Baroness Thatcher has died

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

This seems to me to be a quite curious remark, considering that Jesus was the guy who beat people out of the temple with a whip and was later sentenced to death for being a rabble-rouser.

Actually, there's no evidence that he gave any of the traffickers in the temple a whoop-ass. There was mention of him fashioning a makeship whip but not actually hitting any of them. But a terror from God, it is evident, fell upon them.

If we want to get really asinine about it, we can say that actually there's no evidene that he did, y'know, anything at all.

Think about it...a bunch of traffickers in the temple, with their goons, and all of them run and leave their loot behind because of one guy with a home-made whip? And nothing like the sort with the shards of metal and bones on it to tear through skin, like the one used on him before he was crucified. Methinks there was divine intervention. There's no evidence of Jesus ever resorting to violence. Well not yet anyway, he's going old testament when he comes back. :face:

Harmsway wrote:

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

It's written by people living in the province of Judea, for people living in the province of Judea.

The epistles--as well as the book of Acts--challenge this rather simplistic notion of the New Testament's audience and the makeup of the apostolic church.

But you're right, we are far off-topic. And I wholly agree with you that Libertarian ethics and Christian ethics are not particularly compatible.

Good point on the epistles. The Dead Sea Scrolls seem to suggest that they were written first after the Didache, then Acts, then Mark, Matthew, John, Revelations (which is very Zoroastrian of course) and finally Luke which is aimed at the most Gentile audience of all of them I'd say, all composed between roughly 40-70 AD.

But yes, let's get back to Thatcher. A melding of Christian and Libertarian ethics doesn't work and it's one of the reason current fanatic right-wing American politicians are so laughable. You can't praise Ayn Rand in one breath and then turn around and denounce gay marriage and abortion the next using a Biblical precedent to justify yourself. It's not philosophically consistent, yet this is what most of them do.

The main thing I was trying to get over was that Thatcher, for any and all faults you may assign her, at least was her own woman and was intelligent, instead of a barely literate party puppet. Based on the quote you gave earlier, she was at least able to identify that there was a conflict between her political beliefs and her religious upbringing, which I think the American Right is largely unable to do.

I recall seeing a horrendous rap video made by some (American) Republican yoof. They praised Jesus, Ayn Rand, and Ronald Reagan in the same line. What the actual fuck?

There is quite a lot of conflict bewteen Christianity and classical liberal ethos, but similarly between social conservatism and classical - particularly economic - liberalism. Thatcher certainly didn't seek to conserve society as she found it. Indeed, she was quite ready to have economic liberalism drive rapid and widespread societal change. It's perhaps why "conservative" is sometimes a bit of a useless label.

I agree, labelling Thatcher as a conservative is crazy though she used that term herself. Many old-school Tories were horrified by what she did. As CJB says, she sought to overthrow the all-party consensus, which makes her a revolutionary.

Give that Marx advocated permanent revolution, it's perplexing that the Left in Britain found her challenge so disorienting. Maybe it\s that in the 1970s/1980s, they became obsessed with the feminist-driven 'personal is political' agenda and lost sight of traditional class-based economic theory.

I believe she once claimed that Gladstone would join her party. I suppose her version of Conservative - Thatcherite - is the best description of her political standpoint. A kind of Victorian Liberalism where if you don't work, you starve. While that's okay as an opinion, it doesn't help a society where not everyone starts with the same abilities, or where people aren't always 'normal' or 'able', or indeed 'employable'.

Yes, I think it's undeniable that she revived the Victorian concept of deserving and undeserving poor. Post- Mick and Mairead Philpott that's back on the agenda.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Could be. As I said earlier, I think Thatcher saw the larger picture, but wasn't particularly interested in the 'local difficulties' her actions caused along the way.

Which was unfortunate if you were part of that 'collateral damage'.

Yes.
Which - strangely - is why I find all the indignation and hand-wringing over those who have celebrated her death only slightly less annoying and inappropriate than the act itself.
The overreaction to this behavior is a million miles removed to how Thatcher herself would have reacted to a couple of hundred idiots singing "Ding Dong the Witch is dead".

I also imagine Thatcher would have scoffed at the idea of a state funeral, let alone one at this expense.

Largo's Shark wrote:

I also imagine Thatcher would have scoffed at the idea of a state funeral, let alone one at this expense.

She's probably sit up, reach out from the coffin and bitch-slap you after reading your posts...admit it, you get a woody thinking about it. :face:

I think you're confusing me with Jeremy Archer.

Largo's Shark wrote:

I think you're confusing me with Jeremy Archer.

Jeffrey

Erica "Mr Pedant" Ambler

Jeremy's the poorer, slightly more intelligent member of the Archer Clan.

Hitchens the lesser unleashed:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2308783/PETER-HITCHENS-Lets-remember-Maggie-really--tragic-failure.html

Hilly wrote:

Hitchens the lesser unleashed:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2308783/PETER-HITCHENS-Lets-remember-Maggie-really--tragic-failure.html

Hitchens the lesser? Not in my book. Although I think he overestimates the amount that Mrs Thatcher was really capable of achieving in office.