OC BLOG (CA): Penetrating insights from behind the Orange Curtain

 
 
 

Thanking Milton Friedman

Posted by: Scott W. Graves | 07/30/2008 2:03 PM

friedman.jpgBy Brian Calle, Young Executives of America, and Clare Venegas, Lincoln Club of Orange County

Have you thanked Milton Friedman lately? That's the question PBS asked audiences two years ago, while promoting its retrospective on the life of this hero of freedom. It's a question we should keep asking. Friedman may have passed away in November of 2006, but our debt to him has not.

To help us all remember what Friedman has given us, The Lincoln Club and the Young Executives of America are leading the celebration of Milton Friedman Day in California on July 31, Friedman's birthday. Along with other organizations sponsoring events across the country, we want to keep Friedman's legacy alive.

Friedman is honored around the world as one of the greatest champions of freedom in our time. Just think about how things looked for the cause of freedom when Friedman started writing in the 1950s. Communist tyranny dominated half the world, and was aggressively moving to take over the other half. It was an open question whether freedom would survive at all.

But what was probably even worse was that the "free world" itself had lost its faith in freedom. Government management of the whole economy was thought to be clearly more efficient than the chaos of the free market. Since the communists had the advantage - the advantage! - of centralized economic planning, our only hope to beat them was to centralize our own economy as much as we could and hope it was enough to keep up.

We had lost sight of our founding idea: government that exists to protect the liberty of the individual, and a society that draws strength from that liberty.

Friedman worked long and hard for over half a century to restore that idea. His brilliant mind, his generosity with his time and talents, and his knack for cutting through the fog and explaining ideas clearly brought him success after success.

We have a lot to be thankful for. Friedman's ideas helped win the great 20th century struggle against tyranny. And they extended the blessings of economic prosperity to millions who were being impoverished by inflationary monetary policies and state control of the economy. In the quarter century since Ronald Reagan put Friedman's ideas (and his students) in charge of the money supply, all sectors of American society from top to bottom have enjoyed an unprecedented explosion of new wealth.

Friedman worked to extend freedom in a variety of other areas, too. His influence was crucial in ending the peacetime draft, which is one important reason our military is now the most powerful fighting force the world has ever seen. If you force people to do things, Friedman explained, they don't do them nearly as well as if you get them to do things voluntarily.

In his last decade, Friedman concentrated on educational freedom. School choice, which lets parents choose the right education for their children instead of handing them over to a government bureaucracy, was his last great crusade.

He and his wife Rose founded the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996 to promote school choice for all students.  Currently, there are 23 school choice programs in operation throughout the nation, serving 190,000 students in 14 states plus the District of Columbia.
 
So, have you thanked Milton Friedman lately? If you love liberty, join us on July 31 in thanking the man who did so much to preserve, protect, and defend it.
 
CATEGORY: FEATURE

Comments

There is another person from Chicago who is going to affect the course of our history. His name is Barack Obama. While ya' all relish screwing over the little guy, like Uncle Milty did, we have seen that these policies when implemented create deficit spending and the economy goes to the tank. Your boy Bush ran with these policies and we can see what it did for our great country. So keep talking the talk, Obama will walk the walk.

Andy Favor said:

You are correct that George Bush is a disaster with his increased farm aid, no child left behind, medicare prescription drug benefit, AIDS money for Africa, etc. that has contributed to deficits. But don't blame Milton Friedman for those things. Milton Friedman and his ideas have resulted in hundreds of millions escaping poverty.

Obama wants to have high taxes, windfall profits taxes, and all of the things that contributed to the ecconomic disaster of the 1970s.

Go ahead and blame Richard Nixon there as well, but don't blame Milton.

Here is a nice tribute to Dr. Friedman:

When Mart Laar began his second term as prime minister of Estonia in 1999, the country was in the midst of a fiscal crisis. The collapse of Russia's economy the year before had left Estonia's stock market reeling, and the government was struggling to fund the benefits promised by Soviet-era social programs.

Laar realized that the only way for Estonia to weather the crisis was to finally leave behind the legacy of its communist past. He announced deep cuts to paternalistic state welfare programs, slashed business taxes, and urged liberalization of international trade. By the end of his term, the government's Bureau of Privatization was dissolved; more than 90 percent of the economy was in private hands. The economy was growing 7 percent annually, and Laar was widely credited as the force behind the creation of the "Baltic Tiger."

Mart Laar believes in economic freedom because he believes in the Estonian people. As a young student of history, Laar braved Soviet arrest by researching Estonian resistance to the World War II occupation. In his first term of office, he negotiated the withdrawal of Russian troops from the country, introduced the highly stable Estonian currency, and implemented a flat tax that has decreased steadily since 1994.

Laar is not an economist, and he says that his boldness came mostly from naiveté. "I had read only one book on economics—Milton Friedman's Free to Choose," he said. "I was so ignorant at the time that I thought that what Friedman wrote about the benefits of privatization, the flat tax and the abolition of all customs rights, was the result of economic reforms that had been put into practice in the West. It seemed common sense to me and, as I thought it had already been done everywhere, I simply introduced it in Estonia, despite warnings from Estonian economists that it could not be done. They said it was as impossible as walking on water. We did it: we just walked on the water because we did not know that it was impossible."

Laar's dedication to progress and economic freedom has allowed the former communist state to develop into one of the most dynamic economies in the world, ranking in the top 10 countries in the Economic Freedom of the World index. At the dedication in 1995 of the F. A. Hayek Auditorium at the Cato Institute, House Majority Leader Dick Armey said of Laar's government, "If Estonia is not a vindication of everything we believe in—from free trade to privatization to sound money to balanced budgets—I am at a loss as to how else one could validate our ideas." Laar has defied common wisdom in Europe to prove that economic freedom works.

In 2006 the Cato Institute awarded Laar the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. Recently Mart Laar also became an economic adviser to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Select a Red County Blog

MEET THE LOCAL EDITOR
 
 

Recent Comments

11/22/2008 9:23 AM

Anongymous commented about: How Liberal is Gus Ayer?

Mr. Ayer registered as a Republican to be electable in an interim election with no incumbents. He did...
 

11/20/2008 1:39 PM

John Hewitt commented about: The Darrell Nolta Drinking Game

Anonymous, you have an excellent point. Sometimes people become annoyed by a person or event, to the extent...
 

11/20/2008 2:33 AM

meme commented about: Seasons Greetings to Our Friends...

It’s Christmas again!! A time to cherish the beautiful white snow, smiling snowman, brightness of the Christmas décor...
 

11/19/2008 7:35 PM

orange county og commented about: Gang Members? What Gang members?

hahaha kpc veteran kpc is a wanabe gang that started like a pary crew then a gang how...
 

11/18/2008 11:47 PM

Fred Smoller commented about: More Details On Steve Rocco's Catsup Caper

you can see the documentary I made about him at recallingrocco "dot" com....
 

11/16/2008 10:02 PM

anonymous commented about: Todd Gallinger is the fourth member of "Keep Irvine Great"

Ed Anger, Get your facts straight. Its sad how ignorant people can be. The fact that he's muslim...
 

11/15/2008 4:01 PM

Grizzly commented about: Kudos To Chris Norby On CCWs

Disarming law-abiding citizens in the guise of protecting the community is counterintuitive. As you know, law enforcement cannot...
 

11/15/2008 1:38 PM

Blues commented about: Kudos To Chris Norby On CCWs

Just another reason to put on my list of things that need to be fixed in California before...
 

11/15/2008 12:25 PM

F&E Fan commented about: Same-Sex Marriage Advocates Continue Threatening Yes on 8 Supporters

The judges did not invent a right out of thin air, Jubal. They did their job in determining...
 

11/15/2008 12:16 PM

Bill commented about: Post-Victory Observations On Prop. 8

The loud call for opponents of Prop. 8 to “get over it and accept the will of the...
 

11/15/2008 9:05 AM

COTOBLOGZZ commented about: Sociopoly and the Fanny Playing Card Deck

Excellent - perhaps THAT card deck can be used for Sociopoly, adding GM Executives in some sort of...
 

11/15/2008 12:43 AM

Jubal commented about: Same-Sex Marriage Advocates Continue Threatening Yes on 8 Supporters

It's not hysteria, Missy. That would be the tone of your comments here, which are starting to take...
 

11/14/2008 10:58 PM

BigGuy commented about: Sociopoly and the Fanny Playing Card Deck

I have a Freddie Mac playing card deck that was used as a promotional item at recruitment fairs....
 

11/14/2008 10:57 PM

No Dah...Chris commented about: Update on Orange County's Closest Races - Garden Grove, Westminster, Yorba Linda, and SAUSD

Chris Emami, boy you sure daring to stick your neck out by declaring Andrew Do the winner. Any...
 

11/14/2008 9:29 PM

ADP commented about: Moorlach and Norby On CCWs

Mr Moorlach and his part time "law professor" have not been given all the facts. The new "verifiable...
 

11/14/2008 9:22 PM

Missy commented about: Same-Sex Marriage Advocates Continue Threatening Yes on 8 Supporters

"What Kevin is threatening would be the equivalent of seeking out my clients and threatening to make examples...
 

11/14/2008 9:16 PM

PMS commented about: Kudos To Chris Norby On CCWs

The more I read on the current situation of the CCW policy in Orange County the more concerned...
 

11/14/2008 9:09 PM

JDAP commented about: Kudos To Chris Norby On CCWs

Supervisor Norby; Thank you standing up for what's right instead of what is politically correct. Any man or...
 

11/14/2008 7:58 PM

Jubal commented about: Same-Sex Marriage Advocates Continue Threatening Yes on 8 Supporters

What is being attempted is a boycott of businesses owned by people who DONATED to the Yes on...
 

11/14/2008 6:59 PM

Tiki commented about: Kudos To Chris Norby On CCWs

Thank you Supervisor Norby....
 

What We're Talking About