Thatcher on "The Great Liberator"
Margaret Thatcher's eulogy has provided Ronald Reagan's funeral of its most interesting–and touching, to my mind–moment. Beyond anything else, it underscored just how distant the Reagan era and its main concerns seem to the current day. A snippet (which reminds you of why Thatcher was called "the Iron Lady"):
So the President resisted Soviet expansion and pressed down on Soviet weakness at every point until the day came when communism began to collapse beneath the combined weight of these pressures and its own failures. And when a man of goodwill did emerge from the ruins, President Reagan stepped forward to shake his hand and to offer sincere cooperation….
Ronald Reagan carried the American people with him in his great endeavours because there was perfect sympathy between them. He and they loved America and what it stands for—freedom and opportunity for ordinary people….
He was able to say `God Bless America' with equal fervour in public and in private. And so he was able to call confidently upon his fellow-countrymen to make sacrifices for America—and to make sacrifices for those who looked to America for hope and rescue.
With the lever of American patriotism, he lifted up the world. And so today the world—in Prague, in Budapest, in Warsaw, in Sofia, in Bucharest, in Kiev and in Moscow itself—the world mourns the passing of the Great Liberator and echoes his prayer "God Bless America".
Whole text here.