Phyllis Schlafly, RIP
I realize it will sound odd coming from me, but I often find myself wishing that Republican politicians were more like their Democratic colleagues. That’s because those on the Left always know what they’re for and what they’re against. The tragedy, of course, is that they are always wrong, but they stick to their guns and eventually, when the stars are aligned, they get their way. One person who never shirked in her mission to define what being a Republican was supposed to be was Phyllis Schlafly, who recently passed away at the age of 92, after having spent more than half of her life fighting the good fight on behalf of conservatism. In a different America, the flags would all have been lowered to half-staff.
I realize it will sound odd coming from me, but I often find myself wishing that Republican politicians were more like their Democratic colleagues. That’s because those on the Left always know what they’re for and what they’re against. The tragedy, of course, is that they are always wrong, but they stick to their guns and eventually, when the stars are aligned, they get their way.
One person who never shirked in her mission to define what being a Republican was supposed to be was Phyllis Schlafly, who recently passed away at the age of 92, after having spent more than half of her life fighting the good fight on behalf of conservatism. In a different America, the flags would all have been lowered to half-staff.
In 2012, I published a book titled “67 Conservatives You Should Meet Before You Die.” One of the 67 was Mrs. Schlafly. Unfortunately, because I couldn’t find a publisher to subsidize the project, I had no travel budget. As a result, I had to conduct most of the interviews via email or over the telephone.
Even though I was finally able to corral the likes of John Bolton, Ward Connerly, Ben Shapiro, Michele Bachmann, Ralph Peters, George Kennedy, Joseph Wambaugh, Newt Gingrich, Tony Blankley. Ron Kessler, Hugh Hewitt, Gary Sinise, Pat Sajak, Mark Alexander, Tucker Carlson, Pat Boone, Kellyanne Conway, Caroline Glick, Charles Krauthammer, David Limbaugh, Rick Perry, Pat Robertson, Rick Santorum, Andrew Breitbart and myself, without an advertising budget, I sold very few copies.
This seems like an appropriate time to reprint Phyllis Schlafly’s chapter. In my introduction, I wrote “She has been a controversial gadfly ever since she came on the scene nearly half a century ago, when millions of copies of her self-published book ‘A Choice, not an Echo,’ were distributed in support of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. She led the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, and even now, in her late 80s, she continues to deliver speeches and write articles.”
Q. What did your parents do for a living?
A. My mother was a librarian for the St. Louis Art Museum for 25 years. My father was a sales engineer for Westinghouse who lost his job in the Depression and never regained fulltime employment.
Q. When did you decide to become a lawyer, and did your parents encourage you?
A. I went to law school after I was 50 and my parents were long gone. Nobody really encouraged me.
Q. What book has most influenced you?
A. I’m a reader; I’ve read so many books, I can’t say which had the greatest influence.
Q. In that case, what is your all-time favorite book, and why does it resonate with you?
A. I think the great American novel is “Gone with the Wind.” It’s a tale of perseverance and survival against all odds.
Q. I can see why you might identify with Scarlett O'Hara. What is the best advice you ever received?
A. I grew up in the Great Depression, so the best advice was to prepare myself to be able to support myself, as my mother did.
Q. Who or what makes you laugh?
A. The follies and inconsistencies of the feminists, and their lack of understanding of human nature.
Q. In what specific ways do you think America would be different if Barry Goldwater had defeated Lyndon Johnson?
A. We would not have suffered the tragedy of the Vietnam War, which we now know LBJ got us into because of an incident that was a fraud.
Q. You are of course referring to the alleged attacks on the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, which LBJ used as an excuse to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which he, in turn, used as an excuse to promote his escalating us into an undeclared war.
A. Yes. We would have won the Cold War much sooner because Goldwater would have restored our nuclear superiority, and we would not have suffered Nixon and Watergate.
Q. What is your all-time favorite movie?
A. Shirley Temple movies.
Q. How large a role has money played in your life?
A. It had a big effect when I didn’t have any, so I worked my way through college on the night shift, testing .30 and .50 caliber ammunition. That was a great experience! After I finished college, money was not a big thing with me because I don’t enjoy extravagance.
Q. What is your favorite piece of music?
A. “The Flight of the Bumble Bee.”
Q. Is there anyone you envy? If so, who and why?
A. No. I don’t know anyone who has had such a wonderful life as I have had.
Q. When you wrote “A Choice, not an Echo,” did you have any idea how important and successful the book would be?
A. I planned for it to be important, successful, and to change Republican politics forever. But I thought I could do that by selling 25,000 copies. I ended up selling three million.
Q. When you started to fight the Equal Rights Amendment, did you really believe you had a chance to defeat it? As I recall, something on the order of 30 states had already ratified it, and I believe the magic number was 38.
A. Yes, you’ve got the numbers right. But, yes, I believed we could defeat it, or else I would not have taken on the battle. But nobody else seemed to believe it.
Q. What do you think of Barack Obama, and has your opinion changed in any way since he moved into the Oval Office?
A. He is the same today as he was before he was elected. His goal is Saul Alinsky-style community organizing in order to “fundamentally transform the United States” into European-style Socialism.
Q. What role does religion play in your life?
A. A big role. I’ve been a practicing Roman Catholic all my life.
Q. If they ever get around to filming the story of your life, which actress would you like to see in the starring role?
A. Sorry, I don’t go to movies, so I don’t know any of them.
Q. If with a snap of your fingers, you could change anything about America, what would it be?
A. I’d defeat Obama and banish the supremacist judges.
Q. And who are they?
A. It’s a term I coined and used in my book, “The Supremacists.” They’re the judges who think they are supreme over the two other branches of the government and the will of the American people. They’re the judges who say that the Constitution is a “living” document that they can interpret according to their own biases instead of as it was written, and judges who falsely think that Supreme Court decisions are “the supreme law of the land.”
Q. If you could sit down to dinner with any eight people who have ever lived, and for this one evening they could all speak English, who would they be?
A. George Washington, Tom Paine, Ronald Reagan and Thomas Edison.
Q. Ah, the classic seating arrangement of boy, empty chair, boy, empty chair, boy…Finally, if there is a question I haven’t thought to ask that you wish I had, what is it and what is your answer?
A. Question: Why am I opposed to feminism? Answer: It teaches women the lie that they are victims of an oppressive patriarchy. Feminism is anti-men, anti-masculine, anti-marriage, anti-motherhood and anti-morality. That’s a recipe for unhappiness. In truth, American women are the most fortunate class of people who have ever lived.
Death, as Phyllis Schlafly proves, ends a life, but not the wisdom which inspired it.
