One of the greatest heroes of independence, freedom and responsibility passed this morning. She was fought at the time and is increasingly viewed as a “radical” extremist today. And this she was, in the world of socialism, statism and those paving the road toward Marxist communism. She appeared at a time in Great Britain which was even further advanced on the trail towards socialism than we are in the US today. As the US is fast in the process of the government takeover of one of the largest segments in American business, the medical industry, we can examine an economy under the effect of privatization. Margaret Thatcher said, “privatization shrinks the power of the state and free enterprise enlarges the power of the people… we understood that a system of free enterprise has a universal truth at its heart: to create a genuine market in a state you have to take the state out of the market.” We can actually examine the effect of the very principle so hated today, in all its successful glory. Although she was far from being a “feminist” in the way we see them today, she literally broke ground in the field of thwarting the logic of sexual discrimination which had been almost constant since the dawn of humanity.
Margaret Thatcher appeared during the “Winter of Discontent” in the UK, where the economy was drowning in an ocean of socialism. The government accounted for over 30% of the workforce. The government red tape, just like in the US today, was strangling the free enterprise that remained. Thatcher privatized telecommunications, railroads, steel and more, and the course of UK economy immediately took a new and much more positive direction. Her wisdom in stating, “The lesson of the economic history of Europe in the 70’s and 80’s is that central planning and detailed control do not work and that personal endeavour and initiative do. That a State-controlled economy is a recipe for low growth and that free enterprise within a framework of law brings better results…” Can scarcely be denied, yet America is flocking down that very path and following a leader who is the diametric opposition of Thatcher’s wisdom and is rapidly destroying the independence and freedom of us all.
“We should back the workers, not the shirkers.”
“When you hold back the successful, you penalize those who need help.”
“There is no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
“To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukemia with leeches.”
“What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?”
“When all the objectives of government include the achievement of equality – other than equality before the law – that government poses a threat to liberty.”
“In the Conservative Party we have no truck with outmoded Marxist doctrine about class warfare. For us it is not who you are, who your family is or where you come from that matters, but what you are and what you can do for your country that counts.”
“During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it.”
An interesting aside; listening to the news reports today, each one refers to her greatness, but not a one I’ve heard from the “main-stream” has neglected to point out something quite negative “many believe she kicked the poor into the street,” for example. It’s damn hard for statists to show her the respect she deserves.
~Bacon
ibaconi 