By John BlundellIt was hard to move among the 2,300 people from 170 countries who assembled for Lady Thatcher’s funeral without tripping over a free-market think tank writer, trustee, donor, staffer, founder, or alumnus.The anticipated protests failed to materialize; all I saw and heard as I entered and left the Cathedral and later the reception at the Guildhall were smiling faces, clapping hands, and cheering voices. The BBC of course had to “balance” its coverage by excavating malcontents or traveling to distant former mining communities to find ex-coal miners burning her effigy in celebration. Disgusting, tasteless, and tacky, but then it is the BBC,

as in “Big Bunch of Communists.”Hayek’s name even came up in the address delivered by the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, who told an amusing story about sitting next to Lady Thatcher at a City of London dinner one evening. In the middle of lecturing

HIGHLIGHTS Summer 2013

Lady Thatcher and the Power of Ideas

Continued on page 4

The recent passing of Margaret Thatcher saddened friends of freedom worldwide, especially those aware of her indirect role in the founding of Atlas and the growth of the freedom movement. Thatcher credited the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) for creating the public demand for her free-market reform agenda, and she encouraged its founder Antony Fisher to “build on the success of the IEA in Europe, America and further afield...” The Atlas Network was built on this foundation. In this issue of Highlights, we are pleased to present first-hand reporting from Lady Thatcher’s funeral by our Atlas trustee John Blundell, author of Lady Thatcher: A Portrait of the Iron Lady.

•

Margaret Thatcher and John Blundell

Have a Pint —Celebrate a Victory for Taxpayers in the UK!The top prize at the energetic 2012 Think Tank Shark Tank competition went to the UK’s Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) to fund the project MashBeerTax.org. With the prize money, TPA distributed hundreds of thousands of cardboard beer coasters to pubs around the country raising awareness about the rising costs of government taxes on beer. The result was a cut in beer duty and the abolition of the beer duty escalator in the 2013 budget, a huge victory for TPA and the Mash Beer Tax campaign.

With the news of the Internal Revenue Ser-vice’s admitted mishandling of conservative, free-market groups’ applications for non-profit status in the U.S., many think tanks are beginning to share their stories. Wyoming Policy Institute’s founder, Janie White, told the Daily Caller how her application to start a new think tank failed to progress under IRS review for more than a year despite her sometimes weekly calls to offer additional information. Atlas supported the institute with funds for overhead expenses as they relied mostly on volun-teers while they waited for IRS approval.

U.S. Think Tanks Harmed by IRS

Scandal

2

By Alexander SkourasAtlas Programs Associate forInternational RelationsAfter decades of big govern-ment, a growing welfare state, and the rise of cronyism, Greece finds itself at the epi-center of a profound debt cri-sis. Out of crisis can come new hope, or disaster. Over the last two years growing neo-Nazi and radical leftist movements threaten to turn Greece even further away from the promise of liberty. However, there is also a grow-ing network of individuals and organizations in Greece com-mitted to bet on that promise, and Atlas has launched a spe-cial effort to support them. Our strategy is simple — train and support our best partners in Greece as they work to take their organizations to the next level, while also working to dis-

cover new partners and lead-ers, including students, willing to get involved and to leverage the power of the network. The results are encouraging. This year, two think tank lead-ers have completed Atlas’s Think Tank 101 Online as they establish and revamp their organizations, respectively, and three additional organiza-tions have joined our network, adding their resources to our shared vision. We are also supporting the aggressive growth of the stu-dent movement in Greece with training, books and promo-tional materials. In fact, two organizations have already seen their membership grow from a combined 30 to 500 in just one month. There is a new hope among our partners in Greece, and the time to stand with them is now.

Why Atlas? SPREADING THE WORD

The Time is Now for Greece

Atlas Leadership Academy Director Cindy Cerquitella’s passion for inter-national liberty was sparked after living in Budapest for four years where she saw how detrimental communism can be. Entering her seventh year with Atlas, Cindy is responsible for all Atlas training pro-grams and loves the opportunity to share knowledge, connect like-minded projects, and explore new ways to in-spire and encourage free-market think tanks around the world. Cindy. Cerquitella@AtlasNetwork.org

Nikos Monoyios and Valerie Brackett say, “We are fortunate to have received a good education and to live in a country where the rule of law and property rights are respected, and where free markets are allowed to function with less interference. We are pleased to be in a position to sup-port Atlas in spreading the ideas of liberty, individual responsibility, and limited government as the most prom-ising avenue for escaping the vicious cycle of tyranny, poverty, and violence that is gripping so much of the world.” Originally from Athens, Greece, Nikos came to the U.S. in 1968 with a schol-arship to Princeton University, and later received his MBA from Columbia University. Valerie earned her MD at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich, Germany. They divide their time between a cattle ranch in Idaho and a home in New Jersey.

Staff Spotlight

At the inaugural event of Greece’s new John Stuart Mill Research Group, founder Aristides Hatzis addresses students on the relationship between an open society and classical liberalism.

Crowdfunding for Nepal’s EntrepreneursIn May, Atlas ran an online fundraising campaign to help Samriddhi: The Prosperity Founda-tion in Nepal launch a major project to advance economic liberty for small business owners. In just 30 days, this campaign raised enough money to meet Samriddhi’s total budget. Thanks to all those who joined the campaign and helped Atlas discover yet another way to support our partners. Stay tuned for our next crowdfunding campaign!

A chance encounter: Representatives from all five classes of Atlas’s Think Tank MBA to date reunited at the conference in India.

Asia Centre for Enterprise recently completed three milestone events in New Delhi, India: a month-long training on research methods for think tank policy staff, the Asia Liberty Forum, and a three-day Think Tank Leadership Training. The inaugural Asia Liberty Forum was organized by Atlas Leadership Academy graduate Baishali Bomjan. The two-day event attracted 200 think tank leaders and staff from 30 countries for discussions about strategies and free-market trends in Asia. Atlas Think Tank MBA Senior Fellow Rainer Heufers led several high-energy sessions including the Big Ideas Competition, a contest to see who could offer the most inspiring and strategic project ideas. The conclusion of the Liberty Forum marked the beginning of three days of management training that included opportunities for one-on-one mentoring and work-shopping ideas with peers.

3

NETWORK NEWS

Reasons for Hope ...

Canada’s Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms worked with local Students for Liberty chapters to build free speech walls at Carleton, York, and Queen’s universities with comments ranging from provocative to light-hearted. Ironically, Carleton’s free speech wall was stolen by a member of student government, and at Queen’s, the free speech wall was removed twice by university administrators • The Cato Institute hosted “The Future of Freedom in Cuba,” featuring Cuban bloggers Yoani Sanchez and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, who explained how youth in Cuba use the internet to fight for freedom in their country • The Iranian business magazine, Excellent Organization, published articles and translations by Atlas’s Reza Ansari and Network for a Free Society’s Bardia Garshasbi • The Centre for Civil Society, in partnership with the National Association of Street Vendors in India, organized a national convention to improve livelihood opportunities for street vendors, leading to favorable legislation that included the expansion of legal vending space in urban areas • The James Madison Institute in Florida celebrated it’s 25th anniversary with a celebratory gala with remarks from some of Florida’s most prominent leaders • Civismo celebrated Tax Freedom Day in Spain with an updated online tax calculator that gives every citizen a simple and clear understanding of the latest tax hikes • The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council awarded The MacIver Institute the Citizen Openness Award for its continued efforts to keep government accountable and open to the public.

... Around the World

Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance (ATA), in partnership with the Australian Libertarian Society, organized the first annual Friedman Conference in Sydney, Australia in April. Over 150 attendees from across Australia heard from some of the region’s most prominent advocates for small government along with Atlas’s Dr. Tom G. Palmer. At the invitation of the ATA, and in partnership with the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation, the Institute of Public Affairs, and Centre for Independent Studies, Dr. Palmer also delivered talks in Perth, Canberra, Melbourne, and Brisbane on the unsustainability of Australia’s welfare state, as well as on The Morality of Capitalism at a number of university campuses.

Dr. Tom G. Palmer speaks at the Friedman Conference in Sydney in April.

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him on the benefits of reading F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom she suddenly grasped his wrist and exclaimed, “Don’t touch the duck pate, Bishop, it’s very fattening!” One assumes he did as instructed.Yes, she was very candid and forthright. His story brought back memories of an author whose book on the roots of the welfare state I’d promoted at the IEA. He gave Lady Thatcher a lavishly inscribed copy at my office one afternoon. “What’s this?” she asked very directly. “It’s a history of the welfare state,” he said. “What’s the solution?” she demanded. “I don’t have one,” replied the author. At this point she started hitting him on the arm with his own book saying, “Young man,” (he was over 50) “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions!”It was a gathering of the clan, not so much to mourn, given Lady Thatcher’s age and health problems since 2001, but rather to celebrate even though it was a funeral service and explicitly not a memorial. When the coffin was finally borne out of the West door, the spontaneous cheers from outside filled the Cathedral. It was, for me, the best moment of the day.In the end I lost count of the number of IEA and other related think tank folk who were present. On reflection I think it represented the uncontestable fact that she was interested in ideas and believed they matter. She grew up reading, with adult conversation at the dinner table being the norm. Her dad, Alf Roberts, was known as the most learned man in town, despite leaving school aged 12,

and took her to the library every week bringing home lots of books.By her early 20s, she was familiar with Hayek and Karl Popper as well as C. S. Lewis, Colm Brogan, and the American free trader Walt Whitman. She loved Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” a crash course in public choice economics with a Rand Paul twist.

By her very early 30s, on election to Parliament in 1959, she was already well into monetary theory, union reform, and better scrutiny of public

spending while firmly believing we had nothing to fear from Russian communism as long as we stuck to principle. In researching my biography of her I found a 1950 quote to that effect.Perhaps it is not surprising then to learn that when husband Denis Thatcher first heard Ronald Reagan speak in London in the mid-1970s he rushed home to Flood Street in Chelsea exclaiming to his wife he had just met a politician who was right up her street. Reagan and Thatcher soon met twice; both times they scheduled for an hour but lasted over three before their meeting came to an end.The U.S. Administration did not send a Cabinet minister let alone the President or a living former President to the funeral. But then, as a deeply Thatcherite MP opined on TV, Lady Thatcher would have found the presence of a Clinton or an Obama possibly offensive.The special trans-Atlantic relationship, however, was safe in the hands of The Heritage Foundation who sent Chairman

Tom Saunders, Trustee Meg Allen, former President Ed Feulner, Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus Edwin Meese III, and Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, Nile Gardner. Former Vice President Cheney, George Schultz, Jim Baker, and Newt Gingrich were also prominent, with Mont Pelerin Society member Vaclav Klaus, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and F. W. de Klerk of South Africa.It was a funeral and not a memorial. It was simple and dignified with great hymns extremely well sung: “He Who Would Valiant Be,” “Lord Divine, all Loves Excelling,” and “I Vow to Thee, My Country.”When the IEA discovered Lady Thatcher in the 1960s, editorial director Arthur Seldon wrote to Geoffrey Howe (Lady Thatcher’s first Chancellor), “May we hope for better things from Margaret?” to which Howe replied: “I’m not at all sure about Margaret. Many of her economic prejudices are sound. But she is inclined to be rather too dogmatic… there is much scope for her to be influenced between triumph and disaster.”History can now be sure the IEA was batting on a good wicket (a cricket metaphor) with Lady Thatcher as it fed her ideas between then and through her ascent to power in 1979.

Thatcher from Page 1

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When the coffin was finally borne out of the West door,

the spontaneous cheers from outside filled the Cathedral. It was, for me, the best moment

of the day.

“

”

Atlas and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice co-hosted an International Freedom Forum, highlight-ing market-based education reforms from Indiana to India. Keynote speaker Dr. James Tooley of the E.G. West Centre shared new developments in his work documenting and encourag-ing low-cost private schools

through-out the developing world. On the heels of a state Supreme Court ruling in

favor of school choice, In-diana Governor Mike Pence joined the program to credit the Friedman Foundation team for their work. Panels covered reform strategies for higher education and K-12, with representatives of the Fraser Institute, Centre for Civil Society, OMMA, and Pope Center for Higher Education.

TRAINING

ATLAS UPDATES

Congratulations! ... to the new class of Atlas

Leadership Academy graduates!

Education Reform: From India to Indiana • Atlas President Alex Chafuen is a weekly contributor to Forbes.com on a wide range of topics related to the think tank movement, its history, and future.

• Atlas launched the Liggio Living Legacy Project, to honor and promote the lifetime achievements of Leonard P. Liggio. Visit LeonardLiggio.org

• Atlas hosts monthly events at its Washington, D.C. headquarters connecting international think tank leaders with interested donors, policy makers, and guests. Visit AtlasNetwork.org/events for details.

• You can view Atlas’s latest Year in Review online at AtlasNetwork.org/AnnualReport.

Did you know?

Four Atlas Leadership Academy graduates will pitch a project to a panel of judges and a live audience for the chance to win $25,000. This special competition, modeled after the popular TV show Shark Tank, features inspiring presentations followed by a “grilling” from the judges. Apply by August 14 at AtlasNetwork.org/ALA.

THINK TANK

SHARK TANK

Freedom Frenzy

To learn more and enroll, visit AtlasNetwork.org/ALA

Atlas’s third annual Think Tank Shark Tank competition for advancing liberty will take place during the 2013 Liberty Forum.

Now more interactive, the new version of Think Tank 101 Online is a five-lesson course providing the introductory information you need to start or improve a free-market think tank. Instructor feedback and opportunities to share your work with other participants mean additional help making your think tank a success. Courses are available in English and Spanish. Visit AtlasNetwork.org/ALA for a schedule and registration information.

Think Tank 101 Online 2.0

Atlas CEO Brad Lips, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, and Atlas President Alex Chafuen.

2012 YEAR IN REVIEW

Strengthening the Worldwide Freedom Movement

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SPECIAL EVENT

Atlas Economic Research Foundation 1201 L Street, NWWashington, DC 20005

Save the Date!November 13-14

Atlas’s flagship annual conference brings together freedom champions and supporters from around the globe. Mark your calendar today to join us in New York City November 13-14 and enjoy the following highlights:

Speed Networking - quickly meet fellow free-marketeers with this popular meet and greet format early in the program.

Inaugural Liggio Lecture - part of the Liggio Living Legacy Project, Professor James Otteson of Yeshiva University will deliver a special address in honor of Leonard P. Liggio.

Think Tank Shark Tank - modeled after the TV show Shark Tank, Atlas Leadership Academy graduates will pitch their best think tank projects before a panel of philanthropists for a chance to win $25,000.

Freedom Dinner - featuring Toasts to Freedom from international freedom champions, and — to be announced on-site — the winner of Atlas’s $100,000 Templeton Freedom Award.

Registration opens in July. For more information visit AtlasNetwork.org or contact Chelsea.Albers@AtlasNetwork.org.

Liberty Forum & Freedom Dinner

Establish Your Legacy with a Planned GiftThe Fisher Legacy Society, Atlas’s planned giving program, invites Atlas supporters to make Atlas a part of their legacy plans. Please contact Stephanie.Giovanetti@AtlasNetwork.org to plan your gift today.