CHARLES COOKE: Thatcher and the Conservative Party, Fifty Years Later.

Margaret Thatcher was not perfect. She could be overly combative with her allies, which can hurt in a parliamentary system. On free speech, the right to bear arms, and due process, she was a throwback to the Victorian era rather than to the classical liberal epoch that informed most of her other views. And she probably stayed in office too long. However, imperfection is inherent in the nature of Great figures, and Mrs. Thatcher was undoubtedly one.

For reasons that I have never quite understood, the smart set within our illustrious cache of academic historians are allergic to the idea that history’s turning points can be attributed to the personal virtues or resolve of individuals who stepped up at the right moment. I dissent from this view. It is, of course, true that history is about more than birth certificates and obituaries, but even a cursory glance at the last three hundred years suggests that amorphous forces cannot account for all its jukes and contours. A world without George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ronald Reagan is a world that, in my estimation, would look profoundly different—even if one assumes that all the same societal desires and impulses remain. So, it is with Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher had the audacity to take over the British Conservative Party—thereby hijacking a vehicle that, before and after, was characterized by squishy “One Nation” capitulation and steering it toward the eternal maxims of Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises. She dared to take action that temporarily damaged the economy in the interest of a longer-term fix—thereby risking her re-election and, with it, the entire project. She refused to relinquish the Falkland Islands to a hostile foreign power simply because the bien pensant class thought she should—thereby creating a hostage to fortune that, had it gone wrong, would have put her approval rating into single digits. And, above all, she understood that political rights are ultimately won by argument, not by force.

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