Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher died today. I have no love for the lady. None. But there are two things I need to say:

One, she was the reason I left the UK. Her diagnosis of what ailed the UK back ion the 1970’s was, I still think, in error. Her persistent anti-social rhetoric laid the groundwork, as did Reagan’s here, for the more extreme conservatism that has followed. She epitomized the reaction amongst her kind to the excesses of the 1960’s and all the change it brought to her beloved, but fusty, Britain. That she changed the UK is beyond doubt. Perhaps she needed to indulge in anti-social talk to get results. But her legacy is more the rise of extremist right wing politics than it is of any lasting prosperity.

Second, that legacy leaves her without a home in our contemporary political landscape. She was not extreme enough – hard though that is to believe – to fit into modern right wing America. She supported, quite strongly, socialized medicine. This was probably more from cynical political calculus than from any benign thinking, but nonetheless support it she did. She also was an early and quite vocal voice in warning about climate change. She, unlike her extreme successors, actually believed in science and its messages. She spoke eloquently of the need to deal with climate change even if it represented a cost to us today. Why? So that we pass along a healthy environment to the future. Neither of these positions would be acceptable to today’s Republican party. So she shares her exile with Reagan himself. He would be too left wing for the Tea Party too. After all the budget deals he struck with Congress included tax increases. We all know how that flies today.

So the Iron Lady’s death is a moment to remind ourselves of how far to the right our political discourse has drifted since the 1980’s. She and Reagan began that drift. They provided the venomous rhetoric that was picked up and amplified by later conservatives. And they remain revered by the right even if they would no longer fit in to the right’s ranks.

For us beleaguered liberals it is a moment to reflect on the long path back, and to ponder how much we have all lost courtesy of Maggie Thatcher.

Oh. One last thing.

I read that John Boehner regards Thatcher as the greatest peacetime prime minister in British history. Really? There are more than a few better candidates. Boehner isn’t a student of British history, so I can forgive him. Well, no I can’t. He doesn’t even believe in the same stuff as Thatcher. If he did, he would be a fan of Obamacare. Maybe he is. Secretly. That would be interesting.