A week ago, Atlas conducted a successful event in Dallas, Texas. The event, entitled Risk in a Free Society was co-sponsored with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a long time ally of Atlas which was also created by our founder Antony Fisher. Although a variety of discussions emerged throughout the course of the event, the major focus was on the risk of terrorism, politics, and economics. The conference opened with a great introduction by John Goodman (NCPA) and Alex Chafuen (Atlas), each addressing the threat of risk to free societies. Mr. Goodman´s talk was in the context of the ever present entitlement crisis, and the risk that government imposes on society as it creates unfunded liabilities. Mr. Goodman´s major point was that this risk remains a looming threat, in which think tanks must remain vigilant so that this risk does not overwhelm our liberties. Continuing with the role of think tanks, Mr. Chafuen added that in the quest for a free society, a think tank needs to decrease the risk of those engaging in the fight for freedom, and increase the risk of those endangering liberty and free enterprise. These two impactful opening remarks set the tone for the conference.
To address the risk of terrorism, we had two different panels with prominent experts such as Sebestyen Gorka, who founded the Institute for Transitional Democracy and International Security (ITDIS) in Hungary in 2003. More recently, Mr. Gorka has been assigned to the National Defense University where he is conducting courses on terrorism. Additionally, we had Steve Emerson who is the executive director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism and one of the leading authorities on Islamic extremist networks. Both speakers made a case for why we need to modernize our counterterrorism strategy and tactics to adapt to current challenges. Conversely, Doug Bandow (American Conservative Defense Alliance) gave a broader perspective on what the tradeoff between security and freedom actually entails.
To discuss economic risks, we had distinguished speakers from various North American Institutions give a mixture of perspectives on issues ranging from the current U.S. financial crisis, to more general issues of risk and uncertainty in life. Offering a perspective on the recent Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, NCPA brought their distinguished fellow Bob McTeer. Comments on his remarks were made in a previous post here. Of mention, is a another presentation which made an interesting case for why think tanks exist. This presentation was given by Mike Walker of the Fraser Institute and the upshot of his talk was that since the biggest uncertainties are caused by governments, think tanks help mitigate the risk by offering a check on government power and make sense of the implications of government actions as depicted by their internationally recognized annual report on the Economic Freedom of the World.
To bring more international flavor to the event, the discussions on political risks had a strong Latin American component. The most prominent was our distinguished keynote speaker Jorge Quiroga (former President of Bolivia) – who could not attend due to the prevailing political crisis that is ensuing in Bolivia. However, the honorable Quiroga refused to cancel and called in during our luncheon presentation, to provide an uplifting analysis on the developments in Bolivia. His overarching conclusion for Bolivia, is that hope is still alive pending some form of third party mediation can resolve their crisis. To complement Quiroga´s talk we held a panel on Turmoil in the Andes where two long time friends of Atlas Rocio Guijarro (Venezuela) and Armando Ribas (Argentina) shared their views of on the current situation. Also on this panel, was a new intellectual entrepreneur – Roman Ortiz who directs the security and defense studies of the Fundacion Ideas Para la Paz (Ideas for Peace) in Colombia. These Latin American experts, generally agreed that the support for liberty in the Andes is being eroded by Hugo Chavez (or “Dr. Jeckyll”, as he was referred to in the presentation), Evo Morales (Bolivia), and Rafeal Correa (Ecuador). Each has made significant gains to curtail freedoms in their respective countries by provoking constitutional attacks and implanting socialism.
For our luncheons, we provided two interesting talks on two distinct issues. The first presentation was given by our own Atlas Fellow and contributing editor of the National Review Online Deroy Murdock. Mr. Murdock discussed the rise of pork barrel spending in Congress and used the controversial bridge to nowhere in Alaska as an example. Our second luncheon speaker touched on the recent conflict between Georgia and Russia. This presentation, given by Andrei Illarinov (Cato Institute Fellow), concluded our conference with a bang as he ran us through the history of the conflict and then pointed the blame exclusively towards Russia. What made his analysis all the more interesting is the fact that Mr. Illarinov is the former Chief Economic Advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
All in all, the event was a success as we were able to shed light on various issues involving risk in a free society. Our event preceded NCPA´s annual Gala dinner which featured guest speaker General (ret.) Tommy Franks who humored the audience with his charm and charisma as he shared his view on what it takes to be a leader in a free society.
This conference was a bit different than other Atlas events in that it had a major focus on security issues (i.e. terrorism, war, political violence). Being that Atlas has an initiative through its Secure Free Society (SFS) program to address these types of issues, this conference sent a message to our entire think tank family that security topics should not be neglected, for they go hand in hand with our goals of advancing a global free society.
Joseph Humire is Atlas’s program manager for the Secure Free Societies Program, you can learn more about this program here.
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