Britannia, do you miss her yet?
New slogans, old errors
“Socialism is like one of those horrible viruses. You no sooner discover a remedy for one version, than it spontaneously evolves into another. In the past, there was nationalisation, penal taxation and the command economy. Nowadays socialism is more often dressed up as environmentalism, feminism, or international concern for human rights. All sound good in the abstract. But scratch the surface and you'll as likely as not discover anti-capitalism, patronising and distorting quotas, and intrusions upon the sovereignty and democracy of nations. New slogans: old errors.”
—Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) in 2003 [4]
During my eight-year stint in London from 1995 to 2003, I noticed that the admiration for Margaret Thatcher came mainly from those who did not experience her reign firsthand.
Source: Financial Times 17 April 2013
Below is some advice/wisdom/wit from the late stateswoman.[1] Some quotes could have been written over the past few days, i.e., are still applicable and have a long shelf-life.
On her male colleagues
Margaret Thatcher ordered a steak at a restaurant with fellow male politicians. “What about the vegetables?” the waiter asked. “They’ll have the steak, too,” she answered.
“Now, gentlemen – I’ve only got time to lose my temper and get my way.”
“I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.”
“Women have plenty of roles in which they can serve with distinction: some of us even run countries. But generally we are better at wielding the handbag than the bayonet.”
On freedom
“There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.”
“To be free is better than to be unfree – always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect.”
“Freedom without order is, indeed, mere anarchy.”
“Personal freedom and economic freedom are indivisible. You can't have one without the other. You can't lose one without losing the other.”
“Without a proper rule of law, honest administration, sound banks and secure private property, it is not possible to create a free-market economy.”
On socialism, big government, the third way, etc.
“Nazism (national Socialism) and communism (international socialism) were but two sides of the same coin.”
—Paraphrase on X
Original:
”On one side, we had communism and fascism, which are two sides of the same coin, and in which the government had all the powers over the people, and there was no proper rule of law. Dictatorship, communism, nazism, fascism, they are all of that kind of government power over people.” [5]
“Socialists don't like ordinary people choosing, for they might not choose Socialism.”
“Capitalism is the enemy of enforced homogeneity. “
“'Social justice' can take a free society into still deeper and more treacherous waters if it is applied not only to equality of opportunity but also to equality of outcomes.”
“To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.”
“Socialists have always spent much of their time seeking new titles for their beliefs, because the old versions so quickly become outdated and discredited.”
“Pennies don’t fall from heaven. They have to be earned on earth.”
“The larger the slice taken by government,
the smaller the cake available for everyone.”
“Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them.”
“No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions - he had money, too.”
“Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.”
“The left-wing politician does not begin by asking: Why should the government take an extra pound (or dollar, or yen, or euro) from the citizen's pocket? He asks instead: Why not? In the eyes of such politicians everywhere, wealth is collective not individual, it is theirs and not ours.”
“Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seem to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.“
“The fact that China has so much unsettling historical baggage, and is still communist, means that it is fundamentally hostile to the West.”
“The Russians are traditionally a martial nation. While it is most unlikely that Russia will ever again be a global superpower, it will remain a great power – too big to rest content within its own borders, too weak to impose itself far beyond them. All of which makes for troubling instability. “
“Long before the end of the Soviet era, Russians had come to regard the state itself as their enemy. For those who chose to proclaim their individuality it was an oppressor. But for many more the state was essentially a thief.”
On power
“Being powerful is like being a lady.
If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”
“I don't mind how much my ministers talk - as long as they do what I say.”
On Europe
“I want my money back.”[2]
“There is no way in which the EU can be made 'democratic': the pursuit of this illusory aim is in fact likely further to reduce the power of national electorates.”
“During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it.”
“Europe is the result of plans. It is, in fact, a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a program whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage done is in doubt.”
“If there was ever an idea whose time had come and gone it was surely that of the artificial mega-state.”
On consensus
“Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.”
“For me, pragmatism is not enough. Nor is that fashionable word ‘consensus.’ ... To me consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects—the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?”
On luck and work ethics
“I was not lucky. I deserved it.”[3]
“I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.”
General advice
“My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day's work for an honest day's pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.”
“If you want anything said, ask a man.
If you want something done, ask a woman.”
[1] Mainly from Thatcher, Margaret (2002) “Statecraft—Strategies for a changing world,” New York: Harper Collins.
[2] Although the exact wording is still being debated to this day, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously went before her European Community colleagues in 1984 demanding that the UK not pay so much into the infamous Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of agricultural subsidies since Britain believed it paid far more than it received in this scheme. Demanding a rebate, she slammed her handbag into the conference table and exclaimed something to the effect of "I want my money back!"
[3] 10-year old Margaret Thatcher told by a teacher how lucky she was to have won the poetry reading contest. Financial Times, 9 April 2013.
[4] Margaret Thatcher, Speech to the Atlantic Bridge, St Regis Hotel, New York City, 14 May 2003.
[5] Margaret Thatcher, Messages from Croatia (Zagreb: Croatian Institute for Culture and Information, 1998), 54.