CNE Monatsmagazin Digest
October 2006

English Summary

"To master problems of groups consisting of more than 150 individuals, men has developed in principle two methods: markets and bureaucracy", says Edgar Gärtner, pointing out that the market is the greatest achievement of mankind. In his essay on market hostility that spreads all over Europe, he looks at the chances left to homo sapiens to master the difficulties of the modern world with a stone age brain.

In his new polemic dictionary of social affairs, Gerd Habermann unmasks the misguiding prose of the do-gooders. The dictionary includes over 300 entries on social affairs, fashionable phrases and concepts in social policy. He explains what they mean and what they should mean. Habermann also includes entries on classical and modern heroes of liberalism.

As a term gets commonly used, it widens its meaning, says Hardy Bouillon in his essay on civil society and public spirit. Today, politicians tend to teach their citizens public spirit. This does not work, says Bouillon. If one wishes to see the latter grown one ought to leave individuals on their own. Civil society develops spontaneously, it is not an invention of politics. Politics can only guard it by protecting individual freedom and property.

"Free Europe" is an initiative for a better EU Constitution by Swede Carl-Johan Westholm. The long year secretary of the MPS about his initiative: "The Constitution for Free Europe lacks any words about the role of the EU Commission, the Parliament and other organs and issues. This is thereby delegated from the constitutional level to the institutional level. It means that it is up to the representatives of the national states to agree upon these things, within the constitutional framework."

The dictionary of economic education by Hermann May is written by several classical liberal authors to help pupils and students understand and professors teach economics. The entries are easy to comprehend, hence economic education for everybody. The new 6th edition is an enlarged version and includes 100 pages more on information about modern economics.

The MPS Hayek Essay Contest, whose results were presented at the MPS general meeting in Guatemala early November, counted 66 participants, students and faculty members 35 years of age or younger. They all reflected on how and under what conditions a "universal peaceful order of the world" might, one day, be achieved. Professors Ralph Raico, Buffalo University, Suri Ratnapala, University of Queensland, and CNE's Head of Academic Affairs, Hardy Bouillon, served as judges.

Click here to view the full Monatsmagazin in German.

Dr. Hardy Bouillon is Head of Academic Affairs at the Centre for the New Europe.