For decades, Friedman remained stranded in the intellectual wilderness, spurning the postwar Keynesian consensus that governments should use fiscal policy to manage aggregate demand – a view that sustained statist economic policies through the 1970’s. Indeed, in the context of his age, Friedman was a true intellectual revolutionary, combining rigorous academic research and gracefully written popular books and journalism to argue for free-market policies – and to affirm the link, defended by writers from Adam Smith to Friedrich von Hayek, between economic freedom and political liberty.