Editorials

It's unusual to think of a man born in 1912 as a visionary for our times.

"A man born the year that New York State decreed a 54-hour labor week and the U.S. Treasury Department stopped the use of common drinking cups on interstate passenger trains -- let's just say a man of that vintage might not qualify automatically as a prophet in the age of the iPhone," says William Murchison, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. "Unless the man was Milton Friedman -- an intellectual titan as relevant today as when he died in 2006 after a life heaped high with honors and praise."

Friedman, whose 96th birthday would have been July 31, was unique.

"For one thing, how many deceased economists manage to inspire protests over plans to inscribe their names on college buildings?" Murchison points out. "At the University of Chicago, where Friedman earned a master's degree in 1933 and taught memorably from 1946 to 1976, a mini-revolt of faculty is afoot due to the projected opening this fall of the Milton Friedman Institute."

More than 100 professors there signed a petition protesting that opening.

"These learned academics don't cotton to Friedmanite notions of free markets founded on consumer choice, with as few penalties as possible attached to their operation," Murchison says. "A lot of other Americans, despite the general success of free market policies since the Reagan years, similarly view with apathy or actual hostility Friedman's carefully measured empirical arguments for minimizing regulation and keeping taxes low."

These ideas are even more relevant today.

"They are the very reverse of the formula that centralizers and regulators hope voters will support in November -- a possibility not even a Friedmanite should rule out," Murchison says. "Only this month, David Brooks, a New York Times columnist of moderately conservative bent, declared, 'We're entering an era of epic legislation ... The next few years will be an age of government activism' on issues ranging from health care to infrastructure reform."

Friedman could also have made such a prediction.

"Remember that one of his surpassing strengths was understanding that the regulatory mind is ever busy with schemes for 'improvement,'" Murchison says. "His contention, the fruit of non-stop reflection on the resourcefulness of free minds and free markets, would have been, look here, it wasn't too little government that brought on the present mess, it was too much or the wrong kind of government 'help' and direction."

That applies to energy, for example.

"Friedman would have cited federal bans on new offshore drilling as a major cause of the worldwide petroleum shortages driving gasoline prices and political hysteria to new heights," Murchison says. "He would have affirmed the market's miraculous capacity for directing resources to the likeliest sources of new energy. How he would have laughed at Al Gore's dream of eliminating carbon-based fuels in 10 years!"

Or perhaps not, Murchison reflects.

"Among other salutary things, Milton Friedman was a gentleman, not a scoffer," he says. "He trafficked in ideas, not the vituperation we see everywhere nowadays, from the Internet to the campaign trail. He saw clearly, reasoned sharply, spoke out with lucidity too rare in our times. If only he were still around to blow out the latest set of birthday candles!"

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