Monday, April 8, 2013
We Loved You, Margaret Thatcher, and We Always Will
The twentieth century will be remembered by future ages as the great battleground between socialist statism and conservative democracy. The horrific figures on the statist side were Hitler and Stalin. The conservative standard bearers were Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The last of them died today. Margaret Thatcher was 87. There is little need to recount her achievements - privatization of British industry, defeat of the stranglehold of British unions that had kept Britain impoverished, re-establishment of the British Pound after years of IMF life support, and the Falklands, not so much for themselves but because they represented her will not to let a part of Britain be stolen by "bullies." And she supported Ronald Reagan in his great effort to end the tyranny of Marxism by bringing down the Soviet Union peacefully. She famously said of Soviet leader Mikhael Gorbachev, "We can work with him." But the greater legacy of Thatcher and Reagan was the proof that individual liberty, uplifted by democratic government, leads to the unleashing of the human spirit and intelligence for the good of all people. Margaret Thatcher was tough. She was determined to drive home her policies. She was the Iron Lady. And she changed Great Britain forever, snatching it from the jaws of third-world poverty and dependence on handouts to today's robust free market economy that should be the model for Europe, if only the rest of Europe could understand. Margaret Thatcher did what no one thought possible because she believed in democacy, free markets and individual political and economic rights not dependent for success on birth status or elite positions but on personal effort. She even managed to change her great opponent - the Old British Labor Party - that with her successor, Tony Blair, became the New Labor Party. Ronald Reagan said of her, "When she speaks, we wait to hear from her." Today, British Prime Minister David Cameron said of her, "She didn't just lead our country. She saved our country. And I think she will go down in history as the greatest peacetime prime minister." Rest in Peace, Mrs. Thatcher. May your light and legacy, and those of Ronald Reagan, inspire us to save ourselves and our world from the new 21st century wave of socialist statism now gripping us. You and your friend, "Ronnie" as you called him, showed the way. It is up to us now. As Ronnie said, "If not now, when? If not us, who?"
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ReplyDelete"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money,"
Margaret Thatcher
I have always believed that these 14 words sum up what Mrs. Thatcher was all all about.
A grand lady who spoke what she believed and acted on her core beliefs. many "conservative" politicians could take a great lesson from the way she performed her governmental duties... with strength of mind and character and a solid belief in the fact that she was RIGHT.
"We have raised Britain in the respect of the world from what it was -- broke, bankrupt, unwilling to defend itself properly," Thatcher declared in 1987. "We have, I think, transformed Britain."
She was simply the right person at the right time for not only Britain, but the world.
She and Ronald Reagan were worlds apart but destined somehow to be in lock step to save the world from the evils they were so apposed to.They saw problems as "solvable", not insurmountable mountains that simply need more money and more government program to fix. They saw government programs that were too costly and not really working anyhow as needing to be torn down and sent to the junk yard. Not "band aide" surgery and resurrected under a new name and a new unpaid budget,
"A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master, they are the essence of a free economy, and on that freedom all our other freedoms depend," This is not an Edmund Burke, or John Locke quote ... but the Iron Lady in 1975
Margaret Thatcher I speak for many conservatives you will be fondly missed, but never forgotten. RIP you have earned your place with God
A well-written eulogy.
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