[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 150 (Wednesday, September 25, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6429-S6430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO DR. LEE EDWARDS

  Mr. LEE. Madam President, the resurgence of American conservatism 
over the last three-quarters of a century had many fathers: James 
Burnham, Willmore Kendall, Frank Meyer, Richard Weaver, Milton 
Friedman, Russell Kirk, and, of course, William F. Buckley. They laid 
the intellectual foundation for the political transformation launched 
by Senator Barry Goldwater and brought to fruition by Ronald Reagan. 
All those are names of the past, but one individual remains with us who 
knew most of them, wrote about them, and popularized their thinking 
that transformed American society.
  This is Dr. Lee Edwards. Now in his tenth decade, he has been an 
irreplaceable part of the conservative movement longer than most of us 
have been alive. He is a scholar and teacher with a doctorate from the 
Catholic University of America and further study at the Sorbonne. He is 
a philosopher, formerly the distinguished fellow in conservative 
thought at the Heritage Foundation. His books have been translated into 
as many languages as societies and their peoples have hungered for 
freedom.
  His volumes still speak eloquently to young Americans who wonder 
where we go from here: ``The Collapse of Communism,'' ``The Power of 
Ideas,'' ``The Conservative Revolution: The Movement that Remade 
America,'' ``Reading the Right Books, a Guide for the Intellectual 
Conservative,'' and biographies of half a dozen major conservative 
leaders. He knew them all.

[[Page S6430]]

  One might think he deserves some sort of monument.
  Well, he has one, a monument that he more than anyone else created.
  It stands a few blocks from this Capitol at the intersection of 
Massachusetts Avenue, New Jersey Avenue, and G Street. It is the 
Victims of Communism Memorial, dedicated to ``more than 100 million 
victims of Communism and to those who love liberty.''
  Authorized by Act of Congress in 1993, it was first suggested to Lee 
by his wife Anne, who was also his partner in his writing.
  If this memorial were a mandatory stop for all the high school tours 
that come to DC every spring, graduates would be better inoculated 
against the ignorance of radical leftism that infests too many of our 
universities.
  Lee's work continues through his Victims of Communism Memorial 
Foundation, here in Washington, where visitors are reminded that one-
fifth of humanity still lives under communism in China, Cuba, Vietnam, 
Laos, and North Korea, as well as other countries where oppressive 
Marxist-Leninist practices impoverish and subjugate millions.
  Whatever honors have been bestowed upon him in the past, and whatever 
accolades await him in the future, Lee Edwards remains that rare person 
of enormous achievement for liberty, whose greatest reward will always 
be the joyous sound of breaking chains across the world, the shattering 
of tyranny, and the anthems of a free people.

                          ____________________