When Edwin J. Feulner Jr. strode into Washington, D.C., in the early 1970s, he saw a capital city awash in liberal ideas, with conservative thought relegated to the fringes, a whisper in a town shouting for progressivism. Unfazed, he rolled up his sleeves, co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and turned it into what Newt Gingrich would later call “the Parthenon of the conservative metropolis.” Feulner, a political scientist with a relentless drive and a knack for turning ideas into action, died on July 18, 2025, at 83, leaving behind a legacy that reshaped the American conservative movement and influenced presidents from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.
Born on August 12, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois, to Edwin J. Feulner Sr., a real estate firm owner,
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