After 30 years of funding all manner of right-wing agitprop, the John M. Olin Foundation closes its doors, thus answering the question, “What if It’s a Wonderful Life had been about Old Man Potter instead of George Bailey?” “Without [Olin], the Federalist Society might not exist, nor its network of 35,000 conservative lawyers. Economic analysis might hold less sway in American courts. The premier idea factories of the right, from the Hoover Institution to the Heritage Foundation, would have lost millions of dollars in core support. And some classics of the conservative canon would have lost their financier, including Allan Bloom’s lament of academic decline and Charles Murray’s attacks on welfare.“