IMPACT CASE STUDY: HOW THE INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE WINS VICTORIES FOR LIBERTYDR. TOM G. PALMER ANSWERS THE QUESTION: “IS LIBERTY AN ASIAN VALUE?”A DEMANDING VOICE IN ARGENTINA | WHAT IS THE WORLD10 REPORT? | HIGHLIGHTS FROM ATLAS NETWORK’S REGIONAL LIBERTY FORUMSphoto: Will Rodrigues / Shutterstock.comFREEDOM’SCHAMPIONSUMMER 2016BRAZIL’S IDEOLOGICAL CROSSROADS: MENOS MARX; MAIS MISESAtlas Network’s quarterly review of the worldwide freedom movement Freedom’s Champion | Summer 20162Atlas Network’s vision is a free, prosperous, and peaceful world where limited governments defend the rule of law, private property, and free markets.Atlas Network is the only global organization that supports and empowers a professional association of 459 independent organizations in 97 countries to achieve victories for liberty.Atlas Network serves as the freedom movement’s center of gravity by providing our partners with coaching, competitive grant and award opportunities, and occasions to celebrate high-impact successes.Atlas Network has been a four-star Charity Navigator member since 2008.Atlas Network is a GuideStar Exchange Gold Participant.Atlas Network’s donation payment processor is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1, the most stringent level of certification available.Freedom’s Champion: an Atlas Network Publication Editor-in-Chief Daniel Anthony | Graphic Designer Teresa O’Leary | Photo Editor Grace Courter | Copy Editor Eric D. DixonAtlas Network’s quarterly review of the worldwide freedom movement3Atlas Network strengthens the world-wide freedom movement. Our new quarterly publication, Freedom’s Cham-pion, will show you how we put our supporters’ contributions to work, and the real-world results that are being achieved by our global network of inde-pendent think tank partners.Our cover story discusses the political upheaval that has occurred in Brazil, and the opportunity now emerging — thanks to courageous Atlas Network partners — to downsize the role of gov-ernment, free up the private sector, and strengthen the rule of law. Reformers in Brazil still face severe headwinds, but the impressive impact of our partners has raised hopes for positive change.You might wonder: How do people build a freedom movement as they have in Brazil? The local actors, of course, do the real work and deserve the credit. Certainly, though, the train-ing, connections, and encouragement Brad Lips, CEO of Atlas NetworkA MESSAGE FROM OUR CEOthat those leaders obtained from Atlas Network programs have had a positive effect.That is why we have doubled down on our “Coach, Compete, Celebrate” organizational strategy and launched a series of Regional Liberty Forums. On pages 20–23 you will get a sense of how these regional conferences are catalysts for more ambitious and effective work to advance liberty.Simultaneously, we are expanding the online training offered by our Atlas Leadership Academy. Our new Think Tank Impact course revolves around case studies of effective think tank projects, including the Strategic Re-search Program of Institute for Justice, as described on page 18.You can tell I’m proud of our robust and focused program strategy and how it’s being implemented. It wouldn’t amount Our new quarterly publication, Freedom’s Champion, will show you how we put our supporters’ contributions to work, and the real-world results that are being achieved by our global network of independent think tank partners.to anything, though, if Atlas Network were to become unmoored from the principles at the heart of our work. I am most proud that our team stands up for the freedom philosophy that inspired our founder Sir Antony Fisher and his successors, the late John Blundell and our current President Alex Chafuen. In this issue, on page 6, you are treated to my colleague Dr. Tom G. Palmer’s brilliant talk at Asia Liberty Forum, “Is Liberty an Asian Value?” In it, he affirms that we are building a movement that is universal — promising peace, opportu-nity, and dignity to every person.photo: Judd WeissFreedom’s Champion | Summer 20164TABLE OF CONTENTSIs Liberty an Asian Value? By Dr. Tom G. PalmerThe ideas of liberty are sometimes seen as “Western” ideology, but the desire for freedom from compulsion is part of every culture throughout the world.6Brazil’s Ideological Crossroads: Menos Marx; Mais Mises By Eric D. DixonBrazil is reeling from government corruption scandals and an economy suffering from decades of socialist dogma — but Brazil’s free-market think tanks are blaz-ing new paths.14FREEDOM’S CHAMPION2Atlas Network’s Vision, Mission, Strategy3A Message from our CEO20Regional Liberty Forums 201628Atlas Network’s 35th Anniversary Event30Freedom Champions Around the Network32Supporter Spotlight: Dale Bottoms36In Memoriam37Inside Atlas Network: The Intern Team39Connect with Atlas NetworkAtlas Network’s quarterly review of the worldwide freedom movement518Impact Case Study: IJ’s Storytelling Meets Comprehensive Data to Bolster Liberty LitigationRigorous social science research brings a crucial dimension of scholarly credibility to the Institute for Justice and its mission to protect individual rights through litigation.24This Quarter in World10More young people than ever look to FEE for economic educationEnabling a better business environment in GhanaPaternalistic health regulations in New Zealand violate personal choiceCato Institute presents journalist Flemming Rose with Milton Friedman Prize for courageous defense of free speechLower food prices in Israel through agricultural deregulationi-torney pocket lawyer app protects legal rights in IndiaFGA’s work on welfare reform in KansasAchieving tax reform for small and medium size businesses in AlbaniaAnalyzing efficiency of state-owned enterprises in Sri LankaLittle Sisters of the Poor’s victory thanks to The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty34Alumni In Focus: A Demanding Voice in Argentina By Candelaria de Elizalde of Libertad y ProgresoArgentina’s populism has brought economic stagnation, but Candelaria de Elizalde and Libertad y Progreso are working to change course, with help from Atlas Leadership Academy.Atlas Network’s quarterly review of the worldwide freedom movementSUMMER 2016Freedom’s Champion | Summer 20166IS LIBERTY AN ASIAN VALUE?by Dr. Tom G. Palmer, Atlas NetworkA frequent challenge raised against classical liberalism is that it is not suit-able for Asian people or Asian coun-tries, because of “Asian values” that are allegedly unique to Asian countries. Is Asian liberty different from Euro-pean or American or African Liberty? Or, if liberty is being used in the same way in those regions, is it a reasonable principle for Asian governments and laws, or are Asian values incompat-ible with liberty? One could also ask whether there is one core of values that are common to all Asians, who inhabit a vast region encompassing billions of people speaking hundreds of languages, professing a wide vari-ety of religions, and heirs to thousands of years of multifarious cultural devel-opments.Mural painting of Yogeswar Temple in Patora, Orissa, India, depicting Krishna and Arjuna, the master archer.Atlas Network’s quarterly review of the worldwide freedom movement7LIBERTY, LICENSE, AND SOCIAL ORDERLet’s start with the question of whether liberty might have different meanings in different places. Yes, of course “liber-ty” does. It’s a word, to begin with, and words are not eternal essences, but hu-man constructs that are used variably in different places and circumstances. A word may mean different things in different contexts, so let’s focus on the constellation of ideas known as liberal-ism — or, to differentiate it from what is sometimes called “liberal” in the United States and a few other countries, let’s focus on “classical liberalism.”What is liberty for a classical liberal? Is it just doing your own thing, being pure-ly willful, defying the law, and indulging whatever impulse might cross your mind? That’s what many anti-liberals have alleged. Let’s take a famous ex-ample, Sir Robert Filmer, an advocate of royal absolutism in England. According to Filmer, the king of England had all the rights of dominion over the world that God had given to the first man, Adam, because Adam, being a proper English gentleman, had given the world to his eldest son. That eldest son had given the world to his eldest son, and so on, until one reached … amazingly enough, the king of England! That argument was effectively disposed of by John Locke in the first of his Two Treatises on Government. Filmer had also stipu-lated, however, that “liberty” would lead to chaos, because with liberty anyone could do whatever he “lists” (“lists” is an old-fashioned English way of saying whatever one is inclined to do, as a ship “lists” this way or that), no matter how destructive to others, and thus that liberty is incompatible with law, with government, with order, and with social cooperation generally. With liberty got-ten out of the way, that left, of course, the option of vesting the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son of Adam with absolute and unquestion-able power — or so Filmer hoped.THE CLASSICAL LIBERAL RESPONSEThere was a response from the advo-cates of constitutionally limited gov-ernment, of course. Locke stipulated another meaning of liberty and shaped the liberal understating of liberty and law for centuries. As Locke argued:[T]he End of law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom. For in all the States of cre-ated Beings capable of Laws, where there is no Law, there is no Freedom. For Liberty is to be free from Re-straint and Violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no Law: But Freedom is not, as we are told, A Liberty for every Man to do what he lists: (For who could be free, when every other Man’s Humour might domineer over him?) But a Liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his Person, Actions, Posses-sions, and his whole Property, within the Allowance of those Laws, under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary Will of anoth-er, but freely follow his own.RULES APPLICABLE TO ALLTo enjoy liberty means not being sub-jected to the arbitrary will of another, but to be governed by the law, that is, by rules that are applicable to all and that guarantee to all the right to follow their own wills in those matters regarding their own property. Property referred not only to one’s physical possessions, in the terms of Locke’s day, but re-ferred to your “life, liberty, and estate,” that is, what is proper to you. What is especially striking about Locke’s com-ment is the connection of liberty with law. The two are not opposed, nor is liberty opposed to order. Arbitrary and unaccountable power is the enemy of both liberty and of order. Liberty re-quires and is grounded on the rule of law, rather than the rule of man. Those who think that liberty and law are in-compatible confuse liberty with li-cense and law with command. Liberty is not license and commands are not law. Law is the enterprise of subject-ing human conduct to the governance of rules, as the jurist Lon Fuller put it, and not the enterprise of issuing arbi-trary commands and edicts backed by threats of violence.THE PRESUMPTION OF LIBERTY The core of the idea of liberty under law is the presumption of liberty. That presumption is analogous to the pre-sumption of innocence. Both have a common epistemic feature. To be re-quired to prove that one is innocent of a charge is to ask for the near impossi-ble. Each time one managed to show, if that were possible, that one was inno-cent of a crime, another charge could be brought, and the burden would be on the accused to demonstrate a neg-ative yet again. Similarly, one cannot show why one should be allowed to do every single thing one might wish to do — to wear a hat or not wear a hat, or to wake up at 7:30 a.m. or at 7:15 a.m., or to read this book rather than that; it would be impossible.Those who think that liberty and law are incompatible confuse liberty with license and law with command.Freedom’s Champion | Summer 20168Instead of being required to justify and ask permission for all of the possible things we could do, the presumption of liberty requires that the burden rest not on the one who would exercise freedom but on the one who would restrict it. In the permission society, everything that is not permitted is for-bidden, whereas in the society of lib-erty everything that is not forbidden is permitted. That’s not only a principle of the English common law, but before that it was a key principle of Islamic jurisprudence that “the original state of matter is its permissibility unless there is a specific provision that prohibits it” (in Arabic: al-aslu fil shyai’ al-ibahah ma lam ya’ti dalil ‘ala tahrimih).1 The rule of law, rather than arbitrary power; and the presumption of liberty, rather than the presumption of power, are at the core of the classical liberal ideal of liberty.IS LIBERTY JUST A WESTERN VALUE?Is liberty so understood an Asian val-ue? Do Asians, any more than others, like to be ordered, commanded, threat-ened, and assaulted with violence for not obeying arbitrary commands? Well, certainly not the ones who actually are threatened or punished. I am sure that they don’t welcome it any more than people in Europe, Africa, or the Americas. Those who are suppressed are unlikely to uphold as a supreme or definitive value their own suppression. Perhaps those who assert that unique-ly “Asian values” are incompatible with liberty argue, however, that liberty is by origin a Western value — or European — and thus, by stipulation, could not be an Asian value.I am sometimes asked about my work “defending Western values.” I respond that I do not defend “Western values.” The response is puzzlement and some-times shock. That’s because the ques-tioners assumed that individual liber-ty, the rule of law, toleration, limited government, property rights, and free-dom of exchange are uniquely West-ern principles. Moreover, they assume that collectivism and dictatorship are somehow not Western. They have a point — when you go into Chinese state buildings, you see the images of such venerable Chinese sages as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin, each a formative figure in traditional Chinese culture. Enough sarcasm. In actuality, the most influential movements for dictatorship, socialism, and one-party rule were ger-minated and first took root in Europe, not in Asia, Africa, or elsewhere. Most of the modern dictatorships around the world have been inspired by ideol-ogies formulated by European collec-tivist thinkers. Marx and Engels were German, Lenin was Russian, Stalin was Georgian (but acted as a Russian dictator), Mussolini was Italian, and Hitler was Austrian.THERE IS NO GEO-CULTURAL MONOPOLY ON LIBERTYAsian socialism is a Western import. Lin Yutang, in his study of the life of the 11th century Chinese sage and poet Su Tungpo, noted the influence of “West-ern ideas of collectivism” in his discus-sion of contemporary reinterpretation of the policies of Wang Anshi during the 11th century. In his classic book My Country and My People, he described the philosophy of Lao Tzu as “laissez faire in government and naturalism in ethics.” For Lin, although Chinese le-galism expressed elements of socialist thinking, collectivist ideology was an invasive Western species, not a home-grown Chinese plant, and China had its own tradition of limited government.Lin Yutang, a Chinese writer, translator, linguist, and inventor. 1 I am grateful to my friend Wan Saiful Wan Jan for pointing this out to me.Continued on pg. 10“State control can never substitute for self-control without destroying freedom and all that is human in both society and economy.“ —Vernon L. Smith, 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Chapman UniversityGet Dr. Palmer’s new book online at atlasnetwork.org/media/booksNext >