A last comment on FreedomFest 2018

Before FreedomFest 2019 draws too near, I want to post my final comment about the just-concluded FreedomFest 2018.

My participation in FreedomFest 2018 commenced with a private Wednesday night dinner with roughly twenty invited guests, including such folks as as John Mackey, Michael Shermer, Mark Skousen, Daniele Struppa, Deirdre McCloskey, Grover Norquist, Steve Forbes, Lisa Sparks, Larry Elder, Doug Casey, Ross Douthat, and George Will.  It ended with a gala closing dinner on Saturday night,emceed by Fox New’s Kennedy, during which, among many other things, Steve Forbes received the annual Lanny Friedlander Award from the Reason Foundation.  At that dinner, I found myself seated next to a Canadian economic historian who has taught for several decades in Melbourne, Australia.  We hit it off really well and had a great conversation.

Between the two dinners, I debated Michael Shermer on the question “Is Faith Compatible with Reason?”  I took the affirmative, and he, of course, took the negative.  Candidly, I thought that his argument was remarkably weak, and that he failed to engage much, if anything, of what I had said.  But anybody interested should, I think, eventually be able to judge for himself or herself: The debate was recorded for eventual broadcast (I suppose) by C-SPAN Book TV.  When it will go up, I have no idea.  A look just now at available programs on C-SPAN Book TV indicates that the most recent events currently available there date to 10 June 2018, suggesting that the Shermer/Peterson debate, if it actually goes up, will be available sometime around or just after mid-August.

My second official involvement was chairing a panel discussion, on Saturday afternoon, on “How to Make a Bestseller into a Classic.”  My co-discussants were Dr. Daniele Struppa, an Italian-born mathematician and the president of Chapman University, in Orange, California, and Dr. Maurice O’Sullivan, who is Kenneth Curry Professor of English at Rollins College as well as co-director of the Florida Center for Shakespeare Studies.  It was a fun and good natured discussion, although we never really got to the “how to” part of the title.  Instead, we concentrated on what it is that makes a classic a classic — mostly in literature, but also in music and in other fields.  Amusingly, Dr. O’Sullivan publicly declared, agreeing with me, that the film Groundhog Day is a very great classic.  (In fact, he told me that his wife was probably going to suspect that he had paid me to bring that movie up and to endorse it so enthusiastically.)

Anyway, we had a lot of fun there in Las Vegas, and I hope to be back to Freedom Fest many more times.  (This was, I think, my fourth.)

Posted from Victoria, British Columbia