Second Marathon bombing suspect captured

In the waning moments of daylight, police descended Friday on a shrouded boat in a Watertown backyard to capture the suspected terrorist who had eluded their enormous dragnet for a tumultuous day, ending a dark week in Boston that ­began with the bombing of the world’s most prestigious road race.

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Boston locked down after manhunt for Marathon bombers

• Interactive map: Timeline of the manhunt
• Interactive map: Timeline of Marathon attack suspects
• Manhunt for Boston Marathon bombing suspects ends
• Coverage of the Marathon bombings

The arrest of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Cambridge ended an unprecedented daylong siege of Greater Boston, after a frantic night of violence that left one MIT police officer dead, an MBTA Transit Police officer wounded, and an embattled public — rattled again by the touch of terrorism — huddled inside homes.

Tsarnaev’s elder brother and ­alleged accom­plice — 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the second suspect in Monday’s Boston Marathon attack — was pronounced dead early Friday morning at Beth Israel ­Deaconess Medical Center, ­after suffering shrapnel and bullet wounds in a gunfight with police.
“It’s a proud day to be a Boston police officer,” Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis told his force over the radio moments after the arrest. “Thank you all.”
President Obama, addressing the nation from the White House, ­applauded Boston for not allowing the terrorists to prevail.
“They failed because the people of Boston refused to be intimidated,” the president said.
Friday will be remembered as the day the city stood still, after Governor Deval Patrick asked the people of Boston and the nearby communities of Watertown, Waltham, ­Newton, Belmont, and Cambridge to “shelter in place” — stay inside, lock the door, and don’t open it for anyone except police in uniform — while the younger ­Tsarnaev was on the loose.
A city of some 625,000, in a ­metropolis of 2 million, screeched to a halt. Heavily armed officers patrolled eerily empty streets that looked like the set of an apocalyptic movie. The MBTA halted its trains, buses, and subways. Taxi service was temporarily frozen. Amtrak stopped service between Boston and Providence. Officials asked businesses across the region not to open. The Red Sox and Bruins games were postponed. And the campus of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where ­Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a student, was evacuated and closed.
The day began with bomb blasts and gunshots on a street in Watertown, where police said more than 200 rounds were fired in the battle.
While his brother was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev survived and escaped on foot. Local, state, and federal law enforcement officers — includ­ing the Secret Service, K-9 teams, ­explosives experts, and SWAT officers — searched door to door for the suspect throughout Friday. Police in ­helicopters scoured the streetscape from above. More than 1,000 officers participated in the hunt.
By 6 p.m., frustrated officials relaxed the rule and allowed residents to leave their homes. The people of Watertown began to venture outside.
But within an hour, the crack of gunshots again blasted through the neighborhood. ­Sirens blared, and officers on foot scrambled down Franklin Street.
Police found Dzhokhar ­Tsarnaev hiding on a boat stored in a backyard on ­Franklin Street. Police ­exchanged gunfire with him before capturing him alive. Spontaneous celebrations erupted across the region, from the ­Boston Common to the Back Bay streets near the bombing.
The boat’s owners, a couple, spent Friday hunkered down under the stay-at-home order. When it was lifted early in the evening, they ventured outside for some fresh air and the man noticed the tarp on his boat blowing in the wind, according to their his son, Robert Duffy.
The cords securing it had been cut and there was blood near the straps. Duffy’s father called police, who swarmed the yard and had the couple evacuated, Duffy said.

CJ GUNTHER/EPA

The ambulance carrying Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left the Franklin Street area.

Residents, who had barricaded themselves in their homes for nearly 20 hours, were still deeply shaken. “I’m so happy they got these guys,” said Tom Sheridan, 35, an interior painter from Watertown, as he cheered police cruisers and ambulances as they drove by on Mount ­Auburn Street. “But I’m worried there are more people out there like that. It won’t be the same.”
Tsarnaev was wounded and taken to a hospital. In an interview late last night, Patrick said he is “hoping very deeply he survives those wounds, because I’ve got a lot of questions and I know investigators have a lot of questions for him.”
Investigators believe the Tsarnaev siblings, originally from the former Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan, who came to the United States in the early 2000s, are responsible for the attack on the Marathon on Monday that killed three people and injured more than 170, many grievously.
The FBI-led investigation of the atrocity took a sudden and shocking turn Thursday afternoon after the FBI released photos and videos of the alleged Marathon bombers and asked the public for help identifying them. The images showed two young men casually lugging backpacks along Boylston Street Monday, shortly before two bombs exploded near the finish line.
Investigators said they ­believe the suspects carried crude but powerful bombs made from household pressure cookers in their backpacks, which they abandoned on the sidewalk.

Sean Collier, a 26-year-old MIT police officer, was killed in a late night confrontation with the two suspects behind the deadly Boston Marathon.

Upon release of the images, tips poured into the FBI. Within hours, the brothers ­allegedly killed again, shooting Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier in his cruiser, near ­Vassar and Main streets in Cambridge, at about 10:24 p.m. The 26-year-old officer later died.
Police say the siblings carjacked a motorist minutes later on Memorial Drive. They released the unidentified motorist in Cambridge about 30 minutes later, police said. He was not hurt. Later that evening — the timing is unclear — an ­MBTA police officer spotted the stolen car, and a cavalcade of police cruisers chased the suspects into Watertown. The brothers threw explosives at the pursuing officers, police said.
The brothers stopped near Dexter and Laurel streets, got out of the car, and traded gunfire with police for several minutes. MBTA Transit Police Officer Richard H. Donohue Jr., 33, was wounded. He was in stable condition Friday at Mount ­Auburn Hospital.
The elder brother was shot in the battle and collapsed.As his brother lay on the street, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev jumped into the car and took off, plowing past a line of police officers who fired furiously. As he drove, he ran over his brother’s body. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev abandoned the car nearby and fled on foot, triggering an enormous search and setting the region on edge.
Police took Tamerlan ­Tsarnaev to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center about 1:10 a.m. Friday. He was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m. Dr. Richard Wolfe said the suspect had been hit by shrapnel from an explosion and that he had died from “a combination of blasts” and “multiple gunshot wounds.”
The question that remains is why the siblings would attack their adoptive nation. But a picture began to emerge Friday of Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an aggres­sive, possibly radicalized immigrant who may have ­ensnared his younger brother — described almost universally as smart and sweet — into an act of terror.

Johannes Hirn/Landov

Tamerlan Tsarnaev is shown inside the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center in Boston in 2009.

“I used to warn Dzhokhar that Tamerlan was up to no good,” Zaur Tsarnaev, who identified himself as a 26-year-old cousin, said by phone Friday from Makhachkala, Russia. “[Tamerlan] was always getting into trouble. He was never happy, never cheering, never smiling. He used to strike his girlfriend. He hurt her a few times. He was not a nice man.”
In a photo essay about boxing, Tamerlan said: “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.”
In 2011, a foreign government asked the FBI for information about Tamerlan ­Tsarnaev, based on information that he was a follower of “radical Islam” who had changed drastically, the bureau said in a statement Friday. In response, the FBI investigated and interviewed Tamerlan and family members. “The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign,” the bureau said.
Dzhokhar, the suspect seen in FBI photos in a white cap worn backward, was a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. On Wednesday, two days after the Marathon ­attack, he spent the night at his dorm, according to a school ­official who declined to be named. He was an all-star wrestler and a member of the class of 2011 at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School; he won a Cambridge City Scholarship that year.

Yearbook photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

A Northeastern University sophomore who lived within blocks of Dzhokhar and graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin with him described the younger bombing suspect as an honor student popular with classmates who enjoyed playing pickup basketball with a large circle of friends.
Gilberto Junior, 44, owner of Junior’s Auto body in Somerville, said the younger suspect dropped off a white Mercedes station wagon two weeks ago for repairs. Junior said he had not yet touched the car when the suspect came back demanding the car, the day after the bombing. The owner said Dzhokhar appeared nervous.
The family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who died in the blasts, thanked law enforcement officers for their work on the investigation. “None of this will bring our beloved Martin back, or reverse the injuries these men inflicted on our family and nearly two hundred others,” the Dorchester family said in a statement. “We continue to pray for healing and for comfort on the long road that lies ahead for every victim and their loved ones.”
William Campbell III, whose 29-year-old sister, Krystle M. Campbell, was killed when the bombs went off on Boylston Street Monday, said after ­Tsarnaev was captured: “I’m happy that nobody else is going to get hurt by these guys, but it’s not going to bring her back.”
As for the rest of the family, including Krystle’s father, William Campbell Jr., and mother, Patricia Campbell, “they’re happy they got the guys, but basically they feel the same,” he said. “You can only get so angry, and you then know she’s not ­going to be here anymore.”
James Vaznis, Andrea Estes, Shelley Murphy, Eric Moskowitz, Maria Cramer, Brian MacQuarrie, Milton J. Valencia, Meghan E. Irons, Matt Carroll, Michael Levenson, Noah Bierman, Scott Helman, Evan ­Allen, Akilah Johnson, Martine Powers, Bryan Marquard, and Brian Ballou of the Globe staff and Globe correspondents Zachary T. Sampson, Derek J. Anderson, Matt Rocheleau, ­Jaclyn Reiss, and Todd Feathers contributed to this report. Mark Arsenault can be reached at marsenault@globe.com.

'Ma, I'm hurt real bad.' Boston. April 15, 2013. Boston Marathon Bombers Apprehended

Right On The Money. When will the Next Bomb go off??  Literally! Never in a million years did I figure I would be reading the first draft of this article, while in the presence of my Mentor and CEO, Dr. Lant, whom at this very moment, as I write this, has been ordered to not leave his home.  The terror that began at the Boston Marathon has come to Cambridge.It was only 30 or so hours ago that Dr. Lant was in the process of writing an article about the Boston Marathon.  He had a theory, which proved to be “right on the money”.  That this would not stop at one individual bombing, but the terrorism would continue.  And so it has.  Right in his neighbourhood.At this time, one of two brothers responsible for this, has been killed; one still at large. I can only pray that Dr. Lant, Mr. Joseph and his wife, Mercedes, and all the citizens stay safe, and God Bless!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author's program note. To experience the joy of spring in New England and in its first and principal city since its inception in 1630 you must have faced and survived the very real rigors of the New England winter as only the genuine New Englander can do... resolute people... determined people... people for whom the very idea of tenacity was created.

These are the people who know the rancor in the bone rattling chill the old Atlantic has thrown at its stubborn inhabitants each wintry season since there were such inhabitants; daring them to spend yet another exacting season on this inauspicious pied-a-terre the Pilgrims audaciously decreed would be their Godly capital. And so fearing nothing but God they began, little knowing how many challenges there would be, but bolstered by the living God facing each one as it came, no matter what it was or how it seared us.

These are the kind of people who in this often grim, demanding geography built their Shining City on a Hill... these are the kind of people who sustain it. For we are a stern and rigorous people who have grown up sometimes daunted, sometimes misguided, sometimes stumbling, but always advancing... renewing... improving; even when our heart is breaking... as it most assuredly is breaking now.

For the musical accompaniment to this article, I have chosen one of the most soothing and uplifting compositions because I feel sure composer Aaron Copeland meant it especially for moments like now. This is "Appalachian Spring", and I recommend you go now to any search engine and listen to it carefully... for if your soul has no immediate need of it, there is sure to come the day when it will.

This radiant achievement was first recorded October 7, 1945. It caught the sound of the Great Republic as she moved out of the massive burden of war and took her great place on the world stage as the one certain hope of every person who loved freedom and all its works.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U7hPHSkNJo

One of the first recordings was made in Boston, the uneasy, restless, aspiring city where every corner, every location, every crooked, narrow lane revealed another aspect of what this place and its people had done for themselves as they forged revolution here in order to secure liberty everywhere. The world took note of Boston and knew that here important things had been done... things which might benefit them.

And so the unyielding land of New England and its principal city changed the world while admonishing the good people everywhere to see what they had done to shape the better life, urging them to do as much for themselves and to do it as well.

Into this great city of liberty came people determined to use that liberty to confound that liberty, wreak grievous havoc, and inflict mayhem and pain on a perfect April day when spirits were high and joyous and all New England was garlanded by the flowers of springtime we had all been waiting for. These people came to kill... and they did kill. Came to maim... and they did maim. Came to show what purposeful menace might do... and they did show.

Thus a mother heard in disbelief and horror what her son called on this April day to say, "Ma, I'm hurt real bad." He had lost both legs to the people of purposeful menace. Then shortly after she learned a second son had lost both his legs, too, her dismay now complete. In this way the bright promise and happiness of the day died... to be replaced by disbelief, lamentation, and wonder that the work of so few could disrupt so many, so completely, and create so much pain. The universal question was 'How could this happen?"

Martin Richard.

Of those killed, I felt an immediate affinity for Martin Richard. Why? Because he was a boy who wrote improving messages on poster board. What's so important about that? Just this: I was such a boy myself and spent happy world-changing hours crafting my posters with Magic Markers like Martin, just so: school election posters, powerful lines taken from a well-thumbed "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", the ones designed to decorate my room (often featuring the strongest possible warnings to a younger brother who wanted in when I was determined he should stay out) and, of course, the pieces de resistance, master works laboriously created, to be displayed in presidential elections, then kept proudly for years in my clothes closet, until they, tattered, still venerated and profoundly admired, were in shreds.

He was just 8 and his latest beauty, hand-lettered as usual, said a mouthful, "No more hurting people. Peace." It was festooned with those hard-to-make symmetrical hearts beloved of the very young and the very young in spirit. The peace symbol anchored the bottom standing alone in majesty, the better to make sure people knew it was a thing of the utmost significance and Martin's credo.

Of course, as many different colors as the young inventive mind could conceive , were riotously used to create this baby. He reckoned that such an important message called for such an abundance of color as the world had never seen. Thus he applied his choices with verve, lavishly, restraint unthinkable.

In perhaps the last picture of Martin he stands before the world, a wisp of a lad, no heavier than a sack of potatoes as my grandfather used to say, his smile a tad sheepish, proudly showing the message that was the heart of his endeavor.

He died in an instant, his mother and sister were severely injured. And so the youthful advocate for what the world needs now became a mangled thing of blood, disfigurement, and death.

Thus he touched the world and became the very symbol for what we so desperately need and can never have enough: peace. One hopes for the existence of God, if only so that Martin Richard can abide through eternity in serenity with the peace he urged upon us all... the peace he had for himself such a little time.

4:21 p.m. Eastern. "Are you alright?"

The voice at the other end was the best of friends. "Turn on NPR at once. Are you alright?" And so the great matter was brought with urgency to my attention, by someone who watches out for me. By that time, the cell phones of the world were overwhelmed by the calls of the near, dear and concerned, all having but a single refrain: are you okay?

In such ways does love work... and if there was malice that day on the part of a handful, millions demonstrated love.  And as these calls were made, so numerous that even the most sophisticated systems were overburdened and crashed, the people of Boston did what they have done since 1630 in the face of every calamity: they said a little prayer, dusted themselves off, and helped the sore afflicted as best they could until the great resources of the great city could be summoned and brought to bear.

For this is the city of the living God, as eternal as the Eternal City itself, the city the Pilgrims wrought from the inhospitable and daunting terrain, the very definition of fortitude, endurance, courage and unflinching resolution. This is the city which gave the men of '75 the ideas that changed the course of world events and the lives of millions, including generations yet unborn.

We are the people of Boston, current custodians of her universal renown. And if our pain today is sharp, deep, and acute, we have not bowed before the unfolding tragedy. That is not the way of this place and its people even under the greatest duress. There have been great tragedies in these hallowed precincts before; there will be great tragedies again. We shall rise to every occasion, just as we have risen to this one. In this way we honor our ancestors and provide the righteous example for those who, in the fullness of time, will take on this essential burden of our greatness and humanity. 

Envoi

Tragedies like this one must be remembered. Yet remembrance is difficult in a society where tragic incidents come thick and fast. We want to remember, we try to remember, but all too soon we cannot remember... and something essential is lost to us and our posterity.

Let us learn from London, a city of important incidents, people and events, all memorialized by blue historical plaques reminding us of what transpired in these critical places, each a thing which might well be forgotten if no conscious effort was made to remember. Yet remember we must for the consequences of negligence put all our crucial memories at risk... and this is unacceptable.

The past is prologue, and we must do everything to ensure that its significance is never lost. Otherwise, the senseless deaths of Martin Richard and his companions for eternity will be unmitigated, their oblivion making a great tragedy more tragic still; thereby further blighting these once perfect spring days in the city of godliness, revolution, and unceasing incident. 



About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses.

Republished with author's permission by Elizabeth English  http://LizsWorldprofit.com

'How shall we extol thee...?' Thoughts on Margaret Thatcher, dead at 87, April 8, 2013, her irremovable place in History.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author's program note. If you want to know where someone is going, then look at where they have been. We are all the product of our experiences but rarely do these events alter the course of a great nation. However, in the case of' The Right Honourable The Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, PC and FRS they did.

We must, therefore, look carefully at the early Thatcher, the strict Non-Conformist tradition into which she was born, her hard-working, God-fearing parents (and particularly her father), how they made their living, how and where she secured her extensive education that moved her out and up, for her personal and professional experiences did not merely influence just herself, but also the lives of all of us.

Thus, to a singular degree, to look at her past is to see our present and that makes Margaret Thatcher one of the most important of our leaders and one of the most readily understandable. We always knew where she stood, like it or not. Her clarity of thought and expression became a byword, not least in the corridors of power where such clarity is often the first casualty. But not with Mrs.Thatcher. We understood her because she understood us... and her deep understanding was readily apparent whenever she spoke and whatever she spoke about. Her opponents were stymied on the rock of her unflinching plain spoken common sense. We knew she was right because we knew whereof she spoke. "Her nonsense," they grumbled, "was their nonsense."

Of course the liberal elite delighted in such clever put-downs, first because her sureness about what was right and wrong infuriated their relativism, making them appear (what they so often were) weak and ineffectual; second because they both scorned and envied her bond with real people and their everyday concerns.  Liberals, you see, too often concentrate on fomenting outrage about the affronting and unconscionable aspects of our human reality when instead they must move beyond mere outrage, should instead be constantly at the task of exploring and implementing practical solutions, one step at a time.

Too often they feel that mere outrage is sufficient, thereby putting them on the high road to Heaven. But they forget, if they ever knew at all, it is everyday people who must understand every change, accept every change, and implement every change or there can be no change. Or to put this another way liberals might decry the lack of inside water and toilet facilities, using the most persuasive and eloquent of language to make their case for dignity, sanitation, and health. Such exquisite outrage touches our hearts.... but nothing else.

However real people have to fill the heavy pails to the brim and engage in the hard business of carrying them upstairs and down until practical entrepreneurs find a way (with their own time and money, mind) to cut the burden, reduce human work and improve the human condition... and make money where there was no money before. Liberals then peruse the situation, urging that the enterprise, its works and of course its profits be taxed as a matter of "fairness". In due course, Margaret Thatcher became the strongest possible opponent of such cockamamie  "fairness". We knew she was right and supported her accordingly. Thus "her sense was our sense".

Margaret Thatcher remembered this salient aspect of leadership more often than any of the prime or other cabinet ministers of her era. She was always at her greatest when she not only remembered and represented these "common" people and their pressing concerns, but made sure these people were not excluded from planning and shaping the future in which they must live. Consider this: her maiden speech after she was finally elected to Parliament in 1959 after a typically hard-fought battle was in support of her private member's bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960). It required local authorities to hold their council meetings in public. And so she began as she was to go on: the people's friend, and none better. It was the way, the only way, to build a land of hope and glory.

It begins...

To understand the magnitude of her epochal achievement, you have only to consider the right honorable gentlemen (for they were all men) who were the Conservative Party prime ministers of the realm before she ascended to their ranks and changed the reality of political generations forever: Sir Winston Churchill, grandson of a duke, heir to a gilded place at the acme of the peerage; followed by the Earl of Avon (Anthony Eden); the Earl of Stockton (my distant cousin Harold Macmillan); the Earl of Hume with the consummate noble pedigree, a plethora of titles and the hauteur it takes generations to perfect. Finally, her immediate predecessor, Edward Heath, who, too, was a member of the Establishment. Margaret Thatcher was not... broad acres, liveried servants, a safe seat in the House of Commons, followed by the nirvana of the hereditary House of Lords were as remote from her reality as they were from ours. See for yourself...

Born in the village of Grantham, England on October 13, 1925, just a few years after British women gained the suffrage, Margaret Hilda Roberts was the second daughter of Alfred Roberts, a small-time grocer and lay Methodist minister, and Beatrice Roberts, a dressmaker. Throughout her career, Thatcher never tired of reminding the everyday people that she was one of them, growing up "above the shop" in an apartment that lacked indoor plumbing and running water. She thus knew first-hand and over and over again the drudgery of filling, carrying and emptying pails... that was her present, unending reality. She knew it was also ours. She was determined to go beyond it. Her greatness comes from the fact she was determined to help all of us go beyond it, too.

Fortunately she started with the best possible help: a strong sense of self and personal responsibility; a father with the strongest possible work ethic, long experience in and love for politics (a town councilor, he later became Grantham's mayor) and (again through her father, a long-time lay Methodist minister) a sense, direct, personal and profound that God was on her side.

Perhaps because the tenets of Methodism are not now as widely known as they once were, this essential aspect has gone insufficiently noted, if noted at all. But those who are early imbued with a love of God do not shirk the fight or the terrible odds they might face, for the Lord of Hosts sustains them. And if Margaret Thatcher did not wear her redeemer or her belief on her sleeve, it does not mean the woman did not value what the girl had learned at her father's knee, grateful for it her entire life.

One more point: born as she was, a member of the great conscience of Non-Conformity, she understood that she could expect no assistance from the prevailing Establishment, overwhelmingly members of the Church of England. She would have to make her own way .. and so she did, her biography packed with applying for such-and-such a thing, being rejected because she was a woman and, so fortified, applying again... and again until her fortitude, endurance, and commitment wore down the prejudiced so she, the model for the advancement of women, could make another step forward, inspiring and empowering all women, everywhere.

It was grueling, often depressing, always demanding... but it was God's work, something that must be done, and wonderful in His eyes. In this way, she harked back to one of the greatest and most significant British statesmen, but it was not a Conservative; rather William Ewart Gladstone, 4 times Liberal Prime Minister between 1868 and 1894, adored by Non-Conformists, including her Liberal father. Thus, with the thickest of irony, the Grand Old Man of British politics saw his mantel of consequence descend to the Grand New Woman.

Under the circumstances, Mrs. Thatcher in her time became the great polarizing figure that he had been. If the abuse, the censure, the ridicule and cruel commentary bothered her, she took it all in stride, proud of the enemies she made, bidding them to do their worst for she was ready.

"In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman."

Thus, Prime Ministers came to rely on Mrs. Thatcher. It is a measure of family pride that cousin Harold Macmillan, premier from 1957-1963, first appointed her to office, in 1961, as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. It was the lowest rung on the ladder, but she had achieved it against all odds. But far greater odds with far greater risks and far greater challenges now confronted her. The issue was nothing less than the future of England, of Europe, of what we believed in, how we lived, and every right and freedom we so wrongly took for granted.

Her opponents, voluble, numerous, boisterous and condescending, belittled, despised, and excoriated her. Her response? In remarks made at the Conservative Party conference the day she was elected leader in February, 1975 she threw down the gauntlet, "I am not a consensus politician," she said. "I am a conviction politician." She meant every word of it and spent the rest of her long political life showing the world what conviction could deliver.

Her achievements were staggering... because she was clear what she wanted... not peace and quiet and hours wasted in persiflage and platitudes... but results, results, results.

State-run enterprises like British Airways and Rolls-Royce? Privatize to see immediate improvements.

Deregulate to the maximum extent? Absolutely. That's far more productive and efficient.

Reduce the power and influence of trade unions? To be sure. Those autocratic dinosaurs were well past their usefulness, every incendiary word testament to just how ineffectual they were.

Home and stock ownership? Of course. Citizens should be owners and benefit accordingly.

And what should be done to other nations intent on stealing what was left of the empire on which the sun never sets? Strike back, early, resolutely, proudly. And so in 1982 she did the necessary to remove covetous Argentina from the British-controlled Falkland Islands. And so bit by bit Great Britain became great again... and we all were better for it and her many electoral victories which made her the longest serving Prime Minister of modern times.

Now Margaret Thatcher is dead. Her journey over. Her place of greatness secure forever However, I can hear her now, reminding us that everything she stood for and achieved can so easily be threatened, diminished, lost if we do not do what is necessary to preserve it. Thus her legacy must be one of unceasing vigilance and prompt action to ensure that we maintain the freedom necessary for the well lived life, the life we are free to live, shape and improve to our heart's content.This she would bluntly say is the only way to make not just England but the entire world mighty, then mightier yet and every land the land of hope and glory.

Envoi

For the musical accompaniment to this article, I have selected Sir Edward Elgar's  well- known 1902 song "Land of Hope and Glory," with its deeply affecting lyrics by A.C. Benson. Go now to any search engine. You will find many fine versions. The best make you feel the mystic bond that unites people with homelands, especially if that land is England, a place inspiring the deepest bonds of loyalty, affection and gratitude. As such I can never hear this composition's words and music working so well together without a tear, glad to extol a nation I loved long before I went, just as I admired Margaret Thatcher long before I met her. My fervent wish is that this article is worthy of its subject, the lady who made England mightier yet and will always be an example of what is possible when one is willing to do the necessary work, hard, arduous, daunting though it may be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tW0QqiT2LU


About the Author:

Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of 15 books, several ebooks and over one thousand articles. 

Republished with author's permission by Elizabeth English http://LizsWorldprofit.com