“The Wicked Witch is Dead”, said the font page banner headline of Argentina’s leading newspaper last week to announce the death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Similar sentiments were mixed with earnest respect and admiration for Thatcher the world over. In her passing she provoked the same seismic split in political and economic persuasions as in life. It was easy to tell the satisfactory people from the unsatisfactory. Some praise was faint, as that of Obama, with whom Thatcher would have had nothing in common and whose condolence she would have found insulting. She showed, he said, that “there is no glass ceiling [for females] that cannot be broken”. As Mona Charen observed in National Review, the least interesting thing about Thatcher was that she was a woman. She owed nothing to women’s lib and nobody ever called her ‘Ms’.
In 1979 when she was elected for the first of three times, Great Britain was anything but great. Its economy was near collapse after 34 years of mostly (but not exclusively) socialist misrule. Major industries had been nationalized and their unions functioned like criminal gangs. When a union punk said “jump!”, the pre-Thatcher politician asked “how high?” Civil servant strikes lasting up to a year brought the country to its knees. The UK banking and financial system was being continuously audited by the International Monetary Fund. Currency controls were needed to prevent a flight of capital. The marginal corporate income tax rate was 98% and the top personal rate 80%.
She took a sick, demoralized country back to the principles that made it great, against the objections of many people who would later benefit most. She cleaned out the unions, privatized grossly inefficient industries, eliminated large parts of costly nanny-state welfare, restored conditions favorable to enterprise, took the lead with Reagan in actions that quickened the decline and fall of the evil Soviet communist empire, enabled London to become again a world financial centre, recovered the Falkland Islands from the Argentine junta thereby helping to return some democracy to Argentina itself, and refused to take Britain whole-hog into the European Union or to adopt the euro currency. She understood that any degree of socialism is communism lite. She rendered immense service to her country and the world. She was the only person in 180 years of British history to win three consecutive elections for her party. These achievements were ignored or belittled by the left and by the former beneficiaries of union terrorism and welfare bummery. Eventually her own party showed its gratitude by evicting her, much as British voters dealt with Churchill after he delivered them from Hitler.
It is safe to say that in Canada today, certainly in urban Canada, a majority of those (the minority) who are qualified to have an opinion would side with the Thatcher naysayers, not the admirers. Canada has come a long way down the same road on which the UK was nearly destroyed. The Harper government should be flattered if it is criticized for practicing attributes of Thatcherism, but it would be wrongly both criticized and flattered. Harper is more your average John Major with an attitude. The Conservative government is picking its way between the brambled hedgerows of public opinion, trying not to alienate anyone and in the process impressing no one except people who realize there is no better alternative. In the meantime it squanders precious goodwill over census forms. The party has been unable to articulate conservative principles as they may be applied in our country to its everlasting benefit in a way that common voters can understand. Doing exactly so, Thatcher was elected for a second term by a landslide. Ronald Reagan, likewise, in 1984 took every state except Minnesota, the la-la land of the Mondales.
Which sort of brings us to the strange case of the Liberal princeling Trudeau the Younger. In the bleakest times of British politics there was no figure, ever, as vacant or as unqualified for high office. To be sure, the United States has a community organizer president, which might be right up there with high school drama teachers, but neither of our countries deserves this. The Trudeaulet’s party would have chosen him just as enthusiastically and by the same ethically crippled and intellectually comatose process had his surname been Bieber. That says more about this thin shadow of a political party than its new wet-behind-the-ears leader. Who would not take a crown so pressingly proffered?
We have a chance, though. The political left is about to find out how it felt to Conservatives after Preston Manning created the fatal schism in the party without the horsepower to see it through. The Liberals and NDPQ will split the leftist vote and we may be given more time for the coming of the Canadian Thatcher.
But get a move on. We don’t have all day.
In 1979 when she was elected for the first of three times, Great Britain was anything but great. Its economy was near collapse after 34 years of mostly (but not exclusively) socialist misrule. Major industries had been nationalized and their unions functioned like criminal gangs. When a union punk said “jump!”, the pre-Thatcher politician asked “how high?” Civil servant strikes lasting up to a year brought the country to its knees. The UK banking and financial system was being continuously audited by the International Monetary Fund. Currency controls were needed to prevent a flight of capital. The marginal corporate income tax rate was 98% and the top personal rate 80%.
She took a sick, demoralized country back to the principles that made it great, against the objections of many people who would later benefit most. She cleaned out the unions, privatized grossly inefficient industries, eliminated large parts of costly nanny-state welfare, restored conditions favorable to enterprise, took the lead with Reagan in actions that quickened the decline and fall of the evil Soviet communist empire, enabled London to become again a world financial centre, recovered the Falkland Islands from the Argentine junta thereby helping to return some democracy to Argentina itself, and refused to take Britain whole-hog into the European Union or to adopt the euro currency. She understood that any degree of socialism is communism lite. She rendered immense service to her country and the world. She was the only person in 180 years of British history to win three consecutive elections for her party. These achievements were ignored or belittled by the left and by the former beneficiaries of union terrorism and welfare bummery. Eventually her own party showed its gratitude by evicting her, much as British voters dealt with Churchill after he delivered them from Hitler.
It is safe to say that in Canada today, certainly in urban Canada, a majority of those (the minority) who are qualified to have an opinion would side with the Thatcher naysayers, not the admirers. Canada has come a long way down the same road on which the UK was nearly destroyed. The Harper government should be flattered if it is criticized for practicing attributes of Thatcherism, but it would be wrongly both criticized and flattered. Harper is more your average John Major with an attitude. The Conservative government is picking its way between the brambled hedgerows of public opinion, trying not to alienate anyone and in the process impressing no one except people who realize there is no better alternative. In the meantime it squanders precious goodwill over census forms. The party has been unable to articulate conservative principles as they may be applied in our country to its everlasting benefit in a way that common voters can understand. Doing exactly so, Thatcher was elected for a second term by a landslide. Ronald Reagan, likewise, in 1984 took every state except Minnesota, the la-la land of the Mondales.
Which sort of brings us to the strange case of the Liberal princeling Trudeau the Younger. In the bleakest times of British politics there was no figure, ever, as vacant or as unqualified for high office. To be sure, the United States has a community organizer president, which might be right up there with high school drama teachers, but neither of our countries deserves this. The Trudeaulet’s party would have chosen him just as enthusiastically and by the same ethically crippled and intellectually comatose process had his surname been Bieber. That says more about this thin shadow of a political party than its new wet-behind-the-ears leader. Who would not take a crown so pressingly proffered?
We have a chance, though. The political left is about to find out how it felt to Conservatives after Preston Manning created the fatal schism in the party without the horsepower to see it through. The Liberals and NDPQ will split the leftist vote and we may be given more time for the coming of the Canadian Thatcher.
But get a move on. We don’t have all day.
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