The legacy of a movement builder.
Every good founder nurtures his institution, especially in its earliest years, just as he would his own newborn child. Long hours and sleepless nights are to be expected. Navigating setbacks, finding new sources of revenue, forming a competent staff, and keeping them all on the same page: those are among the endless challenges of building a successful organization. Many who try will fall short in talent or perseverance.
For Ed Feulner and co-founder Paul Weyrich, their baby a half-century ago was The Heritage Foundation. Paul died in 2008, and Ed passed away last Friday, July 18, at the age of 83. The intellectual powerhouse they built, for which Ed served 37 years as president, is one of the most respected and effective think tanks in the world.
The moment I heard that Ed had passed, two words flashed in my mind: movement builder. He always knew that for conservative or libertarian ideas to prosper, they must flow from as many fountains as possible. So even as he grew Heritage, he helped allied organizations to grow, too.
Inspired by the work of Heritage in Washington, five people formed the first board of directors of a Michigan-based think tank in 1986. A year later, they hired me as the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s first president—a role I held for 21 years until moving on to assume the presidency of the Foundation for Economic Education. From its very inception, Mackinac viewed Heritage as the model, the mothership of the free-market policy world.
I remember talking to Ed in his office in 1988 or 1989. He was thrilled by Mackinac’s early successes and concluded our meeting with words that defined his professional life: “We’ll do all we can to help you guys in Michigan.” And he did, and so did the wonderful Heritage staff members I came to know.
This is how movements grow. Imagine if Ed’s response had been: “We’re too busy. Our work here is all that’s important. You’re on your own. Good luck.” I dare say that the vast network of state-based think tanks, of which Mackinac was among the first, would be a shadow of the force that it is today. Like so many in that network, I will never forget the encouraging hand that Ed Feulner extended. He was the consummate movement builder.
Ed Feulner also had longstanding connections with FEE. He attended his first FEE seminar at our Irvington, New York, headquarters in 1963 at the age of 22, where he befriended our founder, Leonard E. Read. In 2019, we presented Ed with the Leonard E. Read Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of his unique achievements and exceptional dedication to the cause of liberty.
In his 1998 book The March of Freedom, Ed wrote:
This has been a conscious goal of The Heritage Foundation—to be a permanent Washington presence. We have set out to make our ideas not just respectable but mainstream. To set the terms of national policy debate. To offer not a lament for a lost America, but positive, practical, free market alternatives to the failed liberal policies of the old order.
Ed did not want to lead a group of academics who would write studies, place them on a shelf, and hope someone important might read them. Instead, he envisioned Heritage as a results-oriented institution, operating like a business, expecting progress from its analysts and impact from their research. Heritage would achieve these results by creating timely, concise studies and aggressively marketing them to Congress, policymakers, and the media.
He worked tirelessly. In his prime, he traveled more than 150,000 miles a year, crisscrossing the United States and the globe to meet with leaders and spread the ideals of individual liberty, economic freedom, rule of law, and family values. He was a former president and long-time treasurer of the Mont Pelerin Society, as well as a member and/or officer of many prestigious national and international organizations.
Among his many honors was the Presidential Citizens Medal, bestowed upon him by President Ronald Reagan in 1989.
Ed Feulner will always be a giant in the liberty movement he devoted himself to building. For that, every liberty-loving individual on the planet should be grateful—now and for all time.
