Happy birthday, Uncle Milty! Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman turns 90 at the end of the month. Since he¹s done so much for me, I¹m proposing a special birthday present for him: canonization as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. Here¹s a great opportunity.

The Catholic Church is in a huge crisis for its most recent collage of scandals. Its early history is equally sorry. One of my highly devout Catholic friends calls it the original ³Evil Empire.² Its WWII record is stained and historically it viewed and treated Jews as Christ-killers. Recently it compensated for this with the canonization of Edith Stein, a Jew who converted to Catholicism. I suggest it continue its atonement by canonizing Milton Friedman.

The champion of those who envision a minimalist government, his 1962 book, ³Capitalism and Freedom,² was written for the intelligent reader but was ignored or scorned by most intellectuals. However, it has been extraordinarily influential, and surely prescient. Some of Friedman¹s contributions to improved public policy have been fully implemented. The ripples of his ideas became tides, sweeping away the sand castles of conventional thinking.

Milton wrote ³Capitalism and Freedom² to keep the ideal of limited government alive until circumstances changed. They surely have -- and people are responding. Friedman is increasingly recognized as the most influential economist of the 20th century. Among professional economists, he is best known for his work in economic history and monetary theory. He is, however, more widely respected as a persistent, persuasive, gentlemanly, public intellectual.

Of the three required miracles for sainthood, Friedman has two. Milton was the intellectual leader in abolishing the draft to create a voluntary army. Specifically, his persuasive advocacy of a voluntary army while serving on the Gates Commission eliminated the draft after the Vietnam War.

Second, the privatization of Chile¹s social security system is being widely adopted worldwide, including in former communist and socialist nations -- but alas not in the U.S. The fundamental demographic transformation of all developed nations is gradually exposing conventional, governmentally controlled and mismanaged social security as massive Ponzi schemes. Reckoning is inevitable and Milton will again be proved right.

Two miracles accomplished, one to go. He has two contenders for the third. School vouchers are poised for takeoff now that the Supreme Court has cleared the way. Dramatic reform of the fossilized, paralyzed, pathological U.S. Forest Service is being seriously considered.

Thirty years ago at the University of Montana I debated Milton on the wisdom -- and feasibility -- of his radical proposal for transferring ownership of the National Forests. I argued a better strategy would be to reform the Forest Service. I underestimated the power of his ideas, the pathology of governmental bureaucracies, and the adaptability of the environmental movement.

I should have known better, but I truly believed the Forest Service was a splendid agency, managing for the greater good and the long run. I saw major problems as mere occasional aberrations that would be fixed within the system.

History has proved me wrong. Today a wide admixture of professional Greens, classical liberals, former Forest Service leaders, and conservationists are exploring alternatives to centralized command-and-control from Washington. Charter forests and forest trusts may become an experimental ³Region Seven² of this agency. Innovative forms of organization are now up and running, like the Valles Caldera Trust in New Mexico, and more are seriously contemplated.

School vouchers is the program most closely identified with Friedman The Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation was created to advance this idea. In the 1950s, he first proposed that governments give tuition vouchers to parents with school-age children. They could use them at private or public schools of their choice as long as these met education standards. He was confident that even poor parents, especially minorities, would generally select a better education for their children if they had real choices.

While voucher advocates have substantially won the intellectual battle, vouchers are strongly opposed by teachers¹ unions and by many suburban parents who fear vouchers would encourage poor children to attend schools in their communities.

Despite the discrimination he suffered as a Jew, Milton didn¹t whine but rather he worked. And persevered. Sainthood awaits.