New in WSJ: "Ed Feulner, Ed Meese and the Heritage Foundation's Exodus"

"The leaders of the conservative think tank have abandoned its founding principles."

The Wall Street Journal has published my new commentary, titled "Ed Feulner, Ed Meese and the Heritage Foundation's Exodus." This follows on my resignation from Heritage last month. Here is the introduction:

Rome didn't fall in a day, and Heritage didn't fall in a tweet. Kevin Roberts's bungling defense of Tucker Carlson might have triggered the mass resignation of scholars from what was once America's leading conservative think tank, but this exodus was years in the making. The Heritage Foundation made a strategic choice to adapt to the current political moment by refusing to exclude anyone from its boundless tent. That led Heritage to depart from its principles and embrace people who have no credible claim to conservatism, even at the expense of pushing out the brains that built the foundation. By obsessing over "what time it is," Heritage lost sight of hard lessons learned from the past.

And from the conclusion:

But the Heritage Foundation has no power to cancel anyone. All it can do is protect its own integrity by declining to associate with unsavory figures like Mr. Fuentes. That's what National Review editor William F. Buckley did in 1962, when he denounced John Birch Society leader Robert Welch who claimed, among other things, that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist, and whose organization disseminated antisemitic propaganda even while professing to oppose antisemitism.

I agree with Ben Shapiro's message to Mr. Roberts: "If Heritage Foundation wishes to retain its status as a leading thought institution in the conservative movement, it must act as ideological border control." Because it failed to do so, scholars are self-deporting. What time is it? Too late to save the Heritage Foundation.

Comments

[Dr. Ed 2]

I saw things at Heritage that I didn’t like the looks of 25 years ago. I saw them as an outsider, and I started to wonder if what I had been told about Heritage was actually true.

[Longtobefree]

"The leaders of the conservative think tank have abandoned its founding principles."

"Conservative" - I don't think that word means what you think it means.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

It’s so hilarious how superior Trump Cabinet officials are to Bush Republicans like Cunnalingus Rice and Robert Gates and Dumb as a Box of Rox Tillerson!! You supported such assclowns in the past!!

[santamonica811]

Satire/sarcasm???

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

You think Cunnalingus Rice is better than Rubio?? WTF???

[Phanatic]

If The Heritage Foundation was American's leading conservative think tank, it must have figured out a way to conserve something.

Can you give me an example?

[denizen]

Conservatives conserved nothing. The leading light of conservatism you mention, Buckley, is perhaps best known for his phrase implicitly defining conservatism as the desire to lose in a principled fashion—as someone "who stands athwart history, yelling stop."

Conservatism is dead and nobody should mourn it. The principles you say value will be shortly dead absent the mass deportation and bar on immigration of incompatible peoples. "Conservatism" utterly failed to get that done in service of business interests who wanted cheap labor.

Conservatism has absolutely zero appeal in the current time. Why would Heritage not both: (1) care about defending America from its imminent demise by demographic change; and (2) want to avoid alienating everybody who is both right wing and awake?

[Roger S]

The part about idolizing Buckley for one of his silly rants is particularly strange. Blackman seems to say that conservatism is letting Buckley censor his rivals. Weird.

[denizen]

To be fair, I read the piece as supporting Buckley for "condemning" Welch rather than doing anything to present dissemination of his message. I say that regardless of the facts about Buckley's treatment of Welsh. At least the piece doesn't support "censor[ship]."

But the idea that an organization needs to condemn people like Welch to "protect its own integrity" is pretty wild to me. It's a weird fault of "conservatives" to have the need to supplicate to those who hate them.

[Roger S]

Buckley denouncing Welch was just another power play. They were competing for conservative subscribers. For Blackman to cite this as a great move, 63 years later, is weird.

[denizen]

Interesting. I don't know the history.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think it's mixed. Admittedly I was just a child at the time, and didn't start reading NR until my teens, but my impression from later is that Buckley was genuinely opposed to antisemitism and thought it was wrong to casually use unreasonable accusations of being a communist as a political club.

But they WERE also competitors for the same pool of supporters, and I don't think that would have been a non-factor.

[David Nieporent]

They weren't competing for anyone. As the article mentions, JBS was going around calling Eisenhower communist. NR was trying to protect its brand (i.e., conservatism), not recruit lunatics.

I know this may seem quaint in the age of the Cult of Trump, but back then acting that way was seen as a way to alienate supporters, drive them away from one's cause.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think you're just being unrealistic here. Of course there were people that could have gone NR or JB, and Buckley wanted them going NR.

But I'll agree movement purity was a much bigger motive.

[Roger S]

The whole thing is ridiculous. Imagine someone complaining in 2088 that someone called Trump a Nazi.

[Brett Bellmore]

There's at least some truth to this rant: You conserve things you still have. Once you've lost them, the time for conserving is over.

The truth is that the left has prevailed on almost every issue Buckley fought them on. He conserved almost nothing. He stood athwart history saying "Stop" (Yelling would have been too undignified...) and got run over by a steamroller. People who are standing in the subsequent ruins trying to figure out how to win something back don't tend to view that as a legacy to emulate.

That, of course, does not imply doing the opposite of everything he did. He was right to oppose antisemitism.

Back then the Holocaust was not a long distant memory, it was fresh and raw, and people were aware where antisemitism could lead. So you had to look at anybody who embraced it anyway as a bit more than just misguided. They were dallying with evil, and could be presumed to know it.

Today, of course, the generation that liberated the death camps are virtually all dead, the generation they raised (mine) are dying out, and people can dally with the evil of antisemitism without knowing what they're doing. Doesn't make it any less evil, but it can be unknowing evil.

But it still has to be fought, not just because it's evil, but because it's so damned STUPID. It leads people to divert limited resources to fight imaginary foes, while "enemy of my enemy" reasoning blinds them to the real threats of the day.

[Randal]

defending America from its imminent demise by demographic change

This is the only thing conservatism has ever truly cared about. Demographic change is the history that Buckley wanted to stand athwart and feebly yell "stop!" at. Whether it's Blacks, or Irish, or Chinese, or Catholics, or Italians, or Muslims, or Hispanics, conservatism is practically defined by its paranoia around preserving some sort of percieved purity of stock.

[Roger S]

This is just a Jewish power play. Fuentes complains that Jews have too much influence, so the Jews at Heritage freak out. Heritage did not endorse Fuentes.

Apparently Jews want to prove that they do have too much influence, and they want to punish Heritage to prove it.

[David Nieporent]

Schlafly is a garden variety antisemite like his mother, but he does of course illustrate the paradox: if Jews condemn you for saying antisemitic things, this just proves you were right because they condemned you.

[Roger S]

In today's world, everyone is either called an antisemite or a genocidal baby killer.

[Brett Bellmore]

Listening to his interview now. About 50 minutes in.

I find myself echoing Fuentes' question: "Are you playing dumb, or are you just dumb?" If Piers isn't an idiot, he's profoundly dishonest. And it's not hard to figure out which.

Now, I think Fuentes is way, way too comfortable with being "edgy". He's carrying it to an entirely self-destructive point.

But buried under that he's making some solid points, and Piers is being extremely dishonest in his efforts to misunderstand all of them.

And 70 minutes in? Yeah Fuentes is almost suicidally edgy. It's not that he doesn't have points buried under it, he does. He just has so little interest in whether he offends somebody that he's self-sabotaging.

He's giving people who don't want to address the points every single excuse they need. What an idiot. Actually more of an idiot than Piers, and that takes work.

[Sarcastr0]

buried under that he's making some solid points

I'm not listening to all that, but what solid points do you think Nick Fuentes makes?

[Roger S]

Fuentes says plenty of things that can be criticized. Blackman could be criticizing what Fuentes says, but does not. Why is that?

[Brett Bellmore]

Here's an automatically generated transcript, it seems reasonably accurate.

For instance, that there's a material difference between immigration from culturally similar nations, and mass immigration from very different and unsuccessful nations.

Or when he's trying to talk about how it's rational to avoid black people you don't know, because blacks have a very high violent crime rate. Around a half hour. And that's what he means by being "racist", that's he's not going to pretend stuff like that isn't true.

At about 34 minutes, Fuentes is desperately trying to get Piers to address different crime rates, and Piers just flatly refuses to talk about rates. Keeps leaning on equal numbers of white and black school shooters, guess it was the only violent crime he could find equal numbers for.

Fuentes is trying to drive home that only an infinitesimal percentage of white men commit school shootings, but something like 5 percent of black men commit violent crimes, so why is Piers obsessing about equal numbers of school shootings? And Piers just flatly refuses to talk about that.

That's got to have been deliberate.

[Daddyhill]

If Jews have, as you say, too much influence, doesn't that imply too much power as well? And if they have too much power, then why are Fuentes and his ilk still alive and uninjured? For that matter, why haven't people like Alex Jones been knocked off by the all-powerful and secretive global conspirators they've claimed to have outed? Please don't tell me that it's just more evidence that proves the existence of the cabals. Heads they win, tails we lose, is that it?

Schadenfreude seems to be a less popular sentiment than it was 10-15 years ago. Nevertheless, it's what I'm feeling as I watch the Project 2025 theocrats at Heritage crash and burn. Perhaps it's a case of Icaroid hubris, and it will be the Furies, not the sweet chariot, who'll be coming for them. "They had it comin', they had it comin', they only have themselves to blame."

[Roger S]

Jones and Fuentes have been de-platformed and relentlessly attacked. Why are they still alive? My guess is that they take unusual precautions.

Heritage has been involved in many controversies, notably Project 2025 and Trump. If someone wanted to quit over them, I would not be surprised. But instead, all I hear is Jews whining about Heritage not denouncing Tucker Carlson for interviewing Nick Fuentes, and Fuentes once suggesting that the Holocaust might be exaggerated.

With half the world lining up with those wanting to kick the Jews out of Israel, why are the Jews complaining about this?

[Roger S]

And Mr. Roberts said he wouldn’t be “attacking our friends on the right” or “canceling our own people,” referring respectively to Messrs. Carlson and Fuentes.

This is not true. The famous Roberts message said: “The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” and then went on to attack Fuentes.

Blackman also said: "Nick Fuentes, a fringe figure who has denied the Holocaust." Fuentes was asked this on Piers Morgan, and affirmed the Nazi Jewish Holocaust.

[Drewski]

"Fuentes was asked this on Piers Morgan, and affirmed the Nazi Jewish Holocaust."

Sarcastically, suggesting maybe the death toll was as high as 700 million and then immediately praising Hitler.

[Roger S]

Blackman could have cited actual Fuentes opinions. No, Blackman is just a bigot.

[Brett Bellmore]

7 million, idiot. I just listened to it.

Fuentes wasn't questioning that the Holocaust happened and was awful. He was objecting to laws that made it a crime in many countries to publicly say anything about it that differed from the government's position.

[Stuart]

I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.

I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.

I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.

The Beatles (not Josh).

[Randal]

Pretty funny that, like all great conservative institutions, the Heritage Foundation ultimately succumbed to bigotry and died of antisemitism.

[Roger S]

All non-Jews are antisemites. All Whites are racists. All Americans are imperialists. Keep it up.

[Randal]

All non-Jews are antisemites.

Given how often I too am accused of antisemitism, I can agree with you on this one.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, the cop's badge cam just got released.

Sure looks like he got hit.

[Chris Williams]

America's leading conservative think tanks are Cato, AEI, and the Hoover Institute.

Every time I reviewed research from Heritage, their methodologies by which they derived their numbers were so questionable that it wasted my time just looking at them. Not to mention that traditionalism and fundamentalism tie, politically, back more to Thomas Jefferson's ideas of the Yeoman farmer and Democratic politics through until the 1970s. Traditionalism is not conservativism. It's a movement to push people to believe and behave in a certain way, based on faith and moral stricture, similar to woke ideology on gender fluidity, etc. with their people pushing those views as a particular faith and morality.

To be conservative is to be cautious and prudent; nothing more and nothing less.