Bastiat: The Unseen Radical

David Hart, editor and librarian at Liberty Fund, joined us in Auburn today to deliver a dynamite lecture on his favorite subject: Frédéric Bastiat the radical. We think we know Bastiat from The Law, but his work in economics and social theory actually spans thousands of pages. And he was a thoroughgoing radical in his personal and professional life, both in his Basque hometown of Bayonne and in the “Babylon” of Paris. Hart makes the case that Bastiat was not only a serious and under-appreciated thinker, but also a proto-Austrian to whom we owe a huge intellectual debt. This is a very entertaining and revealing look at one of the true founders of modern libertarian thought.