This is from Redstate:

I am of a generation that takes for granted the fact that capitalism is a good thing. This was not always the case. Milton Friedman, more than any other individual, made it the case.

We forget that there was ever a discussion of this fact. We forget that once, it seemed that capitalism was on the ropes. We forget that there was a battle to be won.

When John Galbraith died, I had a discussion with a friend who'd seen the news. "All these economists," she said, "They're all saying the same thing, it's just where they put the emphasis."

Don't blame her. She majored in Art & Design. But even if she hadn't, well...it's unlikely that anyone born since 1980 would be able to tell you the difference. They forget because they never knew.

Ben Stein once said: "Professor Friedman and his wife stood up for the glory of the rights and choices of the individual. From the individual, not from the state, came creativity, progress, freedom, prosperity. From the state came oppression and stagnation."

I reminded of a quote from Orval Watts in the Northwood Idea. He writes:

Every nation has developed and flowered - with art, music, and the other ornaments and means of civilization - only on the basis of flourishing business trade, commerce. This was true of the Phoenicians, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Egypt, the Chinese civilization, the Byzantine Empire, Venice, Florence, Spain, England, France, Germany and the United States. Go through the history of each and you'll find in its origins that period in which commerce and finance were highly regarded and relatively free in a developing civilization.

Orval Watts: In 1963, at an age (65) where most men are thinking seriously of retirement, Orval resumed his teaching career, moving to the recently established Northwood University (then Northwood Institute), a free-market center of learning in Midland, Michigan.

Orval, bless him, served as director of economic education and chairman of the Division of Social Studies at Northwood for twenty-one years, until he retired in 1984 at the age of 86. While at Northwood, he published an excellent anthology of free market vs. government intervention articles, Free Markets or Famine? (1967), as well as his final book Politics vs. Prosperity (1976).

Source: Making Economic Sense