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The word ‘liberal’ has a different sense in Brazil than in the United States. In Brazil, it refers to the tradition articulated by John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith: limited government, private property, and free trade. In the United States, the word has, however, been appropriated by moderate socialists and basically means an economic interventionist, a busybody. In Brazil, liberals in the classical sense have since 1988 gathered around Easter in Porto Alegre, at the Freedom Forum, Fórum da liberdade, organised by an association of young entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, the Institute of Business Studies, Instituto de Estudo Empresariais. I have spoken thrice at the Freedom Forum, in 2007, 2013, and now in 2026, when it was held on 9–10 April. In 2007, I described green capitalism, or how to protect the environment by defining private property rights to natural resources. In 2013, I defined the main task of classical liberals: to make the invisible hand visible, to explain how order can develop without commands. Now I presented a forthcoming book, Conservative-Liberal Thought in the Nordic Countries: An Anthology, which I edited and introduced, and which is published by the Brussels think tank New Direction.
The Nordic Tradition of Liberty
In my talk, I said that alongside the well-known liberal tradition of Great Britain, a similar, powerful yet neglected tradition had developed in the Nordic countries. The Icelandic chronicler Snorri Sturluson had, in the 1220s, invoked the two old Germanic principles of government by consent and the right of rebellion. The Finnish pastor and politician Anders Chydenius had in 1765 anticipated Adam Smith’s argument for free trade. The Danish pastor and poet N. F. S. Grundtvig had taught in the nineteenth century that the transfer of power from the prince to the people required spontaneous social discipline, acquired in private schools and freely formed associations. Two Swedish economists, Gustav Cassel and Eli F. Heckscher, had in the 1930s employed similar arguments against central economic planning as Friedrich A. von Hayek did in his seminal 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom.
Paulo Guedes and Four Presidential Candidates
The 2026 Freedom Forum was attended by more than five thousand people. Many notable thinkers and men of affairs spoke there, including the Brazilian economist Paulo Guedes. With a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Milton Friedman, Guedes served as minister of the economy during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, from 2019 to 2023, implementing an ambitious programme of liberalisation, privatisation and simplification of the tax system. In his talk, Guedes marvelled at the fact that in the last fifty years, planet Earth has been able to feed four billion newcomers. This has only been possible because mankind has benefitted from the enormous creative powers of a free and competitive order. Guedes urged political conservatives and economic liberals in Brazil to unite against socialism. If they did so, he was optimistic about the future. ‘Brazil has no natural enemies. Our only problem is ourselves,’ he said. Four candidates in the forthcoming presidential election also spoke at the Freedom Forum: Romeu Zema from the New Party (Novo), Ronaldo Caiado from the Social Democrats, Aldo Rebeldo from the Christian Democrats, and Flávio Bolsonaro from the (right-wing) Liberal Party. Zema and Bolsonaro agreed that two urgent problems needed to be resolved in Brazil: personal security and judicial activism.
The English Aristocrat and the American Cowboy
I saw many familiar faces in Porto Alegre. Over a cup of coffee, the American economist Deirdre McCloskey told me a joke about an English aristocrat who was travelling in the Wild West. He asked a cowboy: ‘Who is your master?’ The cowboy replied: ‘He hasn’t seen the light of day.’ I told her that this reminded me of the story by Dudo of Saint Quentin about the Norwegian Viking Rollo the Walker. When he and his men arrived in France in 885, an emissary of the French king wanted to meet their chief. They replied: ‘We have no chief, because we are all equal.’