Abstract
There is no more damaging academic in the 20th century than Milton Friedman. His philosophies caused widespread economic problems and inequality not only in his home country but internationally as well.
Milton Friedman is considered a giant of 20th century economics, and is probably the most influential economist of the past 100 years. The question is rarely asked why Milton Friedman, over so many economists, was so highly quoted and regarded. This drives directly to the heart of who uses and pays for economics writing. According to the standard view, Milton Friedman’s success and influence was simply based upon his scholarship and the correctness of his ideas. In this article we propose a reality regarding his popularity and status that is more nuanced. We will also give examples of how politicized the vast majority of economics writing is.
Nobel Prize Winner
Milton Friedman did win a Nobel Prize, however this was for his work on interest rates, not for his conservative and extreme views on society and regulation. This Nobel Prize victory has been trotted out as support for his ideas by people who are largely anti-intellectual and do not know how the Nobel Prize is awarded and don’t know why or for what he won the prize. Furthermore, a Nobel Prize is not a guarantee of correctness. The professors behind Long Term Capital Management received Nobel Prizes for their option pricing theory roughly one and a half years before their fund collapsed and had to be bailed out by the government.
This information on the work that had him awarded the prize is available at http://www.nobel.com. It is, like most Nobel Prizes in reward for work in a very narrow area.
Dovetailing with the Interests of Concentrated Power
It is amazing that in all the articles on Milton Friedman we have not once seen an article that points out that the main reason Friedman was so popular was what he said dovetailed perfectly with what concentrated power wanted to hear. He argued that taxation was theft and that corporations had no social responsibility. Friedman loved the market, however paradoxically many companies made monopoly profits off of his ideas such as multinationals that purchased public waterworks and then made water obscenely expensive, or private firms that ripped off charter schools in New Orleans after the area privatized many schools creating a totally unaccountable which allowed huge graft to go unpunished. Friedman was silent on these issues. In general he was not the type of economist who would tolerate questioning, and not the type of economist who was honest enough to admit when he was wrong. Few are.
Corrupt Power Loved Milton, or Uncle Milte as he was called by his adherents.
The Attraction of Milton Friedman
Friedman was a technically good economist. He was also an excellent writer. He wrote in a way that was clearer than truth. In his world markets are perfect, and the only thing that gets in the way of the perfection is the government and other non-market mechanisms like unions (that is monopoly power from the bottom rather than monopoly power from the top). Friedman viewed any restriction on corporate power as an interference in the market. While people are distancing themselves from this type of talk now (post financial crisis) for decades now MBAs and economists have been mindlessly quoting Friedman to promote all manner of deregulation. Now we have the deregulated financial markets that have been so desired by conservatives, and our system is melting down.
While it was apparent that Friedman was talented in many ways, it must be said that he was an extremist. He was more in love with theory than with testing his hypothesis against the real world. He was a good writer, but he was not so good that he would have achieved his notoriety, status and eventual Nobel prize without his bias. For instance, if he wrote about the evils of corporate power, we would unlikely be writing about him now. He essentially provided an academic cloak for whatever large corporations wanted to do. Think Rush Limbaugh with a PhD. His job was to create concepts that can be put into policy to punish the vast majority of Americans (and which ended up affecting many other countries as well), to the benefit of the top income bracket. Friedman liked to frame issues as if he were a white knight fighting for truth, when in fact he was extraordinarily servile to power. For this reason, we question how much actual economics he was working on, and how much was simply doctrinal.
Furthermore, Friedman’s experience generalizes. Economics has become profession that uses doublespeak to high sounding concepts and mathematics to support elite interests. How this is done is explained here http://counterecon.com/2008/01/11/unquestioned-capitalism/
If you want a good career in economics, you do and say as you are told, and this can ensure a comfy living. our favorite economists are Michael Hudson and Dean Baker and it is not surprise that both of them work outside of the system. That is not for a major university and not for a financial institution.(1) Lack of need to publish what concentrated power wants them to publish is probably why (in addition to being fine economists) both were able to predict the housing bust, while the vast majority of economists did not.
Similarities Between Milton Friedman and Corporations
If Friedman were reincarnated, he would be come back as a corporation. His opinions were so in line with corporations that he could have been one himself. Once you get beyond the advertising campaigns which talk about “Building a Better World Together,” corporations are simply extremely self centered institutions. Large corporations are against anything that gets in the way of them maximizing their profits. Environmental laws, labor laws, government rules on competition do this. These checks on corporate power exist because of a long history of abuse on the part of corporations that operate in an unconstrained marketplace. Having to argue that regulation is important, that labor laws are important, that the environment is important should not really be necessary at this late date in human history. However, Milton Friedman used his academic perch and dogmatic writing to argue that these things had not place in a fully functioning economy. Large concentrated power made sure that Friedman’s song was heard far and wide. Whether it was true or not was another matter. We believe Milton Friedman was too smart to have written what he wrote. For this reason we give him the intellectual prostitute award for the century. An economist who knew better, but became addicted to the power and prestige of having the ear of concentrated power.
Naomi Klein on Milton Friedman
Friedman and the Hoover Institute
http://counterecon.com/2009/02/05/stanford-lowers-itself-by-having-the-hoover-institute/
References
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-chimain.htm
The Poor Record of Milton Friedman by The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/nov/16/post650
Milton Friedman and Pinochet
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42a/086.html
Footnote
Michael Hudson is a university professor, but we do not think he performs the typical duties of one. Michael Hudson has made the comment that university economics has become so doctrinal and subordinated to concentrated financial interests that he can no longer teach.
“Because they don’t seem to care about their internal economies, except to go on waging the old class war. That is how mainstream economics is taught these days — and why I stopped teaching academic economics for many years.”
See his interview
http://deconsumption.typepad.com/deconsumption/2008/03/acres-interview.html
In any case, we think he is just as, if not more influential by working outside of academic economics. The present academic economics is simply not working for the general economy. Instead it is promoting a false way of thinking among students who study economics, and go on to become employed by concentrated financial power to write up papers that perpetuate a dysfunctional economic system. We call the work that Michael Hudson and Dollars and Sense and CEPR.net do “real economics.” This is where economic principles are applied evenly and rigorously and the advanced math is left to the physicists. As for what most of the academic economics is doing, we would refer to this is as either pure doctrinal drivel, or escapades into bizarre forms of econometrics that have little if anything to do with the real economy.
He also has a number of associations as with the Study of Long Term Economic Trends group.
Can you point us to some sources? I’m fairly familiar with Friedman’s pop work and even some of his academic articles and don’t recall him ever arguing that there even *could* be such a thing as a market without regulation, let alone that regulation was not important. Nor do I recall him arguing against correction of negative externalities that cause environmental damage.
Thanks for your comment. This blog is still in the early stages and I have yet to move many articles out here, however, I would be happy to provide extra evidence to your points.
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In the excellent documentary ‘The Corporation” Milton Friedman is quite clear in stating his view that regulation eventually results in the regulatory bodies being controlled by the very industries they are setup to regulate (capture theory). This has certainly happened to an unprecedented degree over the past 7 years. His quotations on regulation include:
“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”
In an interview with PBS for the show The Commanding Heights on Nixon Friedman states:
“During his regime the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, was established and the OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the OECA [the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance of the EPA] — about a dozen, a half-dozen alphabetic agencies were established so that you had the biggest increase in government regulation and control of industry during the Nixon administration that you had in the whole postwar period.”
On Reagan he states:
“Yes, absolutely. There is no doubt in my mind that that action of Reagan, plus his emphasis on lowering tax rates, plus his emphasis on deregulating … I mentioned that the regulations had doubled, the number of pages in the Federal Register had doubled, during the Nixon regime; they almost halved during the Reagan regime. So those actions of Reagan unleashed the basic constructive forces of the free market and from 1983 on, it’s been almost entirely up.”
Notice, Friedman does not differentiate good from wasteful regulation. OSHA is widely credited with improving worker safety, however he clearly views all regulation as pointless government programs.
In an interview in 1999 he proposes abolishing the FDA as “its in the self interests of pharmaceutical companies not to have these bad things.” http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
In his 1970 article in the New York Times Magazine
http://www.cbe.wwu.edu/dunn/rprnts.friedman.dunn.pdf, he proposes that corporations have no social responsibility and that any money spent on socially responsible programs is theft from shareholders. As he was not keen on regulation, government or social responsibility it seems he sees no place for market resticting or even regulating mechanisms.
Friedman has been one of the main proponents of privatization. This naturally takes assets that are under government control (which is unresponsive, but in some measure accountable to the political process) and puts them in the hands of what Chomsky refers to as “private tyrannies.” That is while it is difficult to influence the local waterworks, it is even more difficult to influence General Electric. By doing this, Friedman increases the regulatory load placed on the government. However and this leads to the fourth point…
Friedman is famous for saying
“I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.”‘
I can only assume that he would mean cutting taxes to cut regulatory programs (as he clearly opposes regulation and may even view it as “theft” from property owners.). Thus in addition to taking assets from governments (schools, public utilities, transportation infrastructure) he would want to hollow out the state so that is also powerless to regulate these corporations.
On The Environment
The way of correcting externalities causing environmental damage is regulation. I am aware that industry funded economists have proposed the idea of pollution credits, however, this is not a genuine offer at a solution but is rather more “self regulation” that results in the same non-results that made Gore’s Inconvenient Truth necessary. That is no “market solution” to environmental damage can be taken seriously as it lacks evidence and is proposed by the very industries (and their paid economists) who would seek to remove themselves from regulation. Thus I think we have good basis to believe that Friedman opposed environmental regulation as he opposed other forms of regulation.
[...] http://counterecon.com/2008/01/10/milton-friedman-economistintellectual-prostitute/ [...]
yes, and Marx is the pure virgin in your eyes.. shame people like you get to live in freedom – I suggest going to Belarus or NKorea, I visited the former a few months ago &suggest you do the same.
I have no exposure to Karl Marx or to Engels. I am aware of them as authors but have never read them.
I don’t know if you have been following current events, but Belarus has not been communist since the early 1990s. They now follow the same corrupt capitalist system that we do. As for N. Korea, I don’t think you can find anywhere in my blog where I recommend adopting the economic principles of N. Korea. Instead I am critical of the corruption and false “free markets” of the US system. It would be nice if you addressed what I actually propose.
I kind of doubt you have read Marx or Engels either as people that write comments like this don’t read much. Next I assume you will praise Adam Smith, someone else you have never read and cannot read?
See this post on poorly educated politicians quoting books they have never read.
http://counterecon.com/2009/03/27/nobody-actually-reads-adam-smith-and-a-wealth-of-nations/
Finally, no one has to leave a country because they disagree with the economic philosophy of the country. That is called fascism. The problem with Eastern Bloc countries is not that they were communist (they really were not, for instance they did not allow labor unions, there was little equality), the problem was that they are fascist. That is they are the type of countries that George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Goldman Sacks would have thrived in. They required little competency and mostly worked off of personal relationships. Your statement about people who disagree with conventional opinion leads me to believe you would be very comfortable in a fascist state. With a few more Republican administrations, you will luckily not even have to leave the US to live in a fascist paradise where everyone has to agree with large banks and politicians.
I accepted you comment, even though it was anonymous, because it gives readers a good idea of the deep ignorance of the population and helps to explain how to counteract statements made by the typically poorly read mutton-head. How is the present corrupt bailout or the fact the Fed refuses to provide an accounting for trillions of dollars of US dollars made ok because N. Korea has a bad economy. That is if I am in favor of corruption can I stay in the country, but if I am against it I should leave? It would be nice if you could leave some more comments. Try listing any argument you can for our current economic system, and I will be happy to refute it.
Funny you write about bailouts and the potent Federal Reserve System, two things Milton Friedman was vehemently opposed to.
Friedman recognized that private firms were in a profit AND loss business. Losses work to get rid of poor executives. The risk of profit and loss rests solely with the private firm, government should not intervene with the profit/loss system. Why should firms care about anything other than profit and the legality of its operations? If I start up a small for-profit business, then it is to better myself and my family, to provide a desirable good or service to willing consumers, and make a profit. I am not in business for charity and no firm truly is in a position to do charity. We seek profit through satisfying consumers. That is our service to community. And yet it is the failed Fortune 500 CEO that often travels to Washington to personally lobby for emergency funds that often leave the same CEO in power and has a retarding effect on the profit/loss system resulting in something akin to Amtrak.
Friedman is also on record stating his views that double taxation leads directly to the creation of large multinationals via massive retained earnings, horizontal expansion, and the marginalizing of smaller shareholders. Friedman favors active owners and smaller businesses.
Friedman’s opposition to the Federal Reserve System is well documented as he spent a good deal of his work detailing the Fed’s turning a deep recession into the Great Depression by contracting the money supply, and he regularly voiced his views about abolishing the System.
You wrote in reply above that Friedman viewed all regulation as pointless government interference. Totally untrue. Friedman is consistent that their is a point to all governmental interference in the market, and it is almost always to serve special interests – big business, big labor, etc. Speaking of big labor, Friedman has never been against labor unions or the right of workers to organize. He is opposed to the undue influence of labor unions on corruptible civil servants to craft favorable policy for labor unions and their members and the effect of such policy to hurt the lower class. A recent example would be the penalties of the Health Care bill not going into effect for unionized health care plans until years after non union health care plans, with unorganized labor representing over 80% of all workers. It’s not justifiable on any level or than to say that big labor got special treatment for an all powerful government.
Friedman was first and foremost an individual in support of maximum freedom for individuals.
Freidman was a absolutely opposed to regulation and that record can not change. Its hard to even listen to or take any of his writing seriously because he was such a tool for concentrated power. If you want to know his position its easy, its whatever benefited the ultra-wealthy. I also consider him a complete scumbag with no ethical compass whosoever. He was a big admirer of Pinochet. It would be like working as a consultant to Adolf Hitler. His work is about as serious as Ayn Rand.
ROBERT you just summed up neo liberal capitalism and its ideology with the comment SHAME PEOPLE LIKE YOU GET TO LIVE IN FREEDOM ( what ever freedom is ). so as there are people that dont share your views the should have all freedoms removed and live terrible lives. i to have travled like many others from hong kong to serveing in kosovo during the wars. let me just say i think what you percive as freedom to be false, second you by that statment are verging on facism, if you dont think like us then you will loose all freedoms hmmmm im sure a few in the past have said somthing similar ( nazism, stalinism, and facism)
now try and understand this socialism or a society that has had constructed inequalities removed for the furtherment of the social is not a SOCILIST IDEAL it is not a marxian ideal its an ideal that has far reaching hisories guys such as hume, john locke,adam ferguson, machavallie have commented , even adam smith would baulk at what has been linked to him as his form of capitalism was not to allow the individual to do what ever they wanted without realising the repercussions it may bring but one that is social
iv read many of marxs works along with Weber amoung others such as wittgenstien, and the comment of marx is a virgin is well it shows your lack of understanding of any social problem or theory, again like adam smith marx would be shocked at what is wrote in his name,
i suggest you go to any nation that the world bank or the imf have ( supported) loaned capital to the cases of sucsses are few and far between
in this day and age i find it shocking that individuals and collectivly people are refusing to belive the histories of there own western nations
the usa do manipulate poor nations and controll there economies for the benifit of the usa poor nations are being asset stripped because they have entred into a loan with imf etc.
weve already said chile had its democraticaly government removed by terrorists ( trained and backed by the usa) and this was legitamised by friedmans theoris and economic planning i think he specificaly called it SHOCK DOCTRINE ( remember it from post ussr) and it impoverished the vast majority of the population . yes a thriving middle class grew from the 1980s onwards but in comparision to total population it was in single percentages. furthermore the economic boom the took place again was not felt by the working poor they thus made to work for petty amounts to try and survive while rich westerners made a killing by ripping there resourses and nation apart simply to fill there own pockets.
how about venezula and chaves legally and democraticaly elected by the people and clandestinely removed by the CIA and a puppet government put in place that would allow the US to prioratise policy that was advantageous to capitalist markateers.
next time think and as ludwig suggests if
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. ie if nothing of importace can be gained shhhhhhhhhhh
and regarding anyone who claims to have an answer or to have a dogmatic stance on an issue ludwig would suggest that Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
regardsw darran
You see all this evidence means nothing to conservatives. The massive increase in inequality in the US is not driven by the ultra wealthy or by the reduction in unions. The financial crisis was not driven by “real conservatives.” There is always this illusory group called real conservatives that hold all these upstanding ideas. The only problem with this is that all the “real conservatives” are connected to or work for in some way corrupt businesses.
Conservatism is to put a pretty face on plantation thinking. That abusing people and animals is ok because it fits with some crazy doctrine such as free markets (which are not free) or free trade (which is corporate controlled trade and sweatshop labor).
Whether its factory farms where animals are tortured, Pinochet’s regime, where people were tortured nothing shocks conservatives. They think they have history actually on their side because they know how to pronounce the words “Soviet Union.” Since communism was fascist, then any form of abuse their corporations impose on others or the environment is ok, because this is supposedly “freedom.” This is the kind of blather sold by the Hoover Institute, American Enterprise Institute, etc…
Interestingly, all conservative principles which include torture (check, who was for and against water boarding and CIA black sites), “tort reform” – i.e. making it much more difficult to sue corporations, anti-regulation, pro-military intervention, anti-woman, pro-elite, anti-freedom of speech (conservatives equate speech with money), would move us closer to what the Soviet Union was, with the difference being that instead of being subjugated by the state, we would all be subjugated by corporations. Big difference.
Such a distortion of Friedman’s record.
Quickly, nothing I wrote above suggested Friedman was a supporter of regulations, I merely pointed out, correctly, that Friedman wasn’t naive enough to believe regulations to be pointless.
The greatest concentration of power in the world is the United States government. Period. And Friedman supported limits to that power. The ultra wealthy can do little to me as an individual without the support of government, which can do plenty of things to me. It garnishes my wages, forces me into a buying into a specific retirement annuity, tell my kids where to go to school, tell me who to hire, it could take my home via abstract reasoning, tell me to wear my seatbelt, restrict me from buying certain drugs, can tap my phone line, prevent me from buying cheaper Chinese tires, and until thirty-two years ago could force me into military service. How pervasive and totalitarian is that power, and here you are talking about Bill Gates and Warren Buffet! They can do little to me without the strong arm of government.
You are creating distractions from the substance of what we are discussing. Pinochet, scumbags, Rand, etc. It is all immaterial, of opinion, and false. Pinochet was a great man. And Rand was the greatest philosopher to have ever lived. She was all I read until I discovered Tony Robbins. You talk about these people but proudly post youtube clips of Naomi Klein who is a falsifying clown. Although I have to admit I have had a number sexual fantasies about her. Except I would not act on them because she is a Jew and I am against interracial breeding. Friedman was no objectivist. Unlike Rand’s core belief, Friedman has always touted voluntary altruism. The key word there is voluntary. This is the foundation of Friedman’s beliefs. Friedman only objects when it is the coercive power of government that forcibly takes individuals’ money to do “good” with. He has given many lectures on the pitfalls of doing good with other people’s money. It is literally anti-liberty.
Re: Pinochet. This is all hear say, but I’ll indulge. Friedman worked briefly to help liberalize the Chilean economy which he believed best for the Chileans, furthermore Pinochet was a hero and one of the best leaders latin america had ever had. Everything bad written about him was false. What needs to be understood is that Pinochet was a liberator of the Chilean people.
It is true that Friedman was against a progressive income tax. It is also true that Friedman supported abolishing the federal income tax, instituting a negative income tax, and the maintaining of an individual’s right to their own paycheck. Friedman has shown that a graduated income tax itself is plagued because politicians have been constantly corrupted by special interests, resulting in a convoluted Internal Revenue Code featuring a myriad of deductibles, exemptions, credits, and preferences making most income untouchable and so that only a tax specialist CPA can understand it all.
Above all, Friedman denounced the pillaging of the poor and wealthy in this country. It has been the constant vote getter for many years – the outright theft from the bottom and top 5% of earners for the benefit of the broad middle class. Friedman supported ending the unfair draft, ending the discriminatory minimum wage laws, ending the destructive drug prohibition, ending government administration of schooling, ending price supports for corporate farms that artificially keep grocery prices high thus hurting poor families, etc. He was a champion of the individual. He supported liberalizing economies because that is best alleviator of poverty yet discovered in this world.
What you are writing is almost verbatim from the Hoover institute. The concept is to weaken government by undermining it. However, is GE democratic? Is Microsoft democratic? No. The power you decry in government has some democratic foundation. The institutions you bring up have zero democratic input.
The primary method by which you are subjugated is through the stripping of government power to protect you by the ultra-wealthy. Don’t forget the wealthy used to employ child labor, currently employ child labor oversees. The wealthy are interested in polluting your environment with heavy metals and they will do if the government does not stop them. Individuals will move into slavery, child pornography, stock fraud etc… unless the government stops them and there are rules against it. For you to make the comment that the ultra-wealthy cannot subjugate you seems to miss out on the totality of human history.
All those things you describe are designed to protect you and create a civilized society. I do want you to wear a seatbelt because I don’t want you to impose externalities on me. I don’t want you buying low standard tires because what if they blow out and you crash and run into me or someone else? That is the difference you are missing. Aside from putting people in the military and grinding them up (which is primarily motivated by conglomerates that want to subjugate other counties to steal from them), the government’s role is to setup rules that protect people from imposing costs on other people.
The fact that Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Pinochet are scumbags is not a distraction. A person’s moral center is critical because without it their opinion is useless. Milton Friedman wrote for money. He designed his entire philosophy around whatever what got him cash. So yes he is a scumbag, but aslo he is straight up whore just like most of his adherents such as Donald Rumsfeld and Alan Greenspan, two sleazes that have cost the US mightily. Naomi Klein is the real deal, she is honest has a moral compass and all of her statements are supported by facts……unlike Friedman’s who makes a habit of contradicting himself. He is both completely opposed to corporate responsibility, but also opposed to regulation. So he would seem to support a society like Nigera — utter pandemonium, but one where Shell Oil gets its money out, while everyone else lives in dire poverty. Also Friedman was well known to massage his research to meet his doctrine.
This fact you cannot deny. Pinochet was a known torturer and criminal when Friedman gave him advice. His Chicago Boys liberalized the economy alright, as they were killing a huge number of people. Friedman just could have cared less. Just like his follower Donald Rumsfeld, he just wants to be successful and wealthy. There is no way around it, the fact that he denounced it afterward is called PR, the facts are the facts on this, and this along with many other of Friedman’s activities provided undeniable proof that he was simply a disgusting human being. Also your comment about him being on the record as opposing in human rights abuses is about as relevant as Michael Milken being on the records as against fraud, or OJ Simpson being on the record as being against wife beating. Is a person’s statement on the record actually evidence of something? Are you proposing that it is. What do you bet Exxon’s public position on the environment is?
As for the rest of your comment all I can say is please…….. Who cares what Friedman supported or did not support, his credibility is gone. I will tell you what he supported, licking the balls of concentrated power and writing whatever got him the most money.
Note: Marcus commented again, but his commentary was began moving towards personal attacks so I marked it as spam. This is not a forum for rehashing stuff that could be found on the Hoover Institute blog. Note to commentors. Any rude commentary with a lot of factual errors will not be approved. Any note which contains a personal attack will not be approved.
Second Note: Marcus sent another note which I did not read. Again, as soon as a a commenter becomes abusive, I no longer read their comments. I would recommend Marcus to Foxnews.com so he can interact with people more like himself and which he will find more gratifying.
There was a comment from Marcus that I had to delete because he had become uncivil. It was where he proposed that GE and Microsoft are democratic because they have shareholders.
This shows how little so many people who pretend to have economics knowledge know. All shareholding is extremely shifted towards the wealthy. So if GE or Microsoft chose to export negative externalities on the rest of society, the wealthy shareholders are likely not going to care because they will gain more individually from rises in share prices than they will lose individually from GE’s or Microsoft’s actions. The only people that can stop them is either the regulatory branch or the judicial branch of the government. GE and Microsoft offer 0% democracy. Furthermore, it should be understood that shareholders are voting for their financial interests. However financial interests do not equal democracy.
It is concerning that some people actually think and will propose that shareholder votes have any likeness to democracy. This is the fight that has to be fought, to push back on completely false statements that are repeated no matter how little backs them up. I am extremely concerned with deeply ignorant comments which are proposed by the semi-educated, who are just looking to regurgitate the official position of concentrated power but which are stated which such confidence.
Its irritating to read someone like Marcus who is just repeating all the cliched false things we have all heard a million times before. If this is going to be the conservative contribution to the comments on this blog I think its good that you blocked him. I don’t come to read a blog which gets into serious topics to listen to someone just make stuff up. I have noticed conservatives tend to get rude after the first comment, so much for their ability to self sacrifice. The modern conservative is more like Rush Limbaugh, corpulent, self indulgent and nasty. I never get a moral feel when interacting with any of them.
on mr milton
go dig out some john pilger a journalist that is not in any ones pocket
mr milton may not have as is suggested in this site by it seems fairly right wing neo liberal conservative thinking people with an objective to keeping what they have. he may not have suggested that the actions of the chilian dictator ship were just and right BUT IT WAS HIS ECONOMIC POLITICAL IDEOLOGY THAT JUSTIFIED THE USA TO TAKE ACTION AGAINST A DEMOCRATICALY ELECTED GOVERNMENT, so his ideology allowed certain actions to be taken on the premis that it is just and right for the USA , and basicaly f*** all who suggest it wrong to put your self at the top ( and to get to the top i need to stomp you all down and keep you there , we can have a democraticaly elected government next door not doing what we told it )
people grow up and do some real reading , read all side of the story and not just the elite side that is mear propaganda for a specific section of society