♪ - hi, this is bob scully, and welcome to another edition of the world show, our free markets series, where this week--you're in for a treat--we meet a true freedom fighter for free markets, somebody who not so long ago was in the thick of things in egypt during the arab spring; before that, he was in kazakhstan, not necessarily the friendliest place in the world; he's been in afghanistan on various missions; and before that, behind the iron curtain in eastern europe, he was dodging

kgb agents. not a boring life, and yet he does it in the intellectual pursuit of convincing people about freedom, libertarianism, and free markets. here is tom palmer of the atlas foundation. tom palmer, i'm all in favour of free enterprise, and when i read about you, initially i thought, "well, i'm going to start a travel agency and handle his travel arrangements, and of course i'll make a lot of money". but then i read further, and let me quote for the viewers here so they get a sense of it: "i was up all night uploading video to our colleagues for editing and posting on the internet. then the gunfire and attacks by the army and riot police right outside the hotel made it impossible to sleep." so you lead, really, a very adventurous life, and even though you're an intellectual warrior, you're almost a guerrilla warrior as well. - i do try to keep busy, and i go to lots of places some are fairly tame, and some are a bit more challenging.

- and how did you come to choose this life? because way back in the '80s, if i read correctly, you were out in vienna smuggling libertarian literature into eastern europe. it sounds a bit like le carré, but it's also kind of dangerous. i mean, how did you get this mission? - well, i'd always had a passionate feeling that tyranny of whatever sort, left or right, was unjust and immoral, and it hurts me to think that people suffer under some form of despotism, that they're arrested and tortured for their views or their religious views or just how they want to live. and i had the feeling in the late 1980s that the soviet union was going to come to an end, that communism would be over--i think i was a little bit ahead of the curve on that--and it mattered what would replace it, because it doesn't follow that if one

tyranny falls it's necessarily going to be an improvement, so it was very important that people have access to the ideas of liberty, of constitutional government, of limited government, of freedom of speech, of free market economy, of the rule of law, of toleration. and i moved to austria and worked with friends there and began bringing books, photocopiers, fax machines, which were very important because the kgb couldn't tap a fax line. they had the ability with those little alligator clips to tap a conversation, but it turns out they didn't have their own fax machines to tap a fax communication, so it was effectively, at that time, before the internet, an easy way for people to communicate without being overheard by the security apparatus. and we began to set up networks of classical liberal or libertarian or, just to use the old-fashioned word,

liberal, as it was used there, clubs, organizations, getting books published underground, even-- i would bring out samizdat books just on rice paper to vienna and then photocopy them and then smuggle back 50 or a hundred copies, which increased the number of copies of that book in circulation by 50 times. - and we'll get into the substantive aspect of that in a few minutes, but i can't help but delve into the cloak- and-dagger aspect of it all. when you say samizdat and kgb, i mean, these are heavy things. you were an enemy of these totalitarian states. you were like one of the early christians trying to get in and spread the word and plant a ferment, a seed. how close did you ever come to being either arrested or tortured? - well, i was arrested a couple of times, but certainly never tortured, and, just in all

honesty, the risk was not really on me; the risk was on the people i was working with. they were the ones who risked arrest, imprisonment, beatings, internal exile. in my case, generally the worst thing that was going to happen was that i would be expelled from the country, so there was very little risk, really, personally for me. but for the people with whom i worked, it was a really different story. - and if only to protect these people, as you point out, you must have learned some of the black arts. i mean, you knew that they couldn't tap a fax line, and you must have used codenames on phone lines, and you must have met in cafés behind newspapers. i mean, how did it happen? - all of those things, and indeed to this day, working with colleagues in some difficult parts of the world, we still-- now we have internet and access to email--but we still use, let's say, codenames or handles other than the real name of the

person, because that could endanger someone. i've learned now in this email world that people will accidentally forward things, and so i'm very, very strict with our colleagues who work in difficult places that they not use their real names and not endanger themselves. so the risk to someone like me is really, in all honesty, not that great, but the people with whom i work often risk their lives, and i'm very careful to take my lead from them and ask them, "how can i be of service to you? we want to help you. we do not want to endanger you. you tell me what i ought to do". and i listen very carefully to them. - but i notice-- and i think that's part, i guess, of being an intellectual warrior--you do jump in there pretty quickly. you say you don't want to take too many personal risks, but that quote i read is from tahrir

square in cairo, and you're right there in the middle of it and people are firing away, and meanwhile you're communicating with morocco where people are talking with you, and they may be spied upon by that authoritarian government. so there are all kinds of risks involved, and i wonder what makes you take that plane ticket and go? - well, as i said, it almost hurts me when i know that people are suffering from a lack of freedom and all of the terrible things that also come from that--the poverty, the life lived in fear--and with other people who share these views around the world, we want to help them. now, i should point out, some of the work i do is in places that are not dangerous, like germany, or belgium, or canada, united states, and so on, so it's not all that cloak- and-dagger sort of thing. but in countries like afghanistan, which i visit frequently--and we have very, very good partners

there, extremely brave people-- that's a different matter. but, again, i listen very carefully to them. i want to be of help to them. i don't go like a lot of foreigners go, with super high security. i just get picked up at the airport by friends, i go very low profile, i often and they tell me, if i don't speak, i can pass reasonably well for a panjshiri, and if i talk, people will notice, of course, that i'm a foreigner, so i'm just silent when we're outdoors. but that's much safer than going in with a lot of security, and of course that's terribly expensive, and we do this on a shoestring--everything is economy airfare, and i fly on a lot of, let's say, scary airlines--scary air--and we try to do this as cheaply as we can, and again in a way that actually

adds value to our colleagues, who are, in these cases, the ones who take the real risk. - and this will be my last question on the topic of your personal safety, but i asked you earlier, "were you ever arrested?" and yes, you were. but now i have to ask you, from the description you've just made of afghanistan, the whole different part of the world, do you not fear kidnapping? - um... a long time ago, i made a decision in my life that i'm not afraid of other people, and so i don't fear it; i'm just cautious and try to take steps to avoid that sort of thing. but i just decided a long time ago i would not go through my life being afraid of what other people could do to me. and so that's my attitude when i go into a conflict zone--is to realize something unpleasant or disastrous could happen to me,

and that's just the risk i take. - i was also struck by the description in your literature of a man who goes under the pseudonym h. ali kamil. he's a shi'ite in southern iraq, and he translates books at great risk to himself--books with libertarian ideas in them-- but if ever he's caught, he'll be killed. he is absolutely in great danger. - very much so, and, of course, a number of his friends were murdered, and the people who upheld the ideas of freedom, of limited government, of religious toleration, were a great risk in that regime, so i was in iraq a number of times working with people who do believe in freedom and mutual coexistence of different religions and different ways of life. life is very difficult for them, and it continues to be, and the verdict is out as to where iraq is going to be going

in this direction. one hopes that they will, as they us and other foreign forces are pulled out, that they will achieve a free society, but people who stand up for these views put themselves at great personal risk. - and i don't want to belabour the early-christian metaphor here, but in a sense you were really the st. paul of this story, because you were giving a lecture over there, and he was in the room, and he came up to you afterwards, and you converted him. he asked you, he said, "well, what is this?" and you said, "it's libertarianism. i'm a libertarian". and everything started there. - yeah, and i gave a lecture at the university there, and i had been slightly injured on the way, and so i was bleeding, and, before i could get any bandages, i just continued giving my talk, and a lot of people came up to me and thought that was a little bit odd, but i was there

for a reason, and i'm very businesslike when i go to places like that, and my job is to do what i can to spread the ideas of liberty, not in an aggressive or combative way. these are attractive ideas about how people could live together peacefully with mutual respect, respecting the dignity of other people, engaging in trade rather than stealing, for example, having dialogue rather than murder people who disagree with you--those are very attractive ideas, and what they need is a hearing, and so i'm willing to take them to difficult places and meet the people who are our partners, and i admire them tremendously. my... you know, just to put it bluntly, with some friends who have suffered so much--they've been in prison, they've been

tortured, they've had family members murdered, they've been harmed in lots of ways, and they continue struggling for these ideas of liberty. and every time i get a little bit tired, or i think, "oh, i should take a day off", i think about them, and i think, "if they can continue struggling in those circumstances, surely i can put in the extra hours as well". - and just to allow our viewers to understand the context a little bit, i read some un data that says that in one thousand years, in the past millennium, less books have been translated into arabic-- in one thousand years--than are translated into spanish in one year. and so mr. kamil is actually very much in danger, because each book is like a bomb, in a way--it's so powerful because there's so few of them--and when he translates bastiat or hayek, all these libertarian economists, he is taking a very, very big risk.

- and one of the books that, in fact, this particular person had translated--it's a tremendously challenging work--is john stuart mill's on liberty, which is about the idea that we should respect other people's liberty, that free discussion is better than oppression or punishing other people for the views that they have. and that was a work of joy for him to be exposed to these ideas, to wrestle with them, to think about them, and then try to explain them to other arabs in elegant and beautiful arabic. so, one thing about the arab world is, for a long time, a small minority of educated elites who speak english or french had access to such books, but the vast majority of the population, who are monolingual, do not, and there's been very little libertarian-oriented literature available in arabic. this is

now changing because of the minbaralhurriyya.org platform that we've organized that is bringing out lots and lots of books with a number of very, very talented arab colleagues who are highly educated people, very focused, very passionate about the ideas of freedom, and they want to share these with their arab brothers and sisters. - and now, to surprise the viewers a little bit about libertarian thought, there's an amusing moment that comes to mind that i saw the other day on television. ron paul was being interviewed by a journalist who said, "well, of course, you're on the extreme right", and then ron paul shot back, "well, i'm in favour of free trade with cuba. how's that?" and the fellow just was speechless 'cause he couldn't put it together. and you, for instance, as a libertarian, oppose the war in iraq. so when we think libertarianism equates with the "right", quote-unquote, it's much more complex than that. - well, yes. war is the greatest enemy

of human life, of freedom, of civilization. it's a terrible evil, and you should resort to it only when it's the last possible way to defend yourselves. this clearly was not the case in the attack on iraq, and so my view, and that of other libertarians, was this is wrong, this is a terrible mistake, should not be done. it was done, and my view was: why not, after that circumstance, find those people who are willing to stand up for freedom in iraq and reach out to them? and i did that. it did not mean that i was supporting the policies of the us and other governments. i think they were wrong. it was a terrible, terrible mistake. i hope we do not make that same mistake with iran. there is so much irresponsible and reckless talk about military action against iran. this would be terrible. first off, it would cost huge numbers of lives of innocent

people. and, secondly, of course it would strengthen the regime, because it would bring nationalism to the fore. people quite obviously don't like being invading by foreigners, and this would be just a disaster, and people in the political discussion in the us or europe who rattle the sabres and talk about war, in my opinion, are extremely irresponsible and reckless. - and we've talked about the dangers that face you abroad, but are you also seen as a troublemaker by the us government when you travel? do they try and sandbag you with their embassies and their networks of people in the countries where you visit? - i wouldn't say that, but i generally keep clear of them. it's very clear, the work that i do and my colleagues, we're not supported by the us government--or any other government, for that matter. we are not representing

a government. this is an international movement of people, so we have colleagues all over the world who are involved in this. i happen to be sitting here in the united states at the moment, but we have colleagues who are in many other countries who are also engaged in the same type of work that i do. it's really an international team effort. us embassies often see it as their role to make sure foreigners don't come to the us, and so when i do try to invite colleagues from other countries, quite often the us embassy is very difficult to work with. - you mean they restrict the visas? - yeah. i think it's actually counterproductive. it's, in my opinion, bad foreign policy for the us to make it so difficult for foreigners to come to the us. in many ways, one of the best things about american foreign policy is not what the us government says, but when people come to the country and see for themselves, and then go

back home. that's a better way to make friends, in my opinion, and the us government has made it more and more difficult over the years. i think it's really counterproductive. - i was really struck by a conversation you had with a journalist in nepal, and you tell the story. first you went to the caucasus, the five soviet republics--kazakhstan, tajikistan, uzbekistan, those places--and then you end up in nepal, where there are communists in parliament, and you're talking about journalists there, and you're explaining to them that you're for limited government, but you are for strong government. and i thought, for people in that neck of the woods, it must be the weirdest possible concept-- if you've got a strong government, it can't be limited government, because you'll have a strong civil service, a strong ruling party, a strong elite, and they will all want more power. it runs a little bit against human nature to say strong government but limited government. - that's a very, very important

point, that to be in favour of limited government is not the same as being against government, because when you say, "well, i'm just against government", you're lumped in with lots of other people who are against government-- criminals, terrorists, foreign governments, and so on. what i favour is limited government. that means that government needs to do its job well. it's supposed to help us to define our rights: what is yours, what is mine? this is obvious in the case of land law and property, for example, but other application as well. it should help us to define--to defend our rights, and have a legal system that allows us to adjudicate disputes and make contracts and live together peacefully and amicably. what happens in so much of the world is government does both too much and too little. it does a lot of things it shouldn't be doing at all-- it's just not well suited to them, or they're criminal and unjust, like stealing from one group to give to another, or telling people how to live,

or oppressing religious minorities. they shouldn't do that. and then, they don't do things that they should do, like provide defence of life, liberty, and estate, or a legal system that actually functions. in many parts of the world, the government legal system is so corrupt, you'd have to be crazy to waste your time going to it. in some cases, the judges will even articulate in advance how much of a bribe you would have to pay them to win the case. it's obvious you're not getting justice there. the government fails. and what you find consistently in poor countries around the world is government failure. the government has failed to provide a system of property, the government has failed to provide the rule of law, the government has failed to restrain its own agents from engaging in criminal behaviour, and the government has failed to provide the legal framework that allows people to work out their differences peacefully amongst themselves, to cooperate, and so on. so what i stress with people

is: limited government is not the same as being just against government, or in favour of chaos, or something like that; it means we want our government to do its job and be limited to doing the things it ought to do, and do those thing well. - are there any governments in the world today, in your opinion, that are approaching that? - yeah. well, "approaching" always is a relative term, from one position or another. take a very good example: the canadian government, i think, has been getting a lot more things right, and the americans now should be looking to canada for good examples of some budgetary restraint--compared to the us, at least--to think about how to limit government's powers in a very effective way, so i think canada is emerging, actually, as a rather good example for the world; australia would be another one; various european governments that have been getting things right-- relatively. the last few years

with the crisis have seen a demand for more state interventionism, which i think is a mistake because the problem was caused by interventionism in the first place. another example, though, of a country that went from really a failed state to an emerging, democratic, rule-of-law country is the republic of georgia. in 2003, it was just a total disaster, a complete failed state. they were able to reform the judiciary, they were able to eliminate huge amounts of bureaucracy, to reform the police--they have a much more transparent policing system than any other former soviet republic, outside of the baltics, let's say. really an astonishing accomplishment, and that was done because libertarians in georgia were very active in helping to drive that reform process. - and, of course, they were nearly clobbered by mr. putin, and i'm just wondering, when

you see somebody like that-- saakashvili, or even the dalai lama, who's really in a whole different world and fighting for very different things than what you're fighting for, but fighting very bravely--when you see all of that, leaders like that, do you think that they will eventually prevail? - that's a question of a timeframe. i do think that authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, they always present this image that they're eternal. it turns out they're not. they tend to be rather brittle, and we've seen this in various regimes. this certainly was the case in egypt, where there was an authoritarian regime of mubarak, total state control of the media, including newspapers and magazines, state control of the economy, very strong state with security apparatus, etc. etc. and it collapsed. the mubarak regime just collapsed. it turns out it was very, very brittle. this is something we've seen around the world--that

these authoritarian states or totalitarian states, they look really tough, really strong-- indeed, they can hurt you very badly if you challenge them--but it turns out they're much more brittle than people think, and they sometimes just collapse to the ground. look at what happened to the soviet union. this monstrous, horrible totalitarian state that killed millions and millions and millions of people--just ground them up in a gigantic meat grinder, if you will--destroyed people's lives, conquered whole nations, exterminated entire classes and ethnicities of people. and it collapsed in a very short period of time. just collapsed to the ground. what's really important when that happens is to make sure that people have the intellectual resources to understand the importance of good institutions like the judiciary, the rule of law, property rights, a constitution,

limited government, so there's at least some chance that something better can replace those regimes. - well, tom palmer, this has been fascinating. maybe i do want to be your travel agent after all. - i've got to warn you, i always travel coach. (bob laughs) - i'll take it anyway. thank you so much. - thank you. - tom palmer was our guest on the free markets series of the world show, and that's our program for this week. i'm bob scully. have a great week. thanks. closed captioning by sette inc.