On the recordSeptember 25, 2024
the resurgence of American conservatism over the last three-quarters of a century had many fathers: James Burnham, Willmore Kendall, Frank Meyer, Richard Weaver, Milton Friedman, Russell Kirk, and, of course, William F. Buckley. They laid the intellectual foundation for the political transformation launched by Senator Barry Goldwater and brought to fruition by Ronald Reagan. All those are names of the past, but one individual remains with us who knew most of them, wrote about them, and popularized their thinking that transformed American society. This is Dr. Lee Edwards. Now in his tenth decade, he has been an irreplaceable part of the conservative movement longer than most of us have been alive. He is a scholar and teacher with a doctorate from the Catholic University of America and further study at the Sorbonne. He is a philosopher, formerly the distinguished fellow in conservative thought at the Heritage Foundation. His books have been translated into as many languages as societies and their peoples have hungered for freedom. His volumes still speak eloquently to young Americans who wonder where we go from here: ``The Collapse of Communism,'' ``The Power of Ideas,'' ``The Conservative Revolution: The Movement that Remade America,'' ``Reading the Right Books, a Guide for the Intellectual Conservative,'' and biographies of half a dozen major conservative leaders. He knew them all. One might think he deserves some sort of monument.…





