16
LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN
Mountain Views News Saturday, April 13, 2013
HOWARD Hays As I See It
GREG Welborn
MARGARET THATCHER, A
HERO FOR OUR TIME
“If [gun laws] need to be
tightened up, or if we think that
it could prevent anything more
like this, then of course that will
be considered.”
He was armed with a handgun
and two legally-purchased semi-
automatic rifles. Sixteen people
were shot and killed, including
the gunman’s mother, and fifteen
injured before the killer turned the gun on
himself.
About a year later, the country stiffened
its gun laws; semi-automatic weapons were
outlawed, new restrictions placed on shotguns
and ammunition, registration requirements were
tightened and cops had more leeway to deny
permits to those deemed unfit.
The massacre took place in the Hungerford
area of Berkshire, England in 1987. The new gun
law got through Parliament under the leadership
of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, quoted
above.
I’ve wondered how Ronald Reagan would fare
with today’s corporate-controlled Republicans.
Here’s a president who argued it was unfair for a
bus driver to pay taxes on his earned income at a
higher rate than what a Wall-Streeter pays on his
capital gains. I can’t imagine many Democrats,
let alone Republicans, openly taking that position
today.
I wondered the same about Margaret Thatcher,
who, in addition to overseeing one of the U.K.’s
most significant gun control measures in a
generation, also accepted scientific fact as being
scientific fact. She was one of the earliest leaders
to sound the warning on climate change; “The
danger of global warming is as yet unseen but
real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices
so that we do not live at the expense of future
generations.”
Thatcher remained an ardent supporter of her
country’s National Health Service, which, unlike
President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, actually
is “socialized medicine”; “I believed that the
NHS was a service of which we could genuinely
be proud. It delivered a high quality of care . .
. and at a reasonably modest unit cost, at least
compared with some insurance-based systems.”
When discussing means to address climate
change, or getting firearms off the street, P.M.
Thatcher would often use the word, “sensible”.
The question is why it’s so hard here at home to
enact measures 90% of us agree are, at the very
least, “sensible”.
The main reason is we’re dealing with an
industry which, according to National Shooting
Sports Foundation, has an annual $32 billion
footprint on our economy (a figure approximate
to what’s spent yearly on the arts), and is
determined to maintain it.
Start with $30 million spent since 1990 buying
Congress through corporate front groups like
the NRA; $4.2 million for the 2012 election cycle
alone, with 96% going to Republicans. Then
create and disseminate talking points about how
Obama wants to take away everyone’s guns, or at
least establish a nation-wide registry of owners so
things will be in place when he decides the time’s
right to impose Sharia law.
Yeah, it’s crazy – but the pros orchestrating the
propaganda do their homework and follow the
polls, like one last month from Public Policy
Polling, showing that when targeting those who
last year voted for Mitt Romney, you’re dealing
with a crowd in which 61% believe global
warming is a hoax, 36% believe Saddam Hussein
was involved with 9/11, and 22% believe Barack
Obama is the “Anti-Christ”. Clearly, these are
folks who’ll buy into most anything.
The threat to wavering Republicans is that
if they don’t fall into line, if they show signs of
putting the interests of constituents over those of
arms manufacturers, they risk being “primaried”.
The lobbyists would invest millions putting
up challengers in “safe” Republican districts,
mobilize the base and guarantee a formidable
turnout of those determined to deny reelection
to anyone seen as siding with the Anti-Christ in
the White House intent on taking their guns.
Keeping guns out of the hands of unstable
people could have a serious impact on that $32
billion industry. Keeping them out of the hands
of unstable countries could cut into the estimated
(by the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute) $8.8 billion in annual arms exports
from the U.S.
Earlier this month the United Nations voted
overwhelmingly to approve a treaty calling
for a “background check” for nations seeking
arms abroad. As reported in the N.Y. Times, it
calls for “sales to be evaluated on whether the
weapons will be used to break humanitarian law,
foment genocide or war crimes, abet terrorism
or organized crime or slaughter women and
children.” Particularly threatening to arms
exporters, it calls for public disclosure of the
countries and regimes they deal with.
Ours was one of the 154 countries in support.
The only three votes against were cast by Iran,
Syria and North Korea. Ratification in the Senate
appears unlikely, though, as the NRA and their
servants in Congress have sided with Iran, Syria
and North Korea. In a recent fundraising appeal,
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) confides, “I don’t know
about you, but watching anti-American globalists
plot against our Constitution makes me sick ...
Ultimately, UN bureaucrats will stop at nothing
to register, ban and CONFISCATE firearms
owned by private citizens like YOU.”
Of course, the treaty only deals with international
sales - but if you’re going to side with Iran, Syria
and North Korea, you have to make stuff up and
target your appeal to the gullible and fearful.
Both Reagan and Thatcher were divisive
figures, and their policies arguably caused great
harm. They governed, though, in service to
their countries, not to corporate benefactors.
When they spoke of the advance of freedom and
fall of Communism, they appealed to our best
nature and highest aspirations. When protecting
accessibility to militarized firepower for the
deranged here and abroad, however, the only
option is to appeal to the basest fears and lowest
common denominator.
And regardless of politics, current efforts to
prevent measures from even coming to the floor
for debate and a vote cannot be described
as conservatism, but only as cowardice.
With the death this week of Margaret Thatcher,
former Prime Minister of England, the West has
lost one of its greatest leaders. She not only saved
her nation, but provided support for our own
President Reagan as he toiled to save America
from the depths of collapse and despair which
had already beset England. For this, we, as
Americans, owe her a debt of gratitude which we
can never repay, and it is for this that I dedicate
this week’s column.
Margaret Thatcher came to power as Prime
Minister in 1979 after Britain’s “winter of
discontent”. More than a political slogan, the
term aptly described a time when everything in
England was falling apart. There was nothing left
to cherish or celebrate. Inflation hit double-digit
levels, unemployment skyrocketed, the economy
was shrinking, 98% income tax rates had
driven entrepreneurs to the brink of collective
bankruptcy, the public unions had paralyzed a
nation with an almost year-long strike, and the
military had retrenched from guarantor of pax
Britannica to beggar of spare parts to keep its jeeps
rolling. Britain was written off by most leaders in
the West and East, alike, as ungovernable and a
has-been nation.
Into this stepped a woman of indomitable
spirit and unflinching faith in the average citizen.
Externally, she also faced an ascending Soviet
Union which threatened to overrun and subsume
Western Europe politically and morally, if not
actually militarily. Many in Western Europe had
simply given up on themselves, but not Margaret
Thatcher.
Margaret Thatcher knew instinctively that
freedom was not only good for the soul but good
for the success of a nation as well. In her own
memoir she commented on “the great complex
romance of international trade which recruited
people from all over the world to ensure that a
family in Grantham could have on its table rice
from India, coffee form Kenya, and sugar from
the West Indies”. She loosened the regulations
and taxes that were strangling her nation, and
she killed inflation. She privatized scores of
industries, thus turning losers, which required
support from the treasury, into winners, which
contributed to the treasury with new tax
revenues born of economic success and growth.
Her actions turned massive government deficits
into a surplus by the time she left office. Along
the way, she allowed the average citizen to
become stockholders, and thus stakeholders, in
British industry, thereby allowing them to enjoy
the fruits of economic recovery many times
larger than what ever could have been received
from government handouts had the government
retained control and ownership of more than a
third of the economy.
Thatcher was tested keenly when the
military junta running Argentina decided to
take advantage of what they perceived to be the
weakened state of Britain’s military capabilities.
Perhaps they were right and, under a leader of
less courage than Margaret Thatcher, they might
have succeeded in their invasion of the Falkland
Islands. But Margaret Thatcher stood tall and did
not abandon the rights and freedoms of British
citizens living on British soil. To many politicians,
the plight of this small band of citizens wouldn’t
have been worth much of a political fight, let
alone a full scale military fight thousands of miles
from home.
That, of course, was
exactly what was wrong
with Britain when
Margaret Thatcher
came along. England
did not respect its
own traditions, history
or principles. Too
many politicians had
shown in the past their
willingness to compromise with the public’s
freedoms, well-being and place in the world. The
world’s bad guys and bullies noticed, but they also
noticed that Margaret Thatcher was different.
Margaret Thatcher stood up against unions
at home, the junta in Argentina, and the
international left which sought to derail the
placement of U.S. cruise missiles in England and
Europe to counter the Russian SS-20 missiles
already stationed in Eastern Europe. Everyone
underestimated Thatcher and came away from
the experience more deeply respecting her
strength and Britain’s reinvigorated place on the
world stage.
To her countrymen, Thatcher rescued a dying
economy. She turned economic contraction
into U.S.-style growth rates which lifted
incomes at all levels. At every economic strata,
personal income rose. Internationally, though,
Thatcher’s contribution dwarfed her domestic
accomplishments.
Margaret Thatcher dissented strongly from
the conventional wisdom of the day, which held
that accommodation with the Soviet Union was
the only viable strategy. 40+ plus years of such
a cynical view had consigned a generation, and
millions, of Eastern Europeans to a life of misery
and neglect. The Soviets, like the Argentines,
thought she would also blink and concede critical
points. They, like the Argentines, were wrong.
While she was willing to deal with the Soviets,
she was nonetheless strident in defending the
principles of freedom and insisting that the
Soviet Union could be defeated. No longer, she
offered, would the millions living behind the iron
curtain be consigned to poverty and serfdom.
She pushed the case for constructive engagement
and while vigorously pushing the moral and
political case for freedom. The fall of the Berlin
Wall and the peaceful dismantling of the Soviet
Union are as attributable to Margaret Thatcher’s
courage and conviction as they are to Ronald
Reagan’s.
Margaret Thatcher came on to the political
stage at one of its most trying moments – a time
when the principles of the West were threatened
and mocked. She left that stage with the cause
of freedom and democracy once again a goal to
which millions can realistically aspire.
About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a
freelance writer and has spoken to several civic
and religious organizations on cultural and
moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area
with his wife and 3 children and is active in the
community. He can be reached gregwelborn2@
gmail.com
THEME: EARTH DAY
ACROSS
1. It’s a wrap
6. *A call to being green, acr.
9. Fog effect
13. Solo
14. Mother, sister or daughter
15. “_____ truly”
16. Teacher’s pet, e.g.
17. Radio knob
18. Consume
19. Bungle
21. *Biology branch
23. Long time
24. Niels Bohr’s study object
25. Cleopatra’s killer?
28. Christening acquisition
30. On which Romney and Obama
were found
35. It must go on?
37. *Like animal near extinction
39. Marilyn Munster to Herman
Munster, e.g.
40. Delhi dress
41. Sends by posts
43. Imitator
44. Are not
46. Mosquito net fabric
47. End of the line
48. Noontime
50. Give certain impression
52. DNA transmitter
53. Boll weevil, e.g.
55. Car display
57. *Garden helper
61. Iron Man’s robotic nemesis
64. French farewell
65. Galley tool
67. Vociferously praises
69. Choral composition with sacred
lyrics
70. Fix a game
71. He lives on Sesame Street
72. *You do it to your garden’s soil
before planting
73. “... ___ he drove out of sight”
74. Homes are often tested for this
DOWN
1. Maple syrup precursor
2. Reunion attendee
3. Lariat, e.g.
4. Used in some liquors
5. *Earth Day founder
6. Please get back to me
7. 17th letter of Greek alphabet
8. Rent again
9. Delivered by a mare
10. *Its emissions are regulated
11. Pharma product
12. Grammy of sports
15. Tower of London guard
20. Render harmless
22. *Corn holder, often left behind
to protect soil quality
24. Most aerial
25. Indian state
26. Harry Belafonte’s daughter
27. Focused or riveted
29. “Yes, ___”
31. One who fabricates
32. _____ colony, middle ages
33. *An earthly body
34. *Earth to ancient Romans
36. *Prop pusher
38. Do it “or ____!”
42. Beach souvenir
45. To give up or bow out
49. Up and down nod
51. *______ earth
54. Mercantile establishment
56. Kate Middleton’s head gear
57. Barack’s David
58. One wafting
59. Possible indoor allergy cause
60. Voyeur’s glance
61. Impulse
62. “____ your manners”
63. Assortment
66. *Clean ___ Act
68. Congressional title
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