Hyde Park is Barack Obama’s neighborhood. The home of the University of Chicago and birth of the atomic bomb. It’s also the home of the late Nobel Prize winner, Milton Friedman, and the Chicago School of economics. Hyde Park “progressives”, as they like to call themselves now, have long hated any affiliation with Milton Friedman because his work in economics does not match their desire for more centralized government control. But they mostly hate Milton Friedman because he dared to question the effectiveness of a government school monopoly. Barack Obama taught a few classes at the University of Chicago.

The University of Chicago wants to create a Milton Friedman Institute. The Hyde Park progressives would rather Milton Friedman stayed dead and was never talked about again. The Chicago Tribune captured the story.

In a letter to U. of C. President Robert Zimmer, 101 professors—about 8 percent of the university’s full-time faculty—said they feared that having a center named after the conservative, free-market economist could “reinforce among the public a perception that the university’s faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity.”

And then we hear this.

“It is a right-wing think tank being put in place,” said Bruce Lincoln, a professor of the history of religions and one of the faculty members who met with the administration Tuesday.

The Milton Friedman Institute will concentrate on bringing in visiting scholars to conduct research on business, economics, and law. And the notion that Milton Friedman was a right wing anything is preposterous coming from a history professor, but not if you know the neighborhood.

Hyde Park is a bastion for socialists, and that’s not meant as a smear or scare tactic, but the simple truth. William Ayers ring a bell? Bill Ayers has many friends around Hyde Park including Barack Obama. Bill Ayers believes sacrificing human life to further the cause of socialism is acceptable by word and deed. Barack Obama called him a friend for what that is worth. Sean Hannity would say that makes Barack Obama a terrorist sympathizer, but it’s not that simple because that view completely ignores the slavery that was still happening then.

Should a person be willing to forgive someone like Bill Ayers who literally blew other people’s property up because he thinks all property should be communal? Blacks weren’t exactly considered full human beings at the time, so he’s got that going for him as a cause of liberty, but… In the process of making bombs to destroy someone’s property, some of his closest friends were killed, so there is yet more to the story. And we don’t doubt Mr. Ayers would gladly use the free market system to sell his movie rights story to Hollywood as he did using freedom with his book. A book that would have to be approved by the government in his view of the world, and a world where the likes of Milton Friedman would be silenced by the same government bent on squashing opposing points of view.

And that is what is happening right now at the University of Chicago and in Barack Obama’s Hyde Park. The socialists and modern progressives are trying to wipe Milton Friedman’s work from the history of the University of Chicago by claiming to be victims. Barack Obama has remained silent on this “controversy” his friends and liberal colleagues at the University of Chicago are causing to try to stain the work of Milton Friedman. He’s running for President and won’t comment. But somebody should ask him his opinion about a Milton Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago, which he uses on his Presidential Resume.

No question today. Just food for thought and background information on Barack Obama’s friends and neighborhood and how they are treating Milton Friedman so soon after his death. And a challenge to some reporter intellectually stimulated enough to know of the impact Obama’s answer about Milton Friedman might have in the world. There are more Che Guevara cultists out there than there should be.

Is Barack Obama smart enough to know that embracing Milton Friedman in any way would splinter his support among the Che Guevara flag wavers, not to mention the much more important teacher’s unions everywhere? Is anyone in the media smart enough to ask him about his thoughts on a Milton Friedman Institute at the University he calls home in Chicago? And then ask him about his kids being in private schools and the rate of Chicago Public School students that graduate, let alone go on the get any 2 year degree in the neighborhood he’s represented since 1996?