In Uganda there is a law against annoying the president, and last night I met an incredible person who has been jailed 12 times for breaking that law. Andrew Mwenda, founder of The Independent newspaper, was giving the keynote address at The Bastiat Prize and asking why the West was so timid in defending free markets and the open society which people like him put their lives on the line to support. A crash isn’t a crisis of capitalism, he said, it’s a characteristic of capitalism – when banks err they are punished. Why do so few in the West make this point?
I asked him later if he worries that next time he’s arrested it will be worse than just a night behind bars. I’ll never forget his response: “Yes, maybe. But I would rather have died yesterday for liberty than live for a thousand years appeasing tyranny.” It was very humbling, and a reminder that that right to tear into those in power – which we avail ourselves of here in Coffee House – is a precious one. All the likes of myself risk if we upset the wrong people is losing contacts, or not being invited to parties anymore. For journalists in many other countries, they are literally and knowingly risking their lives.
The Bastiat dinner was a great event, albeit tinged with an air of apprehension – that these are, of course, dark times for the advocates of the open society. As history teaches us, the enemies of the open society make power grabs after financial shocks. As Mwenda was asking, why accept the premise that the free market failed? The main problem was the abject failure of government to control the money supply and regulate banks (who operated within parameters and to incentives set by ministers).
And I came third, since you asked, which I’m pleased about given the calibre of the six finalists. Swaminathan Aiyar, from the Times of India, got the silver and Barton Hinkle, from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the gold. A great dinner, which went on to the small hours. I was fielding questions from Americans unable to comprehend why the Shadow Chancellor was so stupid as to climb abroad the yacht of a Russian oligarch – didn’t he know how bad that would look? Didn’t he think? I didn’t know what to say.
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