Letter from Stephen Browne, Co-Founder and Director Emeritus

Judging from how the camps are growing around the world, the Language of Liberty project is an idea whose time has come.

The idea for the first Liberty English Camp evolved when I was living and working in Eastern Europe during the 1990s.  The seed of the idea came in two parts.

Part 1 -- a Polish lawyer was my private student of Business English.  It became apparent he was obviously bored with the available material, so I gave him an old political science textbook from the University of Chicago.  I invited him to pick something that interested him to study.  To my surprise, he picked Adam Smith!

"The dialect is a little old," I warned him.  "Yes, it's a little old-fashioned," he said, "but it's easier to understand than a lot of the other stuff because the reasoning is so clear!"

That started me working on course materials based on documents in English, documents important to the history of free markets and political liberty.  I realized there was a huge demand, and nobody was happy with the available supply.

Part 2 -- the idea for the camps came when I met a young woman from Bulgaria at a conference in Athens in 1995.  She had just come from another conference, and said most of the non-English-speaking attendees had sat in the lecture presentations politely nodding their heads, yet understanding very little of the English.

I introduced the idea of combining the ideas of liberty with English instruction at the next ISIL conference in Rome, in 1996.  It met with a massively underwhelming response.  Some western presenters seemed vaguely insulted by the suggestion their audiences weren't understanding them.  Except Virgis Daukas of Lithuania, who grasped the idea and ran with it.

Virgis organized the first Liberty English Camp in Lithuania the following year, set in a former communist Young Pioneers camp.  What delicious irony!  The Lithuania camp has been held without fail every year since.

A few years later, some of us wanted to expand the idea to other countries.  After years of coaxing, I succeeded in getting Glenn Cripe to come to the Lithuania camp in 2004.  Glenn was inspired, as I knew he would be (told ya Glenn!) and the rest is history.

Glenn has brought his formidable organizing skills and his passion for spreading the philosophy of liberty and entrepreneurship to the project, at a crucial time when I had to reduce my participation considerably.  I hope to re-engage with the project eventually, and I'm happy and confident LLI will be here when I'm ready to do so.

The Institute is growing.  Many now see the possibilities in spreading the ideas of free markets and political liberty via the medium of English-language instruction.  Yet much remains to be done.  We need to have a permanent fund-raising apparatus, and a full-time staff to work on curriculum development, teacher training, and liaisons with foundations and think tanks abroad.

It's been a long journey since the beginning more than a decade ago, and there's a long way to go.  It's been exciting and fulfilling, and I can't tell you how proud I am to have been associated with all of it.

Steve blogs at "Rants and Raves"

A Day in the Life:  Liberty Camp

by Andy Eyschen, Co-Founder and Director

So what is a Liberty English Camp?

 A Liberty English Camp is a week long event.  It takes place, typically, in a country with an emerging democracy.  It brings together young people, primarily college and graduate students, and through the medium of English conversation, we learn and discuss the principles of a free society.

 As staff, we assemble a combination of native English speakers and local (host country) teachers and discussion leaders.  Instructors are carefully selected on the basis of their expertise in their topics, their ability to interact with young people, and their teaching skills.  The typical camp has 4-6 teachers who offer a dynamic and interesting mix of experiences and skills. We've hosted authors, internationally prominent businessmen, economists, entrepreneurs and even an opera singer and a movie producer!

 The primary topics we teach are Classical Liberal (sometimes called Libertarian) Philosophy, Free Market Economics, and Entrepreneurship.  The program can also include topics in psychology, literature, ecology, technology, law, taxation, corruption, monetary policy, banking, education, etc.  No subject is taboo, and we examine each topic from the viewpoint of individual freedom and responsibility.

Typical Camp Day

A typical Liberty Camp day starts with a hearty breakfast at 8am.  The discussion over breakfast (surprisingly lively considering the hour) ranges from politics to economics to the country's history, and the instructors and students trade anecdotes of how things work in their respective countries. Campers' stories often feature absurd examples of government inefficiency or abuse of power, and we're sometimes stunned by how the lack of freedom is taken for granted even in countries considered to be functioning democracies.

 The lectures start at 9am, with the whole team present.  After an hour, we usually split into small groups to discuss the content, facilitated by teachers. In these small groups, each participant has an opportunity to articulate and share his/her thoughts, and practicing English language skills.  Students are encouraged to speak their minds, to ask questions, and to explain and defend their points of view, all in English.

 After a short break, which the students often spend huddled together talking, we repeat the lecture/discussion group combination for the second topic.  By now it's lunch time, and the talk over the meal turns to the morning's topics. I'm consistently stunned by the energy, fervor and perseverance with which students soak up knowledge at the camps.

 The afternoon and evening program can be quite varied, and can include John Stossel videos, debates among the students, guest speakers, informal discussions, entertainment and films on liberty and entrepreneurship, though an afternoon usually includes at least two more lecture and discussion blocks.

Dinner follows, usually around 6 or 7 o'clock.  Even after the day's formal program ends, students often sit around a campfire for hours, socializing and debating the day's lessons.  Bed times are not strictly enforced, but we do expect students to show up, if not for breakfast, at least in time for the first lecture.

 Over the course of one week, these students will spend as much "class time" studying liberty as a typical college student spends in class for a semester long course.  The students often end the week by writing outlines of policy papers or preparing a mock business plan of their own.  The intensity students bring to the discussions is a constant reminder that these are  issues they struggle with every day, and it's no surprise that students sometimes travel great distances, a few even crossing a continent, just to attend the week of camp.

Governments around the world get involved in ever more of our lives.  We want to give students examples of this government "takeover" from their own country, as well as from other countries, and to think about the consequences of such increasing interference.  Our aim is to reclaim our personal freedom and sovereignty and reduce government power and interference to an absolute minimum, and encourage individuals to take charge of their lives, to discover their potential, their needs and wants, and to achieve their objectives and aims in life without dependence on government.  In other words, to learn how to "live free", even in an "unfree world".

Love Europe, trash the Euro!

by Nick Cowen, Camp Instructor

 The global recession has not been kind to the Euro.

Since its creation in the early 1990s, the single currency has been a key plank of our technocratic elite.  For states with a bad history of inflation, such as Italy, this was an opportunity to outsource monetary policy to the dull but trustworthy Germans.  New European Union member states have to agree to join the Euro in due course.  Skepticism about this project has inevitably been blamed on economic illiteracy and xenophobia.

 Now the tidal waves of the recession have hit, we can see that many of these claims were based on wishful thinking and a political ideology that favors the integration of Europe into a single state at all costs.  The worst victim so far has been Ireland.  It relied too much on housing construction during the boom years to finance state expenditure and, post crash, finds itself with a huge budget deficit.  It has been forced to take a bailout from other European countries, ceding control of its national budget in the process.  Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal have all suffered from the sudden collapse of international credit, and are implementing painful austerity measures.

 Contrast this with Sweden and the United Kingdom.  Both stayed out of the Euro.  They've been able to re-inflate their currencies so that they at least don't face the same nominal shocks that the periphery of the Eurozone must suffer.  With supply side reforms, Sweden has been able to reduce unemployment despite the recession.  Suddenly steering clear of the Euro looks like the more grown-up policy.  The painful lesson is that even reputable central bankers can just about develop a suitable monetary policy for one state, but cannot find one that works for every state in a sprawling currency union.

 So the practical case for central government has been hammered.  However, the ideology lives on.  As Pierre Manent has said, "The European machine has been set up in such a way that it cannot not be deployed, the result being a 'purposeless finality'."

This is where the Language of Liberty Institute has to work its magic.  We must challenge this passive acceptance of 'ever closer union' with a renewal of the ideas of individual liberty.  Rather than debating who should decide 'monetary policy', we should question whether it is even legitimate to have a monetary policy.  Why should governments control the currencies with which we can transact?  Who gave them the right to create value by fiat, and disperse that right to their banker allies in the world's financial centers?  These are the ideas we are helping to spread in Europe, and we can still be hopeful for the future of liberty here.

Freedom Under Siege in South America

By Alex Potter

 Imagine that President Obama announced tomorrow that armed soldiers patrolling the streets all over the U.S. would arrest anyone who left his home.  Imagine that at the same time all airports and all transportation would be shut down across the country.  Imagine that government assessors would knock on all Americans' doors to determine how much money they had, how much property, and whether they were "using" all the rooms in their house. 

 On Sunday Nov. 28^th, 2010, that is exactly what happened in Ecuador.  Despite being an American who has lived under authoritarian regimes like China and Egypt, I have never felt such a lack of freedom and power in the face of a government as in Ecuador.

 Several months ago, the Ecuadorian government placed stickers on my father-in-law's house labeling it a "leisure property" and thus likely marking it for confiscation.  Not willing to find out what lay in store for his home, he quickly sold it.  Just as they have begun targeting property rights, the Correa regime is also attempting to bring all private universities and private media under permanent government control.

 I can attest that liberty is quickly deteriorating here.  Although my personal experience in South America is primarily in Ecaudor, as a political scientist I can say that things are even worse elsewhere in South America.

 Imagine your life savings being wiped out in a day as your government announces a fifty percent devaluation of the nation's currency.  That happened last January in Venezuela, where hundreds of industries and businesses have been nationalized or confiscated by the radically socialist Chavez regime.  Many educated young Venezuelans and business owners have simply been forced to leave their country in search for freedom.

 Liberty is under threat across an entire continent just to our south.  I know personally that South Americans want the same opportunity to grow their businesses and speak their minds that we have in the United States.  We must act in their defense.  But what can we liberty-loving Americans do?

 The Language of Liberty Institute is an organization that I have tremendous respect for because it seeks to shape the world not through force, but from the bottom up through reason and education.  It is an example of the best values and traditions of our nation in action.

 In South America, the intellectual battle against socialism and authoritarianism is being lost in many nations.  As a teacher in Ecuador, I have many students who yearn for an intellectual basis upon which to defend their family's property, businesses, and right to free speech.  With more funding, the Language of Liberty Institute could expand to South America and begin teaching young people not only the tradition of liberty that is so badly needed, but also the language that will allow them to continue learning about liberty for the rest of their lives.