Clint Bolick
President and General Counsel
Alliance for School Choice

Clint Bolick - Employment- President and General Counsel, Alliance for School Choice, the nation's leading advocacy organization for school choice; previously, co-founded and served as vice president and leader of the litigation team, Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C. which culminated in the successful defense of the Cleveland program in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, (2002). Works- Author, Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle Over School Choice, published by the Cato Institute; author, David's Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary (2006). Special Mention- Recognized in American Lawyer as one of the nation's three lawyers of the year (2003); received Bradley Prize for Outstanding Achievement (2006); senior fellow, Goldwater Institute; research fellow, Hoover Institution. Personal- Lives in Phoenix, Arizona. 

"Tribute to Milton Friedman"

Thank you.  Thank you so much, Becky, and it’s an honor to be here.  It’s an incredible honor to pay tribute to Milton Friedman, the towering apostle of freedom who passed away last year at the age of 94.  There are so many among you who are more qualified than I to do this honor justice, but I will do my best.  Such tribute by anyone who knew Milton Friedman is bound to be intensely personal, and I hope that by sharing my recollections they will summon your own, which in turn will enrich the conversations for the duration of this conference and beyond.  

I may be one of the few who remembers the exact day that I first met Milton Friedman.  I first encountered his ideas as a freshman at Drew University in 1975.  Our economics department was thoroughly Keynesian and I think that the textbooks we were required to buy kept Robert Heilbroner, a Keynesian economist, awash in royalties.  For the sake of my sanity, I sought alternatives and to my delight I discovered the work of Milton Friedman, who made economics both accessible and sensible.  As Thomas Sowell aptly put it, “he could express himself at the highest analytical levels to his fellow economists in academic publications and still write popular books that could be understood by people who knew nothing about economics.”  

Thus armed, I took my first economics final examination.  It was a multiple choice exam for which many of the questions presented a conundrum between choosing the correct answer and the professor’s answer.  I proceeded to choose the correct answers affixing in asterisk leading the grader to an explanation from Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom.  I thought that was kind of clever.  My professor was not amused.  And thus was Milton Friedman responsible in part for the lowest grade I received in my four years of college.  But it was worth it, for Milton Friedman’s writings instilled in me not only as an economic foundation for my belief in freedom, but also an introduction to one of the most liberating ideas of our time: parental choice.  

I was studying to be a school teacher and during my student teaching I grew appalled at the abysmal quality of education I witnessed especially in the inner city, but also in suburban public schools.  In my education classes, I encountered Friedman again, speaking with his usual clarity as he later would explain – and I quote – “schooling is one of the tactically most backward of our major industries.  It is backward because it is a socialist enterprise controlled by a monopoly that has every incentive to serve its leaders and membership and none to serve its students.  Competition would force the government schools to shape up or close down.”  Friedman’s prescription nudged me away from a career as a teacher toward one as a crusader for parental choice and economic liberty not as an economist – I knew better than that at that point – but as a lawyer.  

It was that career choice that brought me to Los Angeles on April 29, 1992, to meet with parents to prepare a lawsuit challenging the horrendous quality of public education in Los Angeles and seeking a voucher remedy.  It was also the day that the Rodney King verdict was handed down.  As my colleague and I drove into South Central Los Angeles, it was a balmy, bright, spring afternoon.  At one intersection, suddenly, our car was hit by a rock and a man charged the car with a 2x4. As I maneuvered the car thorough the red light and as we sped away, I remarked to my colleague, “We’ve got to let the police know what’s going on when we get to our meeting.”  Well, of course, once we got there, we discovered that the police knew what was going on and they had completely abandoned the area to the marauders.  As we watched horrified on TV, Reginald Deny was savagely being beaten only two blocks away from where we were.  But two dozen parents – low-income parents who the system says don’t care about their children’s education – braved the riot, so we stayed.  When my colleague and I subsequently navigated to safety, we learned later that the shopping center where our meeting was held was burned to the ground that night.

That experience – the collapse of the rule of law juxtaposed against the determination of parents to do better for their children – turned me from a school choice advocate into a school choice militant.  It was tough to get out of L.A. the next day because snipers were shooting at airplanes, and when I finally did, I arrived in San Francisco just in time for their Rodney King riot.  

The following day I went to the Hoover Institution to give talk on school choice.  Not only was I rattled from my experiences of the previous two days, but afflicted with a severe case of laryngitis.  When I rose to speak and surveyed the audience, what do I see to cap three surrealistic days, but the beaming visage of my hero, Milton Friedman, in the audience.  I thought to myself: I did not survive the riots, I died.  That’s not Milton Friedman, that’s Saint Peter greeting me at the Holy Gates.  My voice didn’t hold out for long and afterward all I could do was croak my gushy admiration when I finally got the chance to meet the great man and his amazing wife, Rose.  

Over the ensuing 15 years, Milton Friedman never ceased to provide inspiration to me or to the movement to which his ideas gave birth, but he never let friendship intervene with his principles.  Every single time I saw him, he would greet me with the admonition that I was wrong to focus on school choice for low-income kids.  He thought it should be universal.  As he would put it, programs for poor people are poor programs.  And then Rose Friedman would always say, “Milton, Clint has heard this from you before,” to which he would reply, “Yes, but he obviously hasn’t gotten it yet.”  

Apparently, it was not uncommon for Milton Friedman to subject friends and critics alike to his withering logic.  George Shultz observes that Milton’s fellow economists loved to debate Milton Friedman, but only when he wasn’t in the room.  But Milton will be remembered as a happy warrior.  His economic analysis was almost always accompanied by a smile.  I suspect that was because Milton understood that you don’t create economic science, you discover it.  And I think it was the joy of discovery that animated his humor and optimism.  

It is impossible to catalogue Milton Friedman’s accomplishments.  He was a great economist from the beginning, but his world and ours changed in 1947 when he received a note from his fellow Chicago economist George Stigler inviting him to “a junket to Switzerland to save liberalism.”  It was Friedman’s first trip outside the United States and the self-described young, naïve, parochial American found himself surrounded by the likes of Ludwig van Mises and Friedrich Hayek high a top Mount Pelerin.  For six weeks, they conversed and debated, morning, noon and night.  At one point, during a heated discussion about the government distribution of income, Ludwig van Mises proclaimed, “You’re all a bunch of socialists” and stormed angrily out of the room.  This is George Stigler, Milton Friedman and so forth.  

But on that mountain, 60 years ago, the modern freedom movement was born and Milton Friedman became its intellectual leader in America.  In 1955, Friedman first called for school vouchers.  In 1962 he published the classic Capitalism and Freedom, which has sold a half of million copies in 19 languages and greatly influenced an actor turned politician named Ronald Reagan.  In 1976, he won the Nobel Prize in economics.  His 1980 book, Free to Choose, co-authored with Rose, was a reader’s guide to the Reagan revolution, and the subsequent television series brought Milton into the homes of millions.

He advised President Reagan, who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998; Margaret Thatcher; and, less successfully, Richard Nixon.  Milton’s influence transcended international boundaries, particularly in Chile, where his free market prescriptions created vibrant market economy and fomented political liberalization.  Gary Becker writes that Milton Friedman understood that economic freedom promotes political freedom and that political freedom is not likely to persist without economic freedom.  

Throughout his magnificent career, the one constant was his partner Rose.  Their romance endured for 70 years.  That is not to say that they always agreed.  The last time I visited Rose and Milton in their home just before the 2004 presidential election, they sparred spiritedly, but good-naturedly, about the Iraq war – Rose was in favor, Milton was opposed – and whether to vote for Bush.  Rose said yes, Milton said no, though I suspect that he did not vote for John Kerry.  The Friedmans’ 64-year marriage was built on enduring devotion, respect, affection, and humor and I think it is a model for all of us to aspire.  

The Friedmans’ great policy love was parental choice, in which they invested not only their ingenuity and energy, but also much of their personal fortune – creating a foundation to support parental liberty that bears their names.  I am so glad Milton lived to see his dream begin to become a reality.  Bill Oberndorf, the chairman of the Alliance for School Choice, recently asked Milton if he thought progress on school choice was too slow.  Milton responded, “You know, considering that I came up with this idea 50 years ago and absolutely nothing happened in the first 40 years, I think the last ten years have actually been pretty darn good.”  

The school choice movement has suffered huge losses with the deaths of three of its great giants: John Walton, Michael Joyce, and Milton Friedman.  But their mighty labors are bearing fruit.  In the last two years, 19 school choice programs have been created or expanded around the country.  Right here in the sunshine state, two school choice programs have created opportunities for tens of thousands of children, while at the same time boosting public school performance – just as Milton Friedman predicted that it would.  As Milton might have put it, the rules of economics are not suspended at the doors of a schoolhouse. 

And I’m very proud to announce that just yesterday, the Utah House of Representatives voted to create the nation’s first universal voucher program.  If the Senate follows suit – and I suspect that it will – Milton Friedman’s dream will come to full flower in a state for the first time.

I’m sure that Milton is looking down from heaven with a huge smile on his face.  Milton to the very end was an incredibly generous person.  A few years ago when I wrote my book Voucher Wars recounting 12 years defending the constitutionality of school choice programs, I wrote to Milton and asked if he would provide a blurb for the cover on the book.  Milton wrote back and said, “I would be delighted to do that, but I have a policy that I never blurb a book that I haven’t read from cover to cover.”  I wanted to spare him that, but I sent him a copy of the manuscript and a couple of weeks later I get this package form him and with a letter that says, “Here’s the blurb that I promised you, but I’ve taken the liberty of also editing your entire manuscript.”  Sure enough, every single page, the cover should read Voucher Wars written by Clint Bolick as edited by Milton Friedman.  

That is the kind of man that Milton was and there’s a part of him that I especially cherish that each of us can emulate; and if we do, it will enrich not only each of our lives, but it will enrich the freedom movement as a whole.  I cannot tell you the number of young people I’ve encountered over the years who have told me, “I love Milton Friedman and one time I wrote him this letter” – and then over time I’ve come to be able to answer, or to say what the next sentence is that they’re going to say, which is “and he wrote me back.”  And they’ll never forget that.  Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate, was never too busy to answer a letter or for that matter to edit a manuscript.  And in the process, he touched countless lives in a way that will never be forgotten.  

All of us are leaders in our professions.  What a wonderful way to pay homage to Milton Friedman than to always take the time to nurture and inspire those who look up to us.  

In their autobiography, Two Lucky People, Milton and Rose outline their philosophy, and I quote: “Our central theme in public advocacy has been the promotion of human freedom which underlies our opposition to rent control and general wage and price controls, our support for educational choice, privatizing radio and television channels, an all-volunteer Army, limitation of government spending, privatizing Social Security, free trade, and the deregulation of industry and private life to the fullest extent possible.”  And they end with the following words: “We close this book full of optimism for the future and the belief that those ideas will prevail and that our children and grandchildren will live in a country that continues to advance rapidly in material and biological wellbeing and gives its citizens ever wider freedom to follow their own values and tastes so long as they do not interfere with the ability of others to do the same.”  

That is the precious legacy that Milton Friedman leaves to us: the unfinished business that he bids us to complete.  Milton set an incredible standard for all of us as Americans by leaving our country a little freer than the one that he found.  That should be our movement’s loadstar.  Our friend Milton is no longer with us and I miss him and I know a lot of you do as well, very deeply, but by his incredible example, his inspiration will be with us eternally.  



Thank you so much.

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