While others here are more able to assess her political and historical significance, I shall address another aspect of Lady Thatcher’s greatness: She drove ’em nuts. “We on the Left must keep our dignity today,” advised Dan Hodges in a blog post at the Telegraph. Judging from the blogosphere, the Left is not keeping its dignity today. In death, as in life, Baroness Thatcher is driving them crazy. Whenever feminists bring up the urgent need to elect more women, I respond, “Yes, indeed, we need more Margaret Thatchers.” Well, they didn’t mean that kind of woman. Somebody like Hillary Clinton, who hopes to pave her way to the White House on the backs of us poor, excluded “women and girls,” is more to their liking. Meryl Streep portrayed Lady Thatcher as all broody that in her ambitions she might have slighted her children. This was the feminist Having It All meme writ large, though Lady Thatcher herself gave no indication whatsoever that she was at heart a frustrated helicopter mom.
There are so many reasons to mourn the loss of Thatcher. One is that she represented everything the Left hated: the grocer’s daughter who went to Oxford and adopted upper-class diction — what Nancy Mitford called U Usage — and somebody who believed in the traditions and greatness of England and, by extension, the West. One of the things I love so about the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother — an Iron Lady in her own right — was that she adored Margaret Thatcher. The Queen Mum always raised her glass practically into the stratosphere when the Iron Lady Thatcher’s name came up at dinner. Neither of these gals made a profession out of being oppressed or acted as if women were wounded birds in need of special care. We need more real ladies who are real women. Oh, and did I mention that Thatcher was the greatest prime minister since Winston Churchill?