Ed Feulner Built Institutions in Support of American Values

The conservative movement has lost one of its true giants and I have lost a mentor and cherished friend. Ed Feulner was many things: scholar, strategist, counselor to presidents, but above all, he was a great man and an American statesman who devoted his life to the defense of our nation’s first principles. Ed believed that this nation wasn’t only exceptional, but good—and that its future would rise or fall on our fidelity to timeless truths. In an age of cynicism, Ed reminded us that one man with courage and conviction can still shape the course of human history, just as he did.

As the founder of the Heritage Foundation, Ed was a leading voice of conservatism for more than 50 years. Under his leadership, Heritage became both a center for scholarship and a powerhouse of strategic influence. I first met him in 1991, when Heritage launched an effort to strengthen public policy leadership in the states. That initiative would later give rise to the State Policy Network. At the time, I was a young lawyer in Indiana, freshly inspired by the Reagan Revolution...