With great excitement, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is unveiling Anything Peaceful@FEE, a new scholarship fund that brings deserving students from diverse backgrounds to our annual FEEcon event in Atlanta, which is rapidly becoming a must-attend event for lovers of liberty. This year, FEEcon will be held from June 13-15, 2019, at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta.
FEE’s founder, Leonard E. Read, left an indelible imprint on FEE, best expressed perhaps by the title of his 1964 book, Anything That’s Peaceful: The Case for the Free Market.
As one of Read’s seminal works, Anything That’s Peaceful has inspired this new scholarship fund. At the center of it all was this simple but profound proposition: allow people to live their lives free from the initiation of violence. As long as a person does no harm to the rights, lives, or property of others, nobody—whether it be a foreign government or his next-door neighbor—should disrupt his path by force.
In addition to the long list of reasons to support liberty, add this one: it is the most inclusive political philosophy imaginable. It starts with the foundation of each person’s unique and precious individuality. It respects human rights that are universal, owned at birth by each and every one of us. It encourages us to judge people not by some collectivist irrelevance or group assignment but by, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “the content of their character.” You can’t be a racist or a homophobe or a xenophobe or an anti-Semite or any fill-in-the-blank, hate-them-for-the-group-God-put-them-in Neanderthal and a consistent defender of liberty. It is simply not possible and defies the very definition of the “freedom philosophy.”
The new Anything Peaceful@FEE scholarship fund will allow more deserving students to experience this life-changing event.
Both peace and liberty require personal character, which demands that we respect each other and seek to be inclusive, compassionate, and transparent. This is at the core of freedom and FEE’s philosophy—and it’s what we celebrate each year at FEEcon.
To help more students celebrate this message with us, the Anything Peaceful@FEE fund will provide travel scholarships to selected international and domestic students who express financial need and are also passionate about the values of liberty and compassion for all people. FEEcon is a place where people from all backgrounds can come together to set their paths and change the world, and we are delighted that the new Anything Peaceful@FEE scholarship fund will allow more deserving students to experience this life-changing event.
If you are a student who would like to be considered for a FEEcon travel scholarship provided by Anything Peaceful@FEE, please indicate your interest when you REGISTER for the conference. Please note that scholarships are limited, so be sure to register as soon as possible. Early-bird registration pricing ends on 03/31/2019.
Lawrence W. Reed
Lawrence W. Reed is FEE's Interim President, having previously served for nearly 11 years as FEE’s president (2008-2019).
