The Bastiat/Hoiles Prize Advances Free Markets

It may be hard for readers of newspapers other than The Wall Street Journal to believe, but there really is a segment of the professional journalism community that believes in free enterprise. Each year, for the past 10 years, they have been coming together from all over the world to honor the best among them at the annual Bastiat dinner in New York, sponsored by the International Policy Network.

Recently renamed the Bastiat-Hoiles Dinner after generous donors added a Hoiles Prize for excellence in U.S. Journalism, the event is a veritable who's who of journalists, editors, and publishers from media outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, National Review, Reason Magazine, RealClearPolitics, and The American Spectator. The conclave was even attended by a professor from Columbia's Journalism school, though it took some prodding to get him to reveal his affiliation.

The $50,000 Bastiat Prize is named for the 19th century French writer and economist Frédéric Bastiat, best known for his satirical Candlestick Makers' Petition ridiculing protectionism as well as his Seen and Unseen critiques of government efforts to create jobs and encourage industry by robbing Peter to pay Paul. Both are as relevant today as when first penned, because, unfortunately, they are equally ignored by those eager to use the power of their office to buy the votes required to keep them there.

The $10,000 Hoiles Prize is named in honor of 20th century publisher and editor R.C. Hoiles, who founded and ran a chain of U.S. newspapers - appropriately named the Freedom Newspapers - known for the fearless free market bent of their editorial pages. After being vilified by many contemporaries, Hoiles earned the respect of history for his impassioned defense of Japanese Americans whose property was stolen when they were interned on the orders of Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War.

Yours truly was invited to attend, having earned a slot as a finalist for the Hoiles Prize, alas coming home empty handed though reinvigorated knowing that he is not a member of an endangered species.

Claiming top honors, Virginia Postrel, an author and Bloomberg columnist, and Tom Easton, from The Economist, shared the Bastiat Prize. Postrel's winning entries included columns taking shots at efforts to ban the incandescent light bulb, the inanity of the "eat local" movement, and the romantic but misguided nostalgia for subsistence living. Easton was recognized for a pair of gripping pieces describing the scrappy, bottoms-up capitalism emerging in China's shadows, far from the helping hand, iron grip, and probing eye of the central government. Damon Root from Reason Magazine took home the Hoiles prize for columns exposing eminent domain and occupational licensing abuses, favorite tools of crony capitalists and the politicians that enable them.

The evening was held in grand style at the Four Seasons Restaurant, co-hosted by Julian Morris from the Reason Foundation and Amity Shlaes, bestselling author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, herself a past winner of the Bastiat Prize.

In between steak and soufflé, the diners were regaled by two speeches. The first included a sober reflection on the importance of sound money by Richard Fisher, president and CEO of the Dallas Federal Reserve. When approached after dinner and asked about the gap between his recommendations and current Fed policy, he replied, "[T]he Dallas Fed has a tradition of doing a lot of dissenting." Would that he could stem the tide and turn off the printing presses before Ben Bernanke drowns us in a sea of dollars deeper than the ocean of red ink cascading out of Congress.

The second speaker, Professor Russ Roberts of George Mason University, famous for his production of the Keynes vs. Hayek rap videos, shared a whimsical anecdote of his testimony before a rapt group of Congressional staffers. He described the time he read the lawmakers a children's story about a big teddy bear and a little teddy bear, intended to demonstrate the foolishness of the U.S. being afraid of the free trade agreement with Central America. Roberts was aided by Fox News reporter John Stossel, who gamely carried the picture book around the banquet room for all to see. Roberts's more serious point to the collected journalists was that facts, figures, and logic may be powerful to some, but are insufficient tools for persuading the majority of our fellow citizens because storytelling lies at the heart of how the human species learns. Bastiat would have agreed.

Perhaps the crisp storytelling of this stalwart few can wake the electorate before democracy completes the process of destroying itself. It was an honor to spend an evening among them.