‘Well done, good and faithful servant, well done’
UPDATE at 2127…
-Sarah Palin [tip of the fedora to Daria DiGiovanni]:
Today we say goodbye to a towering figure of the 20th century. With the passing of Margaret Thatcher, we’ve sadly lost the last living member of that great triumvirate that included Ronald Reagan and John Paul II — those giants who defeated the evil empire of Soviet Communism and allowed the liberation of its captive nations. We’ve also lost one of the great champions of economic freedom and democratic ideals.
Many will focus on the fact that Margaret Thatcher’s career was a collection of “firsts” for women — she was the first and youngest female Conservative-party member to stand for election, the first woman to hold the title Leader of the Opposition, and the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom.
But Thatcher not only broke a glass ceiling; she broke a class ceiling. She was a grocer’s daughter from the back of beyond who advanced to the height of power in a class-conscious society. Like her friend Ronald Reagan, she was an underestimated underdog and political outsider. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Evening Standard, once said, “There was no Thatcher group within the Tory Party. . . . She was utterly and completely on her own. She simply was an outsider in every way.”
She was at heart a populist taking on the Conservative party’s old guard, who disdainfully referred to her as “That Woman.” The disdain was mutual. She referred to them as “the not so grand grandees.” As Thatcher later said, “It didn’t matter what they called me as long as I got the job done. I mean, to me they were ‘Those Grandees.’ They just don’t know what life is like. They haven’t been through it. And eventually if they didn’t help our cause, they had to go. But it didn’t bother me too much that they were patronizing like that. Frankly, the people, who are the true gentlemen, deal with others for what they are, not who their father was. Let’s face it: Maybe it took ‘That Woman’ to get things done, and the real reason why they said it was because they knew they just hadn’t got it within them to see things through.”
It would be The Grandees, the Establishment Tories, the squishy Quislings of the Conservative Party, who would end up doing the job the Leftists could never do: undermining her and forcing the lady to resign. She was stabbed in the back by them and the Party hasn’t recovered since. Their betrayal led to Tony Blair and the re-Socialization of Britain.
The backstabbing wets now have one of their own as Prime Minister and he is nothing but an effete Establishmentarian who, like the RINO’s here in America have done to the Reagan Legacy, is doing whatever he can to undo the Thatcher Legacy and manage the decline of England. Cameron will fail miserably.
Mrs. Thatcher’s predecessor as prime minister, the amiable but forgotten Sunny Jim Callaghan, once confided to a friend of mine that he thought Britain’s decline was irreversible and that the government’s job was to manage it as gracefully as possible. By 1979, even this modest aim seemed beyond the capabilities of the British establishment, and the nation turned to a woman who was one of the few even in a supposedly “conservative” party not to subscribe to the Callaghan thesis. She reversed the decline, at home and overseas. The Falklands War, inconsequential in and of itself, had a huge global significance: After Vietnam, the fall of the Shah, Cuban troops in Africa, and Soviet annexation of real estate from Cambodia to Grenada, the British routing of the Argentine junta stunned everyone from the politburo in Moscow to their nickel ’n’ dime clients in the presidential palaces, all of whom had figured the “free world” no longer had any fight in it.
Now Britain is a wretched place led by wankering wussies.
-DrewM shows himself to be a prophet:
Lots of Republicans & conservatives praising Thatcher this morning. They’ll be back to surrendering & enlarging the state by the afternoon.
— DrewM (@DrewMTips) April 8, 2013
I find their false grief sickening. They, like the posh wets, despised her back when she was Prime Minister. I remember. I was there. I never forget.
-Lance Burri has re-posted a video he put together sometime back showing highlights of one of Mrs. Thatcher’s last appearance at Prime Minister’s Question Time. It is a tour de force.
-Over at Viral Read, Stacy McCain has posted a nice and balanced video report by The London Daily Telegraph. and a personal recollection over at his place.
-I leave you with another highlight from Mrs. Palin’s tribute:
The grocer’s daughter from Grantham became freedom’s Iron Lady at a time when too many were soft and equivocating. She is sadly gone now, but her intrepid will, her time-tested ideals, her unfailing trust in what is right and just, and her legacy, as solid as iron, will live on forever.
As long as men hold freedom and liberty dear, Margaret Thatcher will live on in their memories, serving as an inspiration and guide.
