Onward for freedom

Conservative leader Edwin J. Feulner died July 18 at the age of 83. Feulner is best-known for his leadership of The Heritage Foundation for more than 35 years. But the full scope of his institution-building efforts spanned six decades and extended to many other groups, from the Philadelphia Society to the State Policy Network to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. In 1989, President Reagan awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal, noting his inspirational leadership shaping domestic and international policy. Feulner continued energetically until his death to nurture a worldwide network of organizations dedicated to advancing human flourishing through freedom.

Feulner’s institution-building was grounded in a commitment to first principles and to mobilizing people around them. His impact came from recognizing that ideas and individuals need institutional homes if they are to shape enduring policy change.

Ideas and their consequences engaged Feulner from his student days. He entered the public arena at the height of the Cold War and as federal programs were significantly expanding in such areas as healthcare, education, and welfare under the Johnson administration. Graduate training in business, economics, and political philosophy strengthened his commitment to liberty and limited government.

A lifelong Roman Catholic, Feulner was drawn to moral arguments for freedom. He emphasized the irreplaceable significance of family, religious congregations, and voluntary associations, and he was deeply concerned about how government expansion undermined their vital role in society. These character-forming institutions, he wrote, “uphold the moral order that makes freedom functional, initiating men and women in the elevating traditions of the human race—loyalty and love, diligence and duty.”

In a 1997 speech, Feulner articulated seven principles of a free society: liberty, free enterprise, heritage, self-government, character, family, and courage. He regarded the family as the fundamental social institution and character as indispensable, writing elsewhere that “liberty unconstrained by character can destroy freedom.” In another speech to an international group of economists and political philosophers, Feulner cited Pope John Paul II’s appeal to build “a civilization worthy of the human person” made in the image of God. As Feulner told his audience, he identified in the pope’s statement an animating principle of much of his own life’s work.

Yet principles alone don’t change policy. The power of ideas is not “self-implementing,” Feulner observed. It is one thing to prevail in an intellectual debate about educational freedom, for example, and quite another to affect policy change that makes that opportunity a reality for the millions of American children lacking it. Feulner was intent on translating ideas into policy, and that led to his institution-building focus.

Feulner’s economic training made him think in terms of division of labor, both within and among institutions. In advancing the freedom agenda, Feulner’s oft-cited philosophy was to add and multiply, not to subtract and divide. He invested in leaders, sought out subject-matter experts, and prioritized coalition efforts.

Feulner would often remind colleagues and co-laborers that, in the policy world, neither setbacks nor strides ahead are permanent. Perseverance is critical. He cultivated a long-range view that promoted tackling complex generational policy changes such as reforms to welfare and entitlements.

Together these insights encouraged a disposition of stewardship. As Feulner wrote in one of his final essays, co-authored in June with former Vice President Mike Pence, “Conservatism … is a promise, a calling, a duty to preserve what is good and cultivate what is enduring. If we hold fast to this charge, we will not only secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves, we will pass down to future generations an America that is strong, free, and truly worthy of its founding ideals.”

Ed Feulner lived up to that promise and calling. He exemplified stewardship—of ideas, individual relationships, institutions, and our inheritance of freedom. He stirred thousands of others to do the same, a charge captured in his characteristic signature, “Onward.” Carrying forward his sense of stewardship is a most fitting tribute.

Jennifer Marshall Patterson directed domestic policy teams at The Heritage Foundation from 2003-2019.