Edwin J. Feulner was a remarkable man with a remarkable career, a career that did much to shape the conservative movement in the second half of the 20th century.

In addition to his work in creating the Republican Study Committee in Congress and the Heritage Foundation, which he led as president for parts of five decades, Feulner poured his immense energy into building many of the institutions that have guided the nation. As the editors of National Review write in their obituary for that great man,

Beyond Washington, he played significant roles in starting the American Legislative Exchange Council and the State Policy Network, both of which remain essential incubators of conservative policy at the state and local levels. Later in life, in addition to returning briefly as Heritage’s president, he served as chairman emeritus of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Museum, and he was appointed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin as chairman of the Virginia Commission on Higher Education Board Appointments. He wrote nine books. He was a faithful Catholic, active in his parish and a Knight of Malta. And he was a devoted husband to his wife, Linda, for four decades, and a beloved father and grandfather.

Institutions are the bedrock of our civil society, beginning of course with that most foundational institution: the family. And no small part of the explanation for America’s relative sclerosis in the 21st century is the weakness and decline of so many of the American institutions that rose to prominence and did so much good work during our nation’s first two centuries.

Men such as Feulner recognized that we shape our institutions, and then our institutions shape us — and those who come after us. That’s why it’s such an achievement when institutions like the Heritage Foundation are founded and cultivated and why it’s such a tragedy when our institutions wither and fail under poor leadership.

There’s a certain tendency on the American right to recognize that, for example, the Boy Scouts or Yale or the Ford Foundation have gone astray, and declare a pox on all that. It is my view that that reasonable, at times, tendency should be tempered with a bit of obstinacy and a double measure of concerted action.

From time to time, conservative institutions grow up as successful alternatives to the moribund left-wing-dominated ones, but, more often than not, Americans have watched venerable institutions decline and fall into shadows of their former glory without anything useful replacing them. That usually happens because leaders forget the purpose for which an institution was founded — the purpose for which it was instituted.

If we don’t fix our institutions, we’ll find that degraded institutions are shaping us and our children. The result won’t be salutary. Perhaps worse, we’ll find that there are no institutions around to shape us at all.

Not every declining institution can or should be saved. And fights over the heart, soul, and direction of old institutions will be lost. But conservatives shouldn’t hesitate to fight the often long and always hard but very necessary battles to save the organizations that have formed and shaped the nation’s character. That is something that men like Ed Feulner understood. And we will regret it if we don’t appreciate his legacy.