While much of the political world focuses on the politicians who want to hold the nation’s highest elected office, John Stossel turns his attention today to real champions of freedom.

[I]t’s a mistake to look for heroes in politics. It’s too ugly a business. My heroes are people like Milton Friedman?, F.A. Hayek and Ayn Rand.

Damn — they’re all gone.

Here are some other champions of liberty you might not know about: Alfred Kahn was a bureaucrat who, under President Carter?, managed to kill off the Civil Aeronautics Board and Interstate Commerce Commission. By bringing freer markets to transportation, he saved Americans billions of dollars.

Norman Borlaug? saved billions of lives. He invented a high-yield wheat that ended starvation in much of the world. He also criticized the environmentalists who fight the bioengineered food that could end hunger altogether. …

… I interviewed some champions of liberty, like John Allison, who ran BB&T, the 12th-biggest bank in America.

Most people don’t think of businessmen as champions of liberty, but I do.

People resent bankers, and frankly, we should resent those who use their cozy relationship with government to freeload. But folks don’t understand banks; they think bankers simply grab money for themselves. Allison is one of the few CEOs willing to face the cameras and explain banking to people.

“Banking is essential,” Allison told me. “Banks allocate capital to people that deserve it. We see really big problems when the banks do a bad job and give capital to the wrong people.”

When the bailouts were proposed, Allison spoke against them.