Milton Friedman, a true champion of freedom and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, has died today at age 94.

Flying the flag of economic conservatism, Mr. Friedman led the postwar challenge to the hallowed theories of Lord Keynes, the British economist who maintained that governments had a duty to help capitalistic economies through periods of recession and to prevent boom times from exploding into high inflation.

In Professor Friedman?s view, government had the opposite obligation: to keep its hands off the economy, to let the free market do its work. He was a spiritual heir to Adam Smith, the 18th-century founder of the science of economics and proponent of laissez-faire: that government governs best which governs least.

The only economic lever that Mr. Friedman would allow government to use was the one that controlled the supply of money ? a monetarist view that had gone out of favor when he embraced it in the 1950s. He went on to record a signal achievement, predicting the unprecedented combination of rising unemployment and rising inflation that came to be called stagflation. His work earned him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1976.

Professor Friedman was also a leading voice on education reform, advocating an end to the government monopoly on education. Some of my favorite Milton Friedman quotes:

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

See Professor Friedman make the case for small government.

Statement from the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation:

Milton?s passion for freedom and liberty has influenced more lives than he ever could possibly know. His writings and ideas have transformed the minds of U.S. Presidents, world leaders, entrepreneurs and freshmen economic majors alike. The loss of his passion, incisive mind and dedication to freedom are all national treasures that we mourn for today.

Milton never chose to slow down; even at 94 he kept fighting to bring educational equality to all of America?s children. And it?s this vision, this drive for educational liberty that the Friedman Foundation will continue to bring to families throughout America.

Those Amish just refuse to sign up for government handouts! This cannot stand.

Tim Taylor’s job calls for finding ways to distribute food stamps to Geauga County’s Amish. He might as well be trying to sell them cars.

The horse-and-buggy crowd philosophically opposes the support program overseen by Taylor’s agency, the Geauga Department of Job & Family Services. Accepting public assistance is verboten within the Amish culture. It simply is not done.

But Taylor is under orders to at least try to get them enrolled. The Ohio Department of Job & Family Services has asked Geauga and Holmes counties, which feature the state’s largest Amish populations, to lift dismal food-stamp participation rates.

Taylor and his Holmes counterpart, Dan Jackson, called the mandate a waste of tax dollars, time and resources.

You think? America has fallen a long way since its creation, as government is now begging citizens to be less self-reliant and more dependent on big brother. If the founders were alive today, they’d kill themselves. Then roll over in their graves.

Hat tip: Florida Cracker

Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Advocate of the Poor

A man who’s trying to eliminate poverty won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The winner, announced at 5 a.m. EDT, is a Bangladeshi professor named Mohammed Yunus and his Grameen Bank, which — through a process called microcredit — has advanced the cause of economic and social development in Bangladesh and beyond, the Nobel Committee said.

“Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights,” the committee said.

Microcredit describes the process of giving small loans to poor a people without any collateral or financial security. The loan recipients are not eligible for traditional loans.

It appeared to be an “impossible idea,” the Nobel Committee said, but it’s working. “Yunus, though his bank, has developed microcredit into an ever-more important instrument in the struggle against poverty.”

Everyone has the potential to live a decent life, the Nobel Committee said, and Yunus and his bank have shown that “even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development.“

Capitalism has worked every single time it’s been tried. Yet these dunderheads thought it was an “impossible idea”? How does that figure?

I’m gonna let you guys in on a little secret. Hard work is how you get out of poverty. Not handouts, not foriegn aid, hard work. It really shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that a small loan of capital (which brings with it the responsibility of repayment) has done far more to help those in poverty than all the bleeding hearts and their aid-without-strings has ever done.

There’s nothing impossible about this formula; it’s tried and true. The impossible ideas are the ones that keep failing (socialism) and yet, for some inexplicable reason, keep popping up everywhere. But it’s good to see a well deserved award, for once.

When Newt Gingrich rode a limited government tidal wave into the Speaker’s chair, ushering in the first Republican House majority in 40 years, it was both the culmination of decades of conservative growth and the beginning of a new Republican era. What Barry Goldwater began and Ronald Reagan brought to the forefront of the national conscience, Newt and the ’94 young guns finished while quickly delivering on their legislative promises.

But that isn’t the end of the story. Today we have a Republican President with an approval rating barely hovering over 40, a Republican Senate that comes together to advance a progressive agenda far more often than one focused on liberty, a Republican House that can’t get pork-barrel spending under control or even eliminate a single worthless government program, and an electorate dangerously close to kicking them out of power. The question so many small government advocates are asking is, how did we get here?

Answering this question requires a bit of ideological introspection. We must come to grips with the fundamental dichotomy inherent in our beliefs that makes governing by limited government principles extremely hard work.

Leaders in America tend to be current or former members of government. That’s no surprise, as they get the media coverage and national recognition that leadership requires. The conservative movement is no different. It’s only natural that members of government are going to turn to government methods to advance their cause.

For conservatives, libertarians and those who favor less government, however, that results in a clash of principles, with the loser most often being the principle of limited government. It takes a lot of self discipline to refrain from using power to do what seems right and to make things better. But that is precisely what the preservation of liberty so often requires, and it’s also precisely where conservatives and Republicans in particular have failed with increasing regularity.

The left does not have to face this dilemma. They have ideas that they believe can make America better, just the same as we do, but no conflicting principle that prevents them from using government whenever possible to implement those ideas. Many self-professed conservatives thought they could just come into power and do the same things, substituting their ideas for those of their liberal counterparts and their base would be happy. But it doesn’t work that way, because their base doesn’t believe government has all the answers.

Ronald Reagan said that, “governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.” It’s a lesson that conservatives need to relearn. They’ve lost theirway and are focusing their efforts in the wrong directions. Separation of cultural views from governmental principles and keeping respective efforts to advance each agenda limited to the appropriate sphere would be a good start.

If you believe people shouldn’t gamble, convince them why you are right; don’t legislate it. Otherwise you are no different than a statist who tries to use government to prevent people from smoking or eating fatty foods. Work to convince people to believe what you believe instead of legislating their behavior. Faithfully living up these standards requires serious dedication and leaders who are intellectually honest. That’s the principled, liberty-minded way.

Congress Passes Internet Gambling Prohibition

Congress dealt a massive blow to U.S. Internet gamblers over the weekend when it passed legislation forcing U.S. banks and credit card companies to block electronic transactions to Internet gambling businesses late Friday night.

Online gaming giants PartyPoker and 888 will suspend business with U.S.-based customers when President Bush signs the bill. And more sites are expected to follow suit. PartyPoker, which earned $859.1 million in 2005, says they will change their focus to the non-U.S. market.

. . .Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) attached the measure to the Safe Port Act Conference Report. The bill also prohibits the use of checks to fund Internet gambling accounts.

“Gambling is a serious addiction that undermines the family, dashes dreams, and frays the fabric of society,” said Frist in a statement after the bill passed in the Senate. “Congress has grappled with this issue for 10 years, and during that time we’ve watched this shadow industry explode. For me as majority leader, the bottom line is simple: Internet gambling is illegal. Although we can’t monitor every online gambler or regulate offshore gambling, we can police the financial institutions that disregard our laws.”

It’s not enough simply to oppose liberal efforts to protect the people from themselves when you disagree with the action itself. True principle requires small government advocates to recognize that you shouldn’t use government to protect people from themselves even in those cases where you think such protection is beneficial. No, especially in those case. Otherwise you are no different than the liberals, using government to force people to behave only in those ways they find acceptable.

True freedom allows people to make their own choices. Conservatives routinely say people should be free to spend their own money when they are advocating tax cuts, now it’s time to put our policy where our mouth is. Let people spend their money how they please.

A teen cancer patient is fighting in court for his right to decide his own medical treatment.

The teen, who is known as Abraham, has Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes.

Three months of chemotherapy last year made him extremely weak. So when he learned in February that his cancer was active again, he turned — against doctors’ advice — to a sugar-free organic diet, herbs and visits to a clinic in Mexico.

. . .

Abraham’s parents face losing custody completely.

“What it boils down to is does the American family have the right to decide on the health of their child,” Jay Cherrix said, “or is the government allowed to come in and determine that themselves and threaten one way or the other to split our family up?”

Many believe parents who don’t seek medical treatment for their children are negligent. Sometimes they are right, but what about a situation like this one where the parents are seeking treatment, just not the treatment government prefers? Should they be able to dictate to the parents what specific treatment the child must receive? A It’s not an easy line to define, but in this instance government has gone too far. The social worker, on behalf of the government, is doing what they believe is best. But that is, contrary to what many think, a subjective conclusion. Many  if not all medical treatments come with potential side effects; who but the individual (or their legal guardian) is best qualified to weigh the costs and benefits of any treatment?

The definition of best, as relevant to this situation, is “having the most positive qualities”. But who defines what is positive and what is not? The doctors clearly have their definition. They believe that whatever is most beneficial to the patient’s health is positive, and therefore is better than any treatment they might judge to be less beneficial. The government shares that view. But what about the individual? They very well may not place the same value on health, or even their life, as the government does. Shouldn’t they have the right to make that decision themselves?

That’s why this is not just about parental rights, it’s also about government forcing its value system on the people. An individual should have the right to decide how much they value, for instance, quality of life over survival chances, and forgo debilitating treatments like chemotherapy if they so choose. Many Americans enjoy taking risks like jumping out of airplanes or riding a motorcycle. They are willing to accept a greater risk of death for the sake of excitement. Americans should have the freedom to prioritize their values how they please, instead of having them forced upon them.