The Iron Lady launched into an attack against government regulations, political correctness, and a licentious socity. Let's run her for President. she couldn't be any worse than Bubba or Dolt --and she might terrorize half or more Washington. ------ Forwarded ------ London Daily Telegraph for 25 Sep 95 <HTML> <Head> <Title>Thatcher hits out at moral 'corrosion' [Anonymized]</Title> </Head> <Body bgcolor=ffffff text=000040 link=ff0000 vlink=7080f0 alink=ff0000><H1 ALIGN=center> LADY Thatcher spoke out against the "licentiousness" of the permissive society last night and said that children were being brought up in a morally corrosive atmosphere.</summary><p> The former Prime Minister expressed her distaste for the coarsening of popular culture in a lecture in London which praised the enduring values and institutions of American civilisation. On the day in which the annual crime figures showed the first overall increase in Britain for several years, she also lamented the steady decline in law and order which had rendered everyone "less secure than we of a right should be".<p> She said: "From the most heinous acts of terrorism to the petty burglar and street corner mugger, we are confronted by those for whom words such as 'justice' and 'right' have no meaning. We see around ourselves the licentiousness of modern society manifested in popular culture. We have witnessed a coarsening of everything from art to music to literature and film. But for some people there seems to be nothing beyond the pale, for them freedom has no limits."<p> Lady Thatcher did not specify the targets of her criticism, but went on to accuse those who advocated unrestrained freedom of expression as perverse, demeaning and dangerous. She said: "The younger generation is being reared in a morally corrosive atmosphere where they are taught that in the name of liberty, anything goes. There is no elevation of the human spirit in works designed merely to shock or to appeal only to our most base instincts."<p> Lady Thatcher's vigorous defence of the rule of law reprised a familiar theme from her period of office in Downing Street, when the Conservatives were themselves accused of fuelling the rise in lawlessness by putting too great an emphasis on individualism.<p> However she did not refer to the present Government and its internal difficulties at all, except to warn in passing of what she saw as the dangers posed by the Labour Party or bureaucrats in Brussels. She said: "If we should be enticed once more down the rutted and muddy road of socialism, we will again find Britain mired in a morass of stifling regulations and government controls."<p> In a sustained attack on state-enforced egalitarianism, Lady Thatcher also hit out at the fashion for political correctness as "the guiding sentiment of tyrants in every age" who believed that if they controlled what people read, they controlled the people themselves.<p> Delivering the inaugural James Bryce lecture for London University's Institute of United States Studies, Lady Thatcher called for more serious study of the history and culture of America to understand the exceptional role the US had played in world affairs. It had served as a beacon of enlightenment in the struggles against German imperialism, fascist aggression and communist tyranny during this century, and would dominate the next.<p> She said: "We are confronted by a stream of dictators and tyrants who will seek to dominate those nations around them, if not the entire world. The deepest conflicts between men will not subside, nor can they subside until the basic principles of individual liberty and political freedom are embraced throughout the world."<p> Lady Thatcher said that too much talk of "rights" was in danger of overwhelming the importance of duty and responsibility in a free country. She said: "In the process, liberty decays into licence in an atmosphere where all is permitted and nothing prohibited. The resulting permissive society is in fact no society at all. It is little more than a state of nature where the line between right and wrong is first blurred and then obliterated - a place where no one dares to say no. There can be no order without authority, and authority that is impotent or hesitant in the face of intimidation, crime and violence, cannot endure."<p> She challenged the modern assumption that progress was the general rule and corruption the exception. Often, it was the other way around. "Freedom and civilisation are conditions that require great effort, deep thought, and unwavering commitment," she said.<p> </body> </html>