El 17 de febrero dejó de brillar uno de los intelectuales y teólogos americanos más importantes del siglo XX. Una de sus obras más importantes, 'El Espíritu del Capitalismo Democrático' es, además de un libro en defensa de la economía de mercado, un intento de mostrar cómo la libertad política y económica produce más beneficios para los individuos que ninguna otra institución.

Something impossible for many was achieved in Ecuador on February 19th: the candidate of the opposition Guillermo Lasso reached a second round or ballot. Definitively, the situation is glimpsed as one of the hardest knocks to the Government of the Citizens’ Revolution. Lasso obtained 28.3% of the votes. It’s been made clear that 61% of Ecuadorians voted for an opposition which represents them.

Even though the validity of the current Basic Law is guaranteed until 2047, China ambitions to control Hong Kong politically and seeks a much earlier integration with Beijing both not only in the economic and political fields, but in the affectitive one.. But, no matter what situation,  it is out of the question for Beiging tolerate  Hong Kong citizens to vote for their representatives. The reaction that this position  may ultimately cause in Hong Kong is yet to be seen.

All these military, police and institutional forces flout the law without counterweight. They act in the daylight with full immunity. They don’t have limits. Their only objective: preventing oppositional citizens, “the internal enemy”, from continuing the fight to call elections, release the political prisoners and allow the reception of humanitarian aid in Venezuela.

Con Tzvetan Todorov desaparece un destacado humanista de nuestro tiempo, un gran europeo, continuador de aquella república de las letras que tuvo su momento de gloria en el siglo XVIII. En su libro sobre el pensador liberal Benjamin Constant nos advierte contra el mesianismo y los regímenes políticos que quieren imponer el Bien por la fuerza.

November 9, 2004 was the fifteenth anniversary of the ?fall? of the Berlin Wall. To commemorate the event, the FAES Foundation organized a series of lectures called ?The Freedom Revolution?, in which twelve figures from the political and intellectual world in the East and West took part. The series was coordinated by Ana Palacio, a member of the Spanish Parliament and former Minister for Foreign Affairs, and it ran from November 2004 to May 2005.One of the main theses of the ?Freedom Revolution? is that the Berlin Wall did not collapse of its own accord. The Wall was pulled down by the determination of people who risked their lives in order to regain their freedom. If the Wall fell it was also because of the steadfastness of a generation of politicians who were determined to stop the advance of totalitarian tyranny despite of the incomprehension of a large proportion of intellectuals in the West. These efforts helped to bring freedom and peace to the other side of the Iron Curtain.Some of the eye witnesses of that time, many of whom played key roles in the process, took part in the lecture series and explained their vision of events and their response. Helmut Kohl, Bronislaw Geremek, Giovanni Sartori, Nicolas Baverez, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Jesús Huerta de Soto, Francis Fukuyama, Guy Sorman, André Glucksmann, Richard Perle, Joseph Weiler and Christopher DeMuth took us through what happened in the Freedom Revolution. Their words, their memories and their teachings, given in the Great Hall of San Pablo-CEU University, are gathered together in this volume, which also includes the introductions made by José María Aznar, AnaPalacio and José María Lassalle.The FAES Foundation would like to give special thanks to Noah Clarke, Carmelo López-Arias, Elena Segura, Jessica Zorogastua and Miguel Ángel Quintanilla Navarro for their work in putting together this publication.We would also like to thank the Rector of San Pablo-CEU University, José Alberto Parejo Gámir, for the magnificent facilities offered by the university, which made this lecture series possible.

Europe is in the throes of two simultaneous crises: on the one hand, it is suffering from a political crisis, a crisis of leadership, one that has led to constitutional failure; on the other, it is suffering from a loss of identity, a phenomenon that results in cultural relativism. Marcello Pera, Speaker of the Italian Senate and Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Pisa, delivered a conference entitled “Strength of Identity” during the course of the FAES Campus 2005, a paper which the FAES Foundation is now publishing. Also known as the co-author of the book Senza Radici (“Without Roots”) alongside Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Professor Pera urges European culture to proudly recall and reaffirm its origins and its universal democratic principles: freedom, equality and tolerance. In this respect, Europe must recognise the intrinsic value of a civilisation, Western civilisation, that has given the world so many universal ideas. “Europe must be aware of the moral superiority of a series of values that have prevailed over centuries and that have produced beneficial results wherever they have become established”.