Free market principles. The history of ideas. The life & work of Creative Heroes.

Category: Biography (page 1 of 1)

The Power of Choice

Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan

Presented with the kind permission of Free To Choose Network

Summary from the Free to Choose Network

Rising like a phoenix from a troubled past, entrepreneurs have turned Chile’s rich Colchagua Valley into one of the world’s great economic miracles. Chilean wines now compete in the world market. Wine and ingenuity have made Don Melchor a very wealthy man. But if you think Chile is an unlikely locale for entrepreneurial success in the 21st century — consider Estonia, until recently part of the Soviet Union.

Economies all over the world are feeling the impact of free markets.

The world of the 21st century is a world of international markets interconnecting people everywhere — people who have never met, yet inadvertently have become integral to each other’s well being. The genie is out of the bottle. Every minute of every day products from all over the world are moving in perpetual motion.

For over 30 years the United States military has operated as a 100-percent volunteer force. To be successful it must offer attractive choices. The army alone now offers some 300 distinct career paths to attract young men and women to a professional life in the military.

All of these things reflect the economics of choice, the economics of individual freedom that have changed and are continuing to change the world in which we live. Still, individual freedom of choice can spark heated protest in the United States and around the world.

For nearly a century one controversial American has championed the idea that only through economic freedom and the rule of law will lead inevitably to political freedom. His has been a commitment to truth — not as he has imagined it, but as he has found it in the world around him. The rise of a global economy through free markets has underscored the power of his ideas — the power of choice. No one has been a greater proponent of individual freedom and individual choice than Milton Friedman, teacher, scientist and author, revolutionary intellectual, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics, and citizen of the world. This is his story, including the impact of his ideas upon people the world over. Included in the program are exclusive appearances by Alan Greenspan, Paul Samuelson, Thomas Sowell, Martin Anderson, Gary Becker and Milton and Rose Friedman.

 

…….

The Right, All Along. The Rise, Fall & Future of Conservatism

Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, William F Buckley Jr

Presented with the kind permission of Fox News Channel.
Special thanks to Brian Gaffney.

The Right, All Along: The Rise, Fall And Future Of Conservatism – hosted by Brit Hume — is the inside story of a political movement that, against all odds, changed the world.

It started 60 years ago with a small group of determined thinkers and activists and grew into the most powerful force in American politics.

This 6-part Fox News Reporting series features rare footage and more than 75 exclusive interviews.

Follow William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Robert Bork, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush and many others who tell the personal stories behind the conservatism’s startling victories and crushing defeats.

The Right, All Along: The Rise Fall And Future Of Conservatism is a unique blend of history, journalism and storytelling that explains how we got to where we are today, and where we may be heading.

Sir Isaac Newton: Gravity of Genius

Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton

Presented with the kind permission of Peter Doyle

Description from Biography Channel:

(This documentary explores) … the incredible achievements and lonely life of one of the greatest scientists of all time.

By the age of 23, he had laid the foundations for calculus, the laws of gravity, motion and inertia, and begun experiments on light.

His major work, The Principia, has become to science what the Mona Lisa is to art.

Isaac Newton has been called the Father of Modern Science.

His incredible body of work represents arguably the greatest contribution to science ever made by an individual. But despite living at the vibrant center of an inspired social scene, his personal life was marked by loneliness.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON examines the many discoveries and private fears of this remarkable man.

Leading scientists trace the extent and impact of his discoveries, and reveal the self doubt that led him to hold back on publishing many of his findings. It was only after his Principia was recognized as one of the great works in science that he released a number of his earlier findings.

(Sir Isaac Newton: Gravity of Genius) … explores the life of the man once called by Lord Maynard Keynes  “the last great magician, the last great mind which looked out on the visible world with the same eyes as those who began our intellectual inheritance.”

Notes from AETV.com:

(This documentary) relates the story of Isaac Newton’s life from his birth during a plague in an English village through his seminal work in mathematics, theology, alchemy and astronomy.

Newton devoted his life to the study of the natural world, discovering the laws of gravity, analyzing light, and developing the three laws of motion to explain the movement of the planets and their satellites.

The documentary provides in depth discussions of each of Newton’s major discoveries, including calculus, gravity and the reflecting telescope.

It traces his studies of ancient history and of the Bible, and details his struggle to gain public recognition for his scientific work.

Some quotes from Sir Isaac Newton:

“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.”

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people. ”

“… from the same principles, I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.”

Principia Mathematica

“To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. `Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things.”

Quoted in G Simmons Calculus Gems
(New York 1992)

“The description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn.”

Principia Mathematica.

“The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.”

His epitaph: Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.

“If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”

Letter to Robert Hooke

“I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilest the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Quoted in D Brewster,
Memoirs of Newton

Isaac Newton on the One Pound note

Isaac Newton on the One Pound note