Funding Fathers: The Unsung Heroes of the Conservative
Movement
By Nicole Hoplin and Ron Robinson
(Regnery Publishing, 248 pages, $27.95)
IN NOVEMBER OF 1958, Barry
Goldwater was reelected to a second term in the Senate, but
Republicans lost 48 seats in the House, 12 in the Senate and 13 of
21 governorships. November 2008 doesn’t look as bad by comparison.
The party’s enormous losses did not discourage Dean Clarence
Manion, who decided that this was a fine time to draft Goldwater
for the Republican nomination for president. A former dean of Notre
Dame law school, Manion wrote Goldwater on July 27,
1959, to suggest that the Arizona
senator write a book outlining his philosophy. He suggested
that the title be “The Conscience of a Conservative,” and he
offered Goldwater a $1,000 advance.
Manion then filed the paperwork to start a nonprofit
publishing house after New York
publishers declined to acquire a book with no manuscript.
(Manion decided a nonprofit would allow Goldwater supporters to
take a tax deduction when they made bulk purchases of the book.)
Manion was the man behind the scenes, according to authors Ron
Robinson, president of Young America’s Foundation, and Nicole
Hoplin, who tell his story in their fine new book
Funding Fathers: The Unsung Heroes of the Con servative
Movement. He was ever-present, urging Goldwater
ghostwriter Brent Bozell to get on with the writing of
The Conscience of a Conservative, and
helping with proofreading, layout, promotion, and distribution to
get the book into the hands of Republican delegates before the
party’s state caucuses and conventions met in 1960. Goldwater
didn’t win the nomination in 1960 or the presidency in 1964. But
his book’s words inspired.
I have little interest in streamlining government or in
making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not
undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My
aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to
inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to
the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that
impose on the people an unwarranted financial
burden.
Who will write that today? Hoplin and Robinson tell
Manion’s story because they want to inspire their readers to be
donors and activists like him—entrepreneurs of political ideas who
will not let a bad election cycle undermine their determination to
invest in ideas they believe in. Timing, they suggest, is far less
important than commitment and clarity. Donors, in particular, need
to take heart. They can make a difference if they retain confidence
in their capacity to give wisely. Hoplin and Robinson warn against
too often demoralizing donors by telling stories about donor
mistakes and the neglect of donor intentions by the foundations
they create. What’s needed, they write, is a new generation of
courageous philanthropists, men and women who will make great gifts
supporting conservative ideas and institutions. Such gifts will
inspire others to imitate their example.
Funding Fathers is a celebration of
the unheralded achievements of great donors. For instance, the
names of Kansas City philanthropist
William Volker (1859–1947) and his nephew Harold Luhnow (1895–1978)
are forgotten. In part, that’s because they put a time limit on the
life of the grant-making Volker Fund they established. Unlike a
Ford Foundation or Pew Charitable Trust, which exist in perpetuity
to support causes contrary to the donors who created them, the
Volker Fund honored its donors’ intentions during their lifetimes.
During its three decades of existence the Volker Fund achieved far
more than William Volker could have imagined.
In a Kansas City archive Hoplin
and Robinson located a scrap of paper dated May 7,
1945, on which William Volker authorized a $2,000
grant request by Friedrich Hayek to defray the travel expenses of
17 Americans to the first Mont Pelerin Society meeting in
Switzerland. It was during the high tide of
Keynesianism (and one day before Nazi Germany’s surrender) that
Volker made it possible for American free-market economists and
writers to meet their counterparts in war-torn
Europe.
The $2,000 grant helped pay for economists Milton
Friedman, Frank Knight, Ludwig von Mises, and George Stigler,
writers Felix Morley, John Davenport, and Henry Hazlitt, and
institution-builders Leonard Read of the Foundation for Economic
Education and F. A. Harper, who would found the Institute for
Humane Studies, to confer with like-minded Europeans about the fate
of the postwar world. Hoplin and Robinson’s diligent research also
uncovers that Volker subsequently provided teaching stipends for
Hayek, Mises, Morley, and economist Murray Rothbard and sponsored
lectures by Milton Friedman that would become his book
Capitalism and Freedom. One wonders
what grants might have a comparable impact today.
FUNDING FATHERS contains
chapters on the vision and generosity of Henry Regnery
and William F. Buckley Jr.; auto dealer Holmes Tuttle and the oil
men Henry Salvatori and Cy Rubel—Ronald Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet”;
and Britain’s Antony Fisher, the chicken farmer-turned- Margaret
Thatcher adviser who arguably invented the entrepreneurial
public-policy think tank and encouraged others to start them around
the world. It tells the stories of Spike Hennessy, a major
benefactor of Hillsdale
College, and Joseph Coors, whose $250,000 gift
jump-started the creation of the Heritage Foundation. While they
often repeat stories contained in other memoirs, biographies, and
histories, Hoplin and Robinson have uncovered new information about
the philanthropy undergirding the conservative movement,
particularly during its early days. Their archival research and
interviews provide many examples of how big ideas have often
depended on modest and not-so-modest contributions from savvy
donors.
The authors’ concluding chapter describes the odyssey of
John Engalitcheff. Born a Russian prince, he was forced by the
Bolshevik revolution to emigrate in 1924 to the
United States, where he eventually made his
fortune manufacturing air- conditioning products. The entrepreneur
began making contributions to anti-Communist and pro-defense
groups. On November 15, 1984, he collapsed just as he was about to
shake hands with President Ronald Reagan in a White House receiving
line, days after the President’s reelection, and he died several
days later. In 1990, upon his widow’s death, Engalitcheff’s estate
was divided among nine organizations, which each received a minimum
of $4 million and some up to $13 million, the bequest totaling $102
million. The organizations included the Young America’s Foundation,
where Robinson is president and Hoplin is director of foundation
relations. Engalitcheff’s bequest to the foundation eventually
allowed it to buy the hilltop Reagan Ranch, the president’s getaway
retreat outside Santa Barbara,
California.
Robinson and Hoplin observe that by funding the property
purchase Engalitcheff’s gift not only assisted Mrs. Reagan with her
husband’s medical costs but it preserved a tangible part of the
president’s legacy. Today the Reagan Ranch serves as a Young
America’s Foundation conference venue and historic
site.
Funding Fathers is a timely book
because it reminds conservatives that while elections come and go,
good ideas prevail. But spreading those ideas requires
organization, which requires money, which, for conservatives,
requires donors.
