There Goes the Mont Pelerin Society

Next week a special meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society will take place at the Hoover Institution which is located on the campus of Stanford University.

The Society was the brainchild of Friedrich Hayek to bring together top scholars (36 at the first meeting), mostly economists, but some historians and philosophers, to discuss ways via the battle of ideas to advance and defend freedom in the world.

The first meeting was held in 1947 at Mont Pelerin, Switzerland.

Those in attendance at that first meeting included Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, F.A, Harper, Milton Freidman, Fritz Machlup, Karl Popper and Leonard Read.

The event at Stanford will have a decidedly different mix.

The anti-Rothbardian, Jennifer Burns, will participate in a panel discussion, "Removing Obstacles on the Road to Economic Freedom: 1947 to 1980."

The anti-Misesian, Russell Roberts, will participate in a panel discussion, "Taking Ideas to Action: Making the Case for Freedom."

And to just make clear how bad things have deteriorated at the Society, the warmonger and apologist for every statist thing done by the George W. Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, will participate in a panel discussion, "Spread of Free Market Ideas in the 1980s."

Intellectual institutions should really die with their founders. Only the books, pamphlets and other intellectual efforts under the auspices of such an institute, when the founder was in control, should remain.

-RW