By Alan Bean

In one of those odd quirks of history, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shuffled off this mortal coil just as we were remembering the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and his great “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” delivered a half-century ago in April of 1963.

I wonder what King and Thatcher would have had to say to one another had history arranged such a meeting.  I suspect they would have liked and, perhaps grudgingly  respected one another, but have two people ever looked at the world through such different lenses?

Bleeding hearts like me remember Thatcher for her “families and society” comment.  Let’s be fair and consider her words in full context: (more…)