Thatcherism Lives On

Four twentysomethings tell the London Evening Standard how their conservatism is a nod to the late Margaret Thatcher's legacy.

"People my age who hate her with a passion -- it's not really hatred. You ask them what they really think and they struggle. It shows a lack of critical thinking," Raheem Kassam said. "This claim that she was divisive is strictly an inherited one. I find it as galling as people who inherited her politics."

A Cuban Dissident For Thatcher

As Britain celebrated the life of its first and only female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, at a ceremonial funeral service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, a dissident opposing the Cuban regime writes about meeting "the lion of liberty."

"Not wanting to miss the opportunity, I introduced myself to her and said the following: 'Ma'am, my people, the Cuban people, admire and love you for all of your efforts in defense of individual liberty, and we will be eternally grateful to you when the moment of our own freedom comes. Thank you.' I suddenly realized that I was tearing up as I said this. She took my hand with both of hers and looked me in the eye with her own steel blue eyes and said: 'The Cuban people too will be free, I have every expectation.'"

When Tragedy Becomes Political

In Amy Davidson's piece "The Saudi Marathon Man" for The New Yorker, we are given the standard line of Americans-as-intolerant-bigots. Writing of the 20-year-old Saudi national who was interviewed by police and his apartment searched following the bombings at Monday's Boston Marathon, Davidson says:

"The bombing could, for all we know, be the work of a Saudi man -- or an American or an Icelandic or a person from any nation you can think of. It still won't mean that this Saudi man can be treated the way he was, or that people who love him might have had to find out that a bomb had hit him when his name popped up on the web as a suspect in custody. It is at these moments that we need to be most careful, not least. It might be comforting to think of this as a blip, an aberration, something that will be forgetten tomorrow -- if not by this young man. There are people at Guanatanmo who have also been cleared by our own government, and are still there."