I was very sad to learn that Milton Friedman passed away today at the age of 94. Cato president Ed Crane has a great podcast celebrating Friedman’s life. I think he’s probably right that Friedman was the greatest champion of liberty in the 20th century.
He was probably the most important force behind the revolution in monetary policy that has banished stagflation to the history books. And he was instrumental in convincing the Nixon administration to end the draft.
But most important, from my perspective, is that he worked tirelessly at effectively communicating the ideas of liberty to non-academics. He had a column in Newsweek in the 1970s, created a PBS documentary on free markets in 1981, and produced several books on economics and political philosophy aimed at the educated lay reader. Here’s just one of the hundreds of interviews he gave promoting individual liberty during his long and prolific career:
Liberty has lost a great champion.
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