Friedman had a lot to do with this because of the force of his free-market beliefs, which he preached from China to Chile, arguing that the free market was far more efficient than government bureaucracies in the production and distribution of goods and services. Countries that had the freest economies, like Hong Kong, were the most prosperous and those that were the least free were the poorest, he said.

Who can forget the scene in his "Free to Choose" PBS series, where he held a pencil and showed how all of its component parts -- wood, lead, rubber, metal and paint -- were produced in sufficient quantities to meet the demands of the marketplace? The free market was responsible for always producing enough pencils at the cheapest possible price without a central authority in charge of the means of production.

Milton Friedman is gone, and I fear the defenders of capitalism and free markets, especially here in the United States, are in dangerously short supply. To be sure, tax-cut crusaders Jack Kemp, Larry Kudlow and Art Laffer are among the most articulate proponents of Friedman's views, and they have kept the lamp of economic freedom burning bright in the post-Reagan era -- as has President Bush. But the anti-free market, anti-free trade forces are growing.

Now we hear the gloom-and-doom voices -- on the left and the right -- selling trade protectionism and proposing higher tariffs (another word for taxes) on everything we buy to keep the rest of the world's goods out of our economy. Others are pushing for higher taxes on incomes, as well as on investors and corporations and small businesses, the entrepreneurs who produce most of our new jobs.

When I interviewed Friedman last year at his spectacular hilltop apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay, he acknowledged the forces of socialism had been kept "at bay, but we have not defeated them."

If those forces are to be conquered, the benefits of economic freedom, he said, must be taught to each succeeding generation. While Friedman's teachings live on in his books, columns and TV lectures, there is still a critical need for reinforcements.