“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. When we come to The Heritage Foundation,” Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi greeted his audience in Washington on October 5, 1989, “it is like coming home.” He thanked the right-wing think tank for repealing Congressional blocks on aid, which would enable him to fight on for a “free market economy” and democracy.  Eventually a ceasefire was reached in Angola, and elections were called. When Savimbi lost in 1992, he plunged the country into war yet again. The next decade of Angolan history was defined by broken ceasefires, mass killing of civilians, and diamond-funded insurgency until the country’s government finally caught and killed him in 2002. The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont wrote upon his death that “his fighters laid siege to a country's cities, starved and enslaved its people, and sowed its fields with mines. In 30 years they drove a third of the population from their homes in their battle with the government.”

Savimbi closed his 1989 speech by thanking Heritage for its “great support. No Angolan will forget your efforts.” I am not sure Americans remember those efforts enough. 

Today the Heritage Foundation is running roughshod over American democracy. Russ Vought, formerly a Heritage lobbying head, is now using his power as director of the Office of Management and Budget to cut funding Congress has already appropriated. This is a flagrant violation of both the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and the Constitution more generally. If you listened only to what Heritage said for the last few decades, this could come as a surprise. 

But if you listened to what they did, it was obvious. The Heritage Foundation has always pursued far-right power, across the world. When Savimbi died, foreign policy scholar Piero Gleijeses wrote in the LA Times that Savimbi “never deviated from his overriding goals or principles. . . absolute power.” The Heritage Foundation, and the “constitutional conservative” posture more broadly, has followed the same principle.

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Founded in 1973, it took time for Heritage to gain steam. The think tank is practically synonymous with the Reagan administration. On their website, their first boast is pushing the Reagan administration into “implementing nearly two-thirds of the 2,000 policy recommendations from our first ever ‘Mandate for Leadership.’”  While he was a horrible and far-right President, Reagan did not always satisfy American conservatives. Heritage’s role in the Reagan administration was to pressure the President from the right– a role it has happily taken up since. The 2025 Mandate for Leadership is something you probably know better as “Project 2025.”