Browse archives: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995

Published on 10/16/1995 All articles from this issue

Margaret Thatcher

printer friendly version

Lady Margaret Thatcher charmed her audience once again at Flint Center in the recent Celebrity Forum. Introduced as the "Iron Lady" by host Dick Henning, Lady Thatcher proceeded to hold the audience spellbound for about an hour and a half including a question and answer time in which she minced no words in stating her opinions.

Thatcher did a retrospect on the past century noting that there were three major insolences that impacted the century and the world. One, science, starting in 1900 before there were cars, airplanes, computers and all the medical wonders that have changed the world. The second impact was Nazism and Communism as ideologies, one of which survived from 1917 until the present, in some ways. And the third was the impact of the two World Wars and the Cold War. She said that stepping up our defense was the only way we won the Cold War and a strong defense is essential to keep peace in the world.

About the Soviet Union she said that she discovered that when Gorbachev came on the scene in the 1980s that "He was a man we could do business with." At the time Gorbachev told her that 30% of all the produce of the production produced never got to market because they did not have a distribution or transportation system.

Waving the flag for the traditional family was a strong part of her message. "Where would the prodigal son have gone without a family?" She pointed out that we can't have a free society without social or moral values. Peace, she says is the "dividend that comes from a strong defense," in defending the French atomic tests.

She pointed out that John Adams said that the U.S. Constitution was "designed for a religious and moral society." She decried the U.S. deficit stating that in "my last four years in office had a surplus every year. I commend it to you!" About the O. J. Simpson trial "Never have television in a court room." About her leadership, "I never tried to get to consensus. I tried to get agreement with what I wanted to do."

Some sobering statistics. Lost in battle from 1900 to 1988: 36 million people. Murdered by totalitarian regimes: 119 million persons. (95 million were murdered in the Soviet Union alone during that 88 year period.)

Greatest political event of the 1900s was the collapse of the Soviet Union.