From the Guardian.
David Frum, one of the few conservatives I still read regularly, had a laudatory tribute on his blog.
His best quotes
Thatcher was a woman of fierce principle. Yet – and here contemporary conservatives can take another lesson from her – she lived by facts, not theories. She was among the first world leaders to recognize the reality and threat of climate change. She appreciated the devotion of her country to its National Health Service and never challenged that deeply rooted British institution. She met and mastered the challenges of her time; she bequeaths to her successors the responsibility to do the same with the very different challenges of their time.
That said, I am not a fan. I cannot be a fan of a woman who was vehemently anti-labor, who supported apartheid in South Africa and strongly opposed civil rights and democratic rule in Northern Ireland, her privatization schemes failed as often as they succeeded and class inequality in Britain is at the highest its been since the turn of the previous century. Someone asked her what her greatest legacy was and she said ‘Tony Blair’. This was meant as a compliment to Blair whom she felt adopted many of her ideas. This is accurate, Blair continued to privatize public services and like Thatcher was a strong military interventionist. It has been said that Gordon Brown cautioned against the war while Thatcher and Major advised Blair to go in. His decision to do so was his greatest failure-but we can lay a lot of the blame on her shoulders as well.
And of course we have this gem:
“The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend.”-President Obama
Pretty hard to say that to Bobby Sands family.
anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. In that spirit, here’s my statement on the death of Margaret Thatcher:
.
I didn’t expect Obama to bash her in a diplomatic press release upon her death, but I found the statement appalling. It went far beyond what he had to say about George McGovern, and only serves to confirm my suspicions that Obama prefers Thatcher’s politics to McGovern’s.
Obama’s admiration for transformative leaders in democratic societies is a matter of record, irrespective of those leaders’ ideologies.
Case in point, Obama’s admiration for Ronald Reagan:
Notice he is praising Reagan for his communication skills and ability to inspire others to his cause, a praise I’d share since we are still living in Reagan’s America politically. But he called her specifically a champion of freedom and liberty. Ask the South Africans, whose aspirations for democracy she equated with ‘terrorism’. Ask the Catholics in Northern Ireland who were agitating for their civil rights, and whose hunger strike she ignored until the prisoners starved themselves to death. Ask the people of Iraq who she graced with Saddam’s rule until he acted up and she graced with two punitive and avoidable wars of choice. Ask the people of Chile who suffered under Pinochet, if she was their champion. Or ask the workers in Liverpool or the people of Scotland whose jobs and rights she regularly axed and crushed. No champion here.
He easily could have said she was a solid ally of the US and an inspiring communicator, unassailable facts. But he instead praised her as a champion for rights and concepts she clearly did not.
his statement about Reagan. I hoped, once upon a time, he’d want to be the Democratic Reagan. God knows the Reagan era is long past its expiration date. But instead he’s Mr. Bowles-Simpson, a Grand-Bargaining fool eager to cut Social Security. His rhetoric always seems more admiring when he’s talking about the right rather than when he wags his finger and says he’s not for defending programs the way they were written in 1938.
My grandpa would not recognize the Democratic party today, it no longer stands with the worker, the laborer, the farmer, and the kids like him who survived a Great Depression and fought back fascism. My great grandpa wouldn’t recognize today’s Republican party, a party that’s no longer socially progressive, fiscally conservative, in favor of small business and American manufacturing. The Republicans are beyond hope but the Democrats will need to become economically populist again, the wedge issues favor them at the time being but that won’t be the case for long.
There is no conflict between the wedge issues and the majority of Americans. We need to show “the rest of us” that the plundering of the 99% by the 1% must not only stop, but must be reversed.
If that is what you mean by becoming “economically populist”, count me in.
There are simply far too many Americans disengaged and burned out by politics, and the way to get them back is not through more vague promises of bipartisanship and the ‘hope’ and ‘change’ rhetoric, but through concrete action that restores their jobs, their paychecks, their livelihoods, and their families. It’s all interconnected. You want to talk about family values and stopping the break up of the family and moral values? End poverty. End joblessness. Poverty and unemployment are the main contributors to all the ‘immoralities’ the right loves to bash from single motherhood to urban crime to our ‘failing’ schools.
One Thatcher quote does inspire me
Imagine if a true left leaning populist felt that way? Why is it that conservatives get to govern from their ‘gut’ and turn 1 vote Senate majorities and 1% popular vote leads into ‘mandates’ while we are always on the defense? I am sick and tired of it. I want a fighter, and we deserve one after 40 years of waiting.
Do these conservative guys ever think facts matter in the least when they write their crap?
From Greenwald
is what people seem to be chanting in South London and other parts of the UK, where there are street parties. Seems like news. But so far as I can tell the news is hard to find in this country.
News of street parties might interfere with the official hagiography now being prepared. Get ready to hear Peggy Noonan.
Biggest hack in the DC. press corps and thats saying something.
I was thinking more along the lines of Cokie Roberts. At least there’s no pretense Noonan’s anything but a conservative.
Stand Down Margret,
Stand Down Palee-eze
Stand Down, Margaret