First Blog

Someone has past away.  It happens every day.  It is a part of life.  We traditionally give reverence to the dead. While  not exactly liking or admiring them in life we honor their memory in death.  We mourn their passing; we celebrate their achievements.  This is the normal course of events saving the monsters of the day.  Hitler and Stalin are the iconic examples of mass murderer monsters that garner no, absolutely no charity in their passing. Nowadays we have the hagiographers and demonizers of every high-profile passing.  Case-in-point is Margaret Thatcher.  She is gone; her achievements, great or not, are now in the records.  By many accounts, she elevated a deteriorating British economy, though by many others she was the Iron Lady who ran roughshod over smaller nations. Many African nations do not celebrate her life.  Many on the far left deprecate her existence and celebrate her death.  They even rejoice in her passing by holding public rallies.  This seems to be symptomatic

April 8, 2013: Margaret Thatcher has departed.  Wonderful to her supporters and despised by others, she  now rests upon her contributions.  Is there a lesson learned?  Maybe.  Looking at British leaders for the last while, we've seen a few monumental figures with vision and resolve.  Thatcher is among them. So also was Churchill and Gladstone. They are rare. Indeed they are the exception. Between Churchill and Thatcher there was no one, and after Margaret there has been almost no one. Maybe Blair, though he was caught up in the past and present.  Articulate though he was and is, he did not command the world stage as did others.  England's leaders have been populated and punctuated by true visionaries, and then replaced by unmemorable leaders and losers.  This has been the nature of British affairs. In the US, we have seen Reagan, Roosevelt, and Lincoln - and in between, what?  Affairs in the US are about the same. Yet, the same obtains for other world leading countries.  In