by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The death of Margaret Thatcher will no doubt generate much deserved recognition and discussion of her historical significance. She was, after all, the most consequential British Prime Minister in the post-war period, eclipsed only by Winston Churchill as the greatest British leader of the 20th century. She reversed England\u2019s economic and cultural decline hastened by socialist delusions, and she was instrumental in backing Ronald Reagan when he shoved the USSR into the dustbin of history. But her passing puts me in mind of another death\u2013\u2013the ideology we call feminism.<\/p>\n Feminism, of course, has been dead for decades. But like most progressive ideology, it continues a zombie-like existence, stumbling around the universities, popular culture, and the media, devouring the brains of the stupid or badly educated. What passes for feminism today has nothing to do with the original aims of equity feminism, which focused on removing the remaining barriers that kept some women from taking control over their lives and enjoying the personal autonomy\u2013\u2013and responsibility\u2013\u2013 that is the foundation of liberal democracy. That aim was achieved pretty quickly, with the result that today as a whole women are better educated, healthier, and longer living than men.<\/p>\n The feminism that has burrowed into the women\u2019s studies caves in colleges and universities is something else: a species of progressive identity politics predicated on perpetual victimhood as a means for extorting more social and political clout. As such it represents a narrow spectrum of women across the world, those privileged enough to take for granted the improvements in science and technology, the economic growth created by capitalism, and the access to education that have liberated women from the tyranny of nature and the oppression of illiberal cultures. These so-called feminists, the richest and most comfortable women who ever walked the earth, have created a new-age cult focused on wacky fads like Wicca or romantic environmentalism, issues of concern only to the well-fed who have the luxury of taking seriously such claptrap. And like most cults, it is humorless, intolerant, conformist, illiberal, and lustful for the power needed to indulge the totalitarian impulse to silence the infidels and impose orthodoxy. In their gospel, the only \u201cchoices\u201d women have are to abort babies, hate men, despise conservative or religious women, and incessantly bite the liberal-capitalist hand that feeds them.<\/p>\n So what has all that to do with Margaret Thatcher? In any morally coherent and intellectually honest world, Thatcher would be a major feminist hero. She was not born to upper-class Ox-Bridge privilege, but had to make her way in a man\u2019s world and succeed not by dint of family or school connections, or by special consideration or reserved slots based on her sex, but by brains, drive, and hard work. Compared to her, feminist hero Hillary Clinton is a rebooted version of a Mad-Men\u00a0haute bourgeois<\/em>\u00a0housewife whose success comes not from her own achievements, but from her connection to and dependence on a politically talented man who ended up President, a man who humiliated her publicly with his juvenile, sordid philandering that reinforced every stereotype of the loyal mate who sacrifices herself on the altar of her husband\u2019s career.<\/p>\n But don\u2019t hold your breath waiting for institutional feminists to celebrate the life and achievements of one of the greatest women of the 20th century. They\u2019d rather worship the creepy Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and its abortion mills, the racist eugenicist quite happy to sweep away millions of inferior people in order to create her vision of utopia. But Thatcher is just the latest example of truly feminist heroes ignored or vilified by the self-styled champions of women\u2019s rights and lives. How is Sarah Palin, a self-made, independent, bear-hunting, successful-in-a-man\u2019s world woman not a feminist hero? Because she chose to raise a Down\u2019s syndrome child instead of killing him, thus defiling the feminist sacrament of abortion<\/p>\n Or what feminists have praised and defended Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brave Somali woman who cast off the shackles of a misogynist, patriarchal Islamic faith, and put her life on the line to do so? In fact, where have the feminists been the last ten years, when the West has been battling the same illiberal oppressive religion that justifies polygamy, misogyny, and genital mutilation? By invading Afghanistan, George Bush liberated more truly suffering and oppressed women than all the Women\u2019s Studies courses, seminars, books, speeches, sit-ins, demonstrations, and articles put together. Yet the progressive ideology and multicultural delusions that define feminism required Bush to be the villain and warmonger of cartoonish leftism, no matter how many Afghan women benefitted from his war.<\/p>\n The silence of feminism, with some few exceptions, on the oppressive theology of Islam is exhibit number one in the corruption of liberal equity feminism by grievance politics, cultural relativism, and illiberal progressive ideology. While feminist professors and journalists wax hysterical over trivial or even illusory slights against women \u2014 Obama complimenting a beautiful state Attorney General, or ex-Harvard president Larry Summers speculating that there just might be inherent differences in men and women when it comes to physics and math \u2014 millions of Muslim women across the globe are subject to honor killings, mutilation, polygamy, and sexual abuse by men just because they wanted some say over their lives. But drunk on multiculturalism, these feminists are silent, preferring to attack a Western culture that has made them free and independent, rather than confront the biggest, most lethal misogynist institution on the planet.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s celebrate the life of the true feminist hero Margaret Thatcher, and leave the zombie poseurs to squabble over sexist pronouns and suffixes.<\/p>\n \u00a92013 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage\u00a0 The death of Margaret Thatcher will no doubt generate much deserved recognition and discussion of her historical significance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[33,22,117],"tags":[190,434,557,673,850,400,1018],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1vJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8066,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-end-of-feminism\/","url_meta":{"origin":5811,"position":0},"title":"The End of Feminism","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ Defining Ideas California recently passed a law requiring that sexual encounters between students in universities and colleges can proceed only on the basis of \u201caffirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement.\u201d Failure to resist or to ask the partner to stop the encounter can no longer be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Defining Ideas"","block_context":{"text":"Defining Ideas","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/defining-ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2416,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-lovely-little-nato-intervention\/","url_meta":{"origin":5811,"position":1},"title":"A Lovely Little NATO Intervention","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine World powers sometimes have to fight wars not for some material interest, but for bolstering a nation\u2019s prestige in order to deter more dangerous aggressors. As Margaret Thatcher said after England\u2019s defeat of Argentina in the 1982 Falklands War, the conflict showed that \u201cnow\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":868,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/appeasement-bode-war-not-peace\/","url_meta":{"origin":5811,"position":2},"title":"Appeasement Bode War Not Peace","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray New Oxford Review A review of\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama's America\u00a0by Bruce S. Thornton. (Encounter Books, 2011 pp. 283) Winston Churchill famously said, \"An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.\" In\u00a0The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8160,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-last-lion-remembered\/","url_meta":{"origin":5811,"position":3},"title":"The Last Lion Remembered","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 23, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Winston Churchill never once flinched in the face of the Third Reich. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Fifty years ago this Saturday, former British prime minister Winston Churchill died at age 90. Churchill is remembered for his multiple nonstop careers as a statesman, cabinet minister, politician, journalist,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Europe"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Churchill in November, 1942 (Reg Speller\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/pic_giant_012215_SM_Winston-Churchill-G-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4909,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/back-to-the-falklands\/","url_meta":{"origin":5811,"position":4},"title":"Back to the Falklands","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 16, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"If only we'd had a roadmap to peace in 1982. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online April, 1982 Secretary of State Alexander Haig today issued the State Department's long-awaited \"Roadmap\" intended to end the dispute over the contested islands. The \"Quartet\" of the United States, Russia, the United Nations,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2003"","block_context":{"text":"May 2003","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2003\/may-2003\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8475,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/progressive-academics-shocked-that-their-creatures-turn-on-them\/","url_meta":{"origin":5811,"position":5},"title":"Progressive Academics Shocked That Their Creatures Turn on Them","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"When the cult of sensitivity begins to eat its children. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Recently several progressive professors have publicly complained that their students are hounding them for failing to consider their tender sensibilities by straying beyond the p.c. orthodoxy on sexual assault, sex identity, linguistic correctness,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Contributors"","block_context":{"text":"Our Contributors","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5812,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5811\/revisions\/5812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}