The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 17)
This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.
Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”
“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.
Washington –Congressman Phil Gingrey (GA-11) today issued the following statement after the passage of S. 365, the bill to provide for an increase in the debt limit.“I commend our leadership for so steadfastly pursuing a deal that results in spending cuts that exceed the level of the debt ceiling increase. Since Republicans took over the House, the tenor in Washington has changed from how much are we going to spend to how much are we going to cut. This is a victory in and of itself for the American people.
However, I am firmly committed to the principles of Cut, Cap and Balance, and while this bill moves the ball in the right direction, it does not make the debt ceiling increase contingent upon passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment. It further concerns me that tax increases could come into play as the newly created commission formulates its proposal and that the Department of Defense could be disproportionately affected by the process of sequestration. While I applaud some aspects of this agreement, I believe that this is the time to amend to our Constitution to finally force Washington to live within its means—and I encourage my colleagues to continue their efforts to advance this principle.”
Marcus Lattimore ran all over the Gators in the Swamp on November 13, 2010, for a school-record 40 carries for 212 yards and three touchdowns en route to a dominating 36-14 South Carolina victory and SEC Eastern Division Championship. With his additional 31 receiving yards, Lattimore single-handedly outgained and outscored Florida (226 yards of total offense, 14 points). *Spurs Up Top 15 Moments of 2010-11: #6* Blog Post:http://bit.ly/TopMoments6
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I think that Steve has the talent to do something special this year at South Carolina. I think the SEC East is down this year and SC may win it easily and even get 10 or 11 victories this year. Then he may retire, but maybe not. (Harry King thinks the East may be better this year but I have my doubts how much better.) Harry King has rightly put Marcus Lattimore on the Heisman watch list.
Kentucky is a basketball school and I know that they have been to 6 straight bowls for the first time in school history, but I am predicting a losing season for them. In 2007 they won 8, then in 2009 won 7 and last year 6. Do you see a trend here? The SEC is just too tough and somebody wins and somebody loses.
Strengths: With nine starters returning on defense, including tackling machine Danny Trevathan at linebacker, the Wildcats should have one of the SEC’s top stop units. Five players with starting experience are back in the secondary, so it should be difficult for opponents to consistently throw the ball. Four offensive linemen are back, giving Kentucky the chance to establish a solid ground game. Wide receiver La’Rod King notched 36 receptions as the No. 2 target behind Chris Matthews, five for TDs.
Weaknesses: While the O-line should be a source of satisfaction, someone has to step up and throw the ball, run the ball, catch the ball, etc. The Wildcats have to replace their leading rusher (Derrick Locke), top passer (Mike Hartline) and top receiver (Matthews). Not to mention their best athlete in Randall Cobb, who could play anywhere on the field and often did. If junior QB Morgan Newton, who started occasionally as a freshman, can’t adequately replace Hartline, Kentucky’s good defense could be wasted.
South Carolina
Returning Starters: 13
Strengths: Start with Marcus Lattimore, who may be the SEC’s top running back. Coach Steve Spurrier rode the gifted freshman to 1,197 yards and 17 touchdowns last year as the Gamecocks won the East Division. Wide receiver Alshon Jeffery caught 88 passes for 1,517 yards and nine scores, showing why he’ll play on Sunday in the future. Ellis Johnson’s defense returns two All-SEC players in DE Devin Taylor and CB Stephon Gilmore, and could derive instant help from DE Jadaveon Clowney, considered the nation’s top high school player last year.
Weaknesses: Will perennial knucklehead Stephen Garcia ever get it? Dealt the fifth suspension of his career in the spring, Garcia isn’t a certainty to return to the program fulltime. If he’s not allowed back—Garcia was permitted to attend voluntary workouts in June—many bets are off with the offense as there is no other QB in the program ready to take over. South Carolina also has to replace two defensive linemen and WR Tori Gurley, but it doesn’t have to worry half as much about those positions as it does about Garcia’s off-field decision-making.
The Gators unveiled bronze statues of Steve Spurrier (1966), Danny Wuerffel (1996) and Tim Tebow (2007) during halftime of Saturday’s spring game.
The statues depict Spurrier passing, Wuerffel poised to throw and Tebow running with the ball.
Tebow says that’s fine with him. He says “you have to change it up. We can’t all be throwing.”
Spurrier thanked his alma mater in a videotaped message shown on the replay boards; he was in Columbia, S.C. for the Gamecocks’ spring game. Wuerffel and Tebow were on hand for the presentation. It was Tebow’s first public appearance at Florida Field since his Pro Day in March 2010.
CBN.com – THE QUARTERBACK WITH THE MIDAS TOUCH
Known as the quarterback with the Midas touch, Danny Wuerffel received the highest honor bestowed on any college football player in 1996—The Heisman Trophy. He holds no less than 32 National, Conference and School Records and maintains a legendary status as one of the greatest college football players ever to play the game.
As well as his athleticism, Wuerffel maintained high academic standards and was celebrated for his personal integrity. But with all of his fame and success, Danny has used his position to give back in all the communities that he has lived and played in as a football player. And his dedication to his faith in Jesus Christ is what has anchored his life.
In 1997, Wuerffel was drafted by the New Orleans Saints. In spite of his outstanding achievements and the national attention he received as a result, Wuerffel seemed unfazed by his success. “You know, the world just pounds the message into your brain that if you make enough money and if you’re successful in your field, that’s all you need. But you can ask just about anybody who’s been successful–somehow there always seems to be a longing for something more. I believe we were made to find fulfillment in our relationship with God,” he explains. “When we look for it in other places, we come up empty.”
Wuerffel got a head start in his search. “I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home. My father is a chaplain in the air force and my mother has always been active in the church. From the time I was very little, I didn’t question God’s existence, because we talked to Him every time we ate a meal. He was a very real part of our lives. So as I grew up and went into high school and then college, the question was not ‘Does God exist?’, but ‘To what extent?’ What part does He play in my life? What does He want from me? What is my relationship with Him supposed to be like? Those were the questions I wrestled with.” In college, out on his own for the first time, Danny began to take a good hard look at his faith. He started studying the Bible for himself and searching for answers to his questions. “From all different angles, God was really drawing me to himself and saying, ‘This is the time to get serious!'” Wuerffel recalls. “The biggest change was my understanding of myself in relationship to God. The more I understood how awesome God is, the more I realized how wretched I was. It’s a humbling experience to realize what your own nature is, to look at yourself and see selfishness and pride and the attitude that you can just do your own thing. Sometimes it was at subtle levels. Other people might not have noticed it, but I could see it.”
While everyone around him was awed by his talent and promise, Danny realized his need for a Savior and decided to surrender his life completely to Jesus Christ. A decision that changed his life forever. No matter what happened in his career — whether he won the Superbowl or sat on the bench — he determined to live his life to bring honor to God. “There’s a verse in Proverbs 3:5-6 that says ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.’ My desire is to acknowledge Him in all my ways — in my marriage, in my family, in football– in whatever I’m doing!” he exclaims.
In February 2004, Danny decided to retire from professional football to work in New Orleans with Desire Street Ministries, dedicated to one of America’s toughest and poorest neighborhoods. “It’s difficult to say goodbye to a dream,” he told the press. “At the same time, I’m thankful that I’m not leaving because I have to.” His wife Jessica admits that since Danny retired from football and joined the ministry, she doesn’t miss the crowds and fans that came with his fame. Danny is also a popular speaker, sharing how his experiences playing football have helped shape his life.
DEVASTATED BY KATRINA
Located in the heart of New Orleans, Danny’s home and ministry, Desire Street Ministries, were completely destroyed by the hurricane. They were forced to relocate to Niceville, Florida where they are up and running a boarding school. Many of the children they worked with in New Orleans are finding their way to the school, now their home. They also have staff on-site at the facility in New Orleans working on cleaning and renovating the facility. “As I reflect on the past six weeks and look again at the flooded images of the ministry facility and my home, I’m once again faced with the reality of the devastation of this storm. And yet in the midst of all these images, through God’s grace, I’ve found my eyes “fixed” on something different,” Wuerffel says. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18 “In the past, that verse often encouraged me to not worry about throwing an interception or losing a football game. How trivial that seems now. God is doing a new thing as a result of this storm…a big thing. I’m not sure exactly what it is or what it’s going to look like in the end, but I’m certain he’s doing something significant. Sometimes, though, it’s just hard to see it while it’s happening.”
Through the storm and its aftermath, God continues to do incredible things. “It hasn’t been an easy six weeks, but I’ve personally seen God triumph over every major obstacle, one after another, and my personal journey of faith has never been more vibrant,” Danny proclaims
I am going to preview all the SEC teams in the next few weeks. I want to start off with Alabama and Arkansas. Earlier I really thought that Arkansas was going to be very special this year. However, after losing our star running back Kniles Davis for a year with a injury just a few days ago, I am starting to wonder if we can do it without him. Harry King in his article, “Do poll voters note injuries?” Arkansas News Bureau, August 18, 2011,said that the injury to a player like Davis would mostly likely cost the Razorbacks a higher ranking
This is the way I view it. Kniles is the guy who can ice away a victory with his hard running in the fourth quarter. I remember when UT had that great running back in 98 that cut through the Arkansas defense the last two minutes of the game like a hot knife in butter. ARKANSAS WILL MISS HIM DEARLY.
I think Arkansas will finish in the top three in the SEC West and maybe do better than that because of the unbelievable receivers!!!
I was at a Applebys the other night in Boston, MA and I was watching the New England Patriots play at Tampa. There was a lively group there watching the game. I got to leave after my meal but I could not resist speaking to the obvious vocal leader of the Pats’ fans. I said,”I am from Arkansas and I wonder if you know about Ryan Mallett who is the backup quarterback for New England.”
He responded, “I am Rudy (not his real name) and these are all my friends…. I love Ryan Mallett. He threw several touchdowns last week and he will be the quarterback of the future.” Later Rudy said that he had been a football and basketball star in high school and was offered lots of money to play pro baseball, but got mixed up in drugs and alcohol and now he is a plumber.
I told him I was glad that he was clean now and I gave him a tract from Chick called “The Happy Hour.” I have put it below.
Today I got to visit with a fellow named Tyler who is a student at Alabama. He is a sophomore at Alabama. He actually attended the Alabama at Arkansas game last year in Fayetteville. That is one of the few games that I could not get a ticket to. This year Alabama will be very good again. I have visited with a lot of people from Alabama this year and I have told them all the same thing. “The national championship will leave the state of Alabama this year finally but it will not leave the SEC.”
Alabama’s defense is the best and if they get the offense going then maybe the national title will stay in Alabama for a third straight year. Harry King like many other journalists have picked Trent Richardson as one of the leading candidates for the Heisman Trophy.
It is a very sad thing to see seemingly smart people try to talk intelligently about things they misunderstand so horribly. This often happens when it comes to religion and politics. And it happened in last night’s Republican candidate’s debate from Iowa, when Byron York asked Rep. Michele Bachmann, because of her evangelical Christian faith, “As President, would you be submissive to your husband?”
The best response to such a snarky and uninformed question was not by the candidate, but from the crowd itself. They jeered loudly and passionately. Good for them.
First, the subtext of the question is that a devout Christian woman who takes her faith seriously cannot be her own person and that if we elect Bachmann, won’t she just be a female puppet of her husband? Mr. York is not the only journalist asking the question. It is really an obscene question, both in its blatant misunderstanding of Christian teaching and in the disrespect it shows the candidate as a woman and a wife.
First, Christianity is no backwoods belief system held by only a few scattered folks here and there. It is a major cross-cultural and historical belief system that has dramatically shaped nearly all of Western and much of Eastern culture. There is no excuse for an intelligent person not to have some familiarity with its teachings in both theory and practice. But alas, such is not the case.
Far too many like to use the “wives, be submissive to your husbands” teaching of Christianity (found in I Peter 3 and Ephesians 5:22) as some kind of proof that Christian women should submit themselves to being treated either like slaves at best or cavewomen at worst, dragged around by their Paleolithic hair. That has never been a part of orthodox Christian teaching or practice. It just hasn’t. And this is what was really behind the question. The Iowa audience got that right off the bat.
Bachmann’s answer was absolutely right. The Christian scriptures teach that husband and wife respect one another as one flesh. But submission is clearly not a one-way street. In fact, in I Peter, the text under discussion, Peter tells all of us, men and women, to “submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him.”
A king is kind of like a president. So not only are all of us called to be submissive to others, but had Mr. York bothered to review the text he was questioning Bachmann on — seems like a reasonable thing to do — he would have found that the text actually calls on Mr. Bachmann, and all other believers, to submit to the authority of the president. Let’s break this down a bit.
Yes, Michele would be called, under her faith, to submit herself to the leadership and protection of her husband in their marriage. And I trust she is quite happy to do so. But no, it does not mean he is her boss, but rather that he is to — and this is critically important to understand — obey God’s command to him for “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
Christian husbands are commanded to be to their wives as Christ was to Church. Christ’s burden is light. He does not lord His authority over believers, but instead laid His life down for his Bride. C.S. Lewis explains this basic Christian teaching:
Christian writers (notably Milton) have sometimes spoken of the husband’s headship with a complacency to make the blood run cold. We must go back to our Bibles. The husband is head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the Church — read on — and give his life for her. This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be, but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion, whose wife receives most and gives least.
That, my friends, is what Christianity teaches about marriage and therefore, what the Bachmann’s marriage seeks to emulate, no doubt.
But it also means, and this is more to Mr. York’s question, that Marcus Bachmann, as a faithful Christian, would also be called to be submissive to Michele, not in their marriage, but in her role as our nation’s leader. This is true of every president, male or female. President Obama has responsibilities as our nation’s president, but also as a husband and a father.
And a good president and his family don’t confuse the two. Nor should a good journalist.
A marriage has one set of rules. A presidency has another. And most people know the difference. And Christianity teaches (for those who do their homework) that submission is a two-way street, never falling unfairly on either husband or wife. It is an equal-opportunity calling. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been women who formed the primary foundation and growth of the Church throughout the world and the centuries, as Rodney Stark aptly explains.
According to Karl Rove, Rick Perry, has committed the unpardonable sin of calling Bernanke’s actions of printing money treasonous.
I thought I was the only one in the public domain that was calling for jail time for crimes committed against the country during the great credit meltdown of 2008.
I’m not sure treason is the right word since it connotes “knowingly” taking action against our country. I don’t think Bernanke could be accused of that, however, he could be accused of being entrapped in a philosophy which has the same result as total destruction. If treason were murder, then what Bernanke did was at least manslaughter.
We’re all familiar with the actions taken by Bernanke (along with Geithner and Paulson) in 2007 and 2008.
Contrary to revisionist history, certain investment banks and beleaguered corporations were on the verge of collapse, the inevitable contraction phase of a boom-bust cycle.
Historically, the cycle starts with growth, and then boom followed by bust, then contraction, stability, growth, and so forth. Unfortunately, as the contraction phase was about to begin, Bernanke went into action.
The selective destruction of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and the careful rescue of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, GM, and many more, were deliberate choices made by this select group of men.
It should the business cycle that determines the winners and losers, not those who believe they’ve come down from Mt. Olympus. Their actions, in my opinion, were not only illegal, but also highly unethical and very immoral.
Attempting to circumvent the natural business cycle had extremely severe repercussions in the United States and around the world. Arab Spring was not about Democracy, it was about jobs and food.
$4.00 gasoline was not about supply and demand, it was about excess trading capital flowing into tight markets. Inflation, deflation, high unemployment, foreclosures, and all the rest of our current economic tribulations can be laid at the feet of those who tried to rearrange the normal economic and business cycles.
It’s interesting to recall after the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 19990s, hundreds of people were indicted and many went to jail. Now, in the so-called aftermath of the credit crisis, no significant person has been either indicted or jailed. Maybe that’s because we haven’t yet reached the aftermath, it’s only just begun.
However, make no mistake; those who created this problem will see their day come. History says it is so, and Bernanke is at the top of the list.
Attention Eagle Fans!!!Come out to Meet the Eagles on Friday, August 26th at 6:00 pm and meet the members of the fall sport teams. David Bazzel, former Razorback and host of the The Buzz’s Show with No Name, will be our special guest introducing each team. There will be food, face painting, and a chance to get all the cheerleaders and football players’ autographs. The elementary class that obtains the most autographs will win an ice cream party!!!
Come and join the fun! Tickets will be on sale at the elementary and high school offices beginning Thursday, August 18th.
Advance tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children. If you purchase your tickets at the door, they will be $12 for adults and $7 for children.
Tickets include the following meal:Adults: BBQ beef, pork, sausage, plus beans, slaw, chips and cheese dip as well as a drink. Children: Hot dog, chips and cheese dip, plus a drink
School merchandise will be available to purchase, and the concession stand will be selling ice cream to satisfy your sweet tooth.
We look forward to seeing you there!
For additional information, please contact Shelley Newkirk or Coach Goss. ***High school athletes participating in a fall sport eat for FREE! Please pick up your ticket from Coach Goss
I am not too happy with the budget deal because I WANT TO SEE REAL CUTS. I knew when I heard President Obama say that there would be no cuts during this sensitive time that meant till after his Presidency was over. That means these are mythical cuts that are scheduled for 2013 and may never happen.
Ron Paul seems to be the only Republican Presidential Candidate that gives us specific examples of where he would cut spending. Why can’t the others give us any examples.
I would like to start by eliminating the Dept of Education and then reducing the weeks a person can draw unemployment. 99 weeks is a crazy amount!!! How did we ever get to that point?
Here is an excellent article below that got me to thinking.
Wth the Ames Straw Poll behind us, the race for the Republican presidential nomination is starting to pick up speed. That means it is more important than ever that we know just where the candidates stand.
Unfortunately, we can expect much of the media attention over the coming weeks to be focused on the “horse race” aspects of the campaign. Will Perry or Bachmann become the conservative alternative to Romney? Is there a dark horse out there somewhere? Who will make the next gaffe?
The candidates are not likely to make things easier. If what we have seen so far is any indication, we can expect lots of Obama-bashing, promises to be the most conservative candidate in the race, and platitudes about American greatness.
So, with that in mind, here are a few questions I’d like to see them answer:
What three programs (at least) would you cut or eliminate? Every Republican candidate has called for balancing the federal budget. Every candidate is also, justifiably, opposed to raising taxes. Since the federal government will spend $1.1 trillion more this year than it takes in, that means spending will have to be cut. Of course, everyone is against “fraud, waste, and abuse.” But the last time I looked, there is no line item called “fraud, waste, and abuse” in the federal budget. Across-the-board spending cuts are another type of cop out. They preserve worthless or wasteful programs, albeit at lower levels, while cutting programs that are actually useful. Balancing the budget without raising taxes is going to require cutting specific programs, so tell us which ones you would cut. And promising to “go through the budget line by line” or the equivalent doesn’t count. Surely by now you have figured out some specific programs that you are willing to cut — even if it means offending that program’s supporters.
How would you reform entitlements? Answering the first question was actually the easy part. Domestic discretionary spending makes up less than 20 percent of the federal budget. If you eliminated it all — the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, the FDA, the FBI — we would still be running a deficit. Ultimately, dealing with our deficit and debt requires dealing with entitlements, particularly Medicare and Social Security. But so far we’ve heard little more than vague generalities. Do you support Paul Ryan’s plan for Medicare reform? If not, what would you do? What about Social Security? Would you cut benefits? Should young workers be allowed to save a portion of their payroll taxes in personal accounts?
Are you a fair-weather federalist? Republicans have become fond of quoting the Tenth Amendment recently: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” But we’ve heard that before. President Bush was all for states rights until a state did something he didn’t like, such as legalize medical marijuana or physician-assisted suicide. What happens now if a state, say, chooses to permit gay marriage? Already former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has attacked Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Texas governor Rick Perry for even hinting that states have that authority. And Bachmann and Perry have started to go wobbly on the issue.
Are there any limits to our military commitments? We are now fighting at least three wars, not counting drone attacks and covert actions. We have troops in more than 100 countries and are still guarding South Korea from North Korea and Germany from, well, something. Are all these military commitments still necessary? Under what circumstances would you commit U.S. troops to combat? It’s not enough to say you would protect U.S. vital interests. What are those vital interests? Promoting democracy? Human rights? Fighting every last terrorist in any country that they pop up in? Ensuring “stability” in every area of the globe?
What is the proper role of government? It’s not possible to think of every possible issue that may come up during your presidency. That’s why it’s so important to know your animating principles when it comes to government. Is it government’s role to “create jobs”? Should government enforce moral values? What things can only government do, and what should be left to civil society? Is there anything that you think is a good idea, but still shouldn’t be government policy?
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 16)
This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.
Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”
“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.
Congressman Paul Broun, M.D. (GA-10) today released the following statement on his vote against the Republican Budget Control Act, which passed the House of Representatives 218 to 210 votes:
“I cannot in good conscience vote for a bill that puts the future of my grandchildren and of generations to come in jeopardy. While I respect my Republican colleagues’ efforts to come up with a compromise, the people in the 10th Congressional District of Georgia did not send me to Washington to follow the herd. They sent me here to protect their liberty and to fundamentally change the way our federal government spends their money. I do support a Balanced Budget Amendment, but I do not support raising the debt ceiling and allowing President Obama to put more debt on the backs of the American people. Congress needs to first acknowledge that we have lost all control of our fiscal house, and then we need to focus on finding a real solution for paying down the national debt.”
An interesting compilation of Milton Freeman as an economic freedom philosopher. Milton makes the case for economic freedom as a precondition for political freedom.
The title of this video, The Power of Choice is really a summary of his philosophy. Let me restate his thesis: If you have the power to choose anything, a job, a pizza, home and so on, you have freedom. Freedom to choose is power. Economic Freedom can, but does not necessarily, lead to political freedom.
If you do not have freedom to choose your job, your home or even your healthcare, then you will never have political freedom. But if you have freedom to choose, you have the conditions right for political freedom. Please note: this is not guarantee of political freedom. It is just a condition that is necessary for political freedom.
99th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth (Part 11)
Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday. Here is another tribute below:
About the Authors
David Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and an economics professor at the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He is editor of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (Liberty Fund) and blogs at econlib.org. … See All Posts by This Author
David Henderson (davidrhenderson1950@gmail.com) is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and an economics professor at the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School. His latest book, co-authored with Charles L. Hooper, is Making Great Decisions in Business and Life (Chicago Park Press, 2006).
So much has been written about Milton Friedman’s many contributions to economic research and analysis and to the struggle for economic freedom. My appreciation for him is more personal: He helped change my life.
Like many young people who read and loved Ayn Rand’s works, I adopted not just her ideas, but also some of her baggage. The problem was that it was hard for me, at 17, to decide what was baggage and what wasn’t. Rand sometimes went overboard but not always. Her denunciations as “evil” of certain people and ideas were justified: Hitler and Nazism and Stalin and communism come to mind. But what about my great Aunt Ruby, one of the neatest old people I knew? Was she evil for voting for the New Democratic Party, Canada’s socialist party? For a while I thought so. I don’t think that distorted thinking would have lasted long had I never heard of Milton Friedman. But Friedman hastened my transition.
In the summer of 1968 I was paging through Newsweek and noticed a column titled, “The Public Be Damned.” At the top was a grinning bald guy with glasses named Milton Friedman. I recognized the statement as one that an Ayn Rand hero had used in Atlas Shrugged, and I started reading. The column was both disappointing and delightful. Disappointing because Friedman didn’t denounce the public; delightful because he gave a logical clear case for allowing competition with the Post Office and turned the statement on its head: “The public be damned” was not an attitude businessmen could afford to have, but was the attitude that the Post Office had. Who was this guy?
I hastened to find out. Realizing that this must be a regular column, I went to my university’s library and started working my way backward through his columns, quickly figuring out that I could skip every two—those by economists named Paul Samuelson and Henry Wallich. Only months later did I learn that he had written a book, Capitalism and Freedom.
Here’s how Capitalism and Freedom begins:
In a much quoted passage in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that the government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, “what you can do for your country” implies that the government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.
Wow! Remember that Friedman wrote this in 1962, when the worship of Kennedy, in the United States and in Canada, where I lived, was close to its pre-assassination peak. This guy, I thought, has a lot of guts. And he said it so well.
I read on. I loved the whole book, although I had a few disagreements—which I still have—that I won’t get into here. There were so many good sections. One of my favorites was his step-by-step analysis of how the American Medical Association had prevailed on the government to restrict the supply of doctors and how we could have quality assurance without licensing of doctors. I found it so persuasive that I followed my mother around our small apartment, reading it at her./p>
All that year I went to the magazine stand every three weeks to get Friedman’s latest column. I stood there reading it because I had budgeted so tightly for college that buying it was a luxury. The next summer I worked in a mine in northern Canada to earn money for my last year of college. I made a lot of overtime money and felt flush enough to actually buy an occasional Newsweek. So one weekend, when I calculated that Friedman’s latest column would be on the stands, I hitchhiked 40 miles from my mining camp to Thompson, Manitoba, to buy the latest copy. Imagine my disappointment when I opened the Newsweek and saw that the article was by Wallich. Newsweek must have had a different summer rotation.
A few times in the 1960s I saw Friedman on TV, and I read everything about him I could find. This guy seemed special. Although he was a good writer, Ayn Rand was better and Murray Rothbard was at least as good. So that wasn’t it. What was it?
Niceness Underrated
He was nice; and he didn’t isolate himself among those who agreed with him but, instead, stepped out in the bigger world. I know that niceness doesn’t mean much to many people who spend their lives steeped in ideas, but it meant a lot to me. I had already sensed, from reading and reading about Rand and Rothbard, that there seemed to be a package deal in libertarianism: to hold the idea of freedom in the world, one needed to attack those who disagreed and surround oneself with those who agreed. I didn’t want to be that way. I had always wanted to be nice and, except for the few months after I read The Fountainhead, when I announced to my mother that I would no longer go to the supermarket for her because that would be self-sacrifice, I was nice.
I also wanted to avoid the kind of isolation from intellectual and generational equals that Rand and Rothbard had chosen, and to be in the bigger world. I later saw, when watching Friedman’s TV series Free to Choose in 1980, just how well Friedman did at disagreeing without being disagreeable. He welcomed all comers, no matter how they disagreed, and he never hit below the belt. I was becoming this way too, but he helped me get there faster.
None of this is to say that Friedman was a cream puff who would never speak truth to power. Two of my three favorite stories from his and Rose Friedman’s book Two Lucky People illustrate that. The first was his challenging General William Westmoreland when Westmoreland, who favored the draft, referred to volunteers as mercenaries. Friedman countered that if Westmoreland insisted on calling volunteers “mercenaries,” Friedman would insist on calling draftees “slaves.” Many people in recent months have repeated this story and I quote the story at length in my article, “Milton Friedman: A Tribute” (at http://antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=10042).
The second is told less often but is even more impressive. In September 1971 Friedman and his former University of Chicago colleague George Shultz, then the administrator of President Nixon’s price controls, had a discussion with Nixon in the Oval Office. As Friedman was about to leave, Nixon said the price controls would be ended soon, adding, “Don’t blame George for this monstrosity.” Friedman answered, “I don’t blame George. I blame you, Mr. President.”
Attention Eagle Fans!!!Come out to Meet the Eagles on Friday, August 26th at 6:00 pm and meet the members of the fall sport teams. David Bazzel, former Razorback and host of the The Buzz’s Show with No Name, will be our special guest introducing each team. There will be food, face painting, and a chance to get all the cheerleaders and football players’ autographs. The elementary class that obtains the most autographs will win an ice cream party!!!
The Daily Hatch 