The Research On The Conservative Values Of The Heritage Foundation In America

The Heritage Foundation is one of the biggest and most influential conservative think tank in America, which has clear political stance and implements conservative policy; In more than 30 years pushing the process of conservative movement, The Heritage Foundation laid the leadership position in policy research institutions in America and the world, became the most influential conservative think tank of the Republican government. Its research scope involves politics, economy, culture, diplomacy, and so on, it flourished in Reagan period, significantly impacted George Walker Bush administration's foreign policy after the September 11 attacks. The Heritage Foundation creates a new mode of public policy research institutions, which later was called as "advocacy tank" by Times, establishes extensive contact network, influences government decisions by using various way, and is more politicized and ideological than other think tanks.As a conservative think tank, the tenet and mission of The Heritage Foundation is "to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense", which is the most fundamental idea and conservative values of the Heritage, also is the center of its political stance and policy advocacy. Not ignored is the anti-China stance of The Heritage Foundation, such as advocating "China threat", supporting to sale arms to Taiwan. In recent years, with the backflow of the conservative trend in American society, the Heritage plays more and more important roles in Republican, top government and Congress, and has extensive and far-reaching influence in public policies and opinions. Deeply probing its conservative values, learning about how they be applied and penetrated to the research process of major issues, then how impact public opinions and government decision-making, all these can help to understand the essence of the Heritage Foundation and seize core elements of its increasingly growing and influential expansion.This paper is about theoretical analysis of the Heritage Foundation, will research its conservative values and how implement and reflect them in specific policies. In addition to preface and epilogue, the main part of the article is made up of three chapters, the content of the first chapter is the introduction of the Heritage's established background, tenet and organizational structure, publications and contact network; the second chapter is on analysing its conservatism values——free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense——from a theoretical perspective; the third one is case studies, through two cases, Bill Clinton's health-care reform and the Bush administration policy in China, explaining how the Heritage put its conservative values into practice in order to influence government decisions in these two problems.