My mind is unchanged

[fpb]

Margaret Thatcher's death has set off a great deal of noise around the world. The burden of the song, even from supposed opponents, is that a great leader is dead. Well, I have long observed that when historians call someone "Great", with few exceptions it is someone that normal men would cross the road to avoid, were it not that it would be very

Comments

[ravenclaw_eric]

Being something of a Russian-history maven, I would have to say that Peter the Great deserved the title (and not just because he stood head-and-shoulders over his contemporaries and was strong enough to astound anybody). Without him, or someone like him, Russia may well have ended up going the route the Ottoman Empire did---trying too late to modernize, and being gobbled up, piece by piece, by its neighbors

[fpb]

I don't think Russia is comparable to the Ottoman Empire, and not only because it is not a Muslim country. The Ottoman Empire was set up for conquest, and started rotting from within the moment conquest became impossible. The Russian Empire was primarily about the defence of an enormous and almost indefensible territory, and could survive and evolve without great need for the constant conquest of new territories to tax and despoil. And change imposed from above tends to become sterile; the great wave of westernization did not in fact reach Russia until the Napoleonic wars, when hundreds of thousands of Russian officers and men spent years west of the Vistula and came back with new prospects.

[fpb]

Oh, and Napoleon is NOT one of my heroes. With the exception of Jesus Christ, the fact that he spoke admiringly of anyone is not going to do anything for my view of that anyone.

[ravenclaw_eric]

I don't approve of Napoleon myself. But when an expert in any field is speaking on his area of expertise, I listen very carefully. I've known people who were grade-A jerks on a scale almost beyond belief, but were very good in one particular area, and when they spoke about the areas that they were good in, I perked up and paid attention.

And as far as unwarrantedly calling someone "The Great" goes---I'd put Justinian I of Byzantium in that category. His wars devastated Italy and left it open to the Lombards, who were quite a bit more barbaric than the Ostrogoths he'd destroyed; his policies did a lot to weaken his Empire in the long run, and his conquests outside Italy were evanescent at best.

[ext_933203]

She had a lot of enemies in Wales. The decline of the mining industry was inevitable, but it's amazing just how important it was to the people - the community life revolved around it; it wasn't just a way of earning a living, more like a way of life. When it went, so did much of the sense of togetherness and solidarity. It's only been a couple of decades, but there's very little left of the old industry - just sad little gutted towns.
BTW, what are your thoughts on the new Pope?

[fpb]

yes, that's another thing to be said about her - she regionalized Britain to an extent unseen before. Wales, Scotland, North England and Northern Ireland all ended up having plenty of reasons to hate her, and her government became in effect a Home Counties oligarchy.

[fpb]

The new Pope? Not who I wanted. I think there is need for a fighter, to sweep clean the disastrous areas of the Vatican and to face down the Church's enemies. Pope Francis sounds too eirenic for that, and is altogether mistaken about Islam, it seems. He may be a saint, but he may also turn out to be the wrong saint at the wrong time, like more than one of his predecessors.

[ext_933203]

That's an interesting perspective - by "altogether mistaken about Islam", you think he's too soft on the subject, right? What would you like to see instead?

[fellmama]

In the US, for some reason, Thatcher was held up as a role model for young women, particularly young women growing up in the 1980s. This probably explains, if not excuses, some of what you're seeing from over here.

(I'm personally discovering that many of my contemporaries are, shall we say, woefully ignorant on the matter.)

[fpb]

Don't worry. What I say is not widely known in Europe, indeed in Britain, either. "What? Her father was rich? What? she dodged the draft during WWII? Butbutbut..." Incidentally, I missed one point that Debbie Schlussel, alas, got quite right: her racism stopped at Muslims. Indeed, she was the one who put together the most enormous and most corrupt arms deal in recorded history, the immense Al-Yamamah sale with Saudi Arabia. Debbie Schlussel, however, proved that she is the idiot we all know and don't love when she went on to speak of "Argentinian Falklanders" - a nationality unknown to anyone else.

[fellmama]

I'm not surprised that my peers (late 20s) don't know much about Thatcher qua Thatcher, especially because we were only children when she was succeeded by Major. I am surprised, though, that my friends and acquaintances, who you'll hardly be surprised to hear tend mostly left, didn't know previously of her association with Pinochet. I thought that was common knowledge, even in the US.

Maybe I paid too much attention to the news as a teenager!

[ravenclaw_eric]

"Dodged the draft?" *glyph of puzzlement*

I hadn't known that Britain had conscription for women.

[ooxc]

trivial point - wasn't the ice cream industrial chemistry?

[fpb]

Come to think of it, I do seem to remember something of the kind, You must be right. I'll correct it. It's not as though I don't have an open-and-shut case without that.
(And she still would not be comparable to Merkel with her several papers of peer-reviewed research.)

[affablestranger]

An excellent post, as ever, sir. Enlightening.

As always, thank you for posting.

(going back to lurking now)