Feulner asked right questions about preserving America’s future

Much has changed in American politics and public policy over the past two decades. That doesn’t mean a major shift in the principles underlying the best policies.

The recent death of Edwin Feulner at age 83 prompted this observer to revisit a 2006 conversation about basic principles. Feulner’s insights remain as valuable today as they were nearly 20 years ago.

A founder of the conservative Heritage Foundation, Feulner led the organization from 1977 to 2013 and again in 2017-18. “Under his tenure, it became the premier conservative think tank in Washington,” editors of National Review noted on July 20, 

Heritage enjoyed a stellar reputation in 2006, when Feulner spoke in Raleigh for the John Locke Foundation. He promoted the book “Getting America Right: The True Conservative Values Our Nation Needs Today.”  

George W. Bush had secured a second term in the White House. He had Republican support in Congress.

Yet Feulner had clear concerns. “At this stage of the game, we are really convinced that most conservatives are really rather disillusioned,” he told Carolina Journal. “After all, we’ve been in charge of the White House for 18 of the last 25 years, we’ve been in charge of Congress for the last 12, and both of those for the last five. So this should be the best of times. And yet we’ve got real problems in Washington. So how do we get it right?”

Getting America “right” meant more to Feulner than achieving Republican policy goals. He wanted a government to move on the right rather than wrong course. Regardless of who held power, he wanted America to enjoy the greatest opportunity for long-term success.

To accomplish this task, Feulner identified “six basic questions that we want people to be able to put to their elected representatives.”

“First, is it the government’s business? That’s pretty basic, but something we don’t ask often enough,” he said. “Second, does it promote the self-reliance of the American people? Third, is it responsible — this program particularly or that one? Is it responsible for the government to be doing it?”

Feulner followed those initial three queries with “issue-related” questions. “First, does it make us more prosperous?” he asked. “Second, does it make us safer? And third — one that’s very much in the news these days — does it unify us? Does it bring us together as a nation?”

The six questions “form kind of a basic rubric of conservative perspectives on whether the government should in fact be doing something or not,” Feulner added.

Distancing himself from “anarchists” and “hardcore libertarians,” Feulner clarified that some government programs — like the GI Bill after World War II — had worked well. His book noted “other programs over the years that have been well designed and targeted to their specific needs.”

“But I’ve got to tell you that when we’ve got the federal government funding things like a rain forest in Iowa, or that famous bridge to nowhere in Alaska, or now they’re talking about a railroad to nowhere down in Mississippi, that’s not really the government’s business,” he said. “Government shouldn’t be doing that.”

Beyond clear examples of government boondoggles, Feulner highlighted troubling news about Heritage’s annual Index of Dependency.

“Unfortunately, just since Ronald Reagan was first elected 25 years ago, we’ve seen the dependency of the American people for the four basics — health care, housing, education, and welfare — go up like 112%,” he said. “I mean we’re moving in the wrong direction. The Americans are a self-reliant people, and we’ve got to re-encourage that. We’ve got to get people off of the idea that government owes them so much.”

Feulner addressed the problem of so-called big-government conservatives. “One of my colleagues has started handing out bottled water to every congressman he meets, on the theory that otherwise they’ll drink too much of the Potomac River, and that somehow corrupts them,” he said. Too many Republicans head to Capitol Hill and “fall in the trap of believing that somehow big government is good government if it’s our government.”

“Conservatives shouldn’t believe that,” Feulner said. “We should all believe as Mr. Jefferson from my home state of Virginia said 200 and some years ago: ‘Any government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.’”

The conversation with Feulner predated Obamacare, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Big Beautiful Bill, and other major developments of the past two decades. Yet politicians of all persuasions could learn valuable lessons from Feulner’s 2006 prescription for getting America “right.”

Mitch Kokai is senior political analyst for the John Locke Foundation.