Some weeks are just priceless....this has been one of those weeks. I have to say my favorite is George Stephanopoulos this week. Dems and taxes go together like soup and sandwich...

Save a SeAL, club a liberal!!

Apologies for pasting it in, but it was too-good for just a URL.
JMR

PASSING OF A GIANT

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Nobel Laureate and
Professor Milton Friedman, at age 94, succumbed to heart failure on
Nov. 16. While the man is gone, those of us who hold personal liberty
as society's highest end will always remember his steadfast support of
the principles of personal liberty.

Professor Friedman, above all, was an economist's economist. During
his professional life, his research on statistical techniques,
consumption behavior and monetary theory became part and parcel of
today's accepted wisdom among economists. His research on monetary
theory and the role of money in an economy has provided central banks
worldwide with the knowledge, whether they use it or not, for monetary
stability.

Professor Friedman will surely be remembered for these intellectual
contributions, but what he'll be remembered for the most is his
steadfast support for personal liberty. In 1947, he joined with
Friedrich Hayek and 40 other free-market academics, mostly economists
of international distinction, to form the Mont Pelerin Society. The
Society's founding purpose was to reduce the academic isolation among
liberty-oriented scholars at a time when socialism was seen as the wave
of the future.

The Mont Pelerin Society now boasts more than 500 members worldwide,
eight of whom have been Nobel Laureates. I'm proud to be a member.

Friedman's first big step into public policy issues, as an
indefatigable defender of personal liberty, came in his 1962 book
"Capitalism and Freedom." In it he argued that educational vouchers
were the solution to poor education; free markets make racial
discrimination more costly; government regulations are the primary
sources for harmful monopolies; and Social Security is an unfair and
unsustainable system. At the time these weren't popular ideas, even
seen as heresy, but today they are much more widely accepted.

In 1980, Professor Friedman co-authored "Free to Choose" with his
wife, Rose Friedman, which was written as a follow-up to his 10-part
PBS series with the same name. Among the topics discussed: The Great
Depression was not a failure of capitalism, as so often claimed, but a
failure of government, mainly the Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S.
Congress; our welfare system creates permanent wards of the state; and
we should decriminalize drugs by treating abuse as a medical problem.

Friedman made a major intellectual contribution to the formation of
a voluntary army. In testimony before President Nixon's commission on
eliminating the draft, General William Westmoreland said he did not
want to command an army of mercenaries. Mr. Friedman interrupted,
"General, would you rather command an army of slaves?" Gen.
Westmoreland replied, "I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees
referred to as slaves." Mr. Friedman then retorted, "I don't like to
hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries. If they are
mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a
mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a
mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher."

Whether one agreed or disagreed with Professor Friedman, they found
him to be a friendly, witty and tolerant person. My first encounter
with him occurred during the mid-1960s while I was a graduate student
at UCLA and he was a visiting lecturer. I've since forgotten my
statement to him during a lecture, but I recall he had patiently
replied, "Walter, you don't really mean that," and proceeded to show me
why.

During my guest-hosting stints on the Rush Limbaugh show, Professor
Friedman was a guest on several occasions. His responses to caller
questions demonstrated the real teacher in him -- the ability to
explain complex phenomena in a way that ordinary people can readily
understand.

In terms of his scholarly output and worldwide contributions to
ideas on liberty, Professor Milton Friedman was the 20th century's
greatest economist.

Walter Williams