Photo: Mbl./Eggert

The three largest newspapers in Iceland have all published interviews with Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, RNH Academic Director, on the occasion of his new book, Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers, being published by the think tank New Direction in Brussels in two volumes at the end of 2020. In the online journal Visir on 27 March 2021, Gissurarson said that the distinction between avarice and enlightened self-interest was morally crucial, but that the magic of the market, demonstrated by Adam Smith, was to harness both sentiments for the common good. The publisher of his book was connected to the European conservative and reformist parties, but it should be recalled that many of the thinkers in the book had been politically active. Snorri Sturluson served as Iceland’s Lawspeaker for a long period; Edmund Burke was a member of the British House of Commons; Benjamin Constant, Frédéric Bastiat and Alexis de Tocqueville were all members of the French legislative assembly, and Tocqueville served for a while as Foreign Minister; Lord Acton was an adviser to Gladstone; Carl Menger was a member of the Upper Chamber of the Austrian Parliament; Wilhelm Röpke was an adviser to Adenauer and Erhard; and both Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman were advisers to Thatcher and Reagan. Other thinkers had however preferred the tranquillity of monasteries or universities, trying to understand rather than to change the world. Gissurarson categorically rejected the common assertion that the 2007–9 financial crisis had sounded the death knell for conservative liberalism or ‘neoliberalism’. Indeed, Hayek’s interpretation of economic crises, that they were usually caused by a prior monetary expansion, seemed appropriate in this case; and the worldwide response to the crisis was to provide banks with liquidity, whereas Friedman’s main criticism of the United States Federal Reserve Board during the Great Depression had been its failure to do so.

In Frettabladid on 30 March, Gissurarson defined a conservative liberal as someone who wanted to conserve liberty as the hard-won product of Western civilisation while recognising that in principle it could be extended to and enjoyed by all. He mentioned that he had been personally acquainted with five of the thinkers in the book, Hayek, Karl R. Popper, Friedman, James M. Buchanan and Robert Nozick. They had all been impressive personalities. In particular, Friedman had been witty and lively. Gissurarson added that he felt Snorri Sturluson and St. Thomas Aquinas both belonged in this group, even if conservative liberalism as a political position really only began to emerge with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in the United Kingdom. Both Snorri and Aquinas had advocated limited government, the former with reference to the old German tradition of consent, the latter by applying the concept of natural law.

In Morgunbladid on 31 March, Gissurarson recalled that he had thirty-five years earlier written his doctoral dissertation at Oxford on Hayek’s conservative liberalism. He had since then modified his views in two ways. First, he was now more sympathetic than some thinkers in the liberal tradition to the idea of nationality, the respect for one’s cultural heritage and the will of a nation to build her own state, as did the Norwegians in 1905, the Finns in 1917 and the Icelanders and the three Baltic nations in 1918. Secondly, he felt even stronger than before that political reforms should facilitate the mutual adjustments of individuals, instead of imposing upon them designs from above. Conservative liberals wanted evolution, not revolution. Gissurarson said that conservative liberalism did not depend on a utilitarian calculus. Man was a choosing agent, not a maximising machine, and there was more to life than material goods. A competitive economy was necessary, but not sufficient. What was also required was honesty, hard work, thriftiness, prudence, civility, punctuality and other traditional virtues. Life had to provide continuity and some predictability, at the same time as it should produce challenges and reward creativity. Thus, within the conservative-liberal tradition there was a fruitful tension between tradition and innovation. Gissurarson stressed that mankind had never had it so good as today, because of freedom, but that hopefully modern man would not only come to appreciate it if he, or she, lost it.

RNH Academic Director, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, met with the President of Iceland, Dr. Gudni Th. Johannesson, at his residence, Bessastadir, on 30 March 2021 and gave him a copy of his recent 884 pages book, Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers, published by the Brussels think tank New Direction in two volumes. The book is also available free of charge online. Of the thinkers included two are Nordic, Snorri Sturluson and Anders Chydenius. Gissurarson was personally acquainted with five of the thinkers, Friedrich von Hayek, Karl R. Popper, Milton Friedman, James M. Buchanan, and Robert Nozick. Afterwards, Gissurarson and the President had a long chat on history. Before he was elected President, Dr. Johannesson, a professional historian, participated in some RNH events: for example, he chaired a lecture given in 2012 by Professor Bent Jensen on Nordic communism, and he read a paper on new evidence on the 2008 bank collapse at a seminar in 2015.

Since November 2020, RNH Academic Director Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson has been a columnist for the online magazine The Conservative, published by ECR, the European Conservatives and Reformists. At the end of 2020, he had written columns on various subjects, including the 2020 presidential elections in the United States and Trump’s record, Nozick’s critique of utilitarianism, Buchanan’s analysis of elections and the folly of the Common Fisheries Policy of the EU, the CPF. He had also protested against the misleading impression of Margaret Thatcher given in the popular Netflix series The Crown and recalled Winston Churchill’s historic visit to Iceland in 1941.

The think tank New Direction in Brussels has published a book in two volumes by Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson on Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers, both online (available free of charge) and on paper.

The first volume contains chapters on Snorri Sturluson, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Anders Chydenius, Benjamin Constant, Frédéric Bastiat, Alexis de Tocqueville, Herbert Spencer and Lord Acton. Gissurarson argues that even if classical liberalism in the modern sense may be traced to Locke’s defence of the 1688 ‘Glorious Revolution’, the two medieval thinkers he discusses, Snorri and Aquinas, supported government by consent and the right to rebellion. It was however in response to the 1789 French revolution that conservative liberalism came into being, not least as articulated by Burke, Constant, and Tocqueville. The 1688 revolution was made to preserve, protect and extend traditional liberties whereas the revolutionaries of 1789 sought to reconstruct the whole of society on their principles.

Hayek in Oxford with Chandran Kukathas, Andrew Melnyk and the author. Photo: Marie Gray.

The second volume contains chapters on Carl Menger, William Graham Sumner, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. von Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Michael Oakeshott, Sir Karl R. Popper, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, James M. Buchanan, and Robert Nozick. Gissurarson grounds conservative liberalism in the concept of spontaneous coordination, as described by Smith, Menger and Hayek, from which flows on the one hand strong support for free trade and limited government and on the other hand respect for traditions, such as property, family and conventional morality. The author provides personal recollections of five thinkers, Hayek, Popper, Friedman, Buchanan and Nozick. Members of the Mont Pelerin Society figure prominent in the book which is 884 pages and carries many illustrations, paintings, photos and graphs. Some of the photos are from past meetings of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Molotov and Hitler in 1940 when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were still allies.

Prague, 8 July - Statement of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience on the recent article by Vladimir Putin: The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II issued on 18 June in the media.

In his recent article, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin wanted to show the world “The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II”. This text is full of mistakes, omissions, half-truths and outright lies which have been refuted by specialists in the field. In fact, Mr Putin did give the world a lesson – a lesson by example on current Russian regime propaganda and attempts to re-write history.

Even though most of the article is about the past – described in a very Stalinist way – the most important part refers to the current situation. Putting the responsibility for the outbreak of the war on almost everyone except the Stalinist Soviet Union can be interpreted as an attempt to fracture European unity, especially in the context of President Putin’s harsh criticism of the European Parliament resolution of 19 September 2019. Even more dangerous is the call to create a new world order, based on an alliance of the five nuclear-weapon states, permanent members of the Security Council. This article is a clear example of misusing the past for current political purposes.

Democratic countries of Europe are ready to discuss all aspects of the past. Historians have criticized mistakes of Western and Central European diplomacy in the 1930s many times. However, mistakes made by democratic countries cannot be used to justify aggressive actions taken by the two totalitarian regimes – Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union – or even lessen their responsibility for causing the war.

Today’s Russian Federation, led by President Vladimir Putin, could not only participate in the debate but also make a significant contribution to it – by opening the World War II archives, especially those connected with Soviet-German cooperation in 1939-1941, Soviet aggressions and annexations during the war and mass crimes committed by the NKVD, Red Army and other units.

The Platform of European Memory and Conscience calls on the European Union and all European governments to:

• fully implement the European Parliament resolution of 19 September 2019 on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe,
• grant full and unhindered access to all archives related to the history of World War II and totalitarian systems,
• secure free and fair debate on the history of World War II and other painful aspects of Europe’s past,
• build the pan-European documentation centre/memorial for the victims of all totalitarian regimes as called for in the European Parliament resolution of 2 April 2009 on European conscience and totalitarianism.

From left: Arnason, Runolfsson and Gissurarson.

Three Icelanders, Professors Ragnar Arnason, Birgir Th. Runolfsson and Hannes H. Gissurarson, all members of the RNH Academic Council, attended a regional meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society at Stanford 15–17 January 2020, organised by MPS President Professor John Taylor and the staff of the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

Guedes addresses the Stanford meeting.

Still going strong at 99 years, George Shultz, Economics Professor at Chicago and Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, gave his view on contemporary issues in a talk with Professor Taylor at the opening dinner on 15 January. Paulo Guedes, Milton Friedman’s student at Chicago and presently Brazil’s Finance Minister, described his ambitious economic reform programme over dinner on 16 January. Entrepreneur Peter Thiel discussed politics and economics with Peter Robinson at the closing dinner on 17 January.

Alejandro Chafuen of the Acton Institute and Gissurarson both attended their first MPS meeting at Stanford in 1980.

Other speakers included Bruce Caldwell who described the 1947 founding of the Mont Pelerin Society, at Friedrich Hayek’s initiative; David Henderson who recalled the general meeting of MPS at Stanford forty years ago, in 1980; Robert Skidelsky, Lord Skidelsky, who presented his interpretation of the great economic controversies of the day; Niall Ferguson who lamented the deteriation in the rule of law; John Cogan who proposed solutions to the American debt problem; Samuel Gregg who argued for a deeper understanding of the moral foundations of capitalism; Bridgett Wagner who explained the aims and strategies of Heritage Foundation; and The Lord Borwick, 5th Baron, who defended Brexit. Over lunch on 17 January, Axel Kaiser and Ernesto Silva spoke about the serious situation in Chile, where after the very successful economic reforms of the 1970s and 1980s, hard-core leftists are trying in well-organised riots to force a change of course, despite the glaring example of Venezuela.

The regional meeting at Stanford was superbly organised by Professor Taylor, and the papers and the ensuing discussions were almost all of high quality. Although the MPS is not a secret society, exchanges of views at its meetings remain confidential so that speakers can explore ideas and arguments regardless of political sensitivities. Hannes H. Gissurarson (who completed his D. Phil. in Politics on Hayek at Oxford in 1985) was one of the few people at the 2020 meeting who had also been at the Stanford meeting of 1980, forty years earlier. He became member in 1984, sat on the MPS Board in 1998–2004 and organised a regional meeting in Iceland in August 2005. Past MPS Presidents include Nobel Prize winners Friedrich A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, James M. Buchanan and Gary Becker.

Thiel interviewed by Peter Robinson.