Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton?

Hold your horses cowboy - don't close that browser just yet. If you are like me, and for the sake of your wife and loved ones I hope you are not, you grew up believing that Ronald Reagan was "The Man" and Margaret Thatcher was the "Iron Lady". I joined the military with the words of Reagan echoing in my head about the need to stand on a wall and face down the bear of communism. Thatcher and Reagan were an inseparable team it seemed in the opposition to the Soviet Union.

There is another side of Margaret Thatcher that most Americans do not know about - but more on that later.

In 1913 Great Britain was prepared to consider and probably "grant" home rule to Scotland. I say "grant" because the notion that sovereignty could be withheld from a nation that preexisted Britain, a nation that only lost its independence after centuries of invasion, coercion and deceit is absurd. Britain could no more "grant" to the Scots that which was rightfully theirs than I can create gold via sheer will. That is not the point however, in 1913 a home rule bill passed the first reading of the British Parliament and everything seemed set. World War I ended the progress of the bill and in the fever-pitch following "The Great War" to grant self-determination to peoples across the world, the Scots were forgotten.

Fast forward to the 1980's, the voting patterns of Scotland and England clearly began to show a shift in what Scots thought was important versus the rest of Britain. Very young conservatives like me in America may have loved Thatcher for her foreign policy but Scots disdained her domestic policies and her paternalistic attitude toward their desires to do things their own way.

A commenter on a Guardian story sums it up:

Despite my very close English connections, I've never been comfortable being British after growing up under Thatcher and seeing how differently England and Scotland voted during those years. It left a great impression that fundamentally England and Scotland are very different - one more "me" oriented and one more socially aware. Several years living in England later on didn't change that view.

Most observers of the movement toward devolution and nationalism in Scotland point directly at Thatcher as the catalyst to reignite centuries old embers. Speaking of a Thatcher visit to Glasgow in 1997 SNP leader Alex Salmond suggested that her visit was "the best advertisement for Scottish self-government possible". A recent History Channel documentary I viewed "Essential Scottish History" spoke to this fact and her influence in galvanizing Scottish nationalism.

For nearly 300 years the Scots had tried it the Unionist way, for nearly 300 years they had seen the downside of representative democracy in action . As a minority, a suppressed nation, they came to know exactly what union meant. It took several attempts to elect the "right" people, pass the right bills etc. before they collectively woke up to this fact in sufficient numbers to push for a return of their own parliament but they did wake up, thanks in large part to Margaret Thatcher.

Perhaps you already see why I placed Hillary Clinton in the title line with Margaret Thatcher - perhaps I do not need to write the rest of this, I think you already get my point.

Small minorities all across these united states are disenfranchised with the way things are, for their own reasons - some to the right others to the left. Most within these minorities still see the hope within one man - "if we can just get him/her elected all will be well." Of course the majority is either apathetic or still delusioned by the non-competition provided by the two non-opposing national parties (but those unwashed masses are not our concern).

On the right many of us support Tancredo or Dr. Paul (a minority if the MSM is to be believed) and within this group of supporters most actually believe. Heck, I want to believe - but I don't. I believe that despite our support Dr. Paul, for instance, simply will not win. The GOP has already established it has no intention of letting it happen - they want one of their men. What does that leave? A third party option that will ensure Hillary the win or sitting home, not voting for the scoundrel, false conservative the GOP trots out - which of course also ensures Hillary wins. Either way, Hillary wins.

I am not a defeatist, Dr. Ron Paul is the right man for the job, Tancredo (or better yet Alan Keyes) might make a decent VP but it will not happen. If it did happen and Paul stuck by his past voting record we would see a presidency with the most vetoes and the most vetoes overridden in the history of this republic. Not that this would be a bad thing, but the fact is what it is. (in it own way a Paul win would highlight just how wrong things are at the core)

Dr. Paul deserves our support, our earnest support. Above anyone else in government he has stood firm on a strict interpretation of The Constitution. Supporting him, despite the odds, is simply the right thing to do - a trigger point must come and it cannot come unless decent, feed-up people continue to dream and continue to see their dream shattered by the current system.

The election is Hillary's to win unless she herself losses it in the coming months - ours is but to stand firm on principles and support that which is right, not what is pragmatic. There is too much pragmatism in politics.

I would have thought that after 7 years of neoconic folly the body of conservatives would rise from the autopsy table and demand a man like Dr. Paul - we see this is not the case in the vast majority, why on Earth would any real conservative support Giuliani, Romney, McCain or Thompson? I don't know - I am without an explanation. After the lies, deceit and downright trampling of the Constitution under Bush I would expect a real conservative revolution but it has occurred only on the fringes.

I would like to think that after 4 years of Hillary real conservatives would wake up and say "enough", I would like to think that they would look at the GOP as an organization infested with false conservatives and bad ideology and demand a change. I would like to think that a combination of tyranny and lies under Bush and socialism and idiocy under Clinton II would wake my own people up and have them screaming in streets for freedom and independence from this republic gone astray - realizing that a vote does not equal a voice in a system this large.

I would like to see that and maybe we will, right now I am confused as to why more of my own people are not in the streets demanding that Ron Paul occupy the White House at the earliest opportunity.

The Scots woke up (partially) will we?