Mark Levin's Hope-Filled Remembrance of Margaret Thatcher on Her Birthday

Dr. Paul Kengor: Shirley Temple's America

I learned only yesterday that Shirley Temple, the iconic child actress, died earlier this week at age 85. Reports on her death were easy to miss. I went through my usual scan of various websites and saw nothing. I fortunately caught a buried “Shirley Temple, R.I.P.” by a writer at a political website.

I was dismayed by the sparse reaction to the loss of this woman who lived a great American life. Had Shirley Temple died 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago, the country would have stopped. People everywhere would have paused to give Temple her due. It would have been the lead in every newspaper.

Happy Birthday, President Reagan

It has been said that when it is dark enough, one can see stars.  In these dark days for our nation, President Reagan's greatness, optimism, joy and vision shine more brightly than ever.  Perhaps seeing in President Reagan, unconsciously, an image of herself, no one has paid more eloquent tribute to the late President than did Margaret Thatcher on his 83rd birthday (see below).  On this, the 103rd anniversary of President Reagan's birth, let us recall when these two great leaders reversed the decline of their nations, freed half a continent and inspired freedom loving people throughout the world.

The words of Longfellow eloquently describe the legacies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and their great partnership for good:

"So when a great man dies,
  For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
  Upon the paths of men."  

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.  Amen. 

Flashback Friday: Margaret Thatcher Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991

Mandela, Churchill and the War for the Future

By Patrick J. Buchanan

By their heroes shall you know them.

In his eulogy, President Obama put Nelson Mandela in the company of three other heroes: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Abraham Lincoln.

What did these men have in common? Three were assassinated, and all four are icons of resistance to white rule over peoples of color.

Lincoln waged the bloodiest war in American history that ended slavery. Gandhi advanced the end of British rule in India. King led the civil rights struggle that buried Jim Crow. Mandela was the leader of the revolution that overthrew apartheid.

Obama's heroes testify to his belief that the great moral struggle of the age is the struggle for racial equality.

For the neocons, the greatest man was Winston Churchill, because he stood up, almost alone, to the great evil of the age -- Nazism.

Thus, to neocons, Munich was the great betrayal because it was there that Neville Chamberlain, rather than defy Hitler, agreed to the return of the Sudeten Germans to German rule. [To the Old Right, Yalta, where Churchill and FDR ceded Eastern Europe to Stalin, a monster as evil and more menacing than Hitler, was the greatest betrayal.]

But what did Churchill think of Obama's hero Gandhi?

"It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace ... to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King."

What did Churchill think of ending Western white rule of peoples of color? Here he is in 1937:

"I do not admit ... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia ... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race ... has come in and taken its place."

Here is Churchill during World War II:

"I have not become the King's first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire."

In short, Dunkirk defiance aside, Churchill's convictions about the superiority of some races and civilizations, and their inherent right to rule what Kipling called "the lesser breeds without the law," was and is the antithesis of what Obama believes.

Any wonder Obama shipped that bust of Churchill that "W" kept in the Oval Office back to the British embassy. Any surprise Obama failed to show up at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, a Churchillian who sent the fleet to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina.

The point: Obama's vision of an ideal world and Churchill's are irreconcilable.
Second, not only is Churchill dead, his empire is dead, his world is dead, and his ideas on superior races and civilizations would be censured and censored if spoken in any international forum.

We are in Obama's world now. It is a world where not only are all races, religions and civilizations equal, but within nations the greater the diversity of races, religions, cultures and ethnic groups the better.

And not only should all have equal rights, but more equal rewards.

Inequality equals injustice. Income inequality is the new enemy.

But though Obama's world is today, it is looking less like tomorrow.

Across the Middle East and Africa, Islamists are murdering and persecuting Christians as they do not regard Christianity as equal.

Ethnonationalism unites Chinese against Tibetans and Uighurs and propels a confrontation with the Japanese who have never been forgiven for the Rape of Nanking.

Vladimir Putin is in the crosshairs of Western secularists for seeking to revive and restore Orthodox Christianity and its moral precepts to primacy in Russian law, which likely means no Gay Pride parades in Red Square any time soon.

In a Christmas card to this writer, the Washington Post's Harold Meyerson brings up my late father's support of Spain's Gen. Francisco Franco -- to reveal the son's suspect motives.

In a civil war from 1936-1939, Franco ran off a Christophobic regime of Socialists, Stalinists and Trotskyists as their comrades of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion got waxed at Jarama River and ended up on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations.

Sorry about that, Harold.

Across Europe, globalism and transnationalism, as represented by the eurozone and EU, seem in retreat, as nationalism is resurgent. Now it is the UKIP, a new British independence party, which seeks to secede from the EU that is surging -- at the expense of the Tories.

Let France be France! Let Britain be Britain! Let Scotland be Scotland! These are the cries coming from the hearts of Europeans rejecting mass immigration and the cacophonous madness of multiculturalism.

All men may be equal in rights. But most prefer their own faith, country, culture, civilization, and kind. They cherish and wish to maintain their own unique and separate identities. They do not want to disappear into some great amalgam of the New World Order.

Whether globalism or nationalism prevails, the big battle is coming.

Margaret Thatcher: A Rare and Highly Personal Interview in 1985

In a time when America's national leadership doesn't dare admit to its true agenda or call its ruinous Marxist philosophy by its proper name, this insightful and highly personal interview with Margaret Thatcher in 1985 is a reminder of what noble, highly principled leadership looks like.  

Emerson wrote that “When it is dark enough, men see the stars;” so it seems to be in discerning great leaders.  We can take hope in the knowledge that statesmen of Margaret Thatcher's caliber, and that of Ronald Reagan, come along when times are dark and they are most needed.  With the ruin of our nation at the hands of a man who daily violates his oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," surely great hearts and minds are being summoned, as was Thatcher, to put matters right.

Margaret Thatcher on Leadership: Lessons for American Conservatives Today

Roger Kimball: The Anglosphere and the Future of Liberty

A few days ago, The New Criterion and London’s Social Affairs Unit hosted a one-day conference about the future of the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, with special reference to the contributions of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in maintaining that filiation. It was a jolly and informative convocation. Among the participants were John O’Sullivan, a close advisor to Margaret Thatcher, and Peter Robinson who drafted Reagan’s famous “Mr. Gorbachev-Tear-Down-This-Wall” speech. Other paper-givers included Daniel Hannan, a conservative, euro-sceptic member of the European Parliament for southern England, Douglas Carswell, a eurosceptic MP for Claxton, and Keith Windschuttle, the historian editor of Australia’s best cultural magazine, Quadrant. If I am counting correctly, this was the twelfth such collaboration between these two organizations. Our stated purposed is to enhance and strengthen the transatlantic conversation on such subjects as limited government, individual liberty, and the the constellation of values adumbrated by the word “Anglosphere.”

What is the Anglosphere? I’m not sure who coined the term, but it was James Bennett, another participant, whose book The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century that gave the word currency. As the title suggests, it is an optimistic, or at least an upbeat book. (Dr. Pangloss was an optimist, but somehow was always a source of gloom.) If the 19^th century was preeminently the British century in world affairs (and it was), the 20^th century belonged to the United States. And going forward? “If the English-speaking nations grasp the opportunity,” Bennett wrote at the end of his book, “the twenty-first century will be the Anglosphere century.”

Read more at PJ Media >>

David Cameron's Address to the Conservative Party Conference 2013

This week in Manchester we’ve shown this Party is on the side of hardworking people.

Helping young people buy their own home. 

Getting the long-term unemployed back to work. 
 

Freezing fuel duty.
 
Backing marriage. 

Cutting the deficit.

Creating jobs.

Creating wealth.

Make no mistake: it is this Party with the verve, energy and ideas to take our country forward…

British Conservative Party's Tribute to Margaret Thatcher

The British Conservative Party has released a video tribute to Margaret Thatcher that will launch its party conference in Manchester tomorrow.   May this fitting tribute, entitled "Our Maggie", inspire them, their party leadership and freedom lovers throughout the world.

Robin Harris - Not for Turning: The Life of Margaret Thatcher

Robin Harris worked for the Conservative Party from 1978, and increasingly closely with Margaret Thatcher herself from 1985, writing her speeches and advising on policy. By the close of her premiership, he was probably the most trusted member of her political team at Downing Street, and he left Number Ten with her. As a member of her personal staff, he then drafted the two volumes of her autobiography and a further book on her behalf. After Margaret Thatcher’s retirement from public life, Robin continued to see her regularly.

Christian Formation Is The Very Opposite Of Indoctrination

Richard Dawkins’s latest outburst reveal a lack of understanding about religion

From the Catholic Herald (UK)
By Francis Phillips

Dawkins: not keen on religion

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and the enfant terrible of religion, is at it again. According to a report in the Daily Telegraph for Monday 22 April, in a speech at the Chipping Norton Literary festival last weekend he told his listeners that he was “passionately against” the teaching of religion as fact. “I’m not against the teaching of religion” he stated; apparently what he dislikes intensely is “the indoctrination of religion”. The good professor thinks that “What a child should be taught is that religion exists; that some people believe this and some people believe that. What a child should never be taught is that you are a Catholic or Muslim child, therefore this is what you believe. That’s child abuse.”

He went on to say that “there is a distinction between fact and fiction”, agreeing that “there is value in teaching children about religion. You cannot really appreciate a lot of literature without knowing about religion. But we must not indoctrinate our children.”

I understand that Dawkins is a very good scientist. Scientists deal in facts as he likes to put it; they might start with a hypothesis which they then test, making experiments that lead to certain conclusions; these can be charted, measured, examined and the results laid out. Religious truths aren’t like that; you don’t “measure” the activity of prayer or its results – though you can witness how religious belief can change a person’s life for the better. It provides an inner light, or conscience (not to be demonstrated in a test tube) that informs moral decisions and behaviour. In other words, the inward life of faith and the actions that flow from it are simply of a different order from the intellectual processes involved in the study of science. They are not “fictions” merely because they don’t pass the laws of scientific scrutiny.

It has been said that Margaret Thatcher’s early training in chemistry gave her a love of facts. This might be true; but as Damian Thompson’s blog post on her Christian faith argues, her actions were also influenced by the Methodism of her childhood: for her, faith meant you should act in a certain way; Christian charity had to be seen in action, in acts of kindness towards others. Thatcher had to attend the Grantham Methodist chapel three times on a Sunday; she also accompanied her father during his lay-preaching activities. Certainly, in the Roberts household you could not have been a freethinker.

Dawkins would see all this as “indoctrination.” I would rather see it, not unlike in some ways the Catholic childhood I experienced, with its regular Mass-going, Benediction and the celebration of liturgical feasts, as parents wanting to impart to their child’s imagination and understanding the consciousness of a wise and loving creator personified in the Gospels by the life of Jesus. As you grow older, you either incorporate these realities and the doctrines that flow from them into your adult intelligence and understanding – or you are free to reject them.

“Indoctrination”, as Dawkins should know (if he were not so exercised by his antagonism towards religion and the publicity he receives whenever he pronounces on the subject) is not the same as forming a child’s mind and heart towards spiritual truths that will, one hopes, help to make him a better, more loving and self-sacrificial person; it is to brainwash him with a particular political ideology such as is evident in North Korea today or which was practised in Russia under the Soviet system. Indeed, indoctrination is the antithesis of Christian formation; it leads the mind, not to wonder, mystery, beauty or love, but to rigidity, mindless control, propaganda and slogans of hatred towards one’s enemies.

Larry Arnn: "Remembering Margaret Thatcher"

Winston Churchill Beats Jobs as CEO's Most Admired Leader

Former British prime minister Winston Churchill was known for his uncompromising leadership style, as well as his penchant for cigars.

Wartime prime minister Winston Churchill has topped a poll of leaders most admired by chief executives, edging out Steve Jobs and Nelson Mandela. 
 
The survey of some 1,300 business leaders, carried out by financial services giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), saw "Iron Lady'' Margaret Thatcher as the only woman in the top ten, at seventh.

Jobs was second on the list and fellow business tycoon Jack Welch, who led General Electric for 20 years, came in fifth.

Read more at All News Australia >>

David Cameron's Tribute to Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons

"She made our country great again."

The Order of Service for Baroness Thatcher's Funeral

A general view of the altar inside St Paul's Cathedral, where Baroness Thatcher's funeral will take place. Photo: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire

Downing Street has released a detailed Order of Service for Baroness Thatcher's funeral on Wednesday.

• 10am - Heads of State, the Royal Representatives of Heads of State and the Diplomatic Corps are received by a member of Chapter at the South Door of St. Paul's Cathedral and taken to their seats.

• 10:10am - Visiting Representatives of World Faiths leave the Dean’s Aisle and make their way to their seats in the Quire.

• 10:15am - Lord Speaker, Mr Speaker and the Prime Minister are received at the North Door of the Cathedral by a member of Chapter and then move to their seats under the Dome.

• 10:25am - The Chapter, the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury leave the Dean’s Aisle and proceed to the Great West Door of the Cathedral.

Margaret Thatcher laid down plans on how the service should proceed. Credit: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press/Press Association Images

• 10:35am - The Lord Mayor and Sheriffs arrive and are received by the Chapter, the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Sheriffs then sit in the Quire.

• 10:40am - Members of the family arrive at the Cathedral and are received by the Chapter, the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury and taken to their seats under the Dome.

• 10:45am - The Foundation Procession leaves the Dean’s Aisle.

• 10:45am - The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrive at the Cathedral and are received at the foot of the West Steps by the Lord Mayor, who accompanies them to the Great West Door, where they are received by the Chapter, the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Her Majesty is preceded by the Lord Mayor bearing the Mourning Sword.

• The Queen and Prince Philip then make their way to their seats under the Dome.

• 11am - The clock of St Paul's Cathedral strikes the hour. The coffin is carried into the Cathedral and placed upon the Bier under the Dome.

Amanda and Michael Thatcher pictured with their grandmother in October 2003. Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA Archive/Press Association Images

• Michael Thatcher and Amanda Thatcher - Lady Thatcher's grandchildren - carry cushions bearing the Insignia of the Order of the Garter and the Order of Merit, which are laid on the Dome Altar.

As the Procession of the Coffin moves through the Nave, the Choir will sing before the Dean of St Paul's, the Very Rev David Ison, addresses the congregation with the Bidding.

A selection of hymns of readings will then be given - chosen by Lady Thatcher. 

Baroness Thatcher's granddaughter Amanda and Prime Minister David Cameron will give readings at the service.

Margaret Thatcher: Plans to Build Museum as Permanent Memorial

The legacy of Margaret Thatcher is to be enshrined in an important new institution that aims to shape Conservative politics throughout this century. 

David Jones, the Welsh Secretary, said: “Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s greatest post-war leader. I can think of no better tribute to her than the establishment of the Margaret Thatcher Library” Photo: Rex Features

Plans are well under way for a combined library, museum and training centre in London to be a permanent memorial to the former prime minister, whose funeral will be held at St Paul’s Cathedral on Wednesday.

The Margaret Thatcher Library, whose backers aim to raise £15 million in private funds to endow it for generations to come, is supported by at least three Cabinet ministers as well as key political lieutenants of Baroness Thatcher. 

The project, without precedent in British politics, will be based on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California, to reinforce what was the most powerful international political partnership of the Cold War era. 

Read more at The Telegraph >>


 

Margaret Thatcher: The Woman Who Changed Britain

Well Done, Lady Thatcher … The Passing of the Iron Lady

From The Center for Vision & Values, Grove City College

By Paul G. Kengor

Margaret Thatcher, one of the greatest leaders of the Cold War, of the 20^th century, and of British history, has died at the age of 87.

I’ve referred to her as one of my Cold War seven: Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Boris Yeltsin, and Margaret Thatcher. They were the seven figures who dissolved an Evil Empire, and only Walesa and Gorbachev still remain with us.

The world dubbed her the Iron Lady, a title that duly fits. Many, however, mistake the Iron Lady moniker as referring solely to her strength in the Cold War. There was much more to it. Consider:

Margaret Thatcher: A Great Briton, A Great World Leader, A Great Lady

Margaret Thatcher, one of history's great champions of freedom, paid the most eloquent tribute to her partner on the world stage, Ronald Reagan, when he died in 2004.  So much of what Margaret Thatcher saw in President Reagan -- love of freedom, courage, strength of character, commitment to principle and perseverance against great odds -- was mirrored in herself.  

Over the past six years we have often written and posted commentary about this providential figure, and those articles can be seen here.  But on this day of loss, we would encourage you to listen again to her moving tribute to President Reagan.  It says everything important about Ronald Reagan and his great friend, eulogist and partner in the building of a better world.  

"Let us give thanks today for a life that achieved so much for all of God's children."

 

From The Telegraph

Baroness Thatcher, who has died aged 87 from a stroke, was not only Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, she was also the outstanding peacetime leader of the 20th century.

For more than a decade Margaret Thatcher enjoyed almost unchallenged political mastery, winning three successive general elections. The policies she pursued with ferocious energy and unyielding will resulted in a transformation of Britain’s economic performance.

The resulting change was also political. But by discrediting socialism so thoroughly, she prompted in due course the adoption by the Labour Party of free market economics, and so, as she wryly confessed in later years, “helped to make it electable”.

As for the effects of the Thatcher phenomenon upon British society, these were both more ambiguous and more debatable. Her remark “there is no such thing as society” was wrenched altogether out of the context of the interview in which it was made, and made to seem to be an advocacy of naked individualism, when she was really calling for more personal responsibility. Yet, rightly or wrongly, the 1980s came to be seen as a time of social fragmentation whose consequences are still with us.

Margaret Thatcher was the only British prime minister to leave behind a set of ideas about the role of the state which other leaders and nations strove to copy and apply. Monetarism, privatisation, deregulation, small government, lower taxes and free trade — all these features of the modern globalised economy were crucially promoted as a result of the policy prescriptions she employed to reverse Britain’s economic decline.

Above all, in America and in Eastern Europe she was regarded, alongside her friend Ronald Reagan, as one of the two great architects of the West’s victory in the Cold War. Of modern British prime ministers, only Margaret Thatcher’s girlhood hero, Winston Churchill, acquired a higher international reputation.

Baroness Thatcher's obituary in full 
 
1. Early life
 
2. Entering politics
 
3. Life in the shadow cabinet
 
4. The rise to leader
 
5. From Opposition to Government
 
6. War on the Left and in the Falklands
 
7. The miners’ strike and her second term
 
8. Third term in office
 
9. Ousted from Downing Street and the leadership
 
10. Life after politics