It is generally the business of the columnist to write something piquant about whatever it is that happens to be generating headlines and activating the salivary glands of those who consume current affairs on a given day. I find myself wondering, sort of, what Ed Feulner might have had to say about the salacious chum that is the perpetually regenerating Jeffery Epstein saga.

We can never know for sure, of course, but I suspect he would find the whole episode — and the who-killed-JFK level of conspiracy theory encompassing it — distasteful, but of little interest otherwise. I wager he would have quickly concluded his time and considerable talent could be put to much better use being brought to bear on the more serious matters of the day.

Which is precisely what Ed Feulner did for the six decades prior to his death last week at the age of 83, a passing which leaves a vacuum in the soul of the conservative movement.

Feulner is best known for his cultivation of the Heritage Foundation, among the first, and certainly most influential, conservative think-tanks of the latter half of the 20th century. But his resume is far more extensive than that. There was virtually no institution of the post-war American conservative intellectual movement, save perhaps National Review, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and Young Americans for Freedom, which preceded his entrance into the public arena, Ed Feulner was not instrumental in creating. He started his public career in Washington D.C. as an aide to Congressman (and later Secretary of Defense) Melvin Laird, where he helped start the Republican Study Committee, but quickly expanded his influence beyond the walls of government. In 1964 he, alongside the giants of the fledgling conservative movement of the day such as William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer, founded the Philadelphia Society, a precursor to the Heritage Foundation which he and Paul Weyrich founded in 1973 (which happens to be the  year of my birth, a fact I am taking a bit of pride in at the moment). He later had a hand in launching the State Policy Network and the American Legislative Exchange Council, and was named chairman emeritus of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

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But of course, it is the Heritage Foundation for which Feulner will be best known, an institution designed with the mission to arm the republic’s decision makers with the ideas and economic literacy needed to steer the nation on the correct path. It was a reflection of the intellectual rigor and adherence to conservative fusionism that was so brilliantly effervescent in its founder — dedicated, in the words of Feulner himself, to promoting traditional American values, a strong national defense, the free enterprise system and free trade; in short, the defense of the best of America’s heritage.

It was particularly influential during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, for whom Heritage assembled a three-volume compendium, “Mandate for Leadership”, to help guide the administration in terms of policy. As William F. Buckley would later write, “60% of the suggestions enjoined on the new President were acted upon, which is why Mr. Reagan’s tenure was 60% successful.”

Ed Feulner was big on ideas, which he noted were the raw material of laws. But he was not content with simply cataloguing ideas for posterity’s sake; he saw his job as drawing from the deep wells of conservative thought, and distributing them in the place and manner in which they would do the most good — in translating, if you will, the abstract to the concrete, the idea into actionable policy.

Feulner’s name will be listed among the pantheon of the modern intellectual conservative movement, alongside the likes of Russel Kirk, William F. Buckley, Eric Voegelin, Milton Freidman, Roger Scruton, and so many others. His loss adds to a growing void, one which almost compels despair the intellectual inheritance these thinkers vouchsafed us is floundering on the shoals of economic populism and isolationism masquerading as conservatism.

And yet, though I only met Mr. Feulner once in passing, and can therefore claim no intimate knowledge of the man, I suspect he would recoil at such pessimism. His personal motto, after all, was “onward, always.” If Ed Feulner had simply lived his life as the husband, father and devout Catholic he was, it would be enough. But he did much more, vouchsafing his nation the intellectual infrastructure needed to sustain the movement he helped foster to preserve; and with which his inheritors can endeavor to continue onward, always, in spite of everything. 

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.