This evening at dinner, after the first session of the Liberty Forum 2008 held here today in Atlanta, I was seating close to a Polish economist. We easily engaged in conversation. Scottish philosophers such as Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith had been cited several times during the day as the founders of modern liberalism. I said to my Polish friend that we should not overlook the contributions to liberalism of early Catholic thinkers of the School of Salamanca. Coming from a country as Catholic as Portugal, he readily acknowledged such contributions.
He then started to talk with considerable knowledge about Portuguese history, specially the discoveries led by Henry the Navigator. He also loved fado and Madredeus and he considered F.C. Porto a great soccer team. He credited Portugal as the precursor of modern globalization to which I added multiculturalism. Then, I asked him why, in his view, the Catholic Church was so seldom mentioned in these events on liberty and on the literature of freedom, given the enormous contribution Catholic thinkers and countries had given to the cause of liberty.
"Because it is politically incorrect", he said.
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