The Conservative Movement Needs More Happy Warriors


One year ago, the conservative movement lost a founding father. Ed Feulner was a giant. He co-founded the Heritage Foundation, built it into the intellectual engine of American conservatism, and gave the Reagan Revolution an institutional home for decades. Presidents sought his counsel. Thousands of young conservatives — myself included — found their calling under his tutelage.

But titles and accomplishments, remarkable as they are, don’t capture the man. Ed Feulner was my boss, my mentor, and my friend. And the conservative movement is worse off without him. We all are. There was no more gracious, intellectually brilliant, or strategically insightful figure in the movement. He could disarm an opponent with a smile, or with a footnote, and finish both before lunch.

Ed’s death came at a moment when the movement he built stands at a crossroads. Will conservatism return to the principles that anchored it and the Republican Party for decades — limited government, free markets, strong families, American leadership in the world? Or will it continue drifting toward a populism unmoored from conservative conviction, one that in its appetite for state power and its politics of grievance often looks more like the Left than the Right?

It is tempting, in the current moment, to despair. Ed never would have. Joy anchored who he was. He lived through moments that looked far darker than this one — the wreckage of the post-Watergate GOP, the malaise of the Carter years, the wilderness after 2008 — and he never once confused a losing season with a lost cause. His conviction was that strategies and messaging may change, but principles endure. This conviction remains as true today as when Ed co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973.

Ronald Reagan called for happy warriors. Ed answered that call every day of his life. His famous refrain — “onward, always” — wasn’t just his slogan. It was his temperament. He believed that in Washington, there are no permanent victories and no permanent defeats, only permanent battles worth fighting well and cheerfully.

That is the inheritance the Right is now squandering.

What passes for conservative leadership today too often is clout-chasing and catastrophizing — influencers who monetize despair, who treat every news cycle as the apocalypse, and every ally as a suspect. Ed understood something they don’t: A movement that runs on animus eventually runs on empty.

For conservatism to succeed, it must build, not destroy — and it must build with gratitude, not contempt, toward its mothers and fathers.

Ed’s own life proved the point. He didn’t tear down those who came before him. He studied them, learning from Russell Kirk and Frank Meyer, and then built something greater, honoring them in the process. He knew he stood on the shoulders of giants, and he said so constantly.

A conservative movement that abandons the demeanor of Ed Feulner — the graciousness, the gratitude, the stubborn cheerfulness — is hardly conservative at all. Conservatism, after all, begins with the conviction that we have received something worth conserving.

Rage is not a governing philosophy. Gratitude is.

The mission of the happy warrior is core to who we are at Advancing American Freedom. As president of AAF, I was honored to have Ed on our board. He joined in February 2024, when we were still finding our footing, and he became our principled and joyful anchor — guiding us as we grew into the organization we are today.

In board meetings, he was exactly the man he had been for 50 years in public life: generous with praise, exacting on principle, and always, always looking forward.

The Right doesn’t need another pundit predicting the end of America. It needs a new generation of Feulner-style happy warriors — men and women who believe, as Ed did, that the American experiment is worth defending precisely because it is worth loving. People who wake up eager for the fight, not because they hate their opponents, but because they love their country.

Ed knew he stood on the shoulders of giants. Today’s conservatives stand on his.

On this first anniversary of his death, the best way to honor him is not with mourning but with the disposition he modeled for half a century: joy for today, hope for the future, and gratitude for the past.

Onward, always.

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Tim Chapman is president of Advancing American Freedom. He served as chief of staff to Dr. Feulner and co-founded Heritage Action for America.