changing lesson about how to grow the conservative movement. I went on from my graduate studies to work at a think tank in Washington and as a staff aide on Capitol Hill. In these roles I observed the labyrinth of organizations — real institutions — that the liberal-Left had established throughout Washington.
Yes, we had ISI. But the Left had Students for a Democratic Society and the Brookings Institution and a host of others. So the late Paul Weyrich and I developed the plan for what would become the Heritage Foundation. We found conservative business leaders willing to support it, with Bill Buckley willing to lend his prestige and speak at its early meetings.
Heritage, of course, would go on to create, incubate, and champion many of the conservative policy ideas that became part of successive Republican administrations. May he rest in peace.
Haley Strack: “Remembering Ed Feulner’s Legacy: Conservative and Republican Leaders Weigh In“; “Feulner’s Farewell Revisited”
Neal B. Freeman: “The Leader Conservatives Needed”
Therese Shaheen: “Remembering Ed Feulner”
Tim Chapman: “Ed Feulner Showed Us How to Build. Now It’s Our Turn”
Yuval Levin: “Ed Feulner’s Fundamental Decency”
The Editors: “Ed Feulner, 1941–2025”
Mark Wright: “Ed Feulner: Institution Builder”
John O’Sullivan: “Ed Feulner: The Quartermaster of American Conservatism“; “Václav Klaus Issues Tribute to Ed Feulner”
K-Lo: “Ed Feulner and the Priority of the Human Person as Gift”
Elizabeth Edwards Spalding: “Ed Feulner: A Man Fully Alive”