For those who don't know already, today is the 80th birthday of Baroness Magaret Thatcher. Aside from President Reagan and Pope John Paul II, Lady Thatcher is one of three politicians that I admire the most. As a young kid growing up in 1980's America, I was always enamored at the positive energy and ideas about humanity that these three greats exhibited day in and day out during their service to their respective nations or realms that they watched over. Though I could go on and on about the late President Reagan and Pope John Paul II, this post is strictly to pay homage and a happy birthday to Mrs. Thatcher. While their is a overwhelming segment within the field of history that believe in a common theory that events and the times make people historically significant, I tend to believe that it's individuals and their actions that make history and Margaret Thatcher is a shining example of this theory. Prior to Mrs. Thatcher taking over the ship of state, Great Britain was immersed in a socialistic swamp in which the various PMs, whether it was Labour or Conservative, continued to expand it boundaries even more by its continued insistence on regulating more and more businesses, subsidizing its citizens and workers, continued state ownership of various enterprises (BBC, British Airways, British Rail as well as the energy companies.), wage and price controls, as well as the continued bending to the fanatical unions in Great Britain who shut down the delivery of coal and gas, trash pick-up, grave digging(bodies were stocked in cold storage), as well as other services that were essential to make the UK function as a nation.
Thankfully, the Oxford educated chemist and eventual barrister, had chosen to read and consume works like F.A. Hayek's masterpiece The Constitution of Liberty, thus providing the Iron Lady (In my case a term of endearment) a powerful guidepost on what is best for a society. In the same vein as President Reagan, the former PM was well aware that as long as the government was immersed waist deep in the life of the people and that of private enterprise, then they could never pull themselves out of this tar-pit of government dependency and enjoy the fruits of liberty. With this guide, her tenacious love for Liberty, and her nerves of steel , Baroness Thatcher took on the entrenched fortress of British socialism and broke its back substantially thus opening the UK's to several decades of growth and granting greater liberty to the British people. Along with turning the economy and the government away from the fully entrenched ideas of socialism (From my observation, Mrs. Thatcher turned the UK off on a Swedish styled version of socialism but the Brits still seem to believe in some socialism light programs. It'll take another Thatcher styled resurgence in the Conservative party and the UK in general to finish the back 9 of the course.).
See tomorrow for more.
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