In the spring of 1971, the U.S. Senate was set to debate and vote on continued government support of the supersonic transport (SST), with most conservatives opposing taxpayer funding in favor of private sector support. A few days after the vote, a well-researched study from an old-line “think tank” landed in Senators’ offices.
Why hadn’t it arrived earlier? “We didn’t want to try to affect the outcome of the vote,” said the group’s president.
“It was at that moment,” recalled Edwin Feulner, Jr., then-chief of staff to Congressman Philip Crane, “that Paul Weyrich and I decided that conservatives needed an independent research institute designed to influence the policy debate as it was occurring in Congress – before decisions were made.”
Thus was born the idea of the Heritage Foundation, whose Founder, Ed Feulner, passed away Friday at the age of 83. It was an idea – give actionable information to Congress in time to affect public policy in a conservative direction – that changed the world.
Obituaries note his role in founding and growing the Heritage Foundation; as Treasurer of the Mont Pelerin Society, as former Chairman of the Board of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute; as a two-time past President of the Philadelphia Society; as president of the Victims of Communism Foundation, as a Board Member of the National Chamber Foundation and the Institut d’ Etudes Politiques.
But Ed Feulner was a long-time Virginian and his contributions to the Commonwealth are less known but just as noteworthy. His dedication to, and investment in, conservative ideas didn’t just play out at the national level.
Ed Feulner had known the Thomas Jefferson Institute’s Founder, Mike Thompson, for years. But his first official connection with the Institute came in the form of an unsolicited donation after Mike passed away. Feulner knew that transitions can result in lost support that often needed to be made up; that ideas may have consequences, but it takes resources to effectuate ideas. More support would follow.
There ensued numerous conversations with Mike’s successors, in which the former Heritage Foundation President offered advice and counsel to the current Jefferson Institute President on growing the organization and arming it with the intellectual ammunition to stop Virginia’s slide towards “California-East.”
He would speak at an Institute Federal Policy Dinner to offer hope after Joe Biden was elected president and later, when the Thomas Jefferson Institute was privileged to offer an advance viewing of the movie “Reagan”, it was Ed Feulner – who had worked so closely with the 40th President to achieve conservative goals – who offered introductory remarks to those in attendance.
Ed Feulner was an early supporter of Governor Glenn Youngkin, gathering together a luncheon of old Reagan hands to hear Candidate Youngkin and round up support. On his election, Youngkin asked Feulner to take a lead on the Virginia Commission on Higher Education Board Appointments, a Board that evaluates potential appointees to higher education governing boards in Virginia. If the Commonwealth has gone farther than other states in taking steps to reverse the Left’s overwhelming bias in higher education governance, it is in no small measure thanks to Ed Feulner.
And just this month, Governor Youngkin named Ed Feulner to the Board of Visitors of Mount Vernon, where we have no doubt Ed would have helped to ensure our nation’s 250th Anniversary reflected the true roots of our nation’s founding, and he would have relished seeing the result.
Ed Feulner postulated several “laws,” one of which was: “In Washington, there are no permanent victories or permanent defeats, just permanent battles.”
That is as true in Richmond as it is in Washington and that is why, no matter how and when we may be disappointed in some policy or political outcome, we all must continue the fight to preserve a liberty based on principles not personality, in a permanent battle Ed Feulner would certainly have been a part of.
As Ed would have said: Onward.
Chris Braunlich is senior advisor and former president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. He may be reached at [email protected].