It is clearly possible to lay some of the blame for both the Silverado/S&L scam and the Enron bust-out at Friedman's feet. Certainly, they are the logical extreme of putting several of his theories into practice, such as "structured finance".

Further, Friedman clearly endorsed a position that crime is good for society because it is more "efficient" (as a matter of Economics) than crime prevention and regulation.

Certainly, Friedman thought that it should be legal for corporate insiders to capitalize on (pun intended) their unfair advantage over outsiders by engaging in illegal "insider trading".

It may also be possible to lay much of the blame for Iraq at Friedman's feet:

"There is no doubt that the destruction of Iraq’s governmental infrastructure is the exact outcome the Neocons in the Bush administration sought, because they also sought to privatize as much of the Iraqi infrastructure as possible.

Iraq was to be the petri dish of the Neocon experiment to prove privatized infrastructure was a better alternative to governmental oversight of a nation’s infrastructure. It needs also to be mentioned that the corporate clients of the Bush cabal were to profit handsomely from the privatization of Iraq’s infrastructure.

That the cultural divisions of the Iraqi population were ignored is a testament to the self centered arrogance of the Neocons, they simply couldn’t envision any other outcome to their plans than their chosen outcome."

It is also important to note, as does Barry Schwartz, in his "The Paradox of Choice", that "constantly being asked to make choices, even about the simplest things, forces us to 'invest time, energy, and no small amount of self-doubt, and dread.' There comes a point, he contends, at which choice becomes debilitating rather than liberating. Did I make the right choice? Can I ever make the right choice?" We normally assume in America that more options ("easy fit" or "relaxed fit"?) will make us happier, but Schwartz shows the opposite is true, arguing that having all these choices actually goes so far as to erode our psychological well-being.

Many of Friedman's "suggestions for reform" are GOP platform line-items that serve the hidden agenda of gutting America's national security interests. This is especially true of his "school voucher" program that will deprive America the Nation of millions of intelligent citizens of the Republic who are qualified to vote based on an understanding of national issues that goes beyond the superficial jingoism doled out at Friedman's "voucher schools", which are, in reality, nothing more than the segregation academies of the Massive Resisters.

So, as globalization (i.e. transnational corporatism) subsumes democracy, it becomes clear that Friedman was ever more of an apologist for profiteers and criminals than a major economic thinker.

After what I have witnessed in the past six years I would say the best reason not to trust the ideas of Mr. Friedman is that American conservatives do.

However, Democrats would be well served to become familiar with the man's work. Mr. Friedman provided the only reply necessary to the Republican's age old label for the Democrats as the party of "Tax and Spend."

As Mr. Friedman knew, when it comes to tending our flock the Democrat's "Tax and Spend" is a morally, ethically and economically superior choice to that of the Republican's preference for "Spend and Tax."

I recall being introduced to Friedman during the PBS series he did in the early 1980s. He was talking about how government should have no role in regulating the market and a women in the audience got up and asked whether a recent government ban on a particular type of baby crib on which the slats were too wide and were allowing babies bodies to slip through but then caught their heads and essentially hung them didn't belie his argument. Nonplussed Friedman responded not at all; once enough babies had died the company would go bankrupt and the product would be taken off the market. Made sense then; seems to make sense today!

For left-of-center American liberals, Milton Friedman was an enlightened adversary,

Absolutely -- the man was The Enemy. Capital E. Especially with his views on illegal drugs.

People who count themselves as left-of-center should hate the idea of legalizing drugs. After all, the War on Drugs is known to target mainly wealthy kingpins from the upper class.

The Drug War has done more to redress racial and socioeconomic imbalances in the country than any government program funded by the taxpayers since the Civil War.

Thanks to those mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine, American prisons are now well-behaved pristine havens of racial and class harmony.

And look what the Drug War has done for gun control! Criminals have to fight with rock-paper-scissors now. It's a whole different world in the ghetto and the barrio!

And besides, according to the UN, the entire world is on schedule to becoming drug free by 2008.

So this whole debate will be history by the next election. We won't ever need to strain our brains over drug policy ever again.

That Milton Friedman, he was the Class Enemy, alrighty.

Who needs him and his right wing ideas? Not the left, that's for sure.

Some dead professor, right? Boy, giving taxes to charter school systems is giving us great schools, isn't it? Handing over our pensions to private enterprise, how's that working? And life without unions? Why, we're happy as hogs, and really rich! Was Friedman right about Enron? Right about Halliburton in Iraq? About all those free contractors deciding how to torture? Congress seems to be working almost exclusively on the "market system." How's it working for the people? Broadband: we're the most libertarian about massive conglomerates having the monopoly on supplying it, but we are falling further and further behind the world. Friedman may have been a useful tonic back in the '70s. But we've got control of inflation now: the solution is, you give all the surplus to the CEOs, and they soak up inflation by buying bigger and bigger yachts. And if there's any extra left over, build tanks with it. Can't have enough tanks.

Oh, and the information explosion is really doing great. It's already built 3D graphics and music stings on FOX.

Sure, he could argue. But he was almost completely wrong.