Most everything Margaret Thatcher achieved came because she refused to listen to those who said it couldn’t be done.
As a conservative, she championed a free market that elite British opinion thought a relic of the 19th century.
As a political leader, she injected spine into a drifting Tory Party, and — in the years before Reagan took office — stood almost alone among world leaders as she battled Soviet aggression.
As a woman, she fought her way to prime minister without once asking for special consideration on account of her sex.
In her day, the toffs dismissed her as the “shopkeeper’s daughter.” For Thatcher, that was a badge of honor. Her political life was spent working for a Britain where men and women could rise not because of their class but because of their talents and enterprise.
The bulk of that battle was moral. Against the relativists of her day, she believed the Western way of life superior to the alternatives because it was rooted in truth and human nature. For such a society to work, it depended on what political author Shirley Robin Letwin called the “vigorous virtues” — thrift, hard work, risk-taking, etc.
In other words, when she argued for free markets and democracy, it was not simply because they were more efficient. Thatcher would tell you it was because they were more moral.
Above all, she did not shrink in the face of criticism. When the Red Army’s newspaper in Britain slammed her as the “Iron Lady,” she turned it into a metaphor for her strength and conviction. “Being powerful is like being a lady,” she liked to say. “If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
We could use more of her today, on both sides of the Atlantic. In life, Thatcher was a friend to America and all freedom-loving people. In death, the acclaim she is now receiving attests to her willingness to stand up for what she deemed right even — especially — when it was not popular. RIP.