There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters

09/17/2010

There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters

I just finished reading Claire Berlinski's great book about Margaret Thatcher (title of this post). Here is a quote from her press secretary, Sir Bernard Ingham, which applies to us today:

"The British establishment was in the grip of a sort of pale-pink socialism. There are still a lot of them around now who believe, who have this sort of naive, this romantic view of the working classes...it's horribly condescending... It is an attitude of mind toward ordinary people that they are not capable of leading their lives without direction. And Mrs. Thatcher was essentially saying, 'Oh yes, they are, let's set them free.' And of course when they were set free, quite a lot of them didn't do well -- of course they didn't. But quite a lot of them prospered enormously, and have never looked back since they got their hands on their council houses! But she really challenged notions -- well, she challenged notions of class!"

Posted at 04:28 PM | Permalink

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My. I guess I haven't been to your blog in quite some time!

Great quote; I'll have to get ahold of the book. for now, I'll venture an extension of this portion:

"And of course when they were set free, quite a lot of them didn't do well -- of course they didn't. But quite a lot of them prospered enormously, and have never looked back since they got their hands on their council houses!"

To which the liberals reply, "That's just not fair! Those who did well must give everything above what they started with to those who screwed up--uh, we mean...to those who are not so fortunate!"

Posted by: Vicki Small | 03/04/2011 at 09:37 AM

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Posted by: Keith Pounds | 06/29/2011 at 02:02 PM

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From the Mystery Lovers Book of Quotations

Liberal principles are all very fine as long as they leave you with something to have principles about. -- Jack Higgins
Sweep everything under the rug for long enough, and you have to move right out of the house. -- Rachel Ingalls
It's hard to live a reputation down. Especially when your actions live up to it. -- Michael Z. Lewin
A prompt man is a lonely man. - Elmore Leonard
You know who casts the first stone? The guiltiest bastard in the crowd. -- William McIlvanney
Life is the process of finding out, too late, everything that should have been obvious to you at the time. -- John D. MacDonald, "The Only Girl in the Game"
We gave her everything. But it wasn't what she wanted. -- Ross MacDonald, "The Underground Man"
Sanity is sometimes a matter of going on, outwardly, as if everything is all right. -- Mary McMullen, "Prudence Be Damned"
People without brains are always dangerous. -- A.E.W. Mason, "The House of the Arrow"
Everybody needs a little improbability in their life. -- Reginal Hill, "Deadheads"

Favorite Quotes

The self-delusion of liberalism is bottomless. It blithely celebrates the inane though no less destructive nihilism of Woodstock while treating as nihilistic traitors serious, property-holding, taxpaying citizens who protest a statist takeover of one-sixth of the United States economy. - George Neumayr
You can tell the Democrats are in trouble when a naïve hockey mom from Alaska can appear out of nowhere and wrestle the entire Democratic Party to the ground. - Christopher Chantrill
...Western hand-wringers, the great progressive liberals of the Western world, would rather wring their hands, or like Darfur, hold some ... interpretive dance event to save Darfur every week for the next thirty years. The uselessness of liberal outrage is one of the great constants of the modern world. --Mark Steyn
"America, not Europe, is now the sanctuary of culture; civilization's very existence depends upon America, upon the actuality of American life, and not the ideals of the American Dream. To criticize the actuality upon which all hope depends thus becomes a criticism of hope itself." -- Delmore Schwartz, 1958
"I've got nothing to do and I'm doing it tomorrow." --Elaine Stritch
"...He is, like all great funny men, inconsolable." --John Lahr describing a famous comedian
In taking our self-examining ethos to these extremes, we have lost a kind of wisdom, wisdom that acknowledges the complexity of human life but can move through it to find the simple truth again. While assessing the intricate failings of our moral history, many of us have lost sight of the simple truth that the system that shapes us is, in fact, a great one, that it has moved us inexorably to do better and that it's well worth defending against every aggressor and certainly against as shabby and vicious an aggressor as we face today. -- Andrew Klavan
The elites in Washington, D.C., New York City and the United Nations seem to have plotted a journey to lead America into the New World Order where a cosmopolitan global citizen is no more connected to his country than a sociopath to his fellow man. -- Dimitri Vassilaros
"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark." --Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr, 1983-2005
Anything that doesn’t show Americans as stupid, selfish, warmongering, religious bigots, half of them living in pampered luxury in garish purpose-built Italianate mansions, the other half downtrodden in the ghetto by Halliburton stock-owning fat-cats, isn’t going to make it to the front pages or the Ten O’Clock News. --Gerard Baker

Iced Tea. Unsweet.

09/17/2010