Washington – I am rounding the last turn of Charles Moore’s magisterial biography of Margaret Thatcher. It is no sprint. It is not even a distance race. It is a marathon of a literary work, three volumes, thick volumes. Yet, as I have said, it is a masterpiece. Charles loves Mrs. Thatcher. That is not to say he lets her off easy. Charles is too fine a biographer for that, and Mrs. Thatcher is too complicated a subject to escape his critical eye. So he has given us three volumes on the lady who returned Britain to economic health and to world significance. Read it for yourself.
One thing attracted my eye in reading volume two, and it continued to attract my eye in reading volume three. Her enemies hated her. They still hate her. In fact, a rising generation of young Brits hate her now. How very curious.
Liberals hate her. Socialists hate her. Even a few moderates or Tories hate her. Why do they hate her with such singular intensity? I believe it is because she diminished the one thing on which all of the above groups have generally agreed. Some have agreed on it more than others, but all have agreed it was essential to Britain’s well-being. What is it? Government.
To those who hate Mrs. Thatcher, government was always there to help. To Mrs. Thatcher, it was usually there to harm, with its inefficiencies, its sclerotic bureaucracies, its grand projects that were usually not needed.
Mrs. Thatcher pretty much believed as Ronald Reagan believed: Government is not the solution to our problem. Government IS the problem. How many times did he say the most terrifying words he could imagine were, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”? Mrs. Thatcher had her own variation of this line. Ronald Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher got along swimmingly, and, come to think of it, Ronald Reagan and only Ronald Reagan shares a place with her in the bien-pensants’ pantheon of hated figures. Donald, your pathway to greatness is clearly marked.
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