Requiem for an Iron Lady

This morning we have lost one of the greatest world
leaders that our world has ever been blessed and
graced with, who came along at just the right time
for the impact that she would make, making both
her country and our world vastly better places.
Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain
spanning three decades from the 1970s through the
1990s, died after the last of a series of strokes which
she suffered during her retirement years, aged 87.

Lady Thatcher, a Conservative, defeated Labor
Prime Minister James Callaghan for the office on a wave
of discontent with Labor's economic policies which
rendered the British economy stagnant and unemploy-
ment high. Thatcher would have not only a tremendous
impact on Britain but on the world as well, becoming
one of the triumvirate of western leaders (the others
being United States President Ronald Reagan and
Pope John Paul II) who would successfully stand up
to and defeat the Communist Bloc of the Soviet Union
and its satellites. Because of this noble trio Eastern
Europe gained its freedom, the Iron Curtain tumbled,
and the Soviet Union collapsed. And none of these
leaders ordered a single missile launched nor a single
shot fired. Thatcher was given the sobriquet "The
Iron Lady" by the Soviet Tass News Agency, more as
a means of ridicule than a compliment, but she indeed
had an iron will and a backbone to match, as her
enemies at home and abroad learned to their dismay
and discomfiture and her supporters discovered to their
joy and delight.

In Britain, she stood up to and backed down the TUC
(the Trade Union Congress) over economic reform, and
did the same to the welfare advocates who pushed for
broadening the range of and eligibility for the country's
welfare programs. Like Reagan in the United States,
she cut the top marginal tax rate and lowered taxes in
general, benefiting many taxpayers and making possible
jobs for the unemployed and underemployed. She also
lessened the regulatory burden on British businesses.
The first and so far only female prime minister in British
history was a devout student of free market economists
Milton Friedman and Frederich Von Hayek, and
implemented their teachings, supplanting the Fabian
socialism which had slowly enveloped Britain during the
twentieth century. Thatcher famously quipped that
"The trouble with socialism is that sooner or later, you
run out of other people's money."

On the world stage, Thatcher had augmented the words
and actions of Reagan and Pope John Paul II. Michael
Reagan, the president's son, told Lady Thatcher on the
occasion of his father's death that it took all three of
them working together to accomplish the death of
the Soviet menace, as each had a unique role to play
that no one else could have played, and that neither
one or any two of the three could have done without
the other one or ones, and that they needed a strong
leader in the western hemisphere. Thatcher responded,
"I never thought of that"; the three simply knew what had
to be done, and they set about doing it. Pope John Paul
was the driving force behind the non-violent liberation
of his native Poland, Reagan stopped communism from
gaining a foothold in central America, and Thatcher gave
stern warnings to the Soviets, their allies, and their satellites
as to what they would face if they continued to menace
former British colonies since turned British Commonwealth
members in Africa and elsewhere. And each one stood
with the others, unwavering, unflinching.

With the sorry state of the world today, what with radical
Islam taking the place of the Soviets as the biggest threat
to world peace and freedom, big government making a
comeback in the United States and in Europe, a youthful
pipsqueak building a nuclear arsenal in North Korea to
threaten South Korea and the United States, feeling his
oats after inheriting the Stalinist government handed down
to him in his family's tyrannical dynasty, and Iran farther
ahead with the development of their nuclear weapons
with bullying Israel on its agenda, we sure could use
some leaders like this troika, these three musketeers of
freedom. Sadly, none seem to be on the horizon, and
the current leaders of Great Britain and the United States
are at best milquetoasts, with the latter literally bowing
and scraping before the tinpot tyrants of the world.

Rest in peace, Lady Thatcher. Yours was a job well done.


MEM