Cal Thomas: A century of Buckley and Thatcher

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Few of us live a hundred years, but each person does have a centenary date. According to WORLD commentator Cal Thomas, a couple of world changing conservatives hit that milestone this year, with hardly anyone noticing.

CAL THOMAS: 2025 is the centenary of two towering individuals in the conservative movement, neither of whom receive the respect they deserve among the ruling political, historical and media classes. William F. Buckley, Junior and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Before this year expires, I’d like to offer some reflections and admiration for these two.

Bill Buckley almost single handedly held the conservative fort until reinforcements arrived. Far from being mean spirited, Buckley used his extensive vocabulary and rapier wit to disarm liberal opponents in ways they didn’t recognize until it was too late to respond.

BUCKLEY: I’ve often been quoted as saying that I’d rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston phone directory than by the 2000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.

It’s a classic line undermining what we now call the “woke” agenda of many centers of so-called: “higher learning.”

Another favorite line came after this question:

QUESTION: On television you are always seated. Does this mean you can’t think on your feet?”

BUCKLEY: It’s very, very hard to stand up carrying the weight of what I know. [LAUGHTER]

Coming from anyone else that might sound prideful, but the line had a considerable amount of truth in it. Buckley was incredibly smart and was his own encyclopedia. I once introduced him at a Washington event this way: “Bill, I don’t mind you writing a column, or being the author of many books, or piloting a yacht, but when you built a harpsichord from scratch and played it at Carnegie Hall, don’t you think that’s pouring it on a little too much?” Clearly, he went through the gift line more than once.

The same could be said of Margaret Thatcher. She was hated by the British Left because she almost single-handedly destroyed the socialist programs that had harmed much of the country’s social, economic, and political infrastructure. Her political opponents would never admit they were wrong, despite the evidence.

THATCHER: Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the state has no source of money other than the money people earn themselves. If the state wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more and it's no good thinking that someone else will pay. That someone else is you… [Applause]

Responding to the collectivism and overreliance on government in her day, Thatcher recalled a basic principle: “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”

Another Thatcher line that should have been quoted during the race for New York City mayor, which was won by Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani:

THATCHER: …socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess…they always run out of other people's money…

In an article titled: “The Woman Who Made Britain Great Again” author Christopher Sandford writes this: “In her first term alone, she oversaw measures that lowered inflation from an annual rate of 18 percent (and rising) to 5.5 percent (and falling). She introduced legislation to curb union militancy (and) privatize(d) inefficient state industries,” among many other reforms.

Sandford wraps up his summation of Thatcher’s remarkable life this way: “she remains the last recognizably great British prime minister, one who embodies the paradox of serving as her nation’s all-but-unchallenged leader for eleven years, while seeing herself as an outsider constantly beset by an inert political establishment.”

Margret Thatcher and William F Buckley, Jr. Two great minds whose ideas and philosophies would still work today should modern politicians again embrace them.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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