Our Favourite Margaret

...and our favorite Margret

(From the Archives)

"People like Mrs Thatcher – state-educated, lower-middle-class, provincial, female – were not supposed to question the 1945 state-socialist settlement. To its architects, such people were of no account. They were neither poor enough to attract romantic sympathy, nor grand enough to be entitled to power. They were expected to know their place."--Charles Moore

Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

They're not mad at the Islamo-murder and mayhem depicted on the videos--they're mad someone mentioned it. President Trump's dust-up with Teresa May over Islamist videos reminds us that Great Britain once had a woman at the helm with vision, courage and a patriot's devotion to do her duty.


"I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil,
and I believe that in the end good will triumph."

Some of our favorite Thatcher aphorisms and observations:

"I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air."
"There were several incidents of the BBC reporting particularly sensitive military matters in ways which put our forces at risk. I was also very unhappy at the attempted "even-handedness" of some of the comment, and the chilling use of the third-person - talk of "the British" and "the Argentinians" on our news programmes. It was also on Friday 2nd April that I received advice from the Foreign Office which summed up the flexibility of principle characteristic of that Department. I was presented with the dangers of a backlash against the British expatriates in Argentina, problems about getting support in the UN Security Council, the lack of reliance we could place on the European Community or the United States, the risk of the Soviets becoming involved, the disadvantage of being looked at as a colonial power. All the considerations were fair enough. But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen's subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister."

"Socialists cry “Power to the people, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.”

"...I always feel ten years younger – despite the jet-lag – when I set foot on American soil: there is something so positive, generous, and open about the people – and everything actually works. I also feel, though, that I have in a sense a share of America."

"Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."

“Socialism’s results have ranged between the merely shabby and the truly catastrophic – poverty, strife, oppression and, on the killing fields of communism, the deaths this century of perhaps 100 million people. Against that doctrine was set a contrary, conservative belief in a law-governed liberty. It was this view which triumphed with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. Since then, the Left has sought rehabilitation by distancing itself from its past.”

"Let me give you my vision: 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.”

"I never hugged him, I bombed him." -- on Muammar Gaddafi

"...Conservatives have excellent credentials to speak about human rights. By our efforts, and with precious little help from self-styled liberals, we were largely responsible for securing liberty for a substantial share of the world’s population and defending it for most of the rest."

“Socialists have always spent much of their time seeking new titles for their beliefs, because the old versions so quickly become outdated and discredited.”

"To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects."

“Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.”

“Don't follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.”

“Let us never forget this fundamental truth:  The State has no source of money other than the money people themselves earn.”

"In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”

   "...I have had time and cause to reflect on what made him a great president. Ronald Reagan knew his own mind. He had firm principles - and, I believe, right ones. He expounded them clearly, he acted upon them decisively. When the world threw problems at the White House, he was not baffled, or disorientated, or overwhelmed. He knew almost instinctively what to do. When his aides were preparing option papers for his decision, they were able to cut out entire rafts of proposals that they knew 'the Old Man' would never wear. When his allies came under Soviet or domestic pressure, they could look confidently to Washington for firm leadership. And when his enemies tested American resolve, they soon discovered that his resolve was firm and unyielding. Yet his ideas, though clear, were never simplistic. He saw the many sides of truth. Yes, he warned that the Soviet Union had an insatiable drive for military power and territorial expansion; but he also sensed it was being eaten away by systemic failures impossible to reform. Yes, he did not shrink from denouncing Moscow's 'evil empire'. But he realized that a man of goodwill might nonetheless emerge from within its dark corridors. So the President resisted Soviet expansion and pressed down on Soviet weakness at every point until the day came when communism began to collapse beneath the combined weight of these pressures and its own failures. And when a man of goodwill did emerge from the ruins, President Reagan stepped forward to shake his hand and to offer sincere cooperation. Nothing was more typical of Ronald Reagan than that large-hearted magnanimity - and nothing was more American."

"Europe is not the creation of the Treaty of Rome. Nor is the European idea the property of any group or institution. We British are as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation. Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history. For three hundred years, we were part of the Roman Empire and our maps still trace the straight lines of the roads the Romans built. Our ancestors—Celts, Saxons, Danes—came from the Continent. Our nation was—in that favourite Community word—"restructured" under the Norman and Angevin rule in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This year, we celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the glorious revolution in which the British crown passed to Prince William of Orange and Queen Mary . Visit the great churches and cathedrals of Britain, read our literature and listen to our language: all bear witness to the cultural riches which we have drawn from Europe and other Europeans from us. We in Britain are rightly proud of the way in which, since Magna Carta in the year 1215, we have pioneered and developed representative institutions to stand as bastions of freedom. And proud too of the way in which for centuries Britain was a home for people from the rest of Europe who sought sanctuary from tyranny. But we know that without the European legacy of political ideas we could not have achieved as much as we did. From classical and mediaeval thought we have borrowed that concept of the rule of law which marks out a civilised society from barbarism. And on that idea of Christendom, to which the Rector referred—Christendom for long synonymous with Europe—with its recognition of the unique and spiritual nature of the individual, on that idea, we still base our belief in personal liberty and other human rights. Too often, the history of Europe is described as a series of interminable wars and quarrels. Yet from our perspective today surely what strikes us most is our common experience. For instance, the story of how Europeans explored and colonised—and yes, without apology—civilised much of the world is an extraordinary tale of talent, skill and courage. But we British have in a very special way contributed to Europe. Over the centuries we have fought to prevent Europe from falling under the dominance of a single power. We have fought and we have died for her freedom."

"All corporatism – even when practised in societies where hard work, enterprise and cooperation are as highly valued as in Korea – encourages inflexibility, discourages individual accountability, and risks magnifying errors by concealing them.”

“It used to be about trying to do something. Now it's about trying to be someone.”

“No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well.”  

“Watch your thoughts, for they will become actions. Watch your actions, for they'll become... habits. Watch your habits for they will forge your character. Watch your character, for it will make your destiny.”  

“The facts of life are conservative.”

(Upon England's loss to Germany in the 1990 FIFA World Cup Semi-final)
Kenneth Clarke: "Isn't it terrible about losing to the Germans at our national sport?"
Margaret Thatcher: "They might have beaten us at our national sport, but we managed to beat them at their national sport twice in the 20th century."

“Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.”

“There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.”

“They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour.”

"Communist regimes were not some unfortunate aberration, some historical deviation from a socialist ideal. They were the ultimate expression, unconstrained by democratic and electoral pressures, of what socialism is all about. … In short, the state [is] everything and the individual nothing.”

“Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.”

“I owe nothing to Women’s Lib.”

"I was, however, wrong on one important matter. Of course, I understood that some of my Cabinet colleagues … were more to the left, some more to the right. But I believed that they had generally become as convinced of the rightness of the basic principles as I had. Orthodox finance, low levels of regulation and taxation, a minimal bureaucracy, strong defence, a willingness to stand up for British interests wherever and whenever threatened — I did not believe that I had to open windows into men's souls on these matters. The arguments for them seemed to me to have been won. I now know that such arguments are never finally won."

"People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top."

“Pennies don’t fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth."

“Good Conservatives always pay their bills. And on time. Not like the Socialists who run up other people’s bills.”

“It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.”

“Many of our troubles are due to the fact that our people turn to politicians for everything.”

"If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken a lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you."

"Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides."

“There is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation.”

“When all the objectives of government include the achievement of equality – other than equality before the law – that government poses a threat to liberty.”

 

“Marxists get up early to further their cause. We must get up even earlier to defend our freedom.”

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

“Constitutions have to be written on hearts, not just paper.”

 

"With all due respect to the drafters of the American Declaration of Independence, all men (and women) are not created equal, at least in regard to their characters, abilities and aptitudes. And if they were, their family and cultural backgrounds - not to mention the effect of mere chance - would soon change that. On one thing, nature and nurture agree: we are all different. If this is unjust, then life is unjust. But, though one hears this expression - usually in the form of the complaint that 'life is unfair' - it really means nothing. In the same vein, someone once said to Voltaire, 'Life is hard.' To which is replied: 'Compared with what?'" When all the objectives of government include the achievement of equality - other than equality before the law - that government poses a threat to liberty."

"When Abraham Lincoln spoke in his famous Gettysburg speech of 1863 of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people", he gave the world a neat definition of democracy which has since been widely and enthusiastically adopted. But what he enunciated as a form of government was not in itself especially Christian, for nowhere in the Bible is the word democracy mentioned. Ideally, when Christians meet, as Christians, to take counsel together their purpose is not (or should not be) to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit—something which may be quite different. Nevertheless I am an enthusiast for democracy. And I take that position, not because I believe majority opinion is inevitably right or true—indeed no majority can take away God-given human rights—but because I believe it most effectively safeguards the value of the individual, and, more than any other system, restrains the abuse of power by the few. And that is a Christian concept."....... 

 

"My job is to stop Britain from going Red.”

She did her job in her time and we're the better for it. Which is why no one from the previous petty leftist administration was at the Lady's funeral. They were too busy mourning at Hugo Chavez' funeral. Just as well--they're small and unworthy anyway.

 

Sec. Schulz and Sec. Baker ably conveyed the love and admiration of our nation for the lady.

Churchill's job was to stop Nazism.

Lady Thatcher's job was to stop Communism. 

 

The job of British leaders today must be to stop Islamism, another radical foreign collectivist and supremacist ideology.

 

And they are failing at their job.

Neville Chamberlain: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing."
Teresa May visits the far away country of Tipton, West Midlands, England