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Last night, I had the occasion to catch a presentation on C-SPAN2'sBookTV by Alan Ebenstein, author of a well-regarded biography of NobelLaureate F. A. Hayek, on another Nobel Laureate who remains central tothe ongoing development of my own political philosophy: Milton Friedman.

Towardthe beginning of his lecture, Mr. Ebenstien noted that ProfessorFriedman was born on July 31, 1912 in Brooklyn, New York. At thatprecise moment, I decided that I had to write this post, on this dayand in this venue, which I have been absent from for many months for avariety of reasons.

My primary intention is to share my ownextended appreciation for a man who has not only profoundly impacted myown thinking but also one who has graciously lent himself to the largerpublic discourse on a wide range of topics, most notably the humanimperative of economic freedom.

Most D'Alliance readers probablyrecognize Professor Friedman's role as one of the most longstanding andnotable public critics of the current Drug War. He was also a leadingintellectual force behind the demise of the draft. (More on both below.)

Eventhough it was another great economist, Julian Simon, who officiallytagged people as "the ultimate resource," Professor Friedman's advocacyon behalf of liberty has always looked to the improvement of the humancondition as a lodestar. Freedom is not only an abstract ideal: it istangible means to ameliorate those hardships resulting from living in aworld with scarce material resources and coercive government actionthat often exacerbates such hardships.

Allow me to clarify why Ihave elected to use the label "Professor," instead of "Doctor" or"Mister," when talking about Milton Friedman. As a technical matter, heserves as the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service ProfessorEmeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago and a SeniorResearch Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.Although I have never had the privilege of listening to a live lecturefrom him (or even viewed his much lauded PBS "Free to Choose" series),I consider him to be one of the greatest professors I have ever had.

In my off year between college and law school, I picked up a copy of Professor Friedman's 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom. Along with Hayek's Road to Serfdom and Ludwig von Mises's Liberalism,it remains one of the lasting formative books in my personalintellectual development. In each of these volumes, I discovered thecognitive antidote to a world held hostage by the tumultuous,oft-deadly gyrations of welfare-warfare statism and an academyenchanted with its own continued role in building Utopia from the top(of the Ivory Tower) down. [Another important libertarian intellectual,Robert Nozick, touched upon the latter issue, specifically the anti-capitalist tendencies of intellectuals.]

Inshort, I discovered classical liberalism, which is a politicalphilosophy that embraces individual rights, limited government, andmarket exchange to advance peace and prosperity. I am one of thosepolitical misanthropes who endeavor to reclaim the word "liberal" fromits skewed modern American usage. Hayek's essay Why I am Not a Conservativeexplores the vacuous meanings of contemporary political labels roughlythree decades before George H.W. Bush campaigned against MichaelDukakis largely by invoking "the L word." Professor Friedman also notesthe "corruption of the term liberalism" in the opening pages of Capitalism and Freedom.

Giventhe clear intellectual force of their arguments, grounded in a firmunderstanding of political economy, it didn't take much for me to"unlearn what I had learned" over the span of my formal education. Ilike to joke that it took the teachings of a "holy trinity of Jewisheconomists" to cleanse myself of the socialist economics and statistpolitics I was exposed to in Roman Catholic and Protestant schools.

By1995, the "year of my unlearning," Hayek and Mises lived only in thelegacies shaped by their writing. Since then, I have come to appreciateany and all sage insights from Professor Friedman that I find in thepapers, periodicals like Hoover Digest, publications from his charitable foundation,or on television -- even if, as he likes to joke, he is partiallyresponsible for the implementation of the payroll tax and has beenmaking up for it ever since.

Two of my favorite moments from Professor Friedman in recent years:

(1)In a book that solicited advice from leading public figures on "the onething you know," he wrote: "There's no such thing as a free lunch, andgovernment's attempt to provide one is ruining our country."

(2)When President George W. Bush welcomed him to the White House for anhonorary lunch in 2002, he took the President to task for his supportof steel tariffs. Curiously, but not surprisingly, his remarks are absent from the video and written transcript of the event on the White House's website.

Iwill never aspire to practice the sublime art of hagiography. I alsofirmly believe that it is best if a person speak for themselves. Whatfollows, then, are a few of my favorite excerpts from ProfessorFriedman's oeuvre, which shall always be "top-shelf" in my personallibrary. These can only provide a rough, incomplete snapshot of hislibertarian philosophy, but are indicative of his strengths as both athinker and a writer.

Professor Friedman on Freedom

Freedomis a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms,that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power.Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrumentthrough which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating powerin political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the menwho wield this power initially be of good will and even though they benot corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will attract andform men of a different stamp.

The preservation of freedom isthe protective reason for limiting and decentralizing government power.But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances ofcivilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science orliterature, in industry or agriculture, have never come fromcentralized government....

Government can never duplicate thevariety and diversity of individual action. At any moment in time, byimposing uniform standards in housing, or nutrition, or clothing,government could undoubtedly improve the level of living of manyindividuals; by imposing uniform standards in schooling, roadconstruction, or sanitation, central government could undoubtedlyimprove the level of performance in many local areas and perhaps evenon the average all communities. But in the process, government wouldreplace progress by stagnation, it would substitute uniform mediocrityfor the variety essential for that experimentation which can bringtomorrow's laggards above today's mean.

(Capitalism and Freedom, at pp. 2-4.)

Professor Friedman on the Draft

[A]puzzling question is why we have continued to use compulsion.... [The]answer is the tyranny of the status quo. The natural tendency of anadministrator of a large, complex, and ongoing activity is to regardthe present method of administrating it as the only feasible way to doso and to object strenuously that any proposed alternative is visionaryand unfeasible -- even though the same man, once the change is made andit becomes the existing method, will argue just as strenuously that it is the only feasible method....

Avoluntary army would preserve the freedom of individuals to serve ornot to serve. Or, put the other way, it would avoid the arbitrary powerthat now resides in draft boards to decide how a young man shall spendseveral of the most important years of his life -- let alone whetherhis life shall be risked in warfare. An incidental advantage of thiswould be to raise the level and tone of political discussion.

Avolunteer army would enhance also the freedom of those who now do notserve. Being conscripted has been used as a weapon -- or thought byyoung men to be so used -- to discourage freedom of speech, assembly,and protest. The freedom of young men to emigrate or to travel abroadhas been limited by the need to get the permission of a draft board ifthe young man is not to put himself in the position of inadvertentlybecoming a law-breaker....

The case for abolishing conscriptionand recruiting our armed forces by voluntary methods seems to meoverwhelming. One of the greatest advances in human freedom was thecommutation of taxes in kind to taxes in money. We have reverted to abarbarous custom. It is past time that we regain our heritage.

("Why Not a Volunteer Army?," New Individualist Review (Spring 1967) Vol. 4, No. 4 at pp. 3-4, 9.)

Professor Friedman on Drugs

Alcoholand tobacco cause many more deaths in users than do drugs.Decriminalization would not prevent us from treating drugs as we nowtreat alcohol and tobacco: prohibiting sales of drugs to minors,outlawing the advertising of drugs and similar measures. Such measurescould be enforced, while outright prohibition cannot be. Moreover, ifeven a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforcedrug prohibition were devoted to treatment and rehabilitation, in anatmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usageand in the harm done to the users could be dramatic.

[Every]friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I amby the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by thevision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army ofenforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slightevidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "onsuspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not thekind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to futuregenerations.

("An Open Letter to Bill Bennett," The Wall Street Journal, 9/7/89.)

Legalizingdrugs is not equivalent to surrender in the fight against drugaddiction. On the contrary, I believe that legalizing drugs is aprecondition for an effective fight. We might then have a real chanceto prevent sales to minors; get drugs out of the schools andplaygrounds; save crack babies and reduce their number; launch aneffective educational campaign on the personal costs of drug use -- notnecessarily conducted, I might add, by government; punish drug usersguilty of harming others while "under the influence"; and encouragelarge numbers of addicts to volunteer for treatment and rehabilitationwhen they could do so without confessing to criminal actions. Somehabitual drug users would, as he says, "continue to rob and steal toget, money for clothes, food or shelter." No doubt also there would be"a black market to undercut the regulated one" -- as there now is inbootleg liquor thanks to high taxes on alcoholic beverages. But thesewould be on a far smaller scale than at present. Perfection is not forthis world. Pursuing the unattainable best can prevent achievement ofthe attainable good.

("Bennett Fears 'Public Policy Disaster' -- It's Already Here," The Wall Street Journal, 9/29/89.)

Professor Friedman co-authored an autobiography with his wife Rose in 1998, Two Lucky People.Their son, David, is a law professor at Santa Clara University; as aself-described anarcho-capitalist, he would probably take issue withhis father's contention that "government is necessary to preserve ourfreedom." The best short bio of the senior Professor Friedman comes from his own hand on the website of the Nobel Foundation.

Milton Friedman already stands as one of this nation's greatest public intellectuals. Major newspapers like The Los Angeles Times and The San Francisco Chronicleran feature articles on him earlier this year. The extent of hisinfluence currently transcends national borders. Looking into thefuture, his influence will certainly rise above the brutish temporalconstraints that Nature places upon us all.

Those in power whoafford Professor Friedman public praise would do well to actuallylisten to the content of his messages, even if they lack the fortitudeto act upon them.

Those committed to drug policy reform shoulddelight that Professor Friedman is still with us -- as should everyperson who cherishes individual freedom in these troubled, uncertaintimes.

Happy 94th, Professor!

Posted by Nikos Leverenz.
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