{"id":387209,"date":"2021-03-17T14:40:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T18:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=387209"},"modified":"2021-03-18T15:59:37","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T19:59:37","slug":"rush-highlights-the-genius-of-milton-friedman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2021\/03\/17\/rush-highlights-the-genius-of-milton-friedman\/","title":{"rendered":"Rush Highlights the Genius of Milton Friedman"},"content":{"rendered":"

BRETT: We are remembering Rush on this, the first month anniversary of his passing far too soon for all of us. But we are remembering the brilliance, the enlightenment, all of the great takes that we have gotten to receive over the years listening to this absolute entertainment powerhouse. He was unlike anybody out there.<\/p>\n

But make no mistake. The admirers of Rush Limbaugh were vast and wide. Heads of state, musicians, novelists, writers, you name it. Folks admired what Rush Limbaugh did, and so much of it, I think, was his genuine, genuine nature. People knew what you saw was what you were getting, and you were getting something very special. If you ever had any opportunity to spend any time with Rush or listen to the program or watch the television shows or read his books, you no doubt felt that connectivity.<\/p>\n

And one of the people, one of the people who admired Rush so very much was legendary American economist Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman is in many ways a visionary when it comes to economics and how it is we ought to be ordering ourselves in terms of free markets, capitalism, opportunity, all of that sort of stuff. Well, Milton Friedman was somebody that Rush also admired tremendously, and Rush replayed a segment of Friedman back in 1979 schooling uber-liberal Phil Donahue on capitalism and greed. It\u2019s one for the ages<\/a>.<\/p>\n

RUSH: 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\u2019s a rock star. Milton Friedman should be the Bible for young people, or anybody, trying to understand capitalism and free markets. Back in 1995, I interviewed Milton Friedman for an issue of the Limbaugh Letter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Milton Friedman, while being interviewed by me — Snerdley will remember \u2019cause 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.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s what it was, wasn\u2019t it? And that, believe me, made my month, day, even year, because Milton Friedman, if he wasn\u2019t in a class all by himself, it certainly didn\u2019t take long to call the roll. He ended up at the Hoover Institution, the conservative think tank out at Stanford. I have a sound bite I want to play for you. Actually, two sound bites.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 greed runs a world in need. Apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere. That\u2019s the world on which hope sits.<\/p>\n

RUSH: He was quoting Reverend Wright, and he said that\u2019s for me, man, I love that. White folks\u2019 greed runs a world in need. So let\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s a good idea to run on?<\/p>\n

FRIEDMAN: Well, first of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn\u2019t run on greed? You think Russia doesn\u2019t run on greed? You think China doesn\u2019t run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy. It\u2019s only the other fellow who\u2019s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.<\/p>\n

Einstein didn\u2019t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn\u2019t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you\u2019re talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade.<\/p>\n

If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n