LIBERAL AND LIBERTARIAN BOOKS FOR IRAQ: Tom Palmer writes: I’m putting together shipments of books about liberty to be distributed to the universities in Iraq. (I will do the usual books by Hayek, Friedman, Rand, Smith, Bastiat, etc., as well as economics textbooks, books by libertarian eastern Europeans on post-Soviet transition, and the like.) Providing English-language books for universities (and for distribution to bilingual intellectuals) will parallel a translation program to get the best items into Arabic for publication in book form and through web site PDFs. I’ve raised some funds for this already, but anyone who’d like to chip in can send a check made out to “Cato Institute” to my attention at the Cato Institute (Tom G. Palmer, Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001, USA) or make a donation via the Cato web site and send a note to me at [email protected] (also [email protected], but I get a LOT of spam on my Cato account) telling me about it, and I will ensure that it goes into a special account to be spent exclusively on promoting liberty in Iraq and the Arab world. My heartfelt thanks to those who have already pitched in!

[later, Palmer elaborates:] But back to the main point, reading thinkers such as F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and the like is helpful mainly to avoid mistakes (such as imposing price controls or protectionism, or arbitrarily confiscating property). What is needed in the process of transformation is a set of guidelines for transforming unfree and impoverished societies into free and prosperous societies. The Iraqis have much to learn from both the failures and the successes of the reformers in the countries of the former Soviet Empire. And they will be better able to move from fear and slavery to confidence and freedom if they understand better the principles of liberty, of the rule of law, of property and the market economy, of toleration, and of agreeable disagreement, conversation, and deliberation. Good books help people to learn, but they are no guarantee of success. Nothing is.

Thanks to Bret for pointing to Juan Cole’s translation project. I have read his writings and have often found them very enlightening. His Americana project sounds quite useful. My interests are somewhat less “American” oriented and more oriented toward the universal principles of liberalism that the American Founders espoused. I’d like to get important works by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Milton Friedman into Arabic editions, but also works by Scotsmen (e.g., David Hume and Adam Smith), Frenchmen (e.g., Frederic Bastiat and J. B. Say), Englishmen (e.g., Arnold Plant and Ronald Coase), Austrians (e.g., Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek), and others, as well. I’m also working on some getting some texts into print with facing Arabic and English pages, to assist those who are struggling to learn one language or the other.

[Can’t remember where I found this.]