It took someone with Edwin J. Feulner Jr.’s irrepressible optimism and unshakable confidence in the American experiment to launch a right-of-center think tank with the modern conservative movement at its nadir.
It was 1973, and Sen. Barry Goldwater’s vision was being supplanted within the Republican Party by President Nixon’s embrace of liberal policies.
Democrats were firmly in control of the House and Senate, and the right had no answer to the left’s extensive public policy infrastructure.
Mr. Feulner responded by founding, with Paul Weyrich, The Heritage Foundation, a nine-person policy shop that would grow to become one of the nation’s most influential think tanks and a model for conservative research organizations.
“We both looked around and saw what was happening on the other side of the political fence where the liberals were quite frankly a generation ahead of us,” Mr. Feulner told the Bradley Foundation in a 2024 interview.
“We said, ‘Hey, why aren’t we doing this kind of thing?’” he recounted.
Mr. Feulner, who died Friday at age 83, was mourned as a pivotal figure in the rise of the conservative movement, a key architect of the network dedicated to spreading, defending and implementing its principles of freedom and traditional values.
“Ed Feulner was more than a leader — he was a visionary, a builder, and a patriot of the highest order,” Heritage President Kevin Roberts and board of trustees Chairman Barb Van Andel-Gaby said in a joint statement.
“His unwavering love of country and his determination to safeguard the principles that made America the freest, most prosperous nation in human history shaped every fiber of the conservative movement — and still do,” they said.
Before Heritage, Mr. Feulner served as the founding director of the Republican Study Committee.
He would go on to serve as Heritage president from 1977 to 2013 and help launch organizations including the Philadelphia Society, the State Policy Network and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
“ALEC’s story is forever connected to Ed’s legacy,” CEO Lisa B. Nelson said in a statement.
“It was in the basement of The Heritage Foundation, in the same year Ed helped launch Heritage, that ALEC first found its footing. His commitment to limited government, free markets, and the power of ideas helped shape ALEC’s early vision and continues to guide us today,” she said.
Mr. Feulner believed strongly in free markets and the foundations of civil society, including churches and civic organizations, but he apparently didn’t believe in retirement.
In March, he led a delegation to Taiwan as part of his extensive travels to promote the Index of Economic Freedom, The Heritage Foundation’s annual ranking of the world’s most open economies.
“Because of freeing economies, more than 1.5 to 2 billion people around the world in the last 15 years have been lifted out of poverty,” Mr. Feulner said in the Bradley interview. “It’s because of freedom and free enterprise and the opportunity that entrepreneurs have built all around the world. It’s very exciting.”
He also served on the board of Advancing American Freedom, the think tank founded by former Vice President Mike Pence in 2021.
“Today, as conservatives mourn his passing, we would do well to remember Ed Feulner’s example,” Mr. Pence wrote on X. “He didn’t just build up institutions; he cultivated a movement — one that brought ideas down from the ivory tower and into the public square, and never lost sight of the moral and spiritual foundations of liberty.”
Mr. Feulner began his career in Washington as a public affairs fellow for the Center for Strategic Studies, now known as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
He was an assistant to Rep. Melvin Laird of Wisconsin, who later became defense secretary, and then worked as chief of staff to another Republican, Rep. Philip Crane of Illinois.
His honors included the Presidential Citizens Medal, which President Reagan bestowed upon him in 1989 for his work as “a leader in the conservative movement,” and the 2012 Bradley Prize.
Mr. Feulner was a regular on lists of the most influential conservatives and most powerful people in Washington, including the Washingtonian’s “45 Who Shaped Washington” list in 2010, marking the magazine’s 45th anniversary.
He was born in Chicago and graduated from Regis University in Denver with a double major in English and business, and then received an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
He attended Georgetown University and the London School of Economics before earning a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
He authored nine books from 1968 to 2012. Two of the books that most influenced him were “The Conservative Mind” by Russell Kirk and Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative.”
Mr. Feulner also wrote the afterword for the Heritage policy blueprint Project 2025 titled “Onward,” a word with which he signed off every day, according to the foundation’s joint statement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson posted on X, “God bless the extraordinary legacy of Ed Feulner, and his singular influence upon the conservative movement. Praying tonight for his family and all who mourn his loss. ‘Onward. Always.’”
We grieve today at Hillsdale for the loss of Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., builder of @Heritage. Ed was a friend of mine for over 40 years. I watched his children grow up, and he watched mine. I watched his beloved Heritage Foundation become what he dreamed of in its early days: an… pic.twitter.com/KJIyY7ZLDH
— Larry P. Arnn (@DrLarryArnn) July 20, 2025
The foundation helped the conservative movement come roaring back after Reagan’s election in 1980. Nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s recommendations in its policy blueprint, “Mandate for Leadership,” were enacted under the Reagan administration.
“Dr. Ed Feulner challenged the orthodoxy in the early ’70s, when the Republican consensus was to go along to get along,” said Martin Gillespie, America First Policy Institute executive vice president and former Heritage team member.
“His visionary policy work was the predicate to the Reagan Revolution and the various citizen movements since that have challenged the establishment. America is undoubtedly stronger because of his indispensable contributions,” he added.
Mr. Feulner was also known as a happy warrior who sought to “add and multiply, not subtract and divide,” as he put it.
“Fundamentally, I don’t want to be the adviser on the extent of national ruination,” he said in the 2024 interview. “I want to be the adviser in terms of how we can do so much better, how we can all prosper together, how we can all live freely and jointly and make things much better for our kids and our grandkids. And that’s what the whole American experiment, I think, is all about.”
Mr. Feulner and his wife, Linda, attended St. Mary’s (Catholic) Parish in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the Bradley Foundation. He is survived by his wife, their two children and grandchildren.
