Michael Barone has a superb column on the late Margaret Thatcher. She was a “crunchy” thinker who never let utopian fantasies get in the way of sober analysis of reality. All of the “soggy” thinkers who revel in wishful thinking and pretend that there will never be any adverse consequences from their many interventions to improve society couldn’t stand that she had the nerve to disagree with them.
Imagine where the UK would be today if it hadn’t been for Margaret Thatcher’s “divisiveness.” Throughout the 60s and 70s, the nation was on a steep downward trajectory thanks to socialism. If that had continued, today we wouldn’t be pointing to Greece as the poster child for statist ruin. Instead, we’d be pointing to the UK, and would have been doing so for at least 20 years.
