25 abril 2008

Atlanta


It starts today here in Atlanta, and extends until Sunday, Atlas Foundation's Liberty Forum 2008. Atlas is an organization devoted to bringing together academics and professionals from all around the World concerned with the cause of freedom. It acts as an umbrella organization for liberal think-thanks in different countries of the World.

Atlas was founded by Sir Anthony Fisher, a British businessman who was indignant with the rise of socialism in his native Britain upon returning from World War II. He then asked Hayek what to do about it. Hayek suggested him to found a liberal think-thank capable of influencing public opinion and opposing the ideas of socialism. He went on to found the famous Institute of Economic Affairs, in London, and later, upon emmigrating to America, he laid the foundations of Atlas. Today, Atlas deals with more than a hundred liberal organizations dispersed throughout the World.

Atlas President is now Argentinian economist Alejandro Chafuen, an academic who did his career in the US. I met Alejandro for the first time at the Atlas 1994 annual event held in S. Paulo, Brazil. Alejandro is the author of several books on the liberal tradition. In his doctoral dissertation, Christians for Freedom, Alejandro traced the roots of modern liberal thought to the works of the Spanish and Portuguese scholastics of the School of Salamanca.

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