At the same time Bill Buckley was founding National Review, Henry Regnery was publishing Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, and Ronald Reagan was still doing television commercials for General Electric, a postwar conservative grassroots movement was developing in parallel with the intellectual movement. Phyllis Schlafly, our next author, tells the compelling story of this grassroots movement.
As Mrs. Schlafly explains, the tension between the grassroots citizens at the base of the party and the Republican Party leadership stemmed from the widespread interest by the base in Christianity and the family—the social issues. The heart and soul of grassroots conservatism came from the social conservatives who felt the heavy foot of secularism treading on tradition.
In the 1970s to early 1980s, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a flash point for conflict between establishment Republicans and the grass roots. The establishment believed that unless it embraced the ERA, women would forever abandon the ranks of the GOP for the Democratic Party. The grass roots believed that if they told the truth about the ERA, the American people would stand against it. They did, and ERA was defeated.
Through her own compelling personal story, Phyllis Schlafly explains the growth of grassroots conservatism, how she led the pro-family movement to defeat the ERA, and how social conservatives enabled the Reagan Revolution.
Phyllis Schlafly has been a national leader of the conservative movement since the publication of her best-selling 1964 book, A Choice Not an Echo. She has been a leader of the pro-family movement since 1972, when she started her national volunteer organization called Eagle Forum. In a ten-year battle, Mrs. Schlafly led the successful movement to prevent the Equal Rights Amendment from being adopted. An articulate and successful opponent of the radical feminist movement, she appears in debate on college campuses more frequently than any other conservative. Mrs. Schlafly is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington University, received her J.D. from Washington University Law School, and received her master’s degree in political science from Harvard University. She is the author and editor of twenty books. She has played an active role in every Republican National Convention since 1952. Mrs. Schlafly was named one of the one hundred most important women of the twentieth century by the Ladies’ Home Journal.