AS THE press reacts to the death of Margaret Thatcher, a leader of exceptional talents who stands out among powerful women of the 20th century for her rejection of feminism, which she called “poison,” we will find her identified — and demonized — as an arch conservative. Here are interesting comments to the contrary by Peter Hitchens and Lawrence Auster in 2007.

Hitchens wrote a review in The American Conservative of John O’Sullivan’s celebratory book about Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World. In that review, Hitchens stated:

What did Prime Minister Thatcher and President Reagan do for the institution of marriage, rigor in education, adult authority, or the idea that people are responsible for their own actions? Far too little.

What did they do for the idea of national sovereignty without which no proper conservative positions can be defended? Well, Reagan was less to blame in this matter, but Thatcher repeatedly compromised with the European Union’s aggrandizement, which is actually one of the major instances of real great-power aggression in our age. She began the betrayal—now almost complete—of Britain’s own people in Northern Ireland, and even became involved in the campaign for liberal intervention in Yugoslavia, a foreign-policy impulse that led directly to the Iraq fiasco.

Auster wrote in response:

The answer to Hitchens’s sad question, “why have we ended up as we are?”, is that the conservatism of these three historic figures was deeply inadequate. The missing key, as Hitchens rightly points out, is nationality: “the idea of national sovereignty without which no proper conservative positions can be defended.” A profound truth, superbly stated. Without the concrete being of an actual country and of actual countries, there can be no conservative values, any more than a man without a body can have conservative values. Yes, Mrs. Thatcher bravely liberated the market from state controls; but she did nothing—nothing—to turn back the Third-Worldization and Islamization of Britain through immigration. Yes, she was fired for resisting the EU; but up to that point she had gone along with the EU every step of the way.

Of Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul II, he wrote:

If, in the end, despite the notable talents—and, in the case of Reagan, the genuine greatness—of these three figures, their historic victories against leftism and Communism have turned to ashes in the mouth, it is because their conservatism was too shallow, too callow, too … neo.

—- Comments —

Alex writes from England:

I think a sense of proportion about Margaret Thatcher’s achievements – which you won’t find in the British media – would be welcome.

What fate or future she’s supposed to have ‘saved’ Britain from is not clear. Standards in education, the NHS, the police, and public administration have deteriorated markedly since she was prime minister. Probity in the financial institutions she ‘liberated’ is now at a discount; competition in the public utilities which she privatised has not materialised. She made no effort to control immigration. She failed to modify Britain’s historic claim to be esteemed as a ‘world power’, and this led to mistakes such as the fiasco in the Falkland Islands.

Of course as a politician, she was head and shoulders above the present gang of nonentities who govern Britain; but she was neither a saviour nor a fiend. She had plenty of common sense and some natural authority. In my view, she had very little influence on the terminal moral decay of Britain – which had been well under way before she came to power.

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