OK, so let's unpack a scenario for a minute.
We tend to have this idea of history, right?
That it's this this huge, unstoppable force.
Yeah, like a tidal wave. Something that's shaped
by, you know, massive social movements or huge
wars or presidents. Exactly. But sometimes history
is shaped by a single person. Someone who just
stands in the middle of the road, puts up a hand
and says, stop. And in the context of the 20th
century, I don't think anyone said stop as effectively
or, frankly, as controversially as Phyllis Schlafly.
And that is the focus of our deep dive today.
We are looking at the life. the legacy and just
the sheer mechanical effectiveness of Phyllis
Schlafly. And if you want to talk about a figure
of contradiction. Oh, she's the definition of
it. I mean, we're talking about a woman who ran
for Congress, who influenced national elections,
became one of the most powerful political organizers
in American history. Right. And she's all of
this while arguing that a woman's highest calling,
her absolute best career path was to be a homemaker.
It's a fascinating paradox, isn't it? To really
understand the modern American political landscape,
and I mean specifically the shape of the Republican
Party and the whole family values platform, you
just have to understand Schlafly. She wasn't
just a suburban housewife who decided to get
involved in local politics. Not at all. She was
an incredibly sophisticated operator. I mean,
she mobilized a grassroots army from the ground
up to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, the
ERA, at a time when almost everyone in Washington
thought its passage was, well, inevitable. So
that's the myth. mission for this deep dive.
We really want to understand how she did it.
How did she stop this thing that seemed unstoppable?
And how did her movement ripple out and end up
impacting everything from, say, the Cold War
all the way up to the rise of Donald Trump? And
we're pulling from a pretty massive stack of
biographical and political history here. We're
going to cover her origins, that famous Stop
ERA campaign, and her writings on... Well, on
everything from nuclear weapons to feminism.
To really get it, you have to transport yourself
back to the early 1970s. The feminist movement
is surging. It's at its absolute peak. You've
got the National Organization for Women. You
have bipartisan support for the Equal Rights
Amendment. It really felt like the culture was
moving in one very specific direction. And then
enter Phyllis. But before she became this anti
-feminist icon, she was. Well, she was a lot
of other things first. Let's start with the origin
story, because I think a lot of people just assume
she was born in a kitchen apron, and that is
just not the case. No, far from it. Phyllis McAlpin
Stewart was born in St. Louis back in 1924, and
her early life was really defined by the Great
Depression. This is such a crucial piece of the
puzzle because it really complicates the narrative
that she would later promote about the traditional
male provider. Right, because I'm looking at
the notes here. And her own father, he faced
long -term unemployment starting in 1932. So
the whole provider system actually failed her
own family. It completely failed them. Her father
was a machinist, a salesman for Westinghouse.
But the Depression just hit the family so hard.
And it was actually her mother, Odile Stewart,
who kept the family afloat. Her mom stepped up.
She did. She went back to work. She was a librarian
and a teacher. So the young Phyllis Lafley grew
up watching her mother be the primary breadwinner,
the one holding the family together, and even
managing to keep Phyllis in a private Catholic
girls' school through it all. Which is just so
interesting, you know, considering Phyllis would
later argue so vehemently for the necessity of
the husband as the sole provider. But clearly
she valued that education. She wasn't just going
to school. She was. She was crushing it. She
was an intellectual powerhouse from the start.
She went to Washington University in St. Louis,
graduated in 1944, and not just graduated. She
was Phi Beta Kappa. Wow. But she didn't stop
there. She went on to Radcliffe, which was the
female coordinate institution for Harvard at
the time, and got a Master of Arts in Government.
So we're dealing with a Harvard -educated political
scientist, but here's the detail that I just
love. It feels like it belongs in a movie or
something. During World War II, while she was
getting this top -tier education, she was also
working. And not just any job. She was working
at the largest ammunition plant in the entire
world. As a ballistics gunner and technician.
A ballistics gunner. She was test -firing ammunition.
She was literally Rosie the Riveter. I mean,
she's in a factory testing ammunition, doing
exactly the kind of nontraditional, heavy industrial
work that the feminist movement decades later
celebrated as women breaking barriers. The contrast
with her later public image is just. It's so
stark, isn't it? But you can already see the
threads of her future career forming even back
then. She moved into political research very,
very quickly. Yeah. By 1946, she's a researcher
for the American Enterprise Institute. That's
a big deal. A very big deal. And then by 1952,
she's only 28 years old and she decides to run
for Congress in Illinois. And this wasn't some,
you know, token run just to make a point. She
actually won the Republican primary. She did.
She beat the guy. a man named John Godlowski
in the primary. She did lose the general election
to the Democratic incumbent, but you have to
look at how she ran that campaign. It was a low
-budget operation, for sure, but she had backing
from some real heavy hitters, people like the
old Immunitions family and the Texas oil billionaire
H .L. Hunt. And her rhetoric back then in 1952,
it sounds, well, it sounds eerily familiar to
things we still hear today. She was accusing
the Truman administration of... demoralizing
our children. It's the beginning of her signature
style that mix of moral conservatism and fervent
anti -communism but her real breakout moment
the thing that took her from being a local Illinois
politician to a national kingmaker. that came
in 1964. This has to be the book. A choice, not
an echo. That is the one. And she self -published
it. Now, self -published usually makes you think
of, you know, a small print run, maybe a few
boxes in a garage. Right, a passion product.
This book sold over 3 million copies. 3 million
in 1964. That's staggering for any political
book, let alone a self -published one before
the internet. It was a complete sensation. The
book was a polemic, a fierce defense. of Barry
Goldwater, the conservative senator running for
president. And it was a brutal, no holds barred
attack on what she called the Rockefeller Republicans.
The moderates. The liberal, moderate establishment
based in the Northeast. She argued they were
a corrupt cabal of secret kingmakers who were
actively diluting the conservative principles
of the party. So she's taking on the establishment
of her own party. She's essentially calling out
the deep state of the GOP before that term even
existed. Precisely. And in that round, she won.
Her book is widely, widely credited with helping
Goldwater secure the Republican nomination. It
totally established her as a force to be reckoned
with in conservative circles. She wasn't just
an outsider anymore. He was a grassroots mobilizer
who could completely bypass the traditional gatekeepers.
Now, there is a bit of a shadow over this period,
though, right? The connection to the John Birch
Society. That was a pretty controversial, far
-right, anti -communist group. It was. And her
connection is... It's complicated. Robert Walsh
Jr., who was the founder of the John Birch Society,
he called her a very loyal member. So he said
she was in. He did. But Phyllis, later in her
life, denied it. She claimed she either quit
or was never really that involved because she
knew that association would hurt the reputation
of her book and Goldwater's campaign. So a strategic
move, a strategic distancing. Absolutely. But
there is just no doubt she moved in those circles
and shared that same intense, all consuming anti
-communist zeal. OK, so by the late 60s, she's
a known quantity in conservative politics, but
she's mostly known for, you know, defense policy
and party infighting. Then the 1970s arrive and
she finds her defining enemy, the Equal Rights
Amendment. And to really understand how shocking
her victory against the ERA was, you have to
put yourself back in 1972. I mean, the amendment
had passed Congress with huge bipartisan majorities.
It wasn't even a partisan issue at first. Not
at all. It had already been ratified by 28 of
the required 38 states. Presidents Nixon, Ford,
and Carter all supported it. I mean, it was seen
as a done deal. Just a matter of paperwork at
that point. And then Phyllis Schlafly organizes
Stop ERA. I never knew this until we started
researching, but STOPDI was actually an acronym.
It was. It stood for Stop Taking Our Privileges.
And that is just a brilliant rhetorical flip,
isn't it? She didn't frame it as don't give us
new rights. She framed it as don't take away
the special status we already have. Exactly.
And that is the absolute core insight into her
entire strategy. She argued that American women
were the most fortunate, most privileged class
of people in the history of the world. She claimed
the ERA wasn't a step up. It was a huge step
down. She didn't argue that women were inferior.
No, she argued they were privileged and that
the ERA would cruelly strip those privileges
away. OK, so let's get into the specifics. What
were the key arguments she used? Because some
of them were incredibly potent. The biggest one
has to be about the military draft. That was
her ace in the hole. It was her most powerful
weapon. She argued that if you have total legal
equality written into the Constitution, you cannot
logically or legally exempt women from the selective
service. Right. No distinction based on sex.
No distinction. So she painted this very vivid,
very frightening picture for parents across America.
Your 18 -year -old daughter is being drafted,
being forced into combat, into trenches, right
alongside men. This terrified mothers and fathers.
Legally speaking, she had a point. If the law
can make no distinction, the draft exemption
for women becomes unconstitutional. OK, so the
draft was number one. She also went after financial
protections, right? This idea of the dependent
wife. Yes. At the time, a lot of laws around
Social Security and alimony were written to specifically
protect women who didn't work outside the home.
She warned very loudly that the ERA would eliminate
Social Security benefits for dependent wives
and widows. So if your husband died, you'd get
nothing. That was the fear she stoked. She said
it would abolish alimony completely. Her argument
was that the ERA would actually liberate men
from their traditional responsibility of supporting
their families, leaving housewives with no safety
net whatsoever. So in her telling, the ERA was
actually a gift to irresponsible men. Exactly.
She pitched it as men getting out of their obligations.
It was a brilliant, if cynical. And then, of
course, there were the social norms arguments,
the bathroom argument that we still hear echoes
of today. Oh, yeah. She famously claimed the
ERA would lead to unisex bathrooms. She also
said it would lead to same -sex marriage. Which
at the time people must have thought was just
completely absurd. Proponents of the ERA scoffed
at it. They called it ridiculous fear -mongering.
But Schlafly was relentless. She insisted that
if you erase gender distinctions in the Constitution,
these are the inevitable legal consequences down
the road. It's kind of wild to look back at that
because in 2007, she basically took a victory
lap on that prediction. She did. She said, see,
I told you so. And beyond just the arguments,
her tactics were revolutionary. You have to visualize
the scene playing out at state capitals all over
the country. On one side, you've got the feminist
protesters, often younger, chanting, holding
signs. And on the other side, you have Schlafly's
army of housewives. Yes. The famous potluck tactic.
Yes. They would show up with homemade bread.
fresh jams, apple pies, and they would deliver
them to the state legislators. That's incredible.
They have these clever slogans, too. Things like,
I am for mom and apple pie, and my personal favorite,
preserve us from a congressional jam. That is
masterful political branding. It's so disarming.
I mean, how do you yell at a nice lady who is
handing you a fresh apple pie? It visually reinforced
the very image of wholesome domesticity that
she claimed to be protecting. It created this
perfect visual contrast that politicians and
the media couldn't ignore. It made the feminist
movement look, to the average observer, kind
of aggressive and anti -family. Why Schlafly's
crew looked like, well, they looked like everyone's
mom. And the bottom line is, it worked. It worked
incredibly well. The momentum to the ERA just
bent. It hit a brick wall and stopped dead. Five
states actually took the step of rescinding the
ratification. They took it back. Wow, I didn't
know that. Yeah. The ERA died having only reached
35 states. It needed 38. And political scientists
who've studied this, like Jane J. Mansbridge,
have said that without Phyllis Schlafly's organization,
the ERA likely would have passed easily by 1975.
So she single -handedly turned the tide. It's
one of the most effective grassroots campaigns
in American history. That is a massive impact
for someone who was, on paper, just a citizen
activist. But I want to dig a little deeper into
the ideology behind all this, because it wasn't
just about the draft or bathrooms for her. She
had a very specific and very rigid philosophy
about gender and its role in the world. She absolutely
did. At her core, Schlafly was a gender essentialist.
She believed that men and women are fundamentally,
biologically, and emotionally different, and
that these differences mean they are suited for
different roles in society. She argued that feminists
weren't just fighting a political battle. They
were fighting against nature and, in her view,
even against God. And this brings us to her take
on the pay gap. Because usually when someone
brings up the pay gap, it's to say, this is unfair,
this is a problem we need to fix. Schlafly looked
at it and said, no, it's actually a good thing.
Right. It's a shocking position to hear. She
called the pay gap itself deceitful propaganda.
But then she also defended the underlying reality
of men, on average, earning more. Her logic was,
well, it was that it is beneficial for society
as a whole if the average man earns more than
the average woman. All because of that provider
role. Exactly. She believed that if men didn't
earn more, they couldn't fulfill their primary,
God -given duty as providers. And if they couldn't
be providers, the entire family unit would crumble.
She said, and this is a direct quote, we certainly
don't want a society in which the average wage
paid to all women equals men because that society
would have eliminated the role of motherhood.
That's a stark way to put it. She literally saw
financial equality as the enemy of motherhood.
She did. To her, the role of the dependent wife
and mother was the most socially necessary, most
critical job in the entire civilization. The
family was the building block of stability. And
that stability, in her mind, required a clear
hierarchy. But this is the paradox that I just
can't get past. She is preaching day in and day
out that a woman's place is in the home, serving
her family. But Phyllis Schlafly herself was
an incredibly active, powerful career woman.
Is the elephant in the room of her entire career.
She was an author, a national speaker, an activist
who traveled the country constantly. She even
went back to school and got her law degree in
1978. Her critics pointed this out all the time,
that she was rarely home. And she was pressed
on this constantly in interviews. She had a standard
rebuttal, a line she always used. She told Time
magazine once that she would cancel speeches
whenever her husband thought she'd been away
from home too much. So she framed her entire
massive career as something she was only doing
with her husband's permission. Yes. She was very
careful to maintain the public optics of submission,
even while she was privately wielding immense
political power. She truly believed that every
marriage required an ultimate decision maker,
and that person, by definition, had to be the
husband. She took that concept of the husband's
absolute authority into some... some very dark
territory later in life. There was a comment
she made in 2007 about marital rape that really
shocked a lot of people. That was during a speech
she gave at Bates College. She was arguing against
the very concept of marital rape as a crime.
She said, and I'm quoting here, by getting married,
the woman has consented to sex and I don't think
you can call it rape. Wow, that is... That's
a heavy statement. It really shows how absolute
her view of the marriage contract was. It wasn't
just a partnership. No, and her view was a legal
and spiritual hierarchy where the husband's rights
were paramount. And she believed that feminism
was victimizing women by telling them this hierarchy
was a trap. For Schlafly, the traditional family
unit with the father at the head was. In her
own words, the greatest single achievement in
the entire history of women's rights. She believed
it protected women. More than any law or any
government program ever could. OK, we've spent
a lot of time on gender, but we can't ignore
the other side of her coin. We mentioned at the
top that she was a ballistics gunner. Phyllis
Schlafly was a stone cold, cold warrior. Absolutely.
You cannot separate her social conservatism from
her national defense hawkishness. They were two
sides of the same coin for her. She was just
as passionate and just as knowledgeable about
nuclear weapons as she was about apple pie. She
wrote these books with titles that sound like
Tom Clancy novels like Strike from Space and
Kissinger on the Couch. She did. She was deeply,
deeply suspicious of the whole idea of easing
tensions with the Soviet Union. She opposed pretty
much every arms control agreement that was proposed.
She used this very vivid analogy to describe
them. What was it? She said signing an arms control
agreement with the Soviets was like. disarming
the police in order to stop murder. So she was
all about peace through strength. More like peace
through supremacy, really. She believed the U
.S. needed to maintain overwhelming military
superiority at all times. And this worldview
extended to her opinion of international organizations.
She despised the United Nations. She called it
a Trojan horse, if I remember correctly. Yes,
a Trojan horse and a monument to foolish hopes.
She saw the U .N. and later organizations like
the World Trade Organization as direct attacks
on American sovereignty. She was an early and
very vocal opponent of what we now call globalism.
She fought against the idea of a North American
union, right? She did. The idea of merging the
economies of the U .S., Canada, and Mexico was
anathema to her. For Schlafly, American sovereignty
was sacred. No international body, no treaty
should ever be able to tell America what to do.
It's just so interesting how that specific thread,
anti -globalism, sovereignty above all, has become
so dominant in one wing of the modern Republican
Party. She was sounding that alarm way back in
the 60s and 70s. She really was a bridge figure
between the old right of the 1950s and the modern
populist right that we see today. Let's pivot
for a second to her personal life a bit more.
We mentioned her husband, Fred. John Fred Schlafly
Jr. He came from a wealthy, prominent family
in St. Louis and was a successful attorney himself.
It's important to note that they were a team.
This wasn't just her project. They were both
devout Catholics and they explicitly linked their
Catholicism with their American patriotism. They
saw the fight against communism as a spiritual
war. As much as a political one. Yes. It was
good versus evil. And they had six children together.
And this leads us to one of the most complex
and I think revealing dynamics in her family
life. Her eldest son, John. Yes. So in 1992.
John Schlafly was publicly outed as gay by a
magazine called Queer Week. Now you have to just
imagine the scene. His mother is at that time
the single most prominent opponent of gay rights
in the entire country. She called the gay lobby
an attack on the very definition of marriage.
So how did she react when her own son was outed?
Did she disown him? No. And this is where all
the nuance and complexity comes in. She did not
disown him. She maintained a relationship with
him. But then this is a very big but. She did
not change her politics one bit. And neither
did he. Wait, what do you mean? John acknowledged
that he was gay, but he publicly stated that
he supported his mother's opposition to same
-sex marriage. That is really hard to wrap your
head around. He agreed with her that he himself
shouldn't have the right to marry. Essentially,
yes. It seems he compartmentalized his personal
life from his political beliefs, much like his
mother did with her professional career and her
domestic ideals. It's a fascinating psychological
dynamic. Schlafly continued to attack the gay
lobby relentlessly, even while her own son was
living as a gay man. That family Thanksgiving
must have been intense. And her other children
were also very active in the movement, right?
Her son Andrew founded Conservapedia. That's
right. Andrew Schlafly founded Conservapedia,
which was created as a conservative alternative
to Wikipedia because he felt Wikipedia had a
liberal bias. And her daughter, Anne, eventually
became the chairman of the Eagle Forum, the very
organization Phyllis had founded. Well, speaking
of the Eagle Forum and her children, that brings
us right to the end of her life. The year is
2016. Phyllis is in her 90s. And there is one
last political explosion. It was a truly dramatic
finale to her career. In the 2016 Republican
primary, most of the conservative establishment,
I mean, the people Phyllis had worked with for
decades, they were backing Ted Cruz. They saw
him as the true conservatives in the race. But
Phyllis, she went a different way. She endorsed
Donald Trump. And she did it very early, when
almost no one in her circle was taking him seriously.
Why Trump? I mean, he seems like the polar opposite
of the pious, Catholic, traditional family man
image that she cultivated. She liked that he
was a disruptor. She liked that he was willing
to fight the kingmakers that she had written
about all the way back in 1964. She saw in Trump
a fighter who would actually enforce the border
and stand up to globalism. She even co -authored
a book. I saw this, The Conservative Case for
Trump. And that endorsement tore her beloved
organization apart. Really? It caused a massive
bitter rift in the Eagle Forum. Six board members
rebelled against her endorsement. They tried
to oust her. And one of those six board members
was her own daughter, Anne. Her daughter sided
against her in a boardroom coup. She did. And
was a Ted Cruz supporter. The board split and
Phyllis actually broke with the dissident members,
including her daughter. It was an incredibly
bitter internal struggle right at the very end
of her life. But Phyllis stuck to her guns. And
the book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was
published on September 6, 2016. Yes. One day
after she died. That timing is just incredible.
She died on September 5th. She lived just long
enough to see Trump officially accept the nomination.
But she passed away just before the election
itself. It was a final, powerful act. There was
another incident near the end of her life that
I think really sums up her relationship with
the broader culture. It involved her alma mater,
Washington University. Yes, this was back in
2008. Washington University in St. Louis announced
that they were going to give Phyllis Schlafly
an honorary degree. I mean, she was, after all,
a highly accomplished and famous alumna. And
I can imagine that went over well. The student
body and a large portion of the faculty went
ballistic. There were huge protests. A group
of law professors wrote a public letter calling
her entire career an exercise in anti intellectualism
in pursuit of a political agenda. But the university
didn't back down? No. The ceremony went ahead,
and when Phyllis Schlafly stood up to receive
her degree, hundreds of students and faculty
members in the audience stood up as well and
silently turned their backs on her. A silent
protest. How did she handle that? In classic
Schlafly fashion. She didn't blink. She later
called the protesters a bunch of losers and juveniles.
She said, I'm not sure they're mature enough
to graduate. She never, ever. sought approval
from her enemies. In fact, I think she thrived
on their disapproval. It's clear she left a huge
mark. I mean, we see her in pop culture now more
than ever. She was the central figure, the anti
-hero in the miniseries Mrs. America, played
by Cate Blanchett. She's even mentioned in Margaret
Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments.
There's a Schlafly Cafe. She's become a symbol.
For the left, she's the ultimate betrayer of
her gender, the woman who got to the top and
then pulled up the ladder behind her. For the
right, she's the godmother of the modern conservative
movement, the woman who proved that you can stop
the progressive tide if you organize effectively.
So as we wrap this up, how do we summarize a
figure like Phyllis Schlafly? A lawyer who argued
against expanding women's rights. A career woman
who preached domesticity. A polite, well -spoken
lady from the Midwest who fought some of the
most brutal political wars of her time. I think
you have to see her as the primary architect
of the modern family values platform. Before
Schlafly, the Republican Party was mostly focused
on business, economics, and anti -communism.
She was the one who fused social conservatism,
abortion, gay rights, traditional gender roles
with national defense. She realized you could
mobilize millions of voters not by talking about
tax rates, but by talking about their children,
their values and their deepest fears. She tapped
into the silent majority before that was even
a popular term. She practically invented the
playbook for it. And that that really leads to
the big question, the provocative thought to
leave you with today. Let's hear it. Phyllis
Schlafly showed the world that a well -organized
grassroots movement, one that focuses on specific
tangible fears like the draft and traditional
symbols like mom and apple pie, could stop a
constitutional amendment that had bipartisan
support and seemed absolutely inevitable. She
defeated the elites with an army of ordinary
people. So in our current era of intense political
polarization, when you look at the success of
modern populist movements on the right. You have
to ask, is this just the Schlafly playbook on
repeat? Did she write the code that is still
running modern American politics today? That
is definitely something to chew on. She might
be gone, but it seems her playbook is very much
still in use. That's it for this deep dive into
Phyllis Schlafly. Thanks for listening, and we'll
catch you on the next one.