Mentioning Townhall is not to say it was always with us, or inevitable.  Townhall was birthed into the nascent online community of news and commentary in 1995, by the dint and work of a giant in the conservative community—Edwin J. Feulner.  Dr. Feulner passed away last week.  Just as Townhall was not inevitable, neither was the intellectual and puissant conservative movement as we know it and knew it.  Ed Feulner was one of a handful that made it happen.

His founding and leadership of the Heritage Foundation didn’t make some difference in the conservative world, it made nearly all the difference.  Heritage not only churned out copious white papers on serious policy issues, it hosted, gave classes, and jobs to conservative thinkers and writers.  It shaped the Reagan administration’s policies in the 1980s, and it brought untold tens of thousands of young conservatives into the fold of scholarship and hobnobbing with the constellation of important conservative writers and thinkers.

Ed Feulner was one of our most important inventors and captains.  May he rest in peace.