Obama’s Guesses vs Friedman’s Courageous Candor

Letter to Philippians: Partisan Barack Obama is no Milton Friedman. Not scholarly like the late great U of Chicago economist. Not as smart about the Laws of Economics let alone the Rule of Law …

The WSJ’s op ed “Obama’s Disrespect for the Law” was focused on his comments re Rep Ilhan Omar’s alleged immigration & financial fraud scams. And another opinion piece in the paper titled, “Milton Friedman’s Courageous Candor” got me thinking. While the first article by James Freeman called out No. 44 for attacking the judicial warrant enabling the search of Omar’s home,” the Friedman piece by Arthur Diamond hailed how “the economist became a Nobel laureate” by “skewering not people but bad ideas.” Consider Obama’s post on X essentially calling the Omar investigation itself a fraud, even though the ex-president is noted for his “no one is above the law” one-liner. As the WSJ’s Freeman asked, “How would Mr. Obama know what evidence exists or doesn’t exist?” If his insistence that it’s all a part of Trump’s “intimidation” of a member of Congress, “how did federal law enforcers persuade a judge to issue a warrant?” As WaPo recently reported, that warrant was issued by US Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh, a big "donor to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton & Joe Biden … [and] … sworn into office by Judge James Boasberg, the pre-eminent judicial enabler of the abuses committed by the FBI against basic political liberties.”

Now, compare that Obama rant to Friedman’s history of teaching his students at U of C to understand how the world really works and how to make it work better. He was tireless in warning about how socialism would trigger the end of progress & freedom; how the naivete of youthful Marxist foot soldiers would hasten the capitalist West’s ruin. In establishing what became known as “The Chicago School of Economics,” he believed that good economics required free speech and advocated for secular democracy & human rights inside Iran. Friedman empirically showed how open borders is incompatible with a modern welfare state. He was known to sometimes change his mind in response to new evidence & arguments. Ever hear Barack admit he was clueless let alone just plain wrong?

Davd Soul