Rev. Robert Sirico addressed a turn-away crowd at the annual banquet of the Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 30, 2008. In less than two decades the Acton Institute has become a major center for scholars and clergy focused on religion and liberty. In the early 1990s’ Father Sirico began discussing with Alex Chafuen and Leonard Liggio how to undertake work in that area. At the Mont Pelerin Society regional meeting in Antigua, Guatemala, Fr. Sirico received encouragement from Sir John Templeton. Fr. Sirico, Alex Chafuen and Leonard Liggio then huddled in the shadow of Aqua volcano to plan the Acton Institute with Father Sirico as president. The original Acton board included Leonard Liggio and Alex Chafuen (who continues to serve).

Fr. Sirico’s speech,  entitled, The Way Forward, appears below:

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Sherlock Holmes solves the crime in The Hound of the Baskervilles because the dog of the house does not bark. Hernando de Soto has solved the problem of property in the Third World by the dogs that bark. Whether in Peru, Egypt, Indonesia, South Africa, Haiti or Central Asia, millions of people have settled on unclaimed ‘public’ lands but have no titles since it was never owned except by the claim of the state to everything. Challenged to find the property rights among the settlers around the Third World cities, de Soto proves the property rights by each individual family’s dog knowing the family’s property lines. You know when you have crossed onto another’s property because a different dog barks.

We should recall one of the greatest books, The Ancient City, by the Sorbonne historian, Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (Garden City, NY, Doubleday Anchor Books). Fustel de Coulanges describes the origins of property in the classical world rooted in ancestral religion of each family. Each property was sacrosanct as the religion of each family was unique. According to Cicero (Pro Domo, 41): “What is there more holy, what is there more carefully fenced around with every description of religious respect, than the house of each individual citizen? Here is his altar, here is his hearth, here are his household gods; here all his sacred rights, all his religious ceremonies, are preserved.”

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By Leonard Liggio

James Gillray's famous cartoon portrays Burke's vitriol in the House of Commons

The Economist recently (October 4th) ran an article on the heroes of England’s current political parties. The Liberals selected the philosopher and economist, John Stuart Mill, and runner-up Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who introduced the welfare state and condemned the dominant Liberals to irrelevance by splitting the party by his favoring protective tariffs. The Conservatives selected Margaret Thatcher as their hero, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill nosing out the Whig ideologist, Edmund Burke, by one vote.

On October 6th, the Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute was presented by Professor Gertrude Himmelfarb (Mrs. Irving Kristol). In 1948 she edited a volume of the writings of Edmund Burke and in 1952 published her famous book on Lord Acton (Lord Acton: A Study In Concscience and Politics (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, 1952)). She taught for many decades at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Professor Himmelfarb’s lecture topic was Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (November, 1790) (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2001).

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I first met Hernando de Soto almost 30 years ago when I became president of the Institute for Humane Studies in Menlo Park, California. He visited me when he had met with Antony Fisher in San Francisco. We shared our ideas on strategy for free market policies.

Since then Hernando has been most successful in his property rights program of the INSTITUTE for LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY in Lima, Peru. He is the author of The Other Path and The Mystery of Capitalism which have been international bestsellers and translated into 20 languages.

His talks are always engaging and educational in free market ideas. His father had been a Peruvian diplomat, who was exiled to Europe during a socialist military dictatorship. Hernando was educated in Switzerland. Despite his elite education he often captures his audience by presenting the persona of a Latin American peasant speaking to a North American audience.

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In the early 1990’s there were several conferences on the end of the Soviet Union in which I participated. They were directed by Dr. John H. Moore, formerly deputy director of the Hoover Institution and of the National Science Foundation, who then was the director of the International Institute at George Mason University and later President of Grove City College in Pennsylvania. I participated in one held in Paris at Le Defense building of the Thomson company with a number of Russians dealing with the new situation. Another was sponsored by George Mason University and resulted in a book edited by John H. Moore, Legacies of the Collapse of Marxism (Fairfax, VA, George Mason University Press, 1994). It contained papers by a number of authorities such as Robert Conquest, Daniel Chirot, and George Mason faculty such as James Buchanan, Seymour Martin Lipset, Francis Fukuyama and Leonard P. Liggio.

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This week, Leonard Liggio discusses two heroes of Classical Liberalism from the 1800s, Henry Villard, and Oswald Garrison Villard.

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On August 23rd Dr. Gordon Tullock will retire from George Mason Law School, where he has been teaching law and economics since 1983. Leonard Liggio attended a going away event for him at his offices yesterday. Atlas honored Dr. Tullock with a lifetime achievement award last year.

In honor of Dr. Tullock’s great work, Leonard offers a brief history of his life and accomplishments…

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Each week we will bring you insights on current events and history from Atlas’s Vice President, Leonard Liggio.

This week, Leonard offers some historical background on the oil industry in the Middle East. These thoughts were inspired by an article by Dr. Hussein Sinjari of Baghdad, entitled, Iraq and Turkey: A Regional Cooperation Should Change the Region.

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