01/08/2005 4:54:42 pm
Happy Birthday! Yesterday was the 93rd birthday of Milton Friedman. He is the winner of of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Medal of Science. But first and foremost, he is a champion of a free society and a free economy. Oddly, it might seem, his ideas of freedom have been controversial through the years. When he came to receive the Nobel Prize in Stockholm in 1974, there were demonstrations in the streets. But his influence by the strength of the arguments has been growing. The Thatcher and Reagan revolution was largely inspired by his ideas and so is, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has given Friedmans "Free to choose" as a birthday present to freinds for years. "Milton Friedman has done more than defend freedom as an abstract ideal," President George W. Bush recently said, "He has creatively applied the power of freedom to the problems of our own country, and in the process he has become an influential social reformer." Buy "Capitalism and freedom" here and "Free to choose" here.