Friedman acknowledged that in matters of economic policy "the patient is incompetent to choose the physician," but he saw "no alternative in a free society." In an environment structured around uninformed opinions, he assumed "the writings that demand least in the way of hard thought and that appeal most to emotion and prejudice are likely to command the widest readership." Friedman shared Hayek’s understanding of the importance of ideas and the long horizons of ideological change, but they parted ways on the question of rhetoric. Friedman’s public utterances, unlike those of his pre de ces sor, are marked by their neartotal instantiation of Dicey’s warning against qualifi cations in the pre sen ta tion of an economic philosophy. While Hayek remained aloof from politics and confi dent in the infl uence of his ideas unaided by his public persona, Friedman embraced the reductive language of the American public sphere as one more lever in the provocation of ideological change. He recognized the absence of limitations in his advocacy of laissezfaire as a primary source of its polemical strength.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 559