DURING THE GERMAN band Rammstein’s 1998 American debut tour, the lead singer, Till Lindemann, whipped out a monstrous black appliance in his performance of “Bück Dich” (“Bend Over”) and employed it to simulate sex with his keyboardist, who lay on the floor with a mask on his face, a chain around his neck and a gag in his mouth. When they tried this in Worcester, Mass., the two men spent the night in jail on obscenity charges.
This is nothing compared with the uproar they have caused in Germany, where people actually understand their lyrics.
The blows Margaret Thatcher struck against socialism at home and the Soviet empire abroad are her most noted achievements. But an even greater legacy was bequeathed to her sex.
She was and will always be supremely significant to women. Unlike other women to whom she is often compared, she compromised no essential aspect of her personality.
Margaret Thatcher made her own political way, from beginning to end.
8 April 2013
CITY JOURNAL
Before acquiring power, Margaret Thatcher was nothing. She was trained as a chemist. Her career in politics was marked by doggedness, but no one, before her accession to office, would have noted her as a distinctive British personality, a woman who for a time could embody the national will. It was power that established her importance, and power that brought into being all of her now-immortal incarnations—diva, mother of the nation, coy flirt, hissing serpent, stern headmistress, eyes of Caligula, mouth of Bardot, screeching harridan, frugal housewife, Boadicea the Warrior Queen, and Iron Lady, all in one.
NATIONAL REVIEW
by Kathryn Jean Lopez
April 8, 2013
There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters is the title of a book by Claire Berlinski. Berlinski talks to National Review Online about why, in fact, she does!
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Why does Margaret Thatcher “matter,” as your book’s subtitle puts it?
CLAIRE BERLINSKI: I wrote much of this book in 2007.
“The Iron Lady” paints a human picture of Margaret Thatcher. But the film, which opens Thursday in theaters, ignores her political legacy: her belief in state authority, and her victory over socialism.
FINANCIAL TIMES DEUTSCHLAND
March 1, 2012
(Published in German as “Margaret Thatcher: Im Namen der Macht”)
In 2007, I wrote There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters. Shortly after the book’s publication, the Great Financial Meltdown began. The global economy is now sunk in a deep, prolonged recession, one so severe in its effects that many are asking whether the Left has been right about free markets all along. Even I have been tempted to wonder.
Britain in the early 1970s was decayed, ungovernable and globally irrelevant, done in by the cumulative effect of postwar socialist reforms. Margaret Thatcher, who came to power as the nation’s first female prime minister in 1979, returned Britain to the realm of the great powers. Worshiped, feted, loathed and mocked, she is one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. And now Thatcher, as interpreted by Meryl Streep, will be coming to a theater near you in the movie “The Iron Lady,”opening Dec. 30.
But even those most sympathetic to her tend to misunderstand her personality, her governing style and her accomplishments. Let’s examine these misconceptions.
A new biopic has raised hackles, but her achievements are as relevant now as ever.
CITY A.M., London, November 21
The place is Britain; the year, 1978. It is the Winter of Discontent. Labor unrest has shut down public services, paralyzing the nation for months on end. Rubbish is piled high on the street. The government been obliged to supplicate for a loan from the International Monetary Fund. Soon the Soviet trade minister will tell his British counterpart, “We don’t want to increase our trade with you. Your goods are unreliable, you’re always on strike, you never deliver.”
THE PLACE IS simply mythical, its iconic status akin to the Taj Mahal or the Great Pyramids. Not a day passes without some nut trying to get past the front gates, driving up to the vehicle barriers with a 12,367-point list of demands from his alien masters or a desperate plea that the CIA stop beaming those obscene broadcasts into his dental fillings.
Once, I heard, a woman had driven to the gates, shambled out of her battered camper van, and removed a carefully-constructed helmet from her head.
There’s a desperate shortage of foreign language speakers at our intelligence agencies. Not that they’re doing anything about it.
Weekly Standard
December 3, 2001, Vol. 7, No. 12
A RUMOR HAS BEEN CIRCULATING in intelligence circles that communications intercepted prior to September 11 referred in Arabic to a “Christmas gift” for the United States. What no one listening to these messages realized was that the same expression can mean “an unpleasant exploding surprise.”
IN 1997, THE Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, chaired by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, concluded that the government classifies way too many documents – millions every year – while failing to distinguish among different sorts of documents and protect secrets of real importance. What’s more, the Commission argued, secrecy is inherently antithetical to open debate in a flourishing democracy, and the perception of a government bloated with secrets erodes public trust.
