When Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom came out in 1962, his was a rare voice defending classical liberal values and the free enterprise system. For years his ideas were unloved in ruling circles, as the leviathan unleashed by F.D.R.’s New Deal pressed its tentacles even further into the flesh of American society through Johnson’s Great Society and beyond.
But after nearly a generation wandering in the wilderness, Friedman lived to see the vindication of his ideas, as big government solutions repeatedly failed, and free market approaches out-performed.
The fall of the Soviet Union and communism in Eastern Europe should have sealed the argument. But bad ideas never truly die. They merely go dormant. The anti-liberal contagion awaits the day to entice and poison new audiences, in new generations, with the false promise of heaven on earth, for the price of their soul and their freedom.
Read more on our sister site, Libertarian Book Reviews.
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