Announcements: This Week and Next Fall (Updated)

I want to flag a couple of upcoming events for intrepid Power Line readers. First, for Chicago area readers, this Friday morning at 9 am, May 3, I shall be on a panel at the Blackstone Hotel on Michigan Avenue downtown on the subject “Poland & the US in Defense of Freedom: From Defeating Communism to Preserving National Sovereignty.” The event is sponsored by Polish National Foundation, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and The General Ryszard Kuklinski Museum in Warsaw, Poland. This event is part of the Kuklinski Museum Discussion Series — “30 Years After the Fall of Communism in Europe.” It is free and open to the public, and you can RSVP at the Eventbrite site here. (Note also that this panel is part of a larger two-day program on “Toward Freedom: Celebrating Central and Eastern European Independence”    that the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has organized, and you should check out the entire lineup here.)

I’m especially delighted that the panel is going to be moderated by Charles Lipson, emeritus professor from the University of Chicago, whom I have never had the chance to meet before now.

Now the strange thing is that, judging from some frenzied and occasionally trollish twitter traffic, this event is controversial because Poland’s current government is considered, alongside Hungary, as an anti-democratic, proto-fascist outlier in Europe today. In other words, Poland is another “rogue regime” where “populism” has resulted in the wrong people winning elections—just like here. And of course the title of our panel includes the word “sovereignty” in it, and for the rootless cosmopolites of our time, “sovereignty” is a code word for racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. But also a necessary condition for freedom and independence, which is why it is highly inconvenient for the Davoisie. I don’t know whether we are going to have some “colorful” audience participation or not, but could be.

Second, for readers pondering their vacation plans for the rest of the year, have I got the event for you! On October 2, our friends at the Pacific Research Institute and the Claremont Institute have teamed up to organize a joint 40th anniversary cruise (PRI and Claremont were founded the same year) out of Barcelona, Spain, and ending in Rome on Oct. 10. You can find all the details, itinerary, and speakers here. (Other speakers besides me include Charles Kesler, Michael Anton, Andrew Roberts, and John O’Sullivan.)

As a teaser, here are just two of my events on the cruise:

Come along! I promise some extra exclusive events (which will surely involve drinking fine beverages) for Power Line readers.

UPDATE: I have one other event on this week that I wasn’t sure was going to come together. For East Bay readers, I’m giving a talk this Wednesday night, May 1, on campus at Berkeley for the UC Berkeley chapter of the Young Americans for Liberty on the topic “Do We Still Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident? Revisiting the Declaration of Independence in the 21st Century?” The talk will be at 7 pm in Wheeler Hall, Room 108. Some music will be part of the program! (This link should give you the proper map location.)

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