selective prejudice

In 1947 under the initiative of Friedrich Hayek a number of highly regarded liberal intellectuals from Europe and the United States, such as Hayek himself, Ludwig von Mises, Karl Popper, Milton Friedman, Walter Lippman, George Stigler, Henry Hazlitt and others met in Switzerland to lay the foundations of a liberal organization designed to oppose the rising tide of socialist ideas.

The issue was raised about the name to be given to the new organization. Hayek suggested it to be named The Tocqueville-Acton Society. Frank Knight, the American economist who would become the founding father of the famous Chicago School of Economics, objected on the grounds that he would not like to have the organization named after two Roman Catholic aristocrats. Knight, an agnostic, was a strong opponent of Christianity and of organized religion, specially Catholicism. Ludwig von Mises, a Jew, supported Knight's objection on the grounds that there was the risk that the society would become associated with the errors made by Tocqueville and Acton. Nobody countered them and the organization was ultimately named after the resort where they met: The Mont Pelerin Society.

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There are two interesting points involving this first assembly of post-War liberal intellectuals. The first is that if Tocqueville and Acton were Jews or Protestants and Knight and Mises both Catholics, this episode would have gone down in history as a symbol of Catholic intolerance and Jews, at least, would have erected a monument to it (most likely paid with Catholic money). The second is that Frank Knight and Mises both are regarded by economists as champion fighters against prejudice. Knight, in particular, is the author of the often quoted assertion: "To educate is to unteach with the explicit purpose of overcoming prejudice and intolerance".