By Collin Hitt

Milton Friedman was perhaps the most important man from Illinois during the twentieth century. Like Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama—so far the most important Illinois men of the 19th and 21st centuries—he wasn’t born here. But the intellectual movement he founded during his thirty years in Illinois, now known commonly as the Chicago School of Economics, and the political discourse that he crafted, have changed public policy and the face of political debate across the world.

Yet in his twilight years, Dr. Friedman’s lament was that his ideas had little transformative impact on public education.

Milton Friedman was always passionate about policies that helped the downtrodden and poor. He was vehement in his scorn for policymakers and bureaucrats who, despite their intentions, made matters worse for the disadvantaged.

When Dr. Friedman moved to Chicago in 1946, the city was vastly changed by the Second World War. Thousands upon thousands of veterans were returning home, and thousands upon thousands of families who had moved to the city for war work were now settling in, looking for future opportunities. Immigrants fleeing depression and war ravaged homelands were flocking to the city.

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