A remarkable woman whom many admirers called Great Britain’s
“greatest peacetime leader”, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed
away on Monday, April 8, 2013 at the age of 87. Thatcher was Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990.
Years ago, in a tribute
speech, “Maggie” Thatcher said;
“Ronald Reagan’s achievements can be summed up like this: he
made America great again, and he used that greatness to set the nations free.
Either of these achievements would qualify a President for the political
pantheon: but to have succeeded in both marks out President Reagan as one of
America’s very greatest leaders.
All his policies were of a peace, and all reflected his own
distinctive philosophy. He believed in America, and he believed in people.
When the academics foretold American decline, he replied
that there was nothing this nation couldn’t do, once given the chance.
When the economists denounced his policies of tax cuts as
simplistic, he didn’t mind if his answers were simple because they were true.
When liberals doubted if Americans were willing to master
events and make sacrifices, he replied (and I quote): “No weapon in the
arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free
men and women”.
Later in that same speech, Thatcher spoke these words;
“President Reagan didn’t just abhor communism, mistrust
socialism and dislike bureaucracy, he truly loved liberty – he loved it with a
passion which went far beyond anything else in his political life. It was what
brought moral grandeur to his vision of America and to his dreams for a better
world. It was directed not mainly at earthly powers and principalities but
rather at the infinitely precious, utterly unique human being, wherever he or
she was yearning to breathe free.”
Mrs. Thatcher could have been looking in the mirror with her
comments about President Reagan. Without a doubt Margaret Thatcher, a grocer’s
daughter who rose to become Britain’s top political leader made Great Britain great
again. While she gives President Reagan credit for the fall of communism, she
was the one who told the President, after a trip to Moscow, that they could
work with Mikhail Gorbachev.
As the New
York Times reports, like Ronald Reagan;
“Mrs. Thatcher, many
Britons said, transformed their country, opening the way for sweeping
privatization and deregulation, legitimizing wealth and unleashing acquisitive,
entrepreneurial passions among her compatriots…”
Mrs. Thatcher’s prescription for Britain in the 1980s —
faith in market forces, willingness to impose short-term austerity in the
service of long-term prosperity, and skepticism or even hostility to the fiscal
and social costs of the welfare state…It is an indelible part of the Thatcher
legacy that her success in remaking Britain.”
Margret Thatcher had faith in “the ability of capitalism to
spread prosperity in a way that socialist redistribution never could.” (New
York Times).
Britain’s the Daily
Mail said of Mrs. Thatcher, “It can be said of very few people that their
existence on this Earth made a difference. But that claim can be made with
absolute certainty for the great British stateswoman who died yesterday.
Indeed, Margaret Thatcher changed the landscape of politics, at home and around
the world, in ways that reverberate to this day.”
I write in Don’t
Seek Success – Be Happi about Passion and Purpose being the two primary
keys to happiness, and it is up to us to find our passions and purposes in
life. Margret Thatcher lived her passion and purpose.
Her passion was an abiding love of Great Britain and her
purpose was to restore greatness to her country that she and much of the world
saw as in decline. Most would say she succeeded with a free market conservatism
of which Britain was not accustomed.
Current Prime Minister David Cameron remembers Mrs. Thatcher
simply as the woman “who saved our country.”
President Obama called her “one of the great champions of
freedom and liberty,” and as an example to women that “there is no glass
ceiling that can’t be shattered.”
I rarely agree with President Obama, but he is on target
here. Margret Thatcher was a feminist in very
sense of the word. She rose from humble beginning from a working class family
to become the most powerful woman in the world in the almost
exclusively male dominated arena of politics. Thatcher lived her passion and purpose in life. Indeed, as President Obama said, she shattered the glass ceiling where women in politics were often shut out. She has given young woman the ability to dream that they too, someday, could become Prime Minister or President of their country.
The world has suffered a tremendous loss in the death of Margret Thatcher, but I suspect she is in Heaven now reunited with her dear friend Ronnie recollecting on their lives of passion and purpose and enjoying each other’s well known sense of humor. Margret Thatcher and her incredible legacy will be missed.
For more information on finding your passion and purposes in life, see Don’t Seek Success – Be Happi.
Be Great!
MB
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