Tribute to a True Conservative Leader and Friend

Entrepreneurship is the engine of the American spirit. Freedom is the fuel that propels that engine. It’s all about having the freedom to solve problems for the benefit of people near and far.

Last week, the world lost a great servant leader and policy entrepreneur, Edwin J. Feulner, PhD., founder and longtime president of The Heritage Foundation.

I had the honor of working closely with Ed from 2001 to 2005 as his Chief of Staff at The Heritage Foundation. He was my boss, then he was my mentor, and over the years he became my enduring and dear friend.  

Through the years since Heritage was founded, it has come to be known as the standard bearer of conservative ideas. Often less known is that the man who made it happen was Ed Feulner, and that was by his own design. Ed could have tried to focus all attention on himself or Heritage, seeking to take credit for all the conservative wins, but he truly believed what President Ronald Reagan often said: It’s amazing what you can get done when you’re not worried about who gets the credit.

Ed Feulner was more interested in building a lasting conservative movement than building his personal brand. Because of this, Heritage grew to be the go-to source for principled, conservative policy solutions in America and globally. Arguably, more than any other organization, Heritage has been responsible for growing the conservative movement around the world. 

Ed’s leadership made this happen. But he knew he couldn’t do it alone. He was fond of saying “people are policy” and that as conservatives we should be about “adding and multiplying, not subtracting and dividing.” 

“People are policy” means that policies don’t implement themselves — people implement policies. Even the best policy with the wrong people equals bad outcomes. The best outcomes come from principled people carrying out principled policy based on conservative, free-market values. 

“Adding and multiplying, not subtracting and dividing” means that you can’t just preach to the choir, you’ve got to grow the choir. People from different walks of life and organizations with different viewpoints can agree to focus on where they agree rather than where they disagree. Durable movements are built by people from different walks of life with different opinions, but with the same commitment to the same enduring guiding  principles.  

Look around the world at center-right think tanks and policy organizations and you’ll see Ed’s fingerprints. He helped start or nurture so many — some economic conservative, social conservative, and classical liberal/libertarian —  all learning that they are better together than apart. 

That is the foundation on which my organization, the Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions (C3 Solutions) was built. Climate has been a polarizing issue, with the Left sees it as the most important issue of our time and believes that governments must step in and mandate their version of solutions, forcing people to give up their individual liberties. The Right has seen the climate agenda as an attack on individual liberty and economic growth in pursuit of big government. 

For too long, the climate discussion had been a one-sided issue, with the only “solutions” from the Left being to keep fossil fuels in the ground and to oppose nuclear energy (ironically the cleanest baseload power source). The belief was that solar and wind could supply all of our power needs. In reality, fossil fuels, natural gas in particular, have been the best thing for helping lift people out of poverty and care for the environment. In some of the poorest places in Africa, a fossil fuel like propane can literally save women and children’s lives from air pollution or bodily harm, if they can just get access to it. 

Ed saw, as I do, that while extreme environmentalists on the Left had used climate change as a way to attack personal freedom, capitalism, and even democracy by trying to grow the power of government mandates, conservatives could flip the script and show how economic freedom, prosperity and human flourishing are the best things for climate and the environment. 

So in the spirit of “adding and multiplying” in the name of economic freedom to best steward the environment, C3 Solutions was launched.

C3 Solutions’ first major publication, Free Economies are Clean Economies, used the Index of Economic Freedom together with the Yale Environmental Performance Index to show how when countries are economically free, they are also “cleaner” and do a better job caring for the environment. In fact, free economies are twice as clean as unfree economies. That’s the good news for climate, and for freedom. The world needs more climate solutions, and they can only be found in economic freedom.  

As Ed wrote in our 2022 Free Economies are Clean Economies report, 

“Everyone everywhere wants a clean environment. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. Pollution anywhere eventually becomes pollution everywhere. The question is how to deliver a cleaner environment. As you will read in the following pages, the answer is an environmental ’race to the top’ using an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy patterned on our decades-old race toward economic freedom.”

The world needs more optimistic warriors like him who are committed to putting people first, adding and multiplying, and in the end always looking forward, only learning from the past. We will miss Ed Feulner, but he has shown us the path to success is through freedom and opportunity. Onward!