Throughout her career, Schlafly denounced “the feminists” and their goals, even as she became a successful career woman in her own right. “Her legacy will live on in the movement she led and the millions she inspired”, Trump said.
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Schlafly’s official Facebook page noted that she authored 27 books and thousands of articles, advocating for “common sense and traditional values”.
“She drove me insane because she ran through every door that foremothers worked so hard to open, NEVER saying thanks and then used her position to attack people trying to open other doors for women”, emailed Patricia Schroeder, a frequent Schlafly foil during her quarter century in the House of Representatives starting in 1973. Cue feminists demanding they invented that line.
“Since the women are the ones who bear the babies and there’s nothing we can do about that, our laws and customs then make it the financial obligation of the husband to provide the support”, Schlafly said at the time.
Schlafly spent much of her life on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, living for many years near St. Louis in Alton, Illinois. Instead I found her leading the great majority in opposition to the attack on Serbia. I was starting my first job as a development associate and my first assignment was to fly to MI to drive one of our donors to a Tea Party rally in Kalamazoo to see Phyllis, his hero. She argued that this was to prevent the nomination of a Republican who would offer a choice, rather than an echo of the New Deal Democrats. American women were blessed, she wrote, in a country that upheld chivalrous ideals, where “a man’s first significant purchase (after a car) is a diamond for his bride”.
She went on to criticize the Obama administration for issuing a recent policy calling on schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity and praised the ruling by a federal judge in Texas that temporarily halted enforcement of the “bathroom” policy in Texas schools.
It turns out “human nature” is more attached to social progress than it is the idea that women belong in the kitchen. There is one piece of advice that she said that stands out from the conversation. She was 92 years old. But thinking about how long a battle will be should not be a determining factor in deciding to start. We had created this as the flawless award for conservatives who unlike the left are the generally outnumbered actors speaking truth to power – vicious and unscrupulous and overwhelming power – and who often must do so without the support of other conservatives who know better but are too busy worrying over their shoulders at what the New York Times and the Washington Post and the network media think to have the courage of their own convictions.
Phyllis Schlafly was a giant of the conservative movement. These are two great Catholic women of the 20th Century who were courageous and unafraid to speak truth to power. “She’s doing good work”, the L.A. Times quoted him as saying. They simply followed God’s call in their life.
Of course she could do both politics and motherhood quite well.
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We have big shoes to fill, but we begin immediately and will keep fighting. That’s the rarity. That is the example Phyllis set for the rest of us.
