The Heritage Foundation First Principles

In this First Principles essay, Heritage Foundation scholar Jay W. Richards makes explicit the foundational premises—often tacit—that shape all of Heritage’s research and advocacy.

He identifies 15 principles, arranged logically from the deepest foundations upward: moral realism and the natural law, God as the source of moral order, and human equality and dignity; then inalienable rights, government by consent, and the reality of human fallenness; and finally ordered liberty, the rule of law, limited government, religious liberty, the pre-political family, virtue, free enterprise, national defense, and patriotic citizenship. The essay is descriptive rather than prescriptive, aiming to provide a durable foundation for the conservative defense of the American Republic.

Please find the First Principles essay: here

Jay W. Richards, PhD, is Vice President of Social and Domestic Policy and William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation.