WEBVTT NOTE A Tribute to William H. Peterson, 1921-2012 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Well, Bob Luddy mentioned great entrepreneurs. He's one himself. 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.000 And I want to make the first announcement. We'll have more to say about this later. 3 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:14.000 But Bob is endowing a chair in Austrian Economics here at the Institute in honor of Bill Peterson. 4 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:21.000 And the Peterson-Luddy Chair is going to have a very important role in the future of the Institute. 5 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:26.000 And so, Bob, thanks for everything you do and thanks a million for doing that. 6 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:37.640 I was going to speak about Bill, but how much more appropriate to have gotten remarks today 7 00:00:37.640 --> 00:00:41.360 from his daughter Laura Bennett Peterson. 8 00:00:41.360 --> 00:00:43.520 So let me share those with you. 9 00:00:43.520 --> 00:00:46.840 She said, Dad would be so proud to see you all here. 10 00:00:46.840 --> 00:00:52.280 Of all the honors he earned, he took the greatest pride in the Schlarbohm Prize for Lifetime 11 00:00:52.280 --> 00:01:09.280 and Time Defense of Liberty that he received from the institute in 2005 and the address that Tom mentioned is both online in video and writing, very much worth taking a look at, especially the video, he was such a tremendous speaker. 12 00:01:09.280 --> 00:01:17.280 Laura goes on, Bill would be embarrassed, excuse me, my dad would be embarrassed but also greatly honored by these tributes to him today. 13 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:22.120 Dad would not want this occasion to be a somber one, so let me recall for you one 14 00:01:22.120 --> 00:01:26.960 of his many gifts and something of a trademark of his, an irrepressible sense 15 00:01:26.960 --> 00:01:32.400 of humor. Politicians were a constant source of inspiration, and of course I 16 00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:38.980 use that word wryly. U.S. presidential candidates put on what Dad dubbed in a 17 00:01:38.980 --> 00:01:44.280 wonderful article in 1956, The Greatest Show on Earth, quoting from an imaginary 18 00:01:44.280 --> 00:01:57.280 Larry Huckster's Chorus is a privilege and a pleasure, fellow Americans, to be with you here today, meeting you will be my everlasting inspiration for the next four years. 19 00:01:57.280 --> 00:02:07.280 Lou Mises, dad's great hero, mentor, colleague and friend, also had a sense of humor, which he could display even in lecturing about economic calculation. 20 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:13.680 Margaret von Mises recalled in my years with Ludwig von Mises, quote, once in June 1955, 21 00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:18.140 the Petersons brought their children to a seminar arranged by Lew at a Buck Hills farm 22 00:02:18.140 --> 00:02:20.240 inn in the Poconos. 23 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:24.560 Mary Peterson sat in the back with her two children. 24 00:02:24.560 --> 00:02:28.600 According to the lecture notes of Bettina Bean Graves, Lew said, there will one day 25 00:02:28.600 --> 00:02:34.320 be a period of history in which the government will leave the butter price as it is and people 26 00:02:34.320 --> 00:02:49.320 The little girl, sitting so quietly in the back of the room, who is listening without too much interest to what we're saying, will perhaps live in a world where the butter price will be left to the free market. 27 00:02:49.320 --> 00:02:54.320 I'm afraid I was that little girl, all of age four at the time. 28 00:02:54.320 --> 00:03:02.320 And now, what Mises foresaw, or hoped for, a free market price for butter, among other things, has come to pass. 29 00:03:02.320 --> 00:03:32.320 come to pass. Well, four years later, dad analyzed the great farm problem in his book by that title as a problem of interventionist farm policy. He decried the interest group politics, regulatory capture and crony capitalism that brought this about and proposed such radical solutions as the elimination of agricultural price supports and guarantees, as well as acreage and marketing controls. Quote, which will triumph, he asked, nature's law or man's law? As of today, it's still the latter. 30 00:03:32.320 --> 00:03:40.320 Israel Kirzner, who studied under both Mises and Dad at NYU, once asked Dad whether he should become a rabbi or an economist. 31 00:03:40.320 --> 00:03:43.320 Well, you can guess the answer Dad gave. 32 00:03:43.320 --> 00:03:55.320 In his lucid study of Ludwig von Mises, the man and his economics, Kirzner called Mises the most outspoken, most trenchant, and most passionate defender of free market capitalism of the 20th century. 33 00:03:55.320 --> 00:04:00.800 of the Century. Dad, too, powerfully and persuasively defended the market as the most 34 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:06.080 harmonious and efficient way to coordinate economic activity and to foster innovation 35 00:04:06.080 --> 00:04:11.280 in a world of imperfect information. It was worth defending because it permitted people 36 00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:16.240 to take those actions and to make those choices that best fit their own individual needs and 37 00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:22.520 values. Dad, like Mises, had the courage of his convictions, defending liberty even when 38 00:04:22.520 --> 00:04:25.360 and it was unpopular or inexpedient. 39 00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:31.320 He managed to shock both liberals and conservatives in a 1959 Harvard Business Review article 40 00:04:31.320 --> 00:04:34.200 should we trade with the communists. 41 00:04:34.200 --> 00:04:38.680 For all but military weapons and equipment the United States should, he argued, trade 42 00:04:38.680 --> 00:04:42.440 as freely with communists as with non-communist countries. 43 00:04:42.440 --> 00:04:47.800 The communist challenge could best be met through competition with free enterprise and 44 00:04:47.800 --> 00:04:50.600 the freer the better the stronger. 45 00:04:50.600 --> 00:05:00.600 For when Communism undertakes all the necessary changes, just to provide the qualitative and quantitative aspects of material well-being for its citizens, it will no longer be Communism. 46 00:05:01.600 --> 00:05:04.600 Dad lived by Mises' and this Institute's guiding principle. 47 00:05:04.600 --> 00:05:08.600 Tune cati malis, said Contra identi or ito. 48 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:13.600 Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it. 49 00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:19.600 In Virgil's Aeneid, this was the Sybil's prophecy, an exhortation to Aeneas. 50 00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:24.160 I know with some poignancy the response of Aeneas, whose father had died. 51 00:05:24.160 --> 00:05:29.840 I beg of you but one thing, may it be my lot to look upon the face of my beloved father. 52 00:05:29.840 --> 00:05:32.240 You must show me the way. 53 00:05:32.240 --> 00:05:36.880 Dad left a legacy to this institute because he trusted it to show the way, 54 00:05:36.880 --> 00:05:40.400 and as he so ably did, to freedom. 55 00:05:40.400 --> 00:05:46.800 May his and your good work continue, and may he rest in the peace he so richly deserves.