Since learning of Margaret Thatcher’s passing Monday, chroniclers have pored over her many spoken and written words, from early campaign speeches to that grand British political tradition of Prime Minister’s Questions, in which Britain’s leader trades barbs with members of Parliament.

(I have often longed for such a thing in America, but it would fail miserably. From our presidents to their fan base of the same party to their tormentors in the other party, no one would shut up long enough to allow the process to move with its necessary briskness.)

In my share of revisiting Lady Thatcher’s words of wisdom, I am newly struck by the world’s good fortune at her ascendancy alongside Ronald Reagan’s in America.

The late 1970s turned sharply left in both nations. As the Carter years saddled us with a damaged economy and a depleted military, the Labor Party governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan left British voters similarly eager to give conservatism a try.

Thatcher was elected in May 1979. Six months later, Reagan announced his campaign for president. With a fierce defender of individual and economic freedom installed at No. 10 Downing St., the inauguration of a kindred spirit in Washington created cornerstones of liberty on both sides of the Atlantic. In a triumvirate with Pope John Paul II, Thatcher and Reagan made the 1980s a decade of retreat for totalitarianism the world over.

There are scores of Thatcher speeches I could hold up as particularly emblematic of her courage, but one stands out.

She was not yet prime minister in October 1975. As leader of the opposition Conservative Party, she issued a call to action at a party conference that lamented her nation’s direction.

Her words that day applied to the America of the 1970s and, sadly, apply again to America today.

“A man’s right to work as he will — to spend what he earns, to own property — to have the state as servant and not as master; these are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.”

She then struck at the heart of the most poisonous and false of criticisms — that conservatism somehow operates to the disadvantage of the poor.

“We want a free economy, not only because it guarantees our liberties, but also because it is the best way of creating wealth and prosperity for the whole country. It is this prosperity alone which can give us the resources for better services for the community, better services for those in need.”

On that day in Blackpool, England, she cautioned against a danger that infects us right now — the leap from equal opportunity, which is good, to a forced, phony equality of all things and people irrespective of their unique attributes — the kind of twisted logic that puts women in combat, equates marriages of all types and suppresses wealth on a march toward a sameness of income.

“We are all unequal,” she said. “No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal, but to us every human being is equally important.”

I cannot imagine the American politician with the courage to explain the vital magnificence of “the right to be unequal.”

But then I cannot imagine the likes of Lady Thatcher among us again. All we can do is honor her for what she brought her nation and the world, not because it was good for her party or her politics, but because it was objectively right.

The Mark Davis Show airs from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. weekdays on KSKY (660 AM). He can be reached at markdavisshow@gmail.com