Last week PAFERE hosted it’s first,in a hopefully annual, conference on the life and legacy of Frederic Bastiat. This young institute, which has won several awards from Atlas for it’s excellent products it seems has done an excellent job again, take a look at this post about the event by Sheldon Richman, who spoke.
Last week I mentioned that I traveled to Warsaw, Poland, to participate in the Liberty Weekend Devoted to the Life and Legacy of Frédéric Bastiat. I can report now that the conference, sponsored by PAFERE, the Polish-American Foundation for Economic Research and Education, was a smashing success. Poland has a solid core of freedom-philosophy advocates, and when that country eventually becomes truly free in all respects, that group of scholar-activists will be a big part of the explanation.
I was honored to be a part of the event, and I warmly thank my hosts, especially Paweł Toboła-Pertkiewicz and Jan Malek, for their kind hospitality. They are most eager to bring FEE to the attention of the Polish public, so they arranged for me to be interviewed by an Internet television host, a radio reporter, and a business-newspaper reporter. They also arranged for me to speak to a gathering of students who were eager to hear the libertarian perspective on the financial turmoil. A lively discussion followed. All this occurred immediately after my overnight flight and arrival in Warsaw, but the enthusiasm was a tonic for this weary traveler. (Pawel’s pictures of the events are here.)
It was certainly a pleasure to see such enthusiasm for Bastiat and his work in Poland. The two-day conference drew 90 highly motivated people. I learned, among other things, that Bastiat was first translated into Polish in the 1860s. So the Poles are not newcomers to the great French liberal economist, who lived from 1801 to 1850. American and French fans of Bastiat have long been amused by the fact that he is better known in the United States than in France. Apparently he is better known in Poland too. Paweł, who organized the conference, explained that when he asked the French Institute in Warsaw about holding the conference there to honor a French economist, the official was delighted by the request. He had just one question: Who is this Bastiat?
The passion for liberalism (libertarianism), Bastiat, and Austrian economics that I saw during my brief visit bowled me over. After Bastiat’s, the most common picture at the conference was Ludwig von Mises’s. The conference audience couldn’t have been more eager to exchange ideas and ask questions of the speakers. Thanks to Pawel, the great liberal works are being translated into Polish, including FEE founder Leonard Read’s I, Pencil and FEE president Lawrence Reed’s Great Myths of the Great Depression. The latest to be translated are the collected works of Bastiat, in two beautifully produced volumes.
Read the rest of the article for more on the topics of conversation and for a little Bastiat lesson. View images of the event here.
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