IN the company of history’s great revolutionaries, Rose and Milton Friedman stand out as clear anomalies. Diminutive in stature, modest in speech and manner, they cannot easily be imagined manning the barricades or hectoring the crowds from a soapbox. Most important, unlike other visionaries who sought to change the world, the Friedmans did not say, “Put us in charge of the government and we will make your life better.” Rather, they argued that governments then in charge should get out of the way so that individuals could get on with the job of making their own lives better.
Their 1980 book Free to Choose successfully instigated a revolution in public policy because it offered conservatives both a rhetorical weapon and a legislative program. Until then, the Left had a clear advantage on both scores. Rhetorically, the Left promised compassion and equality and packaged them with programmatic action in the form of ever more government power. Those opposed to an ever larger and more intrusive state were thus forced to defend hard-heartedness and inequality, and to oppose legislative change.
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