Jamie Rose for The New York Times
Eugene Meyer of the Federalist Society said his group might not exist without the John M. Olin Foundation.
Posted on 05/29/2005 7:56:04 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON, May 28 - Without it, the Federalist Society might not exist, nor its network of 35,000 conservative lawyers. Economic analysis might hold less sway in American courts. The premier idea factories of the right, from the Hoover Institution to the Heritage Foundation, would have lost millions of dollars in core support. And some classics of the conservative canon would have lost their financier, including Allan Bloom's lament of academic decline and Charles Murray's attacks on welfare.
Part Medici, part venture capitalist, the John M. Olin Foundation has spent three decades financing the intellectual rise of the right and exciting the envy of the left. Now the foundation is closing its doors. In telling the organization to spend his money within a generation, John M. Olin, a Midwestern ammunition and chemical magnate, sought to maximize his fortune's influence and keep it from falling into hostile - that is, liberal - hands.
In the budget offices of the right, the loss of Olin, though long anticipated, is bringing a stab of anxiety, as total annual giving of up to $20 million disappears from policy organizations, journals and academic aeries. Yet it is a measure of the foundation's success that the anxiety has not been greater. While a generation ago just three or four major foundations operated on the right, today's conservatism has no shortage of institutions, donors or brio.
At a recent farewell dinner in New York that drew a crowd of prominent thinkers and doers, James Piereson, the longtime director of Olin, recounted the 1970's threats that the foundation set out to address: economic decline, urban disorder and Soviet expansionism. By contrast, Mr. Piereson said, critics now say "the United States is too powerful" and its people "too proud."
"This," Mr. Piereson added wryly, "is an exchange that John Olin..."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Jamie Rose for The New York Times
Eugene Meyer of the Federalist Society said his group might not exist without the John M. Olin Foundation.
ping
I was surprised to find an interesting website over at Harvard:
The Harvard Project on Cold War Studies
Lots of interesting archives and links. I wonder if Mr. Olin's money had something to do with this as well?
Absolutetly correct. This should be an object lesson for other donors who fund foundations.
It's not so bad as all of that, even if the left has more foundation money. After all, it takes more money to sell false-to-fact propaganda than it does to expose the truth.
He probably visited John Heinz's grave and clocked the spinning at about 20,000 RPM, then decided he didn't want the same thing happening to him.
THANKS, for posting this.
Thank you John Olin.
Bump.
All of that money spent, and still not a conservative administration in place.
yeah, what a shame,
Kappa Sigma Brother Ping
What struck me about this article is how fair balanced it was--something that would not have happened, say, one year ago.
Printing this article isn't the story, IMO, but the way the Times wrote it, is. Maybe they're really trying...(nah).
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