Here’s an article from the UK Daily Mail with some more details about her.
Margaret Thatcher stood almost alone in driving through the tough policies now credited with saving the economy, secret papers reveal.
The Tory Premier had to take on her predecessor Harold Macmillan, Bank of England governor Gordon Richardson and even her own Chancellor Geoffrey Howe to push through the policies which pulled Britain back from the brink of economic chaos.
Documents released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule show the pressure Mrs Thatcher faced from the Establishment behind the scenes – and the extent to which she was isolated.
In 1980, the year after becoming Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher embarked on a controversial programme to revive the moribund economy through deep public spending cuts and strict control of the money supply, intended to stamp out inflation.
He warned that while her programme of cuts might give a ‘sense of exhilaration’ to her supporters, the country was heading for industrial collapse and ‘dangerous’ levels of unemployment.
Macmillan, then 86, sent the letter following a meeting with the Prime Minister at Chequers in August 1980.
He criticised her for abandoning ‘consensus politics’ to pursue radical reforms and ‘divisive politics’, which he said went against the ‘essence of Tory democracy’.
It was Macmillan who coined the phrase ‘you’ve never had it so good’ in 1957 during the long post-war economic boom.
His brand of consensus politics is now credited with contributing to the economic malaise that brought Britain to its knees in the late 1970s.
Years later, in her memoirs, Mrs Thatcher poured scorn on consensus politics, writing: ‘What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner “I stand for consensus”?.’
[...]In 1981, 365 economists wrote to The Times urging Mrs Thatcher to change course and limit the damage caused by the recession.
But she was unmoved, and her tough stance succeeded in reducing inflation from 27 per cent to four per cent in four years, putting Britain on the road to recovery.
Mrs Thatcher’s economic views were heavily influenced by the right-wing Cabinet minister Sir Keith Joseph, with whom she set up the free market think tank the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974.
Both drew on the work of the influential American economist Milton Friedman whose monetary theories challenged the post-war consensus on economic thinking.
I recommend reading the whole article for some more articles where Lady Thatcher had to stand against everyone and hold onto her convictions in the teeth of the majority.
Here’s an article from Forbes magazine that summarizes her effort to turn Britain around.
Excerpt:
It’s hard to appreciate today how desperate Britain’s condition was before Thatcher took office. Its economy was a laughing stock, the perennial sick man of Europe. Strikes were endemic and union bosses effectively governed the country. Her Conservative Party had long ago made its peace with the welfare state and the ethos of high spending and high taxes. While the previous Tory Prime Minister, Edward Heath, wanted to revive Britain, he hadn’t a clue how to do it. In a make-or-break showdown with the coal miner’s union, Heath called a special election under the banner “Who Governs Britain?” Heath lost and unions’ dominance in Britain seemed secure.
Great leaders have an astute sense of taking advantage of circumstances. Even though Heath had lost two elections, none of the senior party officials would challenge him. At the time, Thatcher was not regarded as one of the party’s major figures. But she was the only Tory who firmly believed in free markets and in Britain’s ability to become again a proud nation based on the principles of liberty. She was a devotee of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman and of the idea of paring back big government and giving free enterprise room to flourish. Astonishingly she beat Heath in a leadership fight in 1975 and led the Tories to victory in 1979.
Immediately she began slashing income tax rates and reining in galloping spending and fighting inflation. She also exhibited that critical sense of timing. When she took office, she was faced with a potential strike of nurses whose union was demanding huge pay increases. Thatcher compromised in a way that some thought she didn’t have the backbone to turn Britain around. Instead she was exhibiting a great politician’s sense of knowing when to pick a fight. Thatcher eventually pushed through major labor union reforms and made it clear she would not tolerate any union riots or violence. Shortly after Thatcher won reelection, the coal miners union, which had destroyed Heath, decided to take her on. But unlike Heath Thatcher was fully prepared. The big showdown ensued and Thatcher beat the coal miner’s union resoundingly. It never recovered from that defeat.
Thatcher knew the deadweight on the economy of excessive taxation. She cut the top income tax rate from 98% to 40%. She cut the corporate income tax rate from 52% to 35%.
One of Thatcher’s greatest innovations was the systematic selling off of the government’s business assets, dubbed privatization. After World War II Britain nationalized enormous swaths of the economy which actions subsequent Conservative governments left largely untouched. Thatcher sold government companies off and her example has been followed by countless nations around the world.
In the area of privatizations, she did two remarkable things. She sold off much of Britain’s public housing. An enormous number of Britons, far more than in the U.S., lived in these government-owned buildings. Thatcher pushed the sale of these apartments to occupants at low prices and on very advantageous terms. The purpose was to begin to shift the mentality of people and their dependence on government. Her other smart move was in the privatization of government-owned companies: offering a significant number of shares to workers at very low prices. Union leaders hated privatization but their opposition was undermined as their members realized that they could do very well buying cheap shares in these newly-privatized entities. Here again she was changing peoples’ thinking: pro-big government workers now saw themselves as share owners, taking on more of a capitalist mentality.
Before Thatcher, many social observers thought that Britain had an ingrained, unchangeable, anti-commercial culture that would forever stand in the way of the country becoming an economic success. Yet within a decade of her taking office, Britain had the most vibrant, large economy in Europe, one even more dynamic, innovative than that of Germany’s. London became a magnet for entrepreneurs from France, Sweden and elsewhere.
One unchangeable characteristic of a great leader is courage and that means taking career-breaking risks. Thatcher demonstrated her mettle in the Falkland Islands crisis. When the Argentinean military dictatorship seized Britain’s Falkland Islands, most military experts felt the Sceptred Isle simply did not possess the military means to take them back. Defying almost the entire political establishment which was haunted by both Britain’s current weakness and the memory of the Suez Canal debacle in 1956, Thatcher declared that the seizure would not stand and that Britain would go to war to take the Islands back. Thankfully she received critical help from the U.S. thanks to in large part the unrelenting efforts of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (who years later became Publisher and Chairman of Forbes). To the surprise of experts, Britain’s military expedition succeeded. The Argentinean military dictatorship fell and democracy was restored in that country. For Britain the Falklands war was a huge boost to a demoralized nation. To the world it meant that once again tyranny would be resisted.
I recommend reading that whole article. It’s hard not to smile at a woman who clearly loved her country and worked to save it from poverty.
Why good men love Maggie
And now I must offend everyone. See, I have a theory about women. I think that women generally tend to be more beholden to the opinions and fashions of the crowd than men are. It’s not absolute, but it’s maybe two-thirds to one-third, in my experience. I think that it is generally hard for them to hold to their convictions in the face of peer pressure. That’s why so few young, unmarried women are conservative after graduating from college. As soon as they reach college, they are swayed towards liberal views by their need to feel good about themselves and their need to be liked by others. Their views at home were not rooted in real knowledge, they were just fitting in with their families and churches and saying whatever words they were expected to say. And then they go off to college and learn other words to say from another community that uses praise and blame to replace their former convictions with new convictions.
But Maggie Thatcher wasn’t like that. And here’s why:
John Ranelagh writes of Margaret Thatcher’s remark at a Conservative Party policy meeting in the late 1970′s, “Another colleague had also prepared a paper arguing that the middle way was the pragmatic path for the Conservative party to take .. Before he had finished speaking to his paper, the new Party Leader [Margaret Thatcher] reached into her briefcase and took out a book. It was Friedrich von Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty. Interrupting [the speaker], she held the book up for all of us to see. ’This’, she said sternly, ‘is what we believe’, and banged Hayek down on the table.” (John Ranelagh, Thatcher’s People: An Insider’s Account of the Politics, the Power, and the Personalities. London: Harper Collins, 1991.)
Policies like unilateral disarmament, wealth redistribution and redefining marriage sound good to many women – especially in college, and especially when only one side is presented and the other side is demonized. The only way to resist ideas that feel good and ideas that get you peer-approval is to have formed your own views through independent study. Lady Thatcher’s economic policies were formed through a study of real economists like Nobel-prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek and Nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. The reason why she was able to hold to her principles is because she knew what she was talking about, and her opponents did not. She didn’t care about feeling good. She didn’t care about what other people thought of her. She knew was right, and that was enough to sustain her in trying times. She had the knowledge, and her opponents couldn’t change her core convictions by trying to shame her. It didn’t work.
Unemployment for both women and African-Americans is higher today than it was when President Barack Obama first took office in 2009, according to federal government data.
Despite an economy that has technically been in recovery since June of 2009, many economic indicators are the same or worse than when President Obama gave his first address to a Joint Session of Congress in February 2009.
“We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before,” Obama said in that speech.
However, employment for African-Americans and women has not recovered and, in fact, is worse today than it was when Obama said those words.
At the end of January 2009, 12.7 percent of African-Americans were unemployed. Four years later, January 2013, the situation was worse, with unemployment higher at 13.8 percent.
Further, an additional 1.2 million African-Americans had left the workforce entirely during the same time period, with the number of those reported as not in the workforce rising from 10.3 million in January 2009 to 11.5 million in January 2013.
People not in the labor force are those who are younger than the retirement age who are unemployed and no longer looking for work, indicating they have either given up looking for work or gone into early retirement.
For women, the story is not much better. In January 2009, 6.9 percent of women in America were unemployed. By January 2013, 7.8 percent of women were unemployed.
Obama is proposing a hike to the minimum wage rate, so that employers are forced to pay the youngest and/or least skilled workers more money than they are worth. Will this lower unemployment?
When considering what economic policies to adopt, it is not enough to do what feels good. Liberals and conservatives agree that it is good to help the poor. Liberals think that higher minimum wage rates help the poor, and conservatives think that lower minimum wage rates help the poor. This is not a topic that is up for debate, though, because economists across the left-right spectrum agree on this one.
Take a look at this post from Harvard University economist Greg Mankiw.
He writes:
My favorite textbook covers business cycle theory toward the end of the book (the last four chapters) precisely because that theory is controversial. I believe it is better to introduce students to economics with topics about which there is more of a professional consensus. In chapter two of the book, I include a table of propositions to which most economists subscribe, based on various polls of the profession. Here is the list, together with the percentage of economists who agree:
A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available. (93%)
Tariffs and import quotas usually reduce general economic welfare. (93%)
Flexible and floating exchange rates offer an effective international monetary arrangement. (90%)
Fiscal policy (e.g., tax cut and/or government expenditure increase) has a significant stimulative impact on a less than fully employed economy. (90%)
The United States should not restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries. (90%)
The United States should eliminate agricultural subsidies. (85%)
Local and state governments should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises. (85%)
If the federal budget is to be balanced, it should be done over the business cycle rather than yearly. (85%)
The gap between Social Security funds and expenditures will become unsustainably large within the next fifty years if current policies remain unchanged. (85%)
Cash payments increase the welfare of recipients to a greater degree than do transfers-in-kind of equal cash value. (84%)
A large federal budget deficit has an adverse effect on the economy. (83%)
A minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers. (79%)
The government should restructure the welfare system along the lines of a “negative income tax.” (79%)
Effluent taxes and marketable pollution permits represent a better approach to pollution control than imposition of pollution ceilings. (78%)
And that’s not all. There have actually been studies done on this, and they echo the consensus.
Consider this 2009 article from the Wall Street Journal that discusses some of the studies.
Excerpt:
Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.
he September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months. Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%. It was merely a terrible 39.2% in July.
[...]Two years ago Mr. Neumark and William Wascher, a Federal Reserve economist, reviewed more than 100 academic studies on the impact of the minimum wage. They found “overwhelming” evidence that the least skilled and the young suffer a loss of employment when the minimum wage is increased.
[...]State lawmakers are also at fault. At least 10 states have raised their minimum wages above the federal level in the last decade, largely in response to union lobbying and in the name of helping the working poor. Four states with among the highest wage rates are California, Massachusetts, Michigan and New York. Studies have shown in each case that their wage policies killed jobs for teens. The Massachusetts teen employment rate sank by one-third when the minimum wage rose by 88% between 1995 and 2008.
According to new numbers from the Labor Department, in 2008 only 1.1% of Americans who work 40 hours a week or more even earned the minimum wage. In other words, 98.9% of 40-hour-a-week workers earn more than the minimum. The data also show that teenagers are five times more likely to earn the minimum wage than adults. Minimum wage jobs are nearly all first-time or part-time jobs, and an estimated two of every three minimum wage workers get a pay raise within a year on the job.
You can read more about minimim wage and unemployment from my second favorite economist Walter Williams, and from my first favorite economist Thomas Sowell. This is an issue that matters to them, because they are both black, and blacks are the hardest hit by these policies – even though most blacks support these policies by voting overwhelmingly for socialists.
This issue is simple and straightforward. To help the poorest and least experienced workers, we have to take away any regulations that separate them from their first employer. From there, they will gain the experience to move up. Nobody stays in a minimum wage job all their lives. They move up when they get experience and a resume. That’s why that first job is so crucial. We have to make it easier for employers to get employees started in their careers.
Let’s take a look at the data, and leave the feelings and rhetoric out of it.
Excerpt:
Battles are brewing in New York, California, Minnesota and the nation’s capital over hiking minimum wages, with Democrats having the votes to ram through hikes in all four cases.
These politicians are claiming the moral high ground, saying it will help the poorest in our communities. Don’t be fooled.
Hiking the minimum wage hurts — not helps — the lowest-paid workers, especially young black men. A 10% hike in the minimum wage causes a 2.5% drop in employment among young white men without a high school diploma and a staggering 6.5% drop among young black men without that degree.
Young black males get clobbered three times as hard because they tend to work in the fast-food and restaurant industries, where any increase in labor costs produces layoffs.
[...]Only 5% of American workers earn the federal minimum, according to the latest government data, compared with 13% in 1979. Minimum wage workers are largely first-time workers. They are learning what all of us learn on our first job: to be prompt, dress appropriately, do what the boss asks and be reliable.
First-time workers face the biggest risk of being priced out of the job market by a minimum wage hike. They aren’t worth much to an employer when they start working. They don’t have the skills.
When the government increases the minimum wage, it’s more expensive to hire first-timers. According to David Neumark and J.M. Salas, University of California economists, and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board, “minimum wages tend to reduce employment among teenagers.”
New York needs that like a hole in the head. Teen unemployment in New York City hit a stunning 35.6% last August, compared with 23.7% nationwide.
All teens are harmed, but black male teenagers are hit hardest by minimum wage hikes, according to a 2011 study by labor economists David Macpherson and William Evans. Unemployment among young black males is currently 29%, double the rate for young white males.
Macpherson and Evans found the reason is that one out of three young black men without a high school diploma works in the restaurant/fast-food industry, where profit margins are thin. Any labor-cost hikes compel these businesses to cut their workforce.
On top of the threatened minimum-wage hikes, businesses now face the certainty of ObamaCare, which will impose the largest government-mandated labor-cost hike in history.
In 2014, employers with 50 or more full-time workers will be required to provide a package of “essential health benefits” or pay a penalty. This government mandated package will add a whopping $1.79 an hour to the cost of hiring an employee. Maybe that’s affordable when you’re hiring lawyers or bankers, but not for hiring unskilled first-time workers.
When considering what economic policies to adopt, it is not enough to do what feels good. Liberals and conservatives agree that it is good to help the poor. Liberals think that higher minimum wage rates help the poor, and conservatives think that lower minimum wage rates help the poor. This is not a topic that is up for debate, though, because economists across the left-right spectrum agree on this one.
Take a look at this post from Harvard University economist Greg Mankiw.
He writes:
My favorite textbook covers business cycle theory toward the end of the book (the last four chapters) precisely because that theory is controversial. I believe it is better to introduce students to economics with topics about which there is more of a professional consensus. In chapter two of the book, I include a table of propositions to which most economists subscribe, based on various polls of the profession. Here is the list, together with the percentage of economists who agree:
A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available. (93%)
Tariffs and import quotas usually reduce general economic welfare. (93%)
Flexible and floating exchange rates offer an effective international monetary arrangement. (90%)
Fiscal policy (e.g., tax cut and/or government expenditure increase) has a significant stimulative impact on a less than fully employed economy. (90%)
The United States should not restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries. (90%)
The United States should eliminate agricultural subsidies. (85%)
Local and state governments should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises. (85%)
If the federal budget is to be balanced, it should be done over the business cycle rather than yearly. (85%)
The gap between Social Security funds and expenditures will become unsustainably large within the next fifty years if current policies remain unchanged. (85%)
Cash payments increase the welfare of recipients to a greater degree than do transfers-in-kind of equal cash value. (84%)
A large federal budget deficit has an adverse effect on the economy. (83%)
A minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers. (79%)
The government should restructure the welfare system along the lines of a “negative income tax.” (79%)
Effluent taxes and marketable pollution permits represent a better approach to pollution control than imposition of pollution ceilings. (78%)
And that’s not all. There have actually been studies done on this, and they echo the consensus.
Consider this 2009 article from the Wall Street Journal that discusses some of the studies.
Excerpt:
Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.
he September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months. Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%. It was merely a terrible 39.2% in July.
[...]Two years ago Mr. Neumark and William Wascher, a Federal Reserve economist, reviewed more than 100 academic studies on the impact of the minimum wage. They found “overwhelming” evidence that the least skilled and the young suffer a loss of employment when the minimum wage is increased.
[...]State lawmakers are also at fault. At least 10 states have raised their minimum wages above the federal level in the last decade, largely in response to union lobbying and in the name of helping the working poor. Four states with among the highest wage rates are California, Massachusetts, Michigan and New York. Studies have shown in each case that their wage policies killed jobs for teens. The Massachusetts teen employment rate sank by one-third when the minimum wage rose by 88% between 1995 and 2008.
According to new numbers from the Labor Department, in 2008 only 1.1% of Americans who work 40 hours a week or more even earned the minimum wage. In other words, 98.9% of 40-hour-a-week workers earn more than the minimum. The data also show that teenagers are five times more likely to earn the minimum wage than adults. Minimum wage jobs are nearly all first-time or part-time jobs, and an estimated two of every three minimum wage workers get a pay raise within a year on the job.
You can read more about minimim wage and unemployment from my second favorite economist Walter Williams, and from my first favorite economist Thomas Sowell. This is an issue that matters to them, because they are both black, and blacks are the hardest hit by these policies – even though most blacks support these policies by voting overwhelmingly for socialists.
This issue is simple and straightforward. To help the poorest and least experienced workers, we have to take away any regulations that separate them from their first employer. From there, they will gain the experience to move up. Nobody stays in a minimum wage job all their lives. They move up when they get experience and a resume. That’s why that first job is so crucial. We have to make it easier for employers to get employees started in their careers.
Dina sent me this sad article from the UK Telegraph.
Excerpt:
A study of 2,000 British parents found most children will put a new baby brother or sister at the top of their Christmas list, closely followed by a request for a real-life reindeer.
A “pet horse” was the third most popular choice, with a “car” making a bizarre entry at number four.
Despite their material requests, the tenth most popular Christmas wish on the list was a “Dad”.
[...]A request for a “mum” reached number 23 on the list.
It’s sad. I think that there is a perception among many young women today that it is OK to have recreational premarital sex that may lead to having a child out of wedlock. Many unmarried women have an intuition (not supported by data) that a child will turn out fine without a father in the home. Some think (against the data) that fathers can be substituted with a government welfare check and that children won’t notice the difference. But the research shows that this is a false belief.
Excerpt:
Census data and the Fragile Families survey show that marriage can be extremely effective in reducing child poverty. But the positive effects of married fathers are not limited to income alone. Children raised by married parents have substantially better life outcomes compared to similar children raised in single-parent homes.
When compared to children in intact married homes, children raised by single parents are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems; be physically abused; smoke, drink, and use drugs; be aggressive; engage in violent, delinquent, and criminal behavior; have poor school performance; be expelled from school; and drop out of high school.[19] Many of these negative outcomes are associated with the higher poverty rates of single mothers. In many cases, however, the improvements in child well-being that are associated with marriage persist even after adjusting for differences in family income. This indicates that the father brings more to his home than just a paycheck.
The effect of married fathers on child outcomes can be quite pronounced. For example, examination of families with the same race and same parental education shows that, when compared to intact married families, children from single-parent homes are:
More than twice as likely to be arrested for a juvenile crime;[20]
Twice as likely to be treated for emotional and behavioral problems;[21]
Roughly twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school;[22] and
A third more likely to drop out before completing high school.[23]
The effects of being raised in a single-parent home continue into adulthood. Comparing families of the same race and similar incomes, children from broken and single-parent homes are three times more likely to end up in jail by the time they reach age 30 than are children raised in intact married families.[24] Compared to girls raised in similar married families, girls from single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to have a child without being married, thereby repeating the negative cycle for another generation.[25]
Finally, the decline of marriage generates poverty in future generations. Children living in single-parent homes are 50 percent more likely to experience poverty as adults when compared to children from intact married homes. This intergenerational poverty effect persists even after adjusting for the original differences in family income and poverty during childhood.[26]
And here’s a bit more data showing that having government replace fathers via higher taxes and more redistribution of wealth doesn’t take away the bad effects of fatherlessness:
Children from low-income, two-parent families outperform students from high-income, single-parent homes. Almost twice as many high achievers come from two-parent homes as one-parent homes. Source: “One-Parent Families and Their Children;” Charles F. Kettering Foundation (1990).
Children reared by a divorced or never-married mother are less cooperative and score lower on tests of intelligence than children reared in intact families. Statistical analysis of the behavior and intelligence of these children revealed “significant detrimental effects” of living in a female-headed household. Growing up in a female-headed household remained a statistical predictor of behavior problems even after adjusting for differences in family income. Source: Greg L. Duncan, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Pamela Kato Klebanov, “Economic Deprivation and Early Childhood Development,” Child Development 65 (1994).
After taking into account race, socioeconomic status, sex, age, and ability, high school students from single-parent households were 1.7 times more likely to drop out than were their corresponding counterparts living with both biological parents. Source: McNeal, Ralph B. Jr.”Extracurricular Activities and High School Dropouts.” Sociology of Education 68(1995): 62-81.
I think that these are significant in light of the recent shooting in Connecticut:
In studies involving over 25,000 children using nationally representative data sets, children who lived with only one parent had lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations, poor attendance records, and higher drop out rates than students who lived with both parents. Source: McLanahan, Sara and Gary Sandefur. Growing up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994.
A 1988 Department of Health and Human Services study found that at every income level except the very highest (over $50,000 a year), children living with never-married mothers were more likely than their counterparts in two-parent families to have been expelled or suspended from school, to display emotional problems, and to engage in antisocial behavior. Source: James Q. Wilson, “In Loco Parentis: Helping Children When Families Fail Them,” The Brookings Review, Fall 1993.
72% of adolescent murderers grew up without fathers. 60% of America’s rapists grew up the same way. Source: D. Cornell (et al.), Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 5. 1987. And N. Davidson, “Life Without Father,” Policy Review. 1990.
The likelihood that a young male will engage in criminal activity doubles if he is raised without a father and triples if he lives in a neighborhood with a high concentration of single-parent families. Source: A. Anne Hill, June O’Neill, “Underclass Behaviors in the United States,” CUNY, Baruch College. 1993.
Peter Lanza, the father of Sandy Hook shooter, hadn’t spoken to his son for more than two years and his father is at a loss for what drove Adam to kill 20 students and six teachers at his old elementary school.
[...]Adam, 20, had not spoken to his brother Ryan or father for upwards of two years at the time of the shooting. Adam reportedly distanced himself from his father Peter when he started to become serious with his new girlfriend, and current wife.
Peter and Adam’s mother Nancy split in 2001 but did not formally divorce until November 2008. Court records made the split appear amicable as both parties agreed to put their sons needs above any bitterness, but Adam was apparently the one to cut ties with his father in 2010.
Women need to think ahead and realize that the little children will be impacted by her choice of man, as well of her choice of whether to have recreational premarital sex with a man. If she doesn’t test him adequately and makes poor choices, then the children will be deprived of a father in the home. I don’t think that the sentiment “he makes me happy and horny and my friends approve of him” necessarily translates into “he can do the job of protecting, providing and leading on moral and spiritual issues”. Those are two different sets of criteria, and often at cross-purposes in a culture that despises traditional male roles as “sexist”.
RT @Dina1410: Britain's benefits ghettos: Report reveals estates where half those of working age are dependent on handouts - http://t.co/oR…4 hours ago
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04/09/2013 • 2:00 AM 7
How Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, saved Britain
Here’s an article from the UK Daily Mail with some more details about her.
I recommend reading the whole article for some more articles where Lady Thatcher had to stand against everyone and hold onto her convictions in the teeth of the majority.
Here’s an article from Forbes magazine that summarizes her effort to turn Britain around.
Excerpt:
I recommend reading that whole article. It’s hard not to smile at a woman who clearly loved her country and worked to save it from poverty.
Why good men love Maggie
And now I must offend everyone. See, I have a theory about women. I think that women generally tend to be more beholden to the opinions and fashions of the crowd than men are. It’s not absolute, but it’s maybe two-thirds to one-third, in my experience. I think that it is generally hard for them to hold to their convictions in the face of peer pressure. That’s why so few young, unmarried women are conservative after graduating from college. As soon as they reach college, they are swayed towards liberal views by their need to feel good about themselves and their need to be liked by others. Their views at home were not rooted in real knowledge, they were just fitting in with their families and churches and saying whatever words they were expected to say. And then they go off to college and learn other words to say from another community that uses praise and blame to replace their former convictions with new convictions.
But Maggie Thatcher wasn’t like that. And here’s why:
Policies like unilateral disarmament, wealth redistribution and redefining marriage sound good to many women – especially in college, and especially when only one side is presented and the other side is demonized. The only way to resist ideas that feel good and ideas that get you peer-approval is to have formed your own views through independent study. Lady Thatcher’s economic policies were formed through a study of real economists like Nobel-prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek and Nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. The reason why she was able to hold to her principles is because she knew what she was talking about, and her opponents did not. She didn’t care about feeling good. She didn’t care about what other people thought of her. She knew was right, and that was enough to sustain her in trying times. She had the knowledge, and her opponents couldn’t change her core convictions by trying to shame her. It didn’t work.
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