Five years ago, one of my favorite professors died.
Over the course of these five years, I have had time to reflect on his lessons and on life from the perspective of those lessons.
He was a remarkable man who left quite an impression on me.
Phil The Fan
Picture this: Spring Semester, 1993. It was just over twenty five years ago and the first Baby Boomer had been elected president and that made Hollywood and academe happy. It was the early weeks of that semester, in late January when people still had their winter coats. The classroom in the English building was full of several dozen students and all watched the professor at the front and center.
“Does anyone here know what a Thyestean feast is?” the professor asked the class. A solid man in a jacket and tie, his receding white hair hovered about his temple and ears, his Celtic blue eyes piercing with both curiosity and delight. His voice was eloquently grand with authority, as erudite as William F. Buckley Jr., but with only the faintest hint of the Mid-Atlantic in his vowels and his tone was gentle and soft spoken: he had a talent for the mimicry of accents, an asset that he used for tales of instruction and humor. If he could exude the kindness and warmth that the real C.S. Lewis had rather than the cold Oxford don that he played in Shadowlands, Sir Anthony Hopkins could ideally be cast to play this professor.
“A Thyestean feast comes from the tragedy of Thyestes, who was tricked by his enemy into eating his children,” I answered. I usually sat in front of the class, by choice, because grades were important and I loved the subject matter. The class was Children’s Literature and the semester started with reading fairy tales by the Grimm brothers, from English translations that were, well, grimmer than the most of the versions adapted by Disney. After the fairy tales came Homer’s Odyssey, followed by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; The Wind in the Willows; The Princess and the Goblin; The Hobbit; The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; A Wrinkle in Time; and The Book of the Dun Cow.
With the reading of The Odyssey, I demonstrated an advantage I had over most of my classmates: not only had I read this epic in during the Fall Semester of my Freshman year, two and half years before, I had just taken Greek Literature in Translation, which meant that I read Homer’s Iliad, some lyric poetry, plus a comedy from Aristophanes, as well as tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides: hence, my familiarity with the Thyestean feast.
While we were only a few weeks into the semester, Children’s Literature was my favorite class. This was not because the readings were “easy” (I mean, the original readership for most of the texts were children) but because they were all fantasy, which had long been my favorite genre. Decades before the Peter Jackson films, I had been a fan of Tolkien and had looked forward to joining a Tolkien club when I got to college. Sure enough, my first week at university, I joined the Tolkien club, where I heard about the Children’s Literature course. The Tolkien club’s sponsor, a bioethics professor, spoke with affection for one of the professors who taught the course and reverence for the other professor, whom he said was one of the few people on campus that had wisdom. It was this latter professor who was the instructor of this Children’s Literature class that I attended: he was Dr. James McShane, who passed away on July 5, 2013.
Part of Dr. McShane’s style was that he would read aloud passages from the text and then share observations on the content. For instance, one of the first stories we read was a translation of the original Grimms’ Cinderella, which had no fairy godmother or glass slipper (these, Dr. McShane explained, were found in the Charles Perrault version of the fairy tale, written for the French court and later used as a resource by Walt Disney), but had the evil stepsisters mutilate their feet to fit in the fabled shoe, only to be exposed by the birds which sang to the prince’s party: “Backwards peek! Backwards peek! There’s blood in the shoe!” The birds were symbolic agents of the girl’s dead mother, who on her deathbed instructs the child to be pious.
“What does it mean to be ‘pious’?” Dr. McShane asked the class. Many of us provided answers like “sanctimonious” and “holy” and to these answers Dr. McShane responded politely but then related an episode from Virgil’s Aenid, how during the fall of Troy, the heroic Prince Aeneas led to safety his young son Ascanius while he carried his decrepit father Anchises. “Aeneas represents the present, and he leads the future in the person of his son and carries the weight of history and tradition of the past in the person of his father. When scholars speak of ‘Pious Aeneas’, it is with this image that they have in mind. To be ‘pious’ is to carry tradition for the next generation.”
Again, after the fairy tales we read The Odyssey, one of the greatest stories in the Western canon. It begins with Odysseus stuck on the island with Calypso: many of us thought he was trapped and a prisoner. No, Dr. McShane explained: there is little in the text to indicate that Calypso has used all that much force to keep Odysseus her captive: on the contrary, he obviously enjoyed the nymph’s company…carnally. However, when pressed by the gods to leave, he finally begins his journey back to Ithaca.
While Odysseus is back on the sea, his son Telemachus goes on his own to seek information about his father. In Book IV, Telemachus comes to the halls of Helen and Menelaus, where they both relate to the prince stories about Odysseus. First, Helen relates how during the siege on Troy, she recognized a disguised Odysseus working as a spy and then explains how she helped him. Her story is followed by one by Menelaus, who relates that when the Greek warriors were inside the Trojan horse, they hear Helen suggest that the Trojans pierce the horse with spears to ensure that it was safe. We can infer that there is strife between the two: Helen wishes to show herself as helpful to her guest's father, while her husband, likely resentful for being cast as a cuckold in front of his fellow Greek kings, wants to remind his adulteress wife and their young guest that she has a duplicitous nature.
“What are we to make of these two?” Dr. McShane asked the class. He then shared a story of a sad young woman whose parents argued all the time: she thought that they hated each other, but he knew her parents and their relationship and explained to her “No child: they were two very passionate people whose relationship was quite physical. When you grew up, you only saw the dark side of their marriage.” He then brought attention back to Helen and Menelaus, noting that sometimes it is better for two unhappy people to have each other, lest there be four miserable people.
That lesson has stayed with me over the years. I would watch various relationships people have come and go, marriages that begin with beautiful weddings and end in acrimonious divorce; I would also see couples stay together, complaining about each other one minute and then indulging in each other’s pet games the next. Years after college, I would watch The Oprah Winfrey Show when, as a guest, Dr. Phil McGraw would delve into the lives of troubled couples, and then I would see McGraw do that on his own show. Through all that dysfunction, be it in gay bars or on daytime television or among friends, it was the wisdom in Dr. McShane’s insight on the not-pretty but well-suited pairing of Helen and Menelaus that would echo in my head.
These days, I rarely ever feel too sorry for people in “bad” relationships: I will feel sorry for their children, but beyond that, I am grateful that these people have each other and are thereby sparing the rest of us the hazards of dealing with such unhappy souls.
I will confess to having some difficulty in reading The Wind in the Willows: I found the idyllic pastoral setting in the English countryside to be…boring (in fact, I remember the journal entry in which I expressed the desire of wanting the Queen of Hearts to appear and shake up the scene). I was annoyed by Toad’s antics and am convinced that today he would have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Fortunately, McShane’s lectures rescued the story from my criticism, as certain features of Victorian and Edwardian society were explained. For instance, when the rabbits would misbehave and annoy the other animals, the other animals would shout “Onion sauce!” at the lapines: onion sauce was a traditional condiment served with rabbit meat in England in the 1800's, so by shouting it at the reckless rabbits, the other animals were taunting them with death.
The following Fall Semester I had Dr. McShane for another class, this time for Irish Literature. Here I was no longer on that firm and familiar foundation of Greek Literature and fantasy: the works from the poets and storytellers of Éire were a new menagerie. Gone were the glories of high fantasy, for now came the tales of suffering and sorrow.
Some of that bleakness was revealed when McShane relayed the time that he and his family stayed in Ireland, in a seaside town called Skerries. Apparently the people in Skerries were not especially friendly by American standards, so when the local priest asked McShane how he liked Ireland, the response was “It would be nice if people said ‘hello’ to my wife!” to which the priest replied (as relayed to us by McShane using his excellent talent for mimicry, realizing a lovely Irish brogue) “You best not be judging all of Ireland by Skerries: Skerries was settled by the Danes, and the Danes are a dour people.” As I had felt proud of my Danish heritage since I was a child, it was striking to hear the Danes dismissed as a dour people (prior to that lecture, I thought that what stood out about Denmark were things like, well, Hans Christian Andersen and pornography--so, in essence, fairy tales and sex--what’s so dour about those?). Still, given that the Viking raids (which provided the Danes to settle Skerries, and in fact, many of the towns in Ireland, including Dublin, were established by Danes) ended many centuries ago, it is striking that these ancient memories lingered and haunted the Emerald Isle.
McShane also took time to explain more about the history of Ireland, the domination by the English (later, British), but noting the Irish successes along the way, and how during the 1700’s, Dublin became the second largest city in the British Empire; in fact, the former Parliament building in Dublin became the Bank of Ireland, a place that the professor recommended to see for its fantastic Georgian architecture. The professor also relayed an anecdote in the 1800’s about a Catholic politician from Ireland who won a seat in Parliament and would have to take the Oath of Supremacy (which affirmed allegiance to the British monarch as the Head of the Church of England): when challenged that doing so would be a lie, the politician countered, “No, for it to be a lie, it must not only be an untruth, it must also have the intent to deceive: as I intend to deceive no one, I am not lying.” Over the years, I find myself correcting people when they misspeak and unintentionally give misinformation and then reflexively say “I’m sorry, I lied,” to which I respond, “No, you only misspoke; for you to have lied, you must have also have had the intent to deceive.”
Of course, much of Irish history was not so cheery. Ireland lost home rule in 1801, when its parliament merged with Westminster, and several decades later, the Irish suffered the Potato Famine. Prior to McShane’s lecture, I did not understand the extent of the tragedy of the famine. The professor explained that potatoes were an easy crop for the Irish people, one that did not need much tending and one not likely to be taken from them by their British overlords. Also, despite the poverty, the Irish were very “pro-sex”, he explained, and being Catholics, they enjoyed big families: indeed, sex gave people something to do while the potatoes grew.
Then came the famine. Their major source of food, wiped out. (A cruel twist is that it only affected the potato: other crops did very well at the time, but those benefited the British which actually owned the land and could sell the crops, rather than the Irish who worked in the fields). I remember how transfixed we were in class, hearing him relate the horror of people dying, and explaining how this event allowed for celibacy and late marriages to enter the Irish Catholic character. “When you see your children eat grass because they are starving,” he explained, “but then watch them die anyway, you change your mind about sex.”
It was at this point where McShane reflected on an exchange that he had with a church official regarding celibacy: the professor came to understand that this man’s religious views were steeped in the celibacy of Irish Catholicism, one that witnessed the horror of children starving after eating grass. In contrast, McShane’s own perspective was more pro-sex, in line with an Irish Catholicism before the famine. He had a big family and he and his wife were known to want some reform in the local diocese, in line with how they understood Vatican II. Contrary to how some factions presented them, the McShanes did not want to turn the Catholic Church into some New Age cult: they expressed their Catholic faith by opening their homes to unwed teenage mothers, thereby living a life of gracious Christian charity rather than of a scowling and shaming judgment. Over the years, I encountered even conservative Catholics who may have disagreed with the McShanes politically, but certainly respected how they lived their faith through grace and generosity.
A year after I took the Irish Literature course, Dr. McShane was gracious and generous enough to have me for an independent study, which enabled me to sit in another series of lectures for Children’s Literature. One lecture which I remember from that class was for The Wizard of Oz: McShane only spent one lecture on that story, and in it, he related the 1939 film as well as the book (Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West would not be released for another year). When discussing the film, the professor mentioned that when he was in Atlanta, he saw Judy Garland in concert: she was more than an hour late for the show, and when she finally appeared, she looked like “the wrath of God”, but after a few minutes, she had the unruly and impatient crowd “eating from her hands.” It was very much like the closing scene from I Could Go On Singing.
Despite his piety and respect for the text, Dr. McShane was not above questioning certain received notions and conventional wisdom. I remember hearing how in school he challenged the teacher about the idea of the “topic sentence” in paragraphs: he directed the class’s attention to the fact that in the course book discussing paragraphs and topic sentences, the paragraphs themselves did not include topic sentences.
What especially stands out in my mind happened during that first semester for Children’s Literature, when we finished Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The story closes with Alice telling her sister about her adventures, and how they made Alice a better mother. “How could what she endured make Alice a better mother?” McShane asked the class. Another student, with whom I had taken a logic class the previous semester and with whom I would also take Irish Literature (and would be, for a time, the most important friend in my life), commented on how demented the story was; and I added that it was also not a sentimental story. So, with dementia but without sentiment, how could Alice’s adventures make her a better mother? I gained respect for Alice and her adventures, although perhaps I had lost some affection for them as well.
Another challenge to a text came when we read A Wrinkle in Time, when the character Calvin O’Keefe, who was of obvious Irish descent, related how he came from a large family and no one would miss him. Falling back on his own Irish Catholic family life, McShane countered this, noting that the book’s author Madeleine L’Engle was an only child and did not know much about what it would have meant to have siblings and growing up in a large family. “There isn’t less love,” he explained: “There is more love, and the older children help raising the younger ones.”
I remember that in one of his lectures, the professor reflected on the word “sap”, which is often used as an insult. “It is short of ‘sapience,’” he explained, “ which means ‘wisdom’, and has nothing to do with what happens in a maple tree.” For me, Dr. McShane had been a great resource of wisdom, of sapience, as well as generosity. He wrote a letter of recommendation for me to attend summer school in Oxford. When I graduated from University in 1995, I had the honor of Dr. McShane appearing at my reception. When I struggled with graduate school, I emailed him and shared a list of the options that I was considering, asking for his advice: his response was frank in that he could not recommend any of the options that I was considering. After that semester, I did not return to graduate school and while I sometimes miss the exchange of ideas in literature, history, philosophy, and religion, I know that it was the right decision.
I maintained contact with the professor, often mailing him Saint Patrick's Day cards in mid-March. Sometimes we would meet at his office, but we would also meet for lunch, most often at a Chinese restaurant close to campus. Sometimes we would reflect on current events: I remember he found the gross emotionalism over the death of Princess Diana to be “ghastly”. In 2003, after the Lawrence v. Texas decision from the Supreme Court, he reflected how the Court generally options to expand liberty to more people rather than restrict it from others. I recall in one conversation that he shuddered when I mentioned reading about Swedenborg, but gasped a sigh of relief when I said that I was also tackling Edmund Burke.
Another book that I had read after graduating was Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis. A bestselling novel when it was first published in 1955, most people today know the story from its several adaptations, although arguably the best adaptation on record is the 1958 film starring Rosalind Russell, which I first saw on public television when I was 10 years old (to my knowledge, there is no fully filmed record of either a production of the original play in which Russell first played the titular role or of the stage musical Mame starring Angela Lansbury; few take the Lucille Ball version of the musical seriously). Auntie Mame is about a wonderfully flamboyant woman who is guardian to her orphaned nephew and throughout their adventures, she reminds both the child and the audience of her motto: "Life is a banquet!" As it turns out, the film was fairly faithful to the book, and while Mame and her nephew might argue that living life is better than reading about it, I think that by actually reading a book, especially a good book, one is also partaking in some of Mame's banquet that is life. Of course, reading provides the joy of escape, but also the joy of unveiling mystery, through characterization and style, humor, and plot; it gives practice for "reading" in life, how to see other people, how to notice hints about who they are and about their motives. I never discussed reading Auntie Mame with the professor but I think he would have approved.
Sometimes I exchanged gifts with the professor at Christmastime: I remember giving him a copy of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, and explained to the professor that while I abhorred Pullman’s philosophy (which could be understood to be “anti-Narnian”, meaning essentially, republican atheism in society and the universe), I liked his story-telling abilities and when I explained that Pullman described C.S. Lewis as a Protestant Ulsterman (which is technically correct, given that Lewis was born in Belfast and after a stint as an atheist returned to the Anglican church), McShane was intrigued but commented with a chuckle (no doubt thinking of someone like Ian Paisley), “Well, that’s hardly fair to Lewis.” He in turn gave me a copy of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, a very thoughtful gift, for he knew that I wanted to be a fantasy novelist.
In one of our meetings at his office, I mentioned the Harry Potter books. Here he gave such a literary challenge: he was unhappy with them. “Harry Potter told a lie,” he said to me. I realized that this was true, that Harry Potter told many lies, and that rarely did Harry suffer much serious consequences for lying. McShane’s revelation to me was a slap in the face, as I did not recognize Potter’s dishonesty or appreciate it as much as the professor did. It underscored for me what a highly ethical and moral man Dr. McShane was. To be a man of such strict principles meant that life for him was a challenge.
Of course, Dr. McShane did more than challenge texts and literary figures: he and his wife challenged the Church. Being a fairly liberal couple (in fact, McShane was the first avowed liberal that I actually respected and his wife remains the only Democratic candidate whose campaign I had ever helped), they found themselves at odds with the very traditionalist hierarchy of the local diocese. Indeed, so reform-minded were the McShanes that they were viewed as enemies of the bishop and were no doubt major targets of the mass excommunication that occurred in 1996. As I was not Catholic and did not even read the newspaper, I was only vaguely aware of what was happening. I had heard rumors that the local diocese was considered one of the most conservative in the United States, if not the world, and knowing that McShane was a liberal Democrat, I could imagine that there would be some friction.
Still, remembering that Dr. McShane believed that words mattered, it must be said that the Church is called “catholic”, that is to say “universal” or "on the whole." Before issues like abortion and homosexuality became such divisive subjects in society at large and Catholic officials started to unite with their old rivals, evangelical Protestant ministers, a large number of Catholics in America were Democrats, often blue-collar working class people of various immigrant communities (the first Catholics in America were mostly English and French, but later generations included Irish and Italian immigrants, as well as Polish, Czech, Austrian, and later even Latin American, Indochinese, and Filipino people). Decades before the prosperity gospel, many Catholics were very much engaged in social justice, and while some clergy and laity would gladly ally with Spain's Generalissimo Franco in the righteous cause against godless communists led by tyrants like Stalin and Castro, there were also nuns and priests who would be no less righteous in their ministry to the suffering and poor: as she is a Catholic or Universal Church, it is part of her function to provide a home for God's children.
Dr. McShane illustrated this Christian concern for the poor and unfortunate in a lecture for the Children’s Literature course, when he provided to the class a photocopy of the original introduction to George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin, published in 1872. In this first introduction, the author stressed that while one of the main characters in the book was a princess, in a sense, all little girls were princesses and all little boys were princes.
“Who here knows about a cross of gold?” Dr. McShane asked the class, providing a question by which even I was stumped. The answer came from the student who sat next to me, a gentleman of Irish and Italian descent (I would later discover that he had worked in Washington, D.C. on behalf of interests for the Democrats, as either a lobbyist or an activist) who said, “‘You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.’” McShane nodded with affirmation and said “Yes!” and explained that the student was quoting a speech from William Jennings Bryan, which was memorialized at the Nebraska State Capitol. Bryan was a Nebraska Democrat made famous in part by his three failed attempts at the presidency as well as his fight against the teaching of evolution in the Scopes trial, the latter which was popularized by the historically inaccurate play Inherit the Wind. While Bryan’s “cross of gold” speech from 1896 was about the gold standard and in fact was two decades after The Princess and the Goblin was first published, McShane explained that the opposition of many religious people to the teaching of evolution was not simply because evolution came in conflict against a literalist interpretation of the Genesis creation account (something not a problem for Catholics, who are not obligated to view Scripture with a literal interpretation), but because some people took their interpretations of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” notions and applied them to the social sciences (i.e., Social Darwinism) to justify not only (at best) laissez-faire capitalism but also eugenics: in short, they used Darwin’s teachings to de-humanize their fellow man, whereas Christians like MacDonald and Bryan did not want society to forget that human beings were children of God, and that all God’s children are princes and princesses.
Dr. McShane once said that his hero was Saint Thomas More, “a man for all seasons” and a beacon of personal integrity. With that sort of example and application of Christian charity, it is not quite so difficult to imagine that Dr. McShane maintained his Catholic faith as well as his left-of-center politics, or that he would come at odds with certain church authorities. Less than a year after the professor's death, I found at Barnes and Noble a book that detailed in part the struggles in which Dr. McShane and his wife fought. Reading this after the professor died, I was again reminded of his strength of character and eloquence of language: how he found goodness in opponents and even prayed with them, but would not permit them to lie.
For me, perhaps the most important but yet a quiet lesson that lingers deeply comes from another lecture in Children’s Literature. As I had previous mentioned, I had difficulty with The Wind in the Willows, and failed to appreciate the appearance of the god Pan in the chapter “Piper at the Gates of Dawn”. Fortunately, the Greek literature was still fresh in my mind during the lecture, so when Dr. McShane asked, “What is a goat song?” I could say “a tragedy”, and when he pointed out passages like “a capricious little breeze”, which would bring to mind “goat spirit,” I came to see the richness of the author’s vision: after all, “Pan” means “All” in modern Greek (although "pa" was for "shepherd" in ancient Greek, which was fitting, as Pan was the god of shepherds), but it also sounds like “pain”, which is French for “bread”, which in itself is a rich image, for not only is it a staple of the human diet, it evokes religious imagery, in not just the Lord’s Prayer (“give us this day our daily bread”) but also the Eucharist.
The professor found the closing of the chapter puzzling: why should this mystic experience be forgotten? Over the years, I can say that it makes a sort of sense to me. While I cannot say that I have ever witnessed a profound numinous moment, like Moses on Sinai or Saul en route to Damascus, I can say that I have had events, fleeting perhaps, times in which I sensed an expansion of life, of life that was beyond my scope and vision. Acts of kindness. Moments of beauty. Surprises of good fortune. Those experiences do not prove that God is real, but having had such experiences, I do not find God to be an idea best expressed in words from an alphabet, but rather a lingering fascination that evokes hope and love, a resource for comfort (which, as Dr. McShane said more than once, means “with strength,” as in, you are being strong with someone). I can appreciate the fear that secular humanists feel when they hear a religious person (often an evangelical Protestant) speak as if on behalf of God Himself and I contrast that with the quiet gentleness of Pan in The Wind in the Willows. One cannot explain God any easier than one can explain falling in love, or the faith one has in a faithless lover, and sadly, not everyone experiences moments of God or committed love, but life continues regardless. I think of the wise insight from Confucius, when asked about ghosts and spirits: they might be real, but for now, we need to live a good life on earth. Although it would be unwise to ignore the divine, perhaps we should also not let a theophany distract us from what needs to be done in our daily lives (a possible counter or complement to the New Testament story of Jesus and the sisters Mary and Martha?). That would be something I think that even if Dr. McShane could not fully accept, he would graciously let it be explained.
The news of Dr. McShane's death reminded me of the years of 1993 through 1995, my last several semesters as an undergraduate, when my upperclassmen friends graduated and I moved out of the dorms and made new friends. I thought especially of memories shared with that classmate from logic and McShane's two literature classes; like McShane, he made an impact on me, but in contrast, my friend and I lost contact in 1996. I recalled this friend sharing with me about the time when he found it difficult to read Shakespeare for a class in the 1990 Fall Semester: this was two years before we met, a time when Operation Desert Storm was in the news and the possibility of war was on everyone's mind, in particular, my friend's, as he was in the service and could have been sent to the Persian Gulf. Dr. McShane provided this young man with recordings of Shakespeare productions, which enabled the stressed student to get through his mental blocks and better comprehend and understand the Bard's works and for which he was most grateful. With that memory in mind, and others (such as the afternoon when we drove across town, sharing how we both liked the professor's tendency to say "Scripture" rather than "The Bible": an option which might sound pretentious to some but to two young gay English majors of Scandinavian descent and from conservative backgrounds who had High Church affinities and cosmopolitan aspirations, it granted the Good Book a dignity which we thought was lacking in Protestant fundamentalist circles), I reached out to this man in social media and was grateful to reconnect with someone with whom I shared such a special part of my life. Of course, we found that we had both changed (which is only appropriate), and yet, at our cores, something of our earlier selves remained--after all, we still shared a reverence for a certain wise professor--and our friendship was restored. Some would dismiss events like this reconnection as just one of those things in life for which we write off as luck or perhaps for which we halfheartedly thank God for a second; while I would not wish to discredit the Almighty, I sentimentally like to imagine that Dr. McShane helped with our reconnection. The professor lived a devout man's life, a pious man's life, one of strong principles and faith, and people of faith know that he is in the arms of Providence, the proverbial Bosom of Abraham; however, I wish to caveat that I like to imagine that similar to that Edwardian literary pastoral figure Pan, the shepherding god of nature in The Wind in the Willows, he was a guiding presence, or rather, he was guiding us as he was in the presence of the Good Shepherd (yes, I am aware that tradition holds that he is in a place where such matters would be of little concern to him, but when he was alive, he knew the value of friendship). Myself, I am among the living and it is my hope that I, unlike Rat and Mole, will remember.
Dr. McShane has been gone for five years and I no longer mail Saint Patrick's Day cards; there might still be a Baby Boomer in the White House, but it is a fact that does not make Hollywood or academe happy. However, I still cherish the memory of the professor's kind voice, his expressive eyes, and the majesty and humanity of the thoughts that he shared: the wisdom, nay, the sapience of those lessons that I received from lectures in the English building, the grandness of the gesture by which he accepted a plastic glass of spumante from my father at my graduation reception, or over mu shu shrimp at a Chinese restaurant that no longer exists. Lessons about ugly relationships, the definition of a lie, the challenge of integrity, and the blessing of friendship: these are only a part of his great legacy. Auntie Mame may have declared that “Life is a banquet!” but Dr. McShane revealed that with a great teacher, one can find in life a feast of sapience.
Thursday, July 5, 2018
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Apple of Discord, 2018: Five Years Since Thatcher's Death
It is now 2018, marking five years since the passing of Margaret Thatcher.
I must say that over these five years, I have learned more about Baroness Thatcher. While this education has been illuminating and with some disappointments, my interest in this woman remains, albeit from a more sober and critical perspective: this is not about blind adoration; it is about honest admiration.
Phil The Fan
Classical mythology tells a story that when the goddess of discord was not invited to a wedding banquet, she tossed a golden apple marked “For the Fairest” in the midst of the party. Soon, it came down to three goddesses vying for the prized fruit: their Greek names were Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera, but later poets would use the names Pallas (or Minerva), Venus, and Juno. The feud between these three led to the Judgment of Paris, the Trojan War, and the founding of Rome. However, I find that these goddesses also made appearances on the world stage in the person of one woman, the late Margaret Thatcher, a discordant figure who took her country out of dystopia and not into Utopia (any scholar of Edmund Burke will tell you that conservatives should always mistrust the idea of utopia) but changed it all the same.
Margaret Thatcher was easily one of the most polarizing figures in British politics, not only despised by the left, but dismissed, mistrusted as subversive, and ultimately rejected by members of her own party. In America, so longing for courageous leadership of quality, the icon of the Iron Lady makes for an easy subject of hagiography (far more so on the right than on the left, for obvious reasons). Of course, the legend of Thatcher is sustained by the historic details of her story, but when we talk about heroes, royalty, saints, and goddesses, the details include symbols that become part of the myth.
Pallas of Westminster
Born Margaret Hilda Roberts, the future Prime Minister had an austere childhood in which the values of thrift and frugality were instilled by her strict lower middle class parents. Much has been made out of her relationship with her father, a green grocer, Methodist lay preacher, and a local politician, particularly in that her mother is hardly mentioned at all (it was even deftly addressed in the film The Iron Lady): many think this is important, although few specify how. We know that Alfred Roberts took his youngest of daughters to the library every week and instructed her in politics in life in ways that fathers usually do with sons rather than daughters. That daughter would later go to Oxford and study chemistry and we also know that after age sixteen, Margaret had little say to her mother, or of her mother in the following years.
What seems to be implied is an Electra Complex, the daughter’s equivalent to Oedipus, and while I am not sure that I could dismiss that assessment, I also see a daughter who sprang from her father’s accomplishments in a way that eclipsed her mother, just as Pallas Athena sprang from the head of her father Zeus rather than from the womb of her mother Metis. We know little about Metis, but we do know that Pallas practically became lieutenant for her father, keeping his shield and thunderbolt safe, and that she also devised practical things, such as the spool and spindle, the bridle, the olive tree, as well as law, technology, and war strategy.
Indeed, Margaret Roberts the chemist graduate from Oxford would later take great satisfaction of being the first Prime Minister to have been trained as a scientist (far more in fact than being the first woman Prime Minister). Much was later made that the British economy, under her government, was treated as a series of monetarist experiments, not unlike experiments conducted in a laboratory: again, Pallas was a goddess of technology.
Margaret married Denis Thatcher and studied law, and after giving birth to twins Carol and Mark, took the bar examination. Law, much like chemistry, is a subject in which a command for details and facts is essential, and again, Margaret, excelled here. While critics have scorned her final marks as lackluster, the fact that she still attained them ought not be dismissed, particularly when one views footage of Margaret, now Mrs. Thatcher, as a Member of Parliament (MP) which she became in 1959, representing the constituency of Finchley in north London: her confidence and carriage, while in the early years certainly lacking the leonine command for which she became infamous in the 1980’s, are nonetheless intriguing.
As the film The Iron Lady portrays, Thatcher had to work to change her voice, deepen it for gravitas and authority, lest she sound too shrill. As professed Thatcher admirer Joan Collins observed during her studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, many acting students from places like Manchester and Liverpool had to lose their accents and attain the respected Received Pronunciation or BBC English; in contrast, today many British leftists and provincials take pride in how they never lost their native regional accents. Regardless, politics is a theatre, and to be a good player, one must speak with a voice that carries respect, and in the class-conscious circles of British society (both left and right), that was not the voice of a middle class matron.
While Thatcher’s voice deepened, she adjusted her attire and hair to suit her role as leader. It was said that she always traveled with her hairstylist's schedule in mind, something in stark contrast with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hilary Clinton, the latter who seemed to take particular pleasure in the freedom of no-nonsense hair. Also contrasting with Clinton, as Prime Minister, Thatcher reportedly rarely ever wore a pant suit (her son Mark did not even think that she owned one), and when she did, it was when she would visit an oil rig or a submarine and for the purposes of dignity did not think a skirt would be sufficient. Yet, this need for dignity need not be dismissed as prudery or Victorian modesty so much as a maintenance of authority: her hair was her helmet; her makeup, war paint; her wardrobe, armor.
War was certainly on Thatcher's mind in early spring 1982, when Argentina seized the Falklands Islands, a remote outpost in the South Atlantic. Here, the macho Argentine junta, desperate for some popular goodwill, invaded the isles that the British had held since 1830. One might not fault the junta too much, for not only had the Thatcher government’s tight budget necessitate a cut in defense of the Falklands, a recent nationality law in Parliament stripped the islanders of full British citizenship, and the British had even discussed the possibility of a leaseback option, by which sovereignty of the islands would inevitably go to Buenos Aries. However, for a rightwing military junta to take those islands by force was utterly unacceptable: even the leftwing politicians in Parliament would not countenance this sort of aggression. With some unofficial strategic help from the U. S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (but no official help from the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig) and as well as Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Britain was able to win back the Falklands.
The overt act of aggression of the Argentines might remind one of Poseidon attempting to take Attica, and the Atticans then turning to Pallas Athena. Athena countered Poseidon and won: Attica is now known as Athens, so named for the goddess whose images populated the city. (There is a twist of history that heralds correspondence and synchronicity: at the time of the former prime minister's death, there was talk about about renaming the Falklands's capital Port Stanley after Margaret Thatcher.) Commanding from her base of civil authority in London, taking messages from Washington, New York, and all over the world, Thatcher was the Pallas of Westminster, a goddess of war by strategy, and she was able to defeat the blustering bully in the South Atlantic. So her regime was secured and a second election victory the following year was assured.
Venus on the Thames
Of course, sometimes the weapons of Athena can be enhanced by the tool of a goddess of love, namely charm, often dismissed as a frivolity. While dealing with world leaders, ranging from King Hussein of Jordan, Danish Prime Minister Poul Schlüter, and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, Thatcher often charmed her foreign counterparts, certainly even flirting with them. To most Americans today and but also to her contemporary critics and enemies, the idea of Thatcher as a Marilyn Monroe figure is absurd, which is why François Mitterrand’s observation that the Iron Lady had the mouth of Monroe is so memorable. And yet, there are several anecdotal stories in which after a long day in the Commons or during a private meeting in Downing Street, Thatcher would kick off her shoes and curl them up on the couch and have a drink: confident, informal; it could even be flirtatious.
Charm was certainly lacking in many characters among the women’s movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Gloria Steinem might have been articulate, appropriately dressed, even groomed, but she was bland, plain, almost ugly. Looking at photographs around the same time of Hillary Rodham, we see a similar looking woman: such a dowdy specimen. In those days, to wear makeup, to do anything cosmetic, even with the hair, was a heretical affront to the feminist cause, at least until Farah Fawcett instigated an explosion in curling iron sales. At the time, beauty and glamour were dismissed as misogynist tools by which patriarchy repressed women. Also, when a man would do so much as open a door for a woman, something for which he was instructed from early boyhood to do in order to be grown up and civilized, his act of decency and gallantry would receive savage and scathing responses. Good manners were injured in those years and memories of those uncouth harridans no doubt inspired the image of the “Feminazi”; when a modern woman insists on pay equal to a man’s for the same job but insists that she does not think of herself as a “feminist”, she is thinking of that type of humorless woman.
In contrast, Margaret Thatcher enjoyed and even exploited her femininity. As a woman, she utilized the gender roles and a gentleman’s deference to a lady’s dignity to her advantage: she would let the men who served her stand when she entered or left a room. Outside of the Cabinet and on the world stage, we think of the cordial friendship between Thatcher and Reagan, two political soul mates, in which she enjoyed his plainspoken vigor, warmth, kindness, and personal passiveness that bordered on masochism and he honored her intelligence and spirit, as well as her demanding presence that bordered on sadism: in many ways, it was a chaste romance, as there is absolutely no evidence that either of them were improper or disloyal to their spouses. Beyond Reagan, we again look to Mitterrand, who confessed to finding her in part appealing, and he had to disagree with her not only as a Frenchman to her English womanhood, but also as a socialist to her conservative. Her femininity and charm worked with Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom she certainly disagreed with more than Mitterrand, but still found him to be a man with whom she could do business.
However, not all of Aphrodite is dulcet and bright. In Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia described a woman with great verbal strength and will and connected her with the Bald or Bearded Venus. Paglia pointed to Bette Davis’s performance as Margo Channing in All About Eve and Elizabeth Taylor’s as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: the quips, arguments, the chewing of scenery—Thatcher did all that and would have done Margo or Martha proud. Many political enemies and rivals like Labour's Neil Kinnock were immune to Thatcher's feminine charms and brutalized by her language, but looking to the classics, one finds that some could resist the power of Aphrodite and that her powers, both dark and bright, were not absolute; still, they provided the social lubrication of manners, charisma, flirting, even verbal combat, which carry a message and mission closer to success.
Juno Britannia
The classics hold that the queen of the gods was not Zeus’s daughter-lieutenant or love goddess but was the jealous Hera, whom the Romans called Juno. A force of regal rage, Juno was a character bent on revenge, as when she was denied the Golden Apple and when she visited troubles upon Aeneas on his quest that would eventually lead to the destruction of her city Carthage. There are stories of Thatcher’s pettiness and vindictiveness, such as against her school headmistress that almost succeeded in preventing young Margaret from taking the necessary Latin that would get her to Oxford. “You are frustrating my ambition!” young Margaret protested, but with her father’s help, she got her Latin and years later, adult Margaret no doubt took great pleasure in correcting the Latin of that same teacher at a public event. Oxford itself became a target of Thatcher’s revenge: previously, standing Prime Ministers that were Oxford graduates would receive honors from the revered University, but due to opposition to her budget cuts, the university establishment refrained from honoring during her premiership, despite it being her alma mater. In the second volume to Charles Moore's biography on Thatcher, we find that she was personally hurt by this, but she kept her pain private (such an English and iron thing to do); her public response: she gave her papers and archives to Oxford’s ancient rival Cambridge.
However, Juno was not merely an angry woman slighted: she was a queen. In the case of Margaret Thatcher, as Prime Minister, she deferred to her own Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II. Much speculation has been made about the relationship between these two powerful figures of the British state: their love for their fathers and the impact their respective relationships with these men seem to be what little they shared in common. While Thatcher was a product of her class and generation and was fiercely loyal to the monarchy as an institution, there are rumors that she dismissed the Queen as one that would vote for the Alliance (of Social Democrats and Liberal Party, the predecessor to the current political party of the Liberal Democrats). Being very correct and patriotic as a monarchist (and reputedly curtseying lower than anyone), Thatcher said little about her relationship with the Queen and only mentioned the monarch a handful of times in her memoirs. Critics of the prime minister argued that Thatcher was trying to assert herself as a queen in her own right, and in the later years of the 1980's, it was difficult to counter that.
As for Her Majesty herself, being ceremonial head of state and society, the Queen’s role was made easier during times of political consensus, and in postwar Britain, consensus indeed ruled the country: Butskellism was the unofficial system by which successive Conservative governments did not undo the advancement of socialism put in place by the previous Labour governments. Thatcher’s defiant shredding of that consensus certainly rocked the boat by which much of the Queen’s reign had sailed since 1952. In any case, it has been argued that theirs was an inconvenient relationship (as was the Queen's with Princess Diana), but it appears that in time, the Queen came to an understanding and perhaps even a sympathy for Mrs. Thatcher: after all, the Queen attended Thatcher's funeral, the first prime minister's funeral that she had attended since Winston Churchill's funeral in 1965.
Despite Thatcher’s own assurances, we can be fairly certain that the two did not agree in matters pertaining to the Commonwealth, specifically on the approach to addressing Apartheid in South Africa. As Liberal Democrat peeress and Thatcher contemporary Shirley Williams had noted in a documentary for the Telegraph, there is no evidence that Thatcher was herself a racist. She was, however, quite indifferent to anti-colonial liberationists and revolutionaries, yet after the Second World War, most revolutionaries were Marxists, and she was explicitly anti-Marxist. The Queen, though no Marxist herself, enjoyed her role as unifier of disparate countries that were formerly part of the British Empire that was now the Commonwealth of Nations, an entity which included successful Western democracies like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as well as several single-party countries under the yoke of Marxist despots, and a few whom the Queen often enjoyed a friendly rapport.
Thatcher’s early encounter with revolutionaries happened when her government took to rectifying the problem of Rhodesia, a former colony whose Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) made it both an international pariah and diplomatic embarrassment for the British. Under Ian Smith, Rhodesia attempted to keep white minority rule while allowing limited representation for the native African people: it was not Apartheid as practiced by the South Africans, but it was not a native majority rule that was favored by successive British governments, both Labour and Tory. The British, while successful in keeping other countries from recognizing Rhodesia’s independence—only South Africa and Portugal engaged with the wayward colony—UDI was an embarrassment for London. The Bush War continued, with fighting that entangled neighboring Commonwealth countries of Zambia and Botswana, and later former Portuguese colonies Angola and Mozambique, now independent after the death of Salazar. Despite such odds, Rhodesia also had fairly successful lobbyists among the Conservative MP’s that were sympathetic to imperial nostalgia and generally hostile to revolution. It was assumed that Margaret Thatcher would be receptive to overtures from the Rhodesian lobby, but instead took very seriously Britain’s imperial role as colonial overseer of the elections by which the former pariah state became Zimbabwe and the revolutionary Marxist Robert Mugabe became leader of the new independent country.
There is little doubt that Thatcher disliked Mugabe and she certainly would have been concerned that South Africa's Nelson Mandela would be a similar character; in fact, history now shows that while his successors have more in common with Mugabe, Mandela himself proved to be a man of extraordinarily magnanimous character, a fact to which Thatcher readily conceded in her memoirs, despite obvious political disagreements with him (dismissing his politics as outdated collectivism). However, during the 1980’s, many figures on the Right (I recall a piece by a National Review writer a few years back in which he complained about trying to tolerate the unsavory character of Afrikaaner-dominated South Africa during the Cold War) accepted the notion that while Apartheid was abhorrent, the revolutionaries fighting the white minority government were Soviet tools in the Cold War: in this, the South African lobbyists were more successful than their Rhodesian counterparts. Denis Thatcher also had business ties with South Africa and he convinced his wife that sanctions, which were sought by the Commonwealth, would be unsuccessful. Additionally, anti-apartheid politician Helen Suzeman, a lone Jewish woman in a South African Parliament dominated by Calvinist men, expressed opposition to sanctions and disinvestment, pointing out that many black South Africans were employed by foreign interests, an important consideration in a country that did not offer a safety net or welfare for blacks. Accordingly, Margaret Thatcher would resist attempts for sanctions at Commonwealth meetings, reportedly even crying to protest that she was being mistreated, not only by the African leaders from Nigeria and Zambia, but also those from Canada and Australia: these are details which do not quite mesh with the Iron Lady legend or a Pallas of Westminster myth, but one can imagine a Venus on the Thames shedding tears when she did not get her way.
The Queen, always present at Commonwealth summits, would be concerned that this organization, dismissed by some Thatcherites as merely an ornament of the past, would split. In fact, in 1986 there was a leak from someone on staff at Buckingham Palace that the Queen was upset with how the Thatcher government was handling the matter of South Africa and the Commonwealth. Much ink was spilled in the press over this controversy, since the monarch must always be seen as apolitical and above party politics. In time, the matter was smoothed over in the papers, while for the rest of Thatcher’s time at Number 10, both HM and PM maintained what appeared to the cameras to be a perfectly correct Constitutional relationship.
It has been speculated that the Queen did not appreciate how as the years went on, Thatcher became more regal in bearing. In 1982, after the Falklands War, Thatcher received a victory salute, an honor considered reserved for the Sovereign rather than the political head of government. The Royal Family was also said to be irked when Thatcher announced to the press that her son’s wife gave birth to a child: “We have become a grandmother.” Some argued that Thatcher merely said “we” rather than call attention to herself by saying “I”, but using regalia is a way any woman calls attention to herself, and for a politician with a mission and message, it must be serious attention indeed.
One thinks of the Prime Minister in Poland and the Soviet Union, attired with spectacular furs and smart clothes that made her a striking contrast to the drab world of communist Eastern Europe:
In the matters of statecraft and diplomacy (in fact, in all human relations), one is wise not to completely dismiss this usage of wardrobe and cosmetics as superficiality: by presenting herself as this modern queen (with due apologies to Her Majesty), Thatcher elevated her cause and her country, as Juno Britannia. It was a well dressed and well-spoken Thatcher whose negotiations with Deng Xiaoping led to the Sino-British Joint Declaration for Hong Kong, a settlement that enabled the former colony to continue to be one of the most successful economies in the world: a politician dressed like an American feminist from the 1970’s or a grunge rock poetess from the 1990’s could have participated in negotiations on the world stage, but would not have spoken well for cause or country. Was Thatcher always so prim and proper? Absolutely not and we have anecdotal stories and video footage showing that she was not always pristine, but the record leaves us with those regal images illustrating the symbolism by which history and mythology often intersect.
All three goddesses had favorites, those for whom they were fond and graced with attention and favors: Aphrodite favored her son the Trojan prince Aeneas and his cousin the lecher Paris; Hera favored the heroic Jason; and Athena favored the wily Odysseus. Likewise, Thatcher had her favorites, including her own son Mark, as well as dashing and handsome men like Cecil Parkinson. Thatcher also greatly admired intelligence and talent and accordingly surrounded herself with intelligent and talented men. Many have noted that among those she favored were, like Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, Jewish. During the Victorian era, there had been in the person of Benjamin Disraeli a Tory Prime Minister of Jewish descent (Disraeli had converted to Anglicanism as a child), but few other Jews had advanced very far in British politics. However, Thatcher spoke highly of Judaism and Jewish people. Some wrote off Thatcher's Jewish sympathies as political good sense, since her constituency Finchley had a sizable Jewish community, but it is also known during the 1930's, her sister Muriel had a pen pal in Austria named Edith, a Jewish girl who thanks to the efforts led by Mr. Roberts, the local Rotary club was able to get the child out of the Continent and escape before it was too late. Over the course of her eleven years in power, Thatcher appointed five Jewish men to her Cabinet; in a country of 60 million people with less than 400,000 that are Jewish, that is quite a figure. In fact, Thatcher's philosemitism was so striking that the former Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan quipped that under her leadership there were more "old Estonians in the Cabinet than old Etonians." It is also said that Thatcher appreciated the self-help preached by the Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits; this certainly was in contrast with the criticism that the bishops from the Church of England had for her Government's social and economic policies (bizarrely, it is reported that when asked by the Queen if he thought that Mrs. Thatcher was Christian, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that he thought the Prime Minister's religion was more Hebraic) and the Iron Lady was so grateful for the Chief Rabbi's support that she saw to it that he was elevated to the House of Lords in 1988.
Like Athena rescuing Attica from Poseidon, or the verbal Bearded Venus shredding the scene, or Juno bent on revenge, the combative Thatcher is the image most associated with the late Prime Minister. Argument, assertiveness, bombast: the 1980’s was the bold decade of New Wave music and Andrew Lloyd Webber, with synthesizers blaring and cymbals crashing. Looking at the materialism and consumerism of the time, one can see evidence of aspiration and opportunity, but also notes how they fueled leftist critics who point to the unemployment and civil unrest of the Eighties: Britain’s manufacturing industry and mining towns were casualties of Thatcher’s policies. Countering this criticism, Thatcher would argue that the welfare state must no longer burden the taxpaying citizen and that individuals had to take responsibility for themselves.
Consider the basket case Britain was in the 1970’s: the grainy film footage of the three day work week and the Winter of Discontent does not show a country that stands impressive against the glitzy Britain of Culture Club, privatization, and the Big Bang of 1986. The glitz and Technicolor glamour came at a price, with years of high unemployment and damaged industries that never recovered: certainly parts of England prospered, but much of Wales and Scotland suffered. Could mining towns have recovered, without the mines? Growing up near a town that was dependent on a major employer (the railroad) whose departure would have devastated the community, I can easily imagine the difficulty mining towns suffered during the infamous miners’ strike of 1984-1985, and ponder what it would mean to the town if the mine closed. After closure of the mines, these towns received subsidies from the British government and later from the European Union, but those payments were only temporary and rather than use the money to start up new industries, the money was spent elsewhere (the local pubs, mostly), so when the payments ceased, there was nothing to show for it. It is easy to be judgmental with townspeople for not being the investing type or the type to start new companies to update the communities into the service-based economy that was the Thatcherite goal, but as critics of Thatcher would say, society is not a laboratory for experiments and those mining townspeople were not the type to think of starting new companies, or think to become that type that would. The desolation and bitterness of the pit closures endures, and perhaps one might understand the glee with which many people celebrated the news of Thatcher’s death, but one is also correct in saying that other opportunities were available but apparently were not recognized: compassion (scathingly dismissed by Thatcher as patronizing) insists that we appreciate that others have suffered, but discerning judgment and hindsight suggest that had other choices been made, prosperity may have resulted.
When Thatcher resigned from the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1990 (Cabinet members, some looking forward to a future with Europe, found it easy to turn against the Prime Minister who harangued them for years as she became increasingly arrogant and reckless: the results of a leadership contest, in which she failed to win an outright majority, were received when she was in the French capital--a judgment in Paris indeed), she was replaced with the relatively affable John Major. A milquetoast compared to his virago predecessor, Major maintained much of Thatcher’s legacy while trying to be himself, just as George H. W. Bush maintained the successes of Ronald Reagan while trying to be his own man. The 1990’s were not as loud or brash as the 1980’s, but they also did not revert to the dark years of the 1970’s, and for that, some credit must go to Major, as he practiced that Tory principle of staying in power until the Opposition is ready for Government. In fact, when Labour came back to power in 1997 (under the banner “New Labour” and stripped of much of its native socialism), Tony Blair did little to alter the course of Thatcherism: neither Blair nor his successor Gordon Brown even so much as restored free milk to schoolchildren, a policy which Thatcher had ended in 1971 when she was Secretary of State for Education and Science, for which she earned the name “Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.” Of course, today the Labour Party is not so new and after the Conservatives under David Cameron won an outright majority in the Commons in the 2015 general election, the Blairite moderate faction is no longer in control of the Labour Party, which is now led by Jeremy Corbyn.
When she left Number 10 Downing Street in November 1990, Thatcher stated that Britain was a much better place than when she became Prime Minister in 1979. Much of Britain had improved, but as indicated by the malicious pettiness expressed by nameless yobs, disgruntled unemployed miners, washed up actresses, and pointlessly asexual musicians, hers was not an unambiguously successful or universally lauded legacy. The acquisition of things, which demonstrated middle class aspirations and spurred economic growth, instead all too often illustrated banal materialism and empty lives. In many ways, the rugged individualism celebrated during the Thatcher years did not instill a sense of personal responsibility but seems to have bred a feeling of entitlement that lacks a sense of community that had been part of British society in previous generations. When Thatcher said “There is no such thing as society,” it was a call for people to take care of themselves and not expect support from the taxpayer; instead, those words are now viewed as a symptom of social ills like apathy and greed rather than a condemnation of sloth. Thatcher wanted her revolution to be moral and by her own admission, economics was merely "the tool" for that revolution. Unfortunately, Thatcherism started at the close of the decade of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, so while it certainly did not invent selfishness, it readily provided more outlets and excuses for a selfishness which had already taken root in British life.
An Iron Lad?
There is also Section 28, a law passed by Parliament which stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” As MP, Margaret Thatcher had rightly voted to decriminalize homosexuality, something which certainly helped put an end to blackmail and extortion, but her Government’s passing of Section 28 in the late 1980’s is not something that I can celebrate. When it was law, it is was never invoked against anyone for violating it and no one was ever taken to court because of it, but from the perspective of gay advocacy and human rights, Section 28 was an active sin of commission, unlike the sin of omission for which the Reagan administration has been accused for its lack of response to AIDS in the early years.
However, as it turns out, Thatcher's response to the AIDS crisis contrasts with that given by her American counterpart. I will admit that I was surprised when I first discovered this in reading God and Mrs Thatcher: The Battle for Britain's Soul by Eliza Filby. While it is not doubtful that Thatcher was squeamish about frank and open talks about sexuality, she allowed for policies which helped to curb the spread of AIDS. Given the British government's powerful role in health services (i.e., the National Health Service), as Prime Minister (a position which has been described as an elected dictator), Thatcher stood to make a greater impact in the fight against AIDS, but I also I think it was her training as a scientist which allowed for her to take seriously the advice from health officials rather than clergymen (many of whom were at odds with her anyway, as relayed in God & Mrs Thatcher) or the more prudish voices in the Cabinet. This orientation to science helped to carry the balance towards saving lives; Britain would have relatively fewer rates of AIDS cases than most other western countries. That fact does not take away that Section 28 was passed by Parliament under a Thatcher government and that it remained on the books for years, but in the battle against AIDS, it was a Thatcher government that saved lives.
Gay people were not the great enemy for Thatcher (after all, the playwright Ronald Millar, who wrote her famous line "The lady's not for turning", was gay): the great enemy was the tyranny from Moscow. In the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, too many people tend to forget how uncertain the defeat of Stalinism was thought to be and that at the time, not many believed that the Western allies would survive. The communist leaders of the old Soviet Union, while certainly opposed to most organized religions and moral traditions espoused by those that practiced them, were no friends to gay people: the early Bolsheviks may have decriminalized homosexuality, but Stalin made it a crime again in the 1930's, declaring homosexuality to be the disease of the bourgeoisie and accordingly, had gay men imprisoned, just as Castro put them into camps. Today, the haggard Bolsheviks and their Stalinist bastard successors are no longer in charge at the Kremlin, but their replacements have enacted legislation similar to Section 28 and have been accused of interfering with voting in the United Kingdom and in the United States; personally, I see this latter conflict as a continuation of the Great Game, which predates the Russian Revolution and was even featured in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim, but is now fought in social media rather than in Central Asia.
Any articulate gay activist can win a debate about the injustice of Section 28, but one also might like to imagine how a right-leaning gay politician could be. Ruth Davidson is leader of the Scottish Conservatives in the Scottish Parliament and she lives openly as a lesbian with a domestic partner; she is a strong woman in her own right, but she was only elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2011, so it is too soon to say how much of an iron lady she is. However, it is more of a challenge to the imagination to consider a right-leaning gay man and how he would compare with Thatcher, a leader who, as previously discussed, was not above using her feminine charm, an option not so accessible to males: how does one conjure the figure of an Iron Lad? I do not imagine such a figure to be like Milo Yiannopoulos, whose antics indicate a need for time to mature. Tory MP Conor Burns, who currently serves as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, is openly gay and frequently visited Baroness Thatcher during her last years. One might also consider the late and prophetic Pim Fortuyn of the Netherlands and Germany's Jens Spahn, who may or may not be the next chancellor and therefore the first openly gay leader of a G-7 country.
A compelling example of Thatcherite fierceness displayed by a gay man might be found in Peter Thiel: not in the latter's speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention (in which he said he was a proud gay man and a Republican, perhaps shocking words to some, but not so amazing if one has attended a Log Cabin meeting or a gathering of Cheryl Ladd fans) but when he vanquished Gawker. It is a story that echoes how Thatcher broke the power of the coal miners' union, led by the avowed Stalinist Arthur Scargill. In both stories, through calculation, determination, a bit of subterfuge, and obstinate will, Thiel and Thatcher brought down an enemy (Thiel secretly sponsored the legal representation of Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker; Thatcher publicly posed as a bystander but in fact took an active role in fighting Scargill). I would like to think an Iron Lad, whether he follows the example of Burns, Fortuyn, Spahn, or Thiel, would reject any legislation like Section 28 (one can appreciate religious sensitivities, but there is no ethical justification for such a law today) and would also know that his liberty had been more secure thanks to the efforts of the Cold Warriors like Thatcher and that he has himself excelled in a country with liberty and a free enterprise economy, because as Andrew Sullivan pointed out in his obituary for Thatcher, the affluent gay scene of modern Britain is a part of Thatcher’s legacy, and I say that is definitely in spite of Section 28 but continues to exist (even thrive) because London does not (yet) bow to Putin.
"Just like a woman..."
I think also of personal betrayals by Thatcher. When the ousted Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his family were seeking a place to settle, as leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher had purportedly promised asylum to the exiled emperor, but after winning the 1979 election and becoming Prime Minister, she did not keep her promise to the dying Shah. A few years after the Shah’s death, it was Thatcher’s American counterpart and ally Ronald Reagan who would let the widowed Shahbanou settle with her children in the United States.
Another person betrayed by Thatcher was Freddie Laker, the airline mogul who revolutionized air travel in the 1960’s. The commendable entrepreneur was certainly someone that Thatcher wanted in a service industry economy, but Laker was at odds with the state-run British Airways and took them to court in the United States: rather than help a man who supported her politically, Thatcher kept her eye on privatization and wanting British Airways free of legal troubles, she reportedly got President Reagan’s Justice Department to throw out Laker’s case. Laker was ruined, but British Airways was privatized in 1987.
However, an ally that Thatcher did not betray was Augusto Pinochet, who in the early years of the first Blair government had been arrested in London and whose case for extradition to Spain was argued among the Law Lords in the House of Lords (at the time, Britain did not have a Supreme Court). Herself no longer in the Commons and her party no longer in Government, Thatcher tried to sway sympathy on behalf of a brutal man whose legacy in his country is as divisive than Thatcher’s is in Britain. For a century that included the likes of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin, Pinochet might not make the top five list of mass-murdering scum of the twentieth century, but there is also no dispute that atrocities occurred during his rule in Chile, which began with a 1973 coup supported by the CIA; indeed, before he died, Pinochet himself admitted that he had responsibility for those atrocities. However, there is also no dispute that Chile under Pinochet had helped Britain in the Falklands War and it was out of respect for that help that Thatcher argued on his behalf, this man whose rule over Chile was perhaps as brutal as that of the Argentine junta from which she liberated the Falkland Islands. That Thatcher chose to be loyal to a dictator to whom she owed political favors rather than an exiled head of state approaching his deathbed or a struggling businessman seeking an honest deal indicates her pragmatism as a politician. It also indicates the ugliness and cold-bloodedness of politics: it is an arena not for the faint of heart or a person of lesser mettle.
The Next Thatcher?
One might ponder recent and current women leaders and contrast them with Thatcher. Some think of Nikki Haley, the current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, but she has only been in the public eye since 2005, when she was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives: as with Davidson, it seems too soon to determine how strong and ferric their leadership will be. This is particularly important when remembering how, almost 10 years ago, many American conservatives were desperate to think of the-then Alaskan governor Sarah Palin as a modern-day Maggie. Prior to her selection by Senator John McCain, Palin was virtually unknown outside of Alaska and time has shown that the desire to view Palin as a modern Margaret Thatcher indicated a longing for that sort of confident leadership which Thatcher provided rather than any affirmation of Palin’s political aptitude. Still, rather than completely dismiss the Alaskan governor, we can think again of Thatcher’s children versus Palin’s children: in contrast to Mark and Carol, it can be readily believed that the Palin children will not be so decidedly distant from their mother when she dies.
Another woman leader is former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who two years ago, most thought would be the first woman U.S. President. Clearly, the former First Lady had the ambition to be the boss of the land, but she is no Iron Lady, yet as in the contrast with Palin, she may have been a better mother to her child than Thatcher was to her children. Regarding the careers of Clinton and Thatcher, their husbands played pivotal roles, but while Clinton's career as an elected official and then as a Cabinet member began only after her husband's presidency ended and when she had attained sufficient name-recognition as a wife to a governor and then a president, Thatcher's husband did not have an elective political career to which his wife had to take a backseat; rather, Thatcher benefitted from the affluent home base that her businessman husband provided, and it was from that foundation which she could launch her career. In that sense, Margaret Thatcher, despite the dismissals by many feminists who insisted that they wanted a leader fighting for women's rights and not a rightwing woman leader, offers a stronger role model for aspiring women leaders: her political achievements were her own; she did not wait for her husband, nor did she need to wait.
A look at their childhoods will show that while they were both raised Methodists, there were important differences as to their respective relationships with their families. As discussed above, Thatcher was not close with her mother, but, like the Queen, revered her father, a man who was a grocer, a preacher, and a politician: all three roles made an impact upon her. In contrast, Clinton spoke glowingly about her mother and clearly adored the woman; it is quite a different story about her father. Like Thatcher's father Alfred Roberts, Hugh Rodham was a small businessman and while Mr. Roberts was reported to have been strict and stern, he was never described as a bully to be feared: it is fear, rather than love and reverence, which appears to be the nature of Clinton's relationship with her father and that seems to be why she only mentions him sparingly. One wonders the sort of private psychic wounds have sought healing in the public political arena.
During the 2016 campaign, Clinton started to have hints of Thatcher's nearly Gerald Ford moment, something which could be troubling, considering in later years when Thatcher fainted while giving a speech, which some later said was indicative of a mini-stroke: perhaps questions about Clinton's health are not unfounded. However, perhaps one can better find similarities by looking at the legacy that these women have left with their respective parties: since the 2016 election, Clinton's behavior has started to echo something that was not one of the Iron Lady's better qualities: Clinton has displayed a pettiness that could almost seem Thatcherish (rather than Thatcherite), as well as something of an inability to leave the stage. One can see sketchy similarities in this behavior with what some in the Tory Party came to resent in Thatcher and how she undermined her successor's authority as party leader and prime minister, and one cannot help but wonder what voices in the Democratic Party have found themselves silenced because Clinton has yet to let go. The fall of Margaret Thatcher left a festering poison in the Conservative Party that Thatcher herself did not inflict but also did not heal (and in fairness, perhaps she could not heal it) and her shadow will linger until the wound is healed; one wonders as to what sort of wound the Democratic Party will suffer if a similar festering shadow haunts its collective memory and how many will resent Clinton for it.
Some might also think of Angela Merkel, chancellor of a country which Thatcher mistrusted almost as much as the Soviet Union--a united Germany. When Merkel came to international prominence in 2005, she was set to lead her Christian Democrats to win her country's general election, but her party failed to win an outright majority, which lead to months of negotiating to make a working coalition. A similar lackluster election in 2017 lead to Merkel again negotiating with other parties to make a government. The Tories' decisive election victories in 1979, 1983, and 1987 spared Thatcher that arduous task. Despite the coalitions, after twelve years in power (exceeding Maggie's premiership of 11 years), Merkel is the senior head of government in the G7 and is even recognized by some to be the leader of the free world. Thatcher was destined to be remembered for making sweeping changes in the United Kingdom, whereas Merkel will be remembered for trying to save the euro in part by demanding austerity in parts of the EU and she will also be remembered for opening the borders of Europe in 2015. Merkel is something of a hausfrau figure, which might be necessary for a Germany trying to compensate for the horrors of the second world war, even decades after the atrocities, and for an united Europe that demands fiscal austerity of the Greeks but open borders for refugees and migrants. Thatcher would have understood the demands for fiscal responsibility but it is unlikely that she would have been so hospitable when it came to borders and security.
Inevitably, we also think to contrast Thatcher with her current successor, British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader, Theresa May. Unlike Thatcher, Haley, Palin, and Clinton, May is like Davidson and has no children (Merkel's current husband has two sons from a previous marriage), although I am not certain as to how much that has impacted her premiership. However, she is like Thatcher and to a certain extent Haley and Palin in that she is well groomed: many have commented on her shoes and she even appeared in Vogue. May's immediate predecessor was David Cameron, who the first time since John Major had led the Tories to an electoral victory, and in an apparent contrast to the rugged individualism of the Thatcher 1980's, he said at the 2005 Conservative Conference: "We know we have a shared responsibility, that we're all in this together, that there is such a thing as society; it's just not the same thing as the state." While this message apparently rejects Thatcher's "there is no such thing as society" remark, it is actually closer to the spirit of her full statement (which, as observed above, called for people to take responsibility), it set the tone back to the paternalistic Toryism of Macmillan and Disraeli rather than Thatcher's more radical neoliberalism. The daughter of a vicar and not a grocer, Theresa May took this platform even further, and we see this when we contrast Thatcher's focus on economics (which the latter had said was a tool) and the current Prime Minister's professed interest in social concerns: as Tim Stanley wrote in the Daily Telegraph, May is a "One-Nation Tory", a type of conservative that is similar to those known as Christian Democrats in continental Europe (e.g., Merkel) and Latin America; she is not a Thatcherite. When she came to power, she held court at her first Prime Minister's Questions, much to the delight of Tory fans around the world, but an ill-advised election last year which eroded her party's majority seems to have diminished her authority. Regardless, many hope that she (or her successor) can at least be like John Major and keep the Tories in power until the Opposition is ready for Government.
Boudica Beneath Big Ben
A feature of May's premiership, and even the cause for it, has been Brexit. While she campaigned for the Remain cause in the 2016 referendum concerning Britain's membership to the European Union, May became leader of the Tories and Prime Minister of a country that voted to leave that bloc. The first months of May's premiership saw her vacillate between declaring "Brexit means Brexit" and give little specification as to what that exactly means. Given Thatcher's ambivalent and uneasy relationship with the European project (it is true that in 1975, she campaigned for Britain to stay in what was then the Common Market and in 1985, her government ratified the Single European Act, by which much of Westminster's authority was subjected to Brussels and a common market became a community, but in 1993, when she was in the House of Lords, she opposed the document by which the European Community became the European Union, the Maastricht Treaty), it is not surprising that many who revere Thatcher insist that the Iron Lady herself would have supported the Leave option. It bears noting that Thatcher gave two full chapters in her 2002 book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World discussing the European Union, and not in flattering terms; however, rather than outright calling for leaving the EU, Thatcher concludes the book by discussing the possibilities for renegotiating the terms of Britain's membership with the EU. Of course, that book was written eleven years before she died and 14 years before the Brexit vote: many things, such as the Lisbon Treaty, happened, things which changed the nature of the European Union, and not in ways that would have endeared it with the Iron Lady. In any case, it is certain that Thatcher mistrusted Europe (in fact, she loathed Europeans). As an American citizen who does not live in Britain, I do not believe it to be good manners to be especially vocal when expressing opinions about another country as its membership with the EU--although I do remember hearing how every American president since Eisenhower wanted the United Kingdom in Europe in order to tone down the anti-American sentiments of the continent and did not seem all that interested as to what was best for Britain.
While I am certain that there have been trade and diplomatic benefits attached with EU membership (many of which Britain has enjoyed) and difficult consequences attached to severing membership, I have also observed that many Britons (from The Two Fat Ladies to the comedy writers of Yes Minister, Thatcher's favorite television show) found being a member of that bloc burdensome: one can imagine that the professed European goal of political integration does not settle easy with older generations who remember World War II, who were impressed with memories of German aggression, French surrender, Italian failure, and Dutch collaboration. Perhaps there is also a parochial trait in say the nature or rather the culture of English people (perhaps rather than other Europeans like the Italians or Germans, or even other Britons like the Scots and Welsh) which finds Europe less than appealing and can quickly dismiss the benefits of EU membership in favor of getting free of the bloc. I even recall seeing several comments to posts in social media which described the European Union as "EUSSR", which would certainly be insulting to those Eastern Europeans that suffered under the tyranny of the Soviet Union, but it also reveals how some in England have viewed the European project. If one reads a sufficient number of Thatcher biographies and watches a certain number of Thatcher documentaries, one can deduce that it might have been likely (but I cannot say that it is 100% certain) that the Iron Lady (who, without any doubt, was very proud to be British and who was also quite English) would have supported the Leave vote, and while she would not have appreciated possible meddling from Moscow in the matter, she'd be unlikely to shed too many tears regarding the breaking the yoke from Brussels and Strasbourg over Westminster (I was advised that her official biographer said that she would have supported a "hard Brexit"). One likes to imagine that if they were conducted when Thatcher was in her prime as prime minister, the Iron Lady's Brexit negotiations with her European counterparts would not be as those by Theresa May have been: the Iron Lady may have even reached an agreement, either something like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which she herself proposed in Statecraft, or, more likely, something close to the settlement Norway has enjoyed with the EU, as proposed more than once by The Economist. Regardless of the outcome of Brexit, one might imagine Margaret Thatcher (and perhaps with Theresa May as one of daughters of the Iceni queen) as Boudica in her chariot across from where Big Ben tolls, ridding Britain of foreign domination: it might be appropriate, given that the Brexit vote happened after Thatcher's death and the Romans left British shores after Boudica's passing, but the Iceni queen's story remains a reminder of one woman's gritty determination for her country, which is no doubt why a statue of her stands outside of the Palace of Westminster.
Legacy: Human and Private, Public and Evolving
Let us now consider the private human legacy and example of Margaret Thatcher. If one dares to look closer to home and hearth, one sees Thatcher’s twins Mark and Carol. Mark, evidently his mother’s favorite, seems to have fallen short of his mother’s dynamic persona and according to some sources, lacks his father’s quiet decency as a businessman: involved in a failed coup, he was deported from South Africa and has been barred from settling in the United States and Monaco. Carol, overlooked by her mother in favor of her brother, managed to make something of a career for herself, but unlike Nigella Lawson, who succeeded at coming out of her political father’s shadow, she will never be free of her mother. One pauses and considers the children of Ronald Reagan, and how his older son Michael, a respected figure in conservative media, and daughter Maureen, who participated in Republican politics while her father was in the White House, contrasted with younger children Ronald Jr., who hosted Saturday Night Live in 1985 and wrote for Playboy, and Patty, who wrote a Mommy Dearest-type book about her parents (filled with anecdotes which were later referenced in that odious celebration of San Francisco, Season Of The Witch) and posed for Playboy: Thatcher’s children seem to be in the middle, of trying to honor their parents but at times embarrassing themselves (in the case of Mark and Carol, this does not seem to be intentional). Comedian Russell Brand expressed pity for the Thatcher children, but I think Carol’s philosophical observations about her family are more useful for us: the marriage of her parents was a parallel partnership and after years of working on their careers, it would be nonsensical to expect their roles as grandparents to make up for their years of being distant sometimes even absent parents. It is quite sad to reflect on that, when one considers the human cost children pay when their parents’ focus on careers. This is not an attack on working women so much as a consideration of the human price that is paid for ambition and success.
The woman’s life was impaired by a series of strokes and she died in a suite at the Ritz hotel in London and her family was not at her side. Nigel Lawson noted that the Prime Minister was not “clubbable”, that outside of reading on subjects like religion, she did not have hobbies. Tory MP Edwina Currie mentioned how Thatcher once said that “home was a place where you go when there’s no work left to be done”, but for Margaret Thatcher, there was always work to be done. Many biographers discussed how she hated to go on vacations; visiting the Queen at Balmoral in the Scottish countryside was always dreaded. Her focus was on work, and when she was ousted from party leadership, that focus was taken from her. Watching interviews she gave just months after leaving power, one is struck by how shaken she was; interviews she gave years later, the anger and bitterness are quite evident. Sometimes people who have lost their focus turn to hobbies or recreation, but as both Lawson and Currie observed, she was not capable of trying either. Being practical, she wrote her memoirs and then went on the lecture circuit, a lucrative option worthy of a world leader whose politics helped others to become millionaires, but one that also allowed for wounds to fester.
Of course, to be bitter and hold grudges are usually things done by people prone to look back on the past: this does not seem to quite fit with the Margaret Thatcher portrayed in the first two volumes of her authorized biography, written by Charles Moore. In those pages, we saw the evolution of the girl who rose from the lower middle class, a figure of aspiration and talent, and the chutzpah that helped, in part, to overcome whatever native insecurities she had: they took her to the heights of democratic government and the world stage. I have observed that ambitious people are not prone to reflect on past failures and ask "what if" questions: they move forward with an eye on the future. Such people are not above shearing themselves free of the past, even if that means distancing themselves from old friends and family. Usually they recognize the hierarchy of life, will sort people in relation to their ambitions, and act accordingly: we know that Margaret Thatcher would bully others, usually the men in her Cabinet (the mousey Geoffrey Howe comes to mind), those whom she saw as her equals in Parliament; in contrast, and to her credit, we are told that she was respectful to the staff at Downing Street and at Chequers (all the same, I do not think I would want to have worked for her). Ambitious and aspirational people are often labeled "cold", but that is only part of it: they are focused, and what is not their target risks being dismissed as distraction and may well be left in the cold. Without the goals and targets of a career, then much for Thatcher may have seemed cold; hence, the bitterness, and again, we see that there is a human cost for ambition and success. Having read the first two volumes of his acclaimed biography, I hope that Moore will shed further light on this matter in the third volume, which we have been promised is the final volume.
Looking back, there is also the 2011 film The Iron Lady, which I have referenced the three times I have blogged Apple of Discord. We have been told that Thatcher's family and those close to her did not agree with the film's portrayal of Margaret Thatcher: they did not like seeing their venerated Iron Lady humiliated by dementia. Others, such as a review that appeared in the leftwing Guardian, argued that the film was about Thatcher without Thatcherism; I think John O'Sullivan at National Review was correct in his review when he said that the title should have been "The Lioness in Winter". Of course, the intention of the film was to tell a human story about a remarkable woman, and in that sense, it was a success: Meryl Streep, a Democrat from New Jersey, rightly won the Golden Globe Award, the British Academy Film Award, and the Oscar for her performance as the British Conservative icon. While I can appreciate those who question of the good taste of making such a film while its subject was still alive, I also admit that having had two grandmothers who lived even longer than Margaret Thatcher did (one lived to 100, the other to 95), I have witnessed the pain and sadness which mental deterioration brings to a family as a brilliant mind ages; I can respect that those close to Thatcher would view such a portrayal as insulting, but for me, it illustrated both how human Thatcher was as well as reminded me how formidable my own grandmothers were.
How lasting was her legacy? A decade ago, commentators on Thatcher reflected how she changed not so much her own party but more especially the Labour Party. As mentioned above, Tony Blair changed the Labour Party from being a socialist party in both identity and mission to a social democratic party. That alteration saw Labour winning an unprecedented series of three elections in 1997, 2001, and 2005. However, the charismatic Blair was succeeded by his dour Chancellor of the Exechequer Gordon Brown, who lacked his predecessor's unctuous charm and ability to keep Labour in power. The great recession of 2008 hit Britain early, which led some to view with suspicion the Thatcherite innovations which Blair and Brown continued, although Thatcher's legislation also included strict regulation on banking and investment, which is in contrast with the notion that the popular capitalism which her leadership provided and that Major, Blair, and Brown maintained (and, to a certain extent, adjusted, with lesser success; e.g., Major privatizing the railroads, etc.) caused that recession. Labour under Brown was defeated in 2010 and a Coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats made a government. When Brown duly resigned as leader of the party, his successor was another Blairite moderate Edward Miliband, who led Labour in Opposition from 2010 to 2015 and was expected to be prime minister, as many pollsters believed that Labour would win the 2015 General Election. To the surprise of many, the Conservatives won an outright victory and Labour suffered its second election defeat in five years. Those two electoral defeats led in part to further discrediting of the Blairite faction in Labour and the next leader became Jeremy Corbyn, the most unapologetic socialist to lead that party since Michael Foot. This reminds us that the much of history is cyclical: a party and a country might go back to policies that previous generations had rejected.
Could that then mean that the Iron Lady herself and her impact are ignored and even forgotten? Not necessarily: even if Labour goes back to its socialist roots and the Conservative Party embraces the One Nation Toryism of its current leader, Lady Thatcher changed her country: in some ways for the better, but not in all. While those who support free enterprise, be they rock-ribbed conservatives or old school classical liberals, agree that Thatcherism was necessary for its time, her critics are also right to say that there were political, economic, and social casualties due to her policies: Utopia is a fool's dream and even capitalists ought not view the 1980's as a golden age or a paradise lost. Still, that does not mean that now the time is right for socialism or that One Nation Conservatism is wrong. Different times have different battles requiring different strategies and different weapons and different leaders: there can be only so many taxes to adjust and only so many industries to privatize before one is left with just the Georgian silver. Regardless as to who rules Britain today or tomorrow, history and the legend of Margaret Thatcher provide examples of her conviction and her strength of character: even if her successors seem to forget her successes, others can still honor her values and may take some satisfaction in them, but when one takes up the fight in life, whatever cause to which one is committed, one should not ignore recreation, hobbies, or family. Snide leftists, generally prone to ridiculing matters like family values, are quick to point out that the Iron Lady died a sick and lonely woman: while I deplore their sanctimony, being mindful that such sentiments come in part from those envious that Thatcher achieved power as a Tory and without the sisterhood of women (she was not, as Currie observed "a sister") and that she was middle class, I can acknowledge their observation. Rather than condemn the late Baroness Thatcher, I am grateful for her exemplary good fight and public life and for the cautionary example of her bitterness and private death.
Over the past five years, I have pondered Margaret Thatcher's life and death, but life is ultimately for the living, and now more than ever, I grieve the over lack of obvious successors to her greatness, both in May's Britain and in Trump's America. I still hope that we will soon see a time for a new era of leadership in the cause of liberty; of sound law and order for the protection of life and property; when one can honor tradition and piety but reject insufferable sanctimony and hypocrisy. In any case, I am sensible enough to know that Burke was right, that one should always mistrust the idea of Utopia, and in turn, know that one must ready to expect there to be discord, and accordingly, I take satisfaction in knowing that the Apple of Discord is the fruit which Margaret Thatcher, as Pallas of Westminster, Venus on the Thames, and Juno Britannia, (and Boudica beneath Big Ben?) has left for us to claim.
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