Milton Friedman Schools Phil Donahue (and Barack Obama) on Capitalism and Greed

RUSH: We have the 100th birthday today of Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman -- some of you in this audience may not know -- Milton Friedman, University of Chicago, a brilliant economist. He and his wife were a dynamo. They were a dynamic team. In economics, free market capitalism, Milton Friedman's a rock star. Milton Friedman should be the Bible for young people, or anybody, trying to understand capitalism and free markets. Back in -- I think the year was 1995. Back in 1995, I interviewed Milton Friedman for an issue of the Limbaugh Letter. That's still the most widely read political newsletter in the country. You can subscribe to it. You go to RushLimbaugh.com and you can get a combo subscription of that and Rush 24/7, the website.

Milton Friedman, while being interviewed by me -- Snerdley will remember 'cause this is back in the days when Snerdley hung around to listen to the interviews taking place. I wish I could remember the exact words, but Milton Freidman paid me a high compliment. I think he suggested that it would be very helpful if more people listened to me. I think that's what it was, wasn't it? And that, believe me, made my month, day, even year, because Milton Friedman, if he wasn't in a class all by himself, it certainly didn't take long to call the roll. He ended up at the Hoover Institution, the conservative think tank out at Stanford.

He would be a hundred years old today. I have a sound bite I want to play for you. Actually, two sound bites. One sound bite is two minutes of Milton Friedman schooling Phil Donahue and his audience in greed and capitalism and virtue. Before that, though, I want to play for you a sound bite of "Barack Hussein Obama! Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!" reading the audio version of his book, The Audacity of Hope. This is Obama talking about a sermon by Reverend Wright that moved him.

OBAMA: It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year. Where white folks' greed runs a world in need. Apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere. That's the world on which hope sits.

RUSH: He was quoting Reverend Wright, and he said that's for me, man, I love that. White folks' greed runs a world in need. So let's go to 1979, ancient times for many of you. We may as well be going back to the Roman Coliseum for this. Nineteen seventy nine, I was 28. Ancient times for many of you. Phil Donahue interviewing Milton Friedman, and they had this exchange. And Donahue starts off wanting to know about greed and capitalism. Here it is. And listen to this.

DONAHUE: When you see around the globe the maldistribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few haves and so many have-nots, when you see the greed and the concentration of power, did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea to run on?

FRIEDMAN: Well, first of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy. It's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

DONAHUE: But it seems to reward not virtue as much as ability to manipulate the system.

FRIEDMAN: And what does reward virtue? Do you think the communist commissar rewards virtue? Do you think a Hitler rewards virtue? Do you think American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? You know, I think you're taking a lot of things for granted. Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us.

RUSH: Milton Friedman back in 1979 schooling Phil Donahue, and everybody else who heard that on the notions of virtue and greed and just basically upsetting Phil's applecart. Phil wasn't smart enough to know it was happening. He's still running around lamenting the accident of birth. If he'd been 30 miles south he would have grown up in poverty. Anyway, we wanted to play that for you and recognize Milton Friedman, 100 years old today, and now, in a testament to Milton Friedman of free market economics, here is our first obscene profit time-out of the day.

RUSH: Milton Friedman: "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there will be a shortage of sand." Milton Friedman: "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." Another Milton Friedman quote: "Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government." Boy, isn't that true? "Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government." Man. Pass another law. Government comes along and creates a program. The program is an absolute disaster. Government says, "That's gotta get fixed." Government says, "Okay, we'll fix it." And it compounds itself, one error atop another.

Another Milton Friedman quote: "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." I'll tell you, the guy was great. He was a genius. He lived into his late eighties. He would have been a hundred years old this week.

Milton Friedman was born in 1912 and died in 2006. He was 94 when he died.

Another great quote regarding government’s attempts to control our consumption of drugs, foods, or soft-drinks:

“The government has as much right to control what goes into my mouth as it does to control what comes out of my mouth.”

"Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? . . . . Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us." - Milton Friedman

Lust for power (described as "political self-interes" by Friedman) is just as great a threat to liberty as is that of what is called "greed" (economic self-interest), is it not? America's Founders seemed to think so, and they wrote a Constitution to limit "political self-interest" in elected officials.

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions." - James Madison, Federalist #51

Limbaugh ~ He lived into his late eighties.

Your correction ~ Milton Friedman was born in 1912 and died in 2006. He was 94 when he died.

This is another example of things the left uses to prove that, "Rush Limbugh lies", pouncing on the most minor misspeak imaginable.

I have watched every video of him I could find. He did have a way of politely, and with a smile, eviscerating his opponents in debates. I can’t understand why Ayn Rand disliked him so much unless it was his chastising her for bringing morality into economics.

I consider Friedman equal to the Newtons, Einsteins and Franklins of the past few centuries. He was always on his game during debates, in another stratosphere compared to everyone else. He was probably the greatest economist ever and yet spoke in plain, simple language which very very few economists can.

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