Libertarian is not conservative. Ditto free market advocacy. Jacob Sullum points out the grating error in the NY Times' way of thinking, this time in Milton Friedman's obit:
I suppose it was inevitable that the New York Times obituary for Milton Friedman would describe his views as "conservative," but it's still a bit depressing. To be fair, the headline accurately calls Friedman a "free-market theorist," and the word libertarian even makes an appearance (in the 16th paragraph and the subhead preceding it). But the Times also says Friedman flew "the flag of economic conservatism," describes the the Chicago School of economics as "conservative," says Friedman "helped ignite the conservative rebellion after World War II," and calls him a "guiding light to American conservatives." The general impression is that Friedman was a conservative with eccentric views about drug policy.So in what sense was Friedman conservative? Was it conservative to advocate laissez faire in the wake of the New Deal and World War II, when the consensus on the left and the right was that managing the economy was one of the government's main tasks? Was it conservative to oppose Keynsianism when everyone was a Keynesian? For that matter, is there anything less conservative than the creative destruction of the free market?
Sullum's headline; "Alert the Times: Milton Friedman Was a Liberal."
Yes. Perhaps the greatest liberal of the twentieth century. A shame he's not recognized as any sort of liberal at all by mainstream opinion.
You can't expect the mainstream to learn that Friedman is a liberal in the classic use of the word when the media is too lazy to do anything more than reprint some label that was used someplace else.