David Davis
Since Margaret Thatcher is to be in-terr-ed tomorrow, I just thought we’d throw one last punch at her enemies and ours. I found this wonderful piece on The Last Ditch the other day, and one para deserves to be highlighted in our usual way:-
“If you want to know who freedom’s enemies are, mention her with approval. Mad eyes will light up all around you and foul sentiments will fill the air. Note their names and never leave them alone with anything you value; material, spiritual or ethical.”
Yes of course, I _know_ that we object to her having
(a) made the British State more efficient – as a recipe for disaster one would recommend this since the British-Political-Enemyclass is efficient already at making a powerful tyrannical state, and
(b) because she failed to absolutely destroy socialism at home and in the world, before members of that same EnemyClass destroyed her.
But I think that Tom Paine’s paragraph sums up who we are up against, whatever we as classical liberals think of Thatcher herself. I think we can lay her to rest now. May The Iron Lady Rust In Peace.
If a critic of Mrs T. wanted her to be tougher on government spending, go further with labour market reform (i.e. taking away GOVERNMENT GRANTED union power) and not get conned into the supporting the SIngle European Act…….
Well then, I have no theoretical dispute with such a critic.
Much though I may doubt whether they (or me) would do better than Mrs T. did – in the postion the lady was actually in.
Apparently, they are playing that music tomorrow “Ding Dong The Witch
Is Dead!
At the time of Thatcher and Reagan, libertarian ideas were considered about a hundred times loonier (at least in America) than they are today. I have no idea how difficult it would be to actually hold high office, but I’m betting it’s a bigger challenge to do so, and hang onto any shred of integrity, than we realize.
I think Mrs. Thatcher did what she could. I remember how our self-anointed enlightened ones swooned in utter disbelief every time she spoke out on behalf of freedom and individual responsibility. She did believe in the potential of the little guy when few other elected officials did.
I’m so tired of being condescended to by politicians. They’re always telling us we’re idiots, as if we could barely find our way to the toilet if they weren’t there to lead us. She didn’t do that, and neither did Reagan. We need more like them now.
I can’t see really see why they are common sense, Regan was a strange
man he stopped welfare and wrote out cheques to people from his own
personal cheque book.
How does inflicting controls on unions square with being a Libertarian? In at least my world view, labour should be able to withdraw its services whenever it wants and for whatever reason it wants. After all, for employers to have such possession of our bodies, that we could be in breach of law for staying at home is surely close to slavery.
On the other hand, I would also be very happy if the employer had the right to tell strikers to get lost when they wanted to come back to work.
Liberty must work both ways, Thatcher did try to tilt the balance in one direction only which is why she has so many enemies.
Firstly the unions are as bad as Thatcher for god’s sake, look how much they
are worth, they don’t give an iowta about ordinary working people. only
their public service paymasters.
I was just watching local news tonight, it’s apparent the “wistlers” have blown the NHS out of the water, I liked the way they came on TV hiding thier identities as although they genuinely fared for their lives. It turns out the crisis is far more serious that anyone could have imagined, over 100 Nurses short, being payed incentives in M S vouchers for doing overtime.Of course the local health service has responded by mobilising a massive recruitment campaign all over Europe, and ignoring the UK’s unemployed, so very odd in veiw we have more unemployed graduates than at any other time, you whistle blowers keep you doors locked, don’t let those section squads in, you girls should now the routine by now for Norwich North, stay in hiding! Could this be the legacy Mrs T has left behind, I think so.
I find it impossible to say anything worthwhile about Mrs. Thatcher on my own blog without constantly linking to _this_ blog, which is how it should be. This time I’ve compared Margaret Thatcher to Sarah Palin — What I say is actually valid, I promise you, despite all their obvious differences, there are some basic similarities, especially in their role as Rorschach tests:
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/04/margaret-thatcher-as-rorschach-test.html
Insert “because” before “despite” in the above.
Thank god there’s a couple of blogs where we can say what we like without
being strung up from a tree by the local SS, but that day might come.
You can say what you like on here: the only precondition is that you don’t get me and Sean Gabb sued for libel by the British-PoliticalEnemyClass, as we are the owners of this blog.
If you did, then you can be sure we’d take it down like a shot. But having saud that, I know that all classical-liberals are intelligent and sensitive people. Not like LeftoNazis at all, who are all hyper-intelligent but totally insensitive: which is why they all kill people, all the time.
Karl, “Stephen Black” on the “problem of Liverpool” post by me, is winding you up and playing with you. Keep talking to him but watch your arse, old man!
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