Ka-Ching!

We want to wish Megan McArdle the best of luck tonight as she emcees the Koch Family Picnic, also known as the Institute For Humane Studies 50th Anniversary Dinner. The chairman, Charles G. Koch, will make a speech and new Institute initiatives will be discussed. No doubt a good time will be had by all, as they plan a happy, regulation-free future.

A little background:

History

The Institute for Humane Studies was founded in 1961 by Dr. F. A. "Baldy" Harper, a former economics professor at Cornell University. Part of a generation that had lived through two devastating world wars and seen the rise of numerous totalitarian dictatorships, Harper set up an institute devoted to research and education in the conviction that greater understanding of human affairs and freedom would foster peace, prosperity, and social harmony.

History demonstrated the great capacity of humans to solve their problems through "the practice and potentials of freedom," and Harper envisioned this as the primary focus of the Institute for Humane Studies. "Not in government or force, not in slavery or war, but in the creative, and thereby spiritual, power of freedom, shall our inspiration be found," he wrote in an early proposal for the Institute.

Based for many years in Menlo Park, California, IHS moved in 1985 to Fairfax, Virginia, and associated with George Mason University. At George Mason, IHS has been able to pursue its mission more effectively in cooperation with other organizations affiliated with the university. 50 years later, IHS continues the work begun by Baldy Harper, cultivating a growing network of more than 10,000 students, scholars, and other intellectuals who to serve in the battle of ideas.

And nothing says freedom like the freedom to poison your fellow Americans and trade with its "enemies" as you get rich, rich rich! I hope that McArdle is charging them a small fortune or will get some quid pro quo for her Koch-employed husband; the Koches can afford it and no real Libertarian would ever work for free.