European Diary: Reykjavik, December 2021 The name of Iceland’s capital Reykjavik is in English ‘Smoke Bay’. The place received the name in 874 from the first settler in Iceland, Ingolf Arnarson from the west of Norway, after he arrived at a bay in the southwest of Iceland and saw steam columns rise from hot springs […]
European Diary: Prague, November 2021 Unsurprisingly, Prague has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe. It was long the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the residence of several rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, and although that strange entity was neither Holy, Roman, nor Empire, its rulers certainly lived in […]
European Diary: Budapest, November 2021 Budapest is one of the many European cities that breathe history. It was originally two cities, Buda and Pest, on the opposite banks of the Danube River, populated by the Hungarians who in the ninth century suddenly appeared in Europe from the Asian steppes. Pillaged by Mongolian invaders in mid-thirteenth […]
European Diary: Warsaw, November 2023 Probably no major European city illustrates as well the ravages of recent European history as Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Originally a small fishing town on the Vistula River, it was the capital of the vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the late sixteenth century until 1795 when Poland ceased to exist […]
Mont Pelerin-samtökin voru stofnuð í apríl 1947, þegar nokkrir frjálslyndir fræðimenn komu saman í Sviss, þar á meðal hagfræðingarnir Ludwig von Mises, Frank H. Knight, Friedrich A. von Hayek, Milton Friedman, George J. Stigler og Maurice Allais og heimspekingurinn Karl R. Popper. Var tilgangurinn að blása nýju lífi í menningararf Vesturlanda með frjálsri rannsókn og […]
Öfgamúslimar hata vestræna menningu. Þeir telja hana spillta: hún tryggi rétt einstaklinga til eigna og viðskipta, hvetji þá til frjálsrar rannsóknar og rökræðu, veiti þeim kost á að stunda lífsnautnir í stað bænahalds og leyfi konum og meinlausum minnihlutahópum (eins og samkynhneigðum) að njóta sín. Munurinn á kristninni, sem er ein undirstaða vestrænnar menningar, og […]
315 starfsmenn Háskólans, innan við þriðjungur þeirra, hafa sent frá sér yfirlýsingu „gegn ísraelskri nýlendustefnu og þjóðarmorði“. Á meðal þeirra eru Vilhjálmur Árnason heimspekingur og Pia Hansson, forstöðumaður Alþjóðamálastofnunar Háskólans. Ekki er í yfirlýsingunni minnst á hina villimannslegu árás Hamas-liða á Ísrael 7. október 2023, þar sem þeir myrtu alla óbreytta borgara, sem fyrir urðu, brenndu […]
European Diary: Vienna, November 2021 In the spring of 1985, a few of us who had formed the Hayek Society at Oxford for discussing classical liberal and conservative ideas invited Friedrich von Hayek to dinner at the Ritz in London. At the close of the event, a group of musicians approached our table and asked […]
European Diary: Paris, October 2021 In Paris, intellectuals are taken much more seriously than elsewehere. On French television, frequently there are long and animated debates about ideas. Books sometimes become sensations. The French would not say flippantly like the English: What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. When I was growing up […]
European Diary: Akureyri, October 2021 Most of Iceland’s population live in the southwestern corner of the country, in the capital Reykjavik, and in towns nearby. The only sizeable town elsewhere is Akureyri in the north of the island, a busy port, the site of flourishing fishing firms and a service centre for the adjacent rural […]
Nýlegar athugasemdir