In Memoriam: Don Lipsett: An Unsung Midwesterner
Kannon, John Von
"In Memoriam: Don Lipsett: An Unsung Midwesterner" by John Von Kannon An Unsung Midwesterner Woodburn, Indiana This self-proclaimed "Smallest City in Indiana" became a temporary Mecca for a hundred or...
...Oi4 Remembering the father of the Adam Smith tie...
...James Burnham Law 5: "Whenever there is prohibition, there's a bootlegger...
...Rusher's Other Law: "When you find a good thing, run it into the ground...
...As one of his eulogists put it, "Don Lipsett had the capacity to change lives by putting together relationships and ideas...
...Don had a taste for both...
...A devoted student of Adam Smith, he founded the Invisible Hand Society, whose exact purpose is unknown, and the Stephen Decatur Shop, procurer of those Adam Smith neckties that flourished during the Reagan administration...
...While at Indiana University he founded the Conservative Club, the Beer & Pizza Marching Society, and the Moon Mullins Study Group and Choral Society...
...In the grim days of the late 1960s and the 1970s, it was the Philadelphia Society that held conservatives together...
...He knew that if conservative ideas were to recover from the Goldwater defeat, they would need organizations and symbols...
...He was also working to build a movement, a community of kindred spirits...
...He cemented them with a unique blend of conviction, humor, and personal loyalty...
...Don served on the staff of ISI and ACU, and was a friend of the founders of National Review...
...All allowed Hoosier conservatives, including the founding staff of this magazine, to get to know one another...
...James Burnham Law vii: "You can't divorce yourself...
...White Mountain Band"), Woodburn is everything Washington can never be...
...From the cheery sign on Norm's U-DO-IT Center ("Regional Games: Go Jason and Nolan") to the mixed news on the front of the American Legion hall ("No Bingo Saturday...
...Sir Rhodes Boyson, M.P.'s Third Law: "I wouldn't trust the communists even if I knew they were telling the truth...
...Visitors to Don's Michigan home looked forward to long, late nights with him, and no stay was complete without a tour of the town in his vintage Cadillac limousine, once owned by Bill Buckley...
...During the meetings of the various organizations he founded, Don was never at the podium giving speeches...
...It is also the birthplace of Don Lipsett, who worked quietly to build the conservative movement for more than three decades...
...The Harris Law of Nugatory Achievement...
...If a thing isn't worth doing, it isn't worth doing well...
...The American Spectator • January 1996 51...
...Don also had a lovely sense of humor...
...The purpose of Don's organizations was not just to develop and promote ideas and institutions, though they did...
...One always left physically exhausted and emotionally refreshed...
...The Rt...
...Ed Meese rarely appeared in public without his, and, in tribute, most of the men at Don's memorial service wore theirs...
...Instead he would sit quietly in the back of the room, puffing away onhis pipe, and taking notes on odd scraps of paper...
...JOHN VON KANNON, former publisher of The American Spectator, is vice president and treasurer of the Heritage Foundation...
...Some of my favorites (numbering in the original) show Don's eclectic interests, world view, and sense of humor: • John Lathrop Ryan's Law of Public Oratory: "Everybody except me speaks too long...
...In this age of self-promotion, it also meant that he was indeed unsung...
...His low-key manner meant that some who knew him underestimated him...
...We will miss him deeply...
...Mike Mooney's Law: "You can't always count on your friends, but you can always count on your enemies...
...Josh Billings Law: "The fellow who writes the banks' advertisements is not the one who makes the loans...
...In 1964 conservative organizations could pretty much be counted on one hand—three fingers to be exact: the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), the American Conservative Union (ACU), and National Review...
...His purpose was serious, though his style was anything but...
...Those meetings led to friendships and successes for conservative institutions...
...In 1964 he founded the Philadelphia Society, a gathering of academic, policy, and business people who meet twice a year to discuss conservative philosophy...
...IN MEMORIAM by John Von Kannon -"9147-', di], Pal16416,40) An Unsung Midwesterner Woodburn, Indiana This self-proclaimed "Smallest City in Indiana" became a temporary Mecca for a hundred or so conservative leaders on a recent Saturday, here to pay their last respects to Don Lipsett—a man Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner called "the unsung hero of the conservative movement" The conservative ideas that now flow from Washington and the Rush Limbaugh studios in New York began at the grass roots, and Woodburn is nothing if not grass roots...
...For one, it introduced those of us involved in the early days of The American Spectator to new writers and new financial supporters...
...Those notes eventually became "A Listing of Important Laws," which he would fax to friends upon request...
...The conversation would wander from the state of the conservative movement to the Indiana University basketball team, to news from long-time friends, to the latest hot mutual fund...
Vol. 29 • January 1996 • No. 1
