Dana Rohrabacher: “I rise to pay tribute to a friend, a mentor, and a true hero of American liberty and a champion of liberty and justice…”

“I rise to pay tribute to a friend, a mentor, and a true hero of American liberty and a champion of liberty and justice for all of humankind. The death of economist and libertarian spokesman, Dr. Milton Friedman, last week silenced a powerful voice in the public debate over the role of individual liberty in our society. As a young man who first became active in politics while I was in high school in the mid-1960s, one of the very first writers who helped shaped my ideas was Milton Friedman in his classic work, ``Capitalism and Freedom.'' Its powerful message of a respect for individual liberty, private property, and limited government inspired me as a young activist in the Youth for Goldwater at that time, I might add, and then again a couple of years later in Youth for Reagan, and continued to guide me as I became a speech writer for President Ronald Reagan and a Member of the United States Congress. Dr. Milton Friedman was always a creative and innovative thinker. I might add, he was a decent and wonderful warm-hearted human being as well, a man who openly challenged the underlying premises of stateism and of socialism and of the authoritarian impulses that we have often found in politics.”