Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Friday, September 14, 2007, 4 pm PST
This Week's Show
Dr. MacLeod will be sharing with us her lifetime experiences as an advocate for the rights of women. The doctor was one of the first women who break through the glass ceiling and occupy a position of responsibility and power in corporate America. Her Ph D. is from Columbia University in New York and she worked her way up into corporate American through sheer grit and determination.
Her life is filled with amazing events and insights she will be sharing with us – long with the truth about what feminism means now and what the loss of ratification of the ERA has done to women. Dr. MacLeod has strong opinions about Phyllis Schlafly, the subject of my ongoing series on mouths hired by the NeoCons.
Phyllis Schlafly - Paid Operative for Fascism.
Phyllis Schlafly was well paid work for her work over the last 40 years. Her most significant accomplishment to be recorded in history will be stopping the ratification of the ERA in 1982.
Those are the facts, but not all the facts.
Her career was founded on, “A Choice, Not an Echo.” The book, well written and researched, itself turned out to be the persuader that focused attention on Schlafly's potential to feed a disinformation campaign that has gone on for decades.
BigOil found Phyllis hanging around the John Birch Society in the mid 60s. Schlafly was ambitious, looking at a cultural reality that denied to women the opportunities available to men in professions. The Glass Ceiling was still intact. Someone, doubtless made her a lucrative offer, perhaps even William F. Buckley, Jr. They needed a mouth to inject disinformation, persuading women they wanted to stay second class citizens.” Phyllis grabbed the job with both hands.
Her other alternatives were bleak. Ads for jobs in the paper were still listed in two categories, “MEN,” and “WOMEN.” Intelligent women who, like Schlafly, had advanced degrees, were routinely offered jobs as typists.
It was understandable; her background was not strong on any familial work in social justice; her family had never contributed to any of the movements that created the wealth of America in social consciousness.
Intelligent, driven, and entirely focused on doing the job for which she had been hired, Phyllis blossomed.
The biography written by Donald T. Critchlow, titled, “Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism,” was reviewed favorably by the Horowitz organ, Front Lines Magazine, October 12, 2005. That interview by Critchlow holds some interesting insights into Schlafly and events along with crediting Schlafly with phenomenal success in subverting the agenda for women's rights.
“Critchlow: It is certain that ERA would have been ratified. It defeating ERA, Schlafly tapped into a new constituency that GOP conservative strategists realized could revive the party: Christian evangelicals. This was a constituency waiting to be mobilized. Traditional minded Christians, as well as Jews, felt that they were under attack by the secular left. Since the banning of prayer in public schools in 1962, evangelical Christians had been simmering. Then in the late 1960s came further assaults on tradition and custom through the liberalization of abortion on the state level, feminism, sex education, and the spread of pornography. Schlafly mobilized evangelical Christian women into the STOP ERA campaign, and in doing so, helped revive the conservative movement and the GOP, shifting it to the Right. She showed that social issues was the key to unleash a conservative revolution that began in the midterm elections of 1978 and continued through the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.”
Critchlow is incorrect on many of his points while correctly crediting Schlafly with stopping the ERA. Other forces had been in play for some time. Schlafly was hired for one part of a larger job.
BigOil had gone after the Conservative Movement using William F. Buckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan, and employing the wiles of Bush Senior and his paid political operative, Karl Rove. They had subsidized the work of Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson in remaking the demographics of the GOP. Hiring Phyllis was a natural continuation of the same strategy. The first goal was extinguishing the real agenda of Conservatism as enunciated by Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater while continuing to shake the boogie man of Communism.
It worked. But looking back we can see that it was always a ruse.
The analysis of United Republicans of California, the group who had gotten Reagan the governorship of California in 1968, showed clearly that Ronald Reagan was never a Conservative. His administration had laid the groundwork for a shift to centralized control that was unprecedented in California history. Changes included state control of education, promotion of regional government, institution of sex eduction in schools, guidelines for redress of racial imbalance in schools, a sharp decrease in personal property rights, Income Tax Withholding, a move towards gun control, and other acts that caused the group to pass a resolution at their 1975 Convention in Santa Maria that ended with “That UROC oppose Ronald Reagan as candidate for President or Vice President, and urge Americans Nationwide to carefully scrutinize his record.”
An educated woman who had known Barry Goldwater and was well informed, Phyllis Schlafly would have had to be well aware of the disconnect between two philosophies that were diametrically opposed. Schlafly consistently ignored the ideas of Conservatism, selling the repackaged ideas of the newly rising wave of Evangelicals from Southern denominations then being urged to become political and active in the Republican Party. This wave of membership was very different than the activists who had supported Goldwater.
The Republican Party shifted not to the Right, the traditional direction of individual rights, small government, and low taxes, but to burgeoning Federalism that used government as the accepted means for coercing personal behavior. Phyllis helped create that shift; she profited and gloried in her success.
When an intelligent, articulate woman undertakes a clear agenda that in no way conforms to her stated goals it is well to take the irrefutable actions as leading straight to the truth of the matter.
Schlafly herself came from a home where her mother, Odile Dodge, the daughter of the moderately successful attorney, worked as a librarian and a school teacher to support her own family and that of her parents. Schlafly herself was forced, due to the family's financial straits, to begin working early to put herself through college.
Why would Schlafly work to deny to other women the opportunities she took for herself?
The obvious is that this strategy made possible a prominence and prosperity that otherwise would have been impossible. Schlafly was motived by a fierce desire for money and social prominence that also propelled her into the Daughter's of the American Revolution.
Opposing the Equal Rights Amendment was a job, nothing more. The arguments she carefully honed each shared that they were posed in heavily charged emotional terms, threatening dire changes in the culture. In each case she made sure that the objective facts were not available to legislators actually making the decision to vote for or against the ERA. That has remained her strategy ever since.
It is true that Phyllis Schlafly was personally responsible for the derailing of the ERA; what was missed was the fact that the ERA was needed to make the torturous process of trying to simulate equality through the intrusion of government at all levels unnecessary.
In vilifying the women she dismissed as 'feminists' Schlafly ignored for her own benefit the generations of women who had endured a reality that refused them the rights that preexist all government, as promised in America's Mission Statement, the Declaration of Independence.
Schlafly understood what she was doing and for whom she worked. We need to redress those actions today and ratify the ERA.
Catch the interview with Dr. Jennifer MacLeod today on the Spiritual Politician at BBSRadio.com
What the Show is about and being a Spiritual Politician
Bringing government into alignment with the Lessons of Jesus:
The focus of our show is how to bring government into alignment with truth of our spiritual nature. So America started with the idea we are all, inherently free. We are free to choose, free to live, to breath, and to live our lives as we see fit. Government does not own us; government is just a contractor, providing service.
That framework is in alignment with the spiritual truth that each of us connects to God directly, needing no agency as an intermediary. To be free is to be free in the spirit and so in the flesh that temporarily holds the spirit.
When Thomas Jefferson said we were all possessed of inherent rights, existing before government he was extending a spiritual truth into a civic form. It is that Mission Statement from the Declaration of Independence we need to keep in mind.
Because we are free and reject, as did Christ, the use of deceit, manipulation or violence we need to be conscious about our relationships with others and find ways to grow into the sense of connection and community that makes us One in Him.
This is especially true for Christians but it is true for everyone else as well.
Nearly every major spiritual viewpoint enunciates the idea that we are connected to each other and should be good to each other. Christians just have an even more exacting mission. Christians are to love every one, treating them as they would Jesus.
Jesus was very clear about how we were to treat others. He did not say that it was alright to be abusive, deceitful, and violent if we used government as our tool and agent. There was no exception, He wanted all of our hearts, minds and souls. Christ did not lay out any plan of government, but left it to the conscience of the individual, the same way He connects to each of us.
We are Americans but we are also members of a human family that connects us to something truly wonderful and immense.
So our job here at the Spiritual Politician is to look at Government as a human tool we use every day. We need to consider if government is working in a way that speaks that common understanding about our connections to each other and, if it is not, we need to change it.
Americans have had many successes over the last 231 years since our founding and, learning from both mistakes and successes we can consider that question. So here at the Spiritual Politician we look at the truth behind of rhetoric.
Given what is going on today in Government what we may decide to do it reboot the whole system.
To provide the examples of what has gone right and what has gone very wrong we here at the Spiritual Politician have put together several different kinds of segments you will hear on our show from time to time.
Founder and president of the Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation
Books by Melinda: Links to Melinda's sites:
How the NeoCons Stole Freedom
Shards of Verse Melinda's Poetry
Greed: The NeoConning of America
1 comment:
Dr. Baskerville and Freedom Do Not Mix:
RE: Dr. Baskerville’s Book - Taken Into Custody
There is an ethical clash within the author’s repeated stated "purpose" for the writing of this book and its resulting claims once read.
It is my hope you will be willing to take a deeper look into the continuing misstatements by Dr. Baskerville. Hyperbole appears to be his chosen way to attack ideas and legislated American human rights he doesn't like.
For example, in reaction to the recent Newsweek article about divorce in this country, Dr. Baskerville, writes....".....millions are appalled when they discover that they can be FORCED into divorce..." (the capital letters were written by me to point out his unethical misuse of language).
Americans are being "forced" into divorce?? He can only mean by using that incorrect term, that divorce legally happens in the United States when one spouse wants out of a marriage. Yes, that is every married American citizen’s legal right to request under the laws dealing with civil marriage.
He clearly doesn’t like the present legal reality that no American citizen can be imprisoned for a lifetime in a marriage that has failed.
However, his unethical choice of words regarding the divorce right under the law, provides the evidence that Dr. Baskerville is working to wipe out the right to divorce in almost every aspect, not merely to change a faulty domestic court system (which is what he has been claiming the reason behind the writing of the book).
Within Christianity: Neither Jesus Christ nor Paul were willing to deny the human-right to divorce for just-cause. Both taught a right to divorce and nowhere in the Bible are children ever connected to that right (that is, presented, by them, as a reason for a Christian, to not act out this God-given human right...yet, Dr. Baskerville "uses" - in my view "misuses" children as a pawn in his clear effort to wipe out the right to "no-fault" divorce in the United States).
http://christiandivorce.1hwy.com/index.html
The divorce right in the mind of God has nothing to do with children in the sense of "justice" in marriage. When people deal with the divorce right within Christian morality, much of the stress for children can be overcome.
It is clear by Biblical teaching that children can survive and also flourish within the justice of that right and the moral way that right is undertaken.
It is my hope that you will review this commentary (below) of Dr. Baskerville’s written contentions about his efforts regarding changing the domestic family court system (if the author would have consistently stayed within this area of examination - the domestic family court system - one could support his ideas. He doesn’t stay there).
The implications to the misuse of language by Dr. Baskerville, clearly steers the reader/listener into another legal area that is a separate legal issue and results in making the claim that the divorce-right, itself, should be removed and placed only within the definitions of a divorce-right that Dr. Baskerville accepts.
Thank you
~ VIEWPOINT ~
All Americans Should Take Notice of -- Dr. Baskerville’s Battle To Turn Back the Legal Clock on "No Fault" Divorce In the United States.
Dr. Stephen Baskerville is ardently pushing his book into the public square - Taken Into Custody (That is his right of free speech... and Americans who love the Constitution have the right to challenge his dangerous ideas within their free speech responses).
Dr. Baskerville claims to be working for ways to reform the Family Court System.
In point of fact, the following quote reveals much more than a desire to reform the Family Court System (because of his viewpoint that it has failed children and many spouses). He presents those parents -- mostly men -- wrongfully kept from their children by manipulation of the court by the ex-spouse.
Quote of his view on how to remedy the family court system problem (my underlining):
"…(a) setting reasonable limits on unilateral divorce when children are involved; (b) establishing a rebuttable presumption of equally shared parenting for children of divorce or separation; and (c) restoring and enforcing the fundamental rights of parents to the care, custody, and companionship of their children."
The first thing one notices in reading his requirements for how to reform the family court system is that only (b) and (c) have to do with the Family Court System re the alleged failures regarding custody battles that he outlines in his book.
It is inescapable that item (a) is a clear attack on the right to "no-fault" divorce law. It is the legal foot-in-the-door that would wipe out "no-fault" divorce law (the majority of legally married couples will have children in their lives at some point).
If someone would have told you that there would be citizens of the United States, who would be working to bring a law into existence that would allow ONE spouse in a divorce action (the spouse who does not want the divorce), to control the right-to-divorce of his/her spouse because they share children, would you agree that the spouse who acted out his/her legal right to divorce, should lose his/her Constitutional right of due process because they share children?
Putting aside (for a moment) that this "law" would be setting-aside the Constitutional right of due-process for the spouse who wanted the divorce, destroy (for all intents and purposes) "no-fault" divorce in the United States, and define the basis for a right-to-divorce within a concept of "possible harm to children" the implications of such a law enacted doesn’t stop with this tossing out the right-to-divorce of the spouse who does want the divorce.
It would set-up a legal right for one spouse to imprison the other spouse in a failed marriage.
Once instituted into Law, the personal and financial problems would begin for the spouse who wants the divorce at the moment this "legal" right would be activated by the spouse who did not want the divorce or who had initiated a "no-consent" response based on it, in order to control the spouse who wants the divorce.
This type of law would allow one spouse to virtually blackmail the spouse who wanted the divorce. Echoes of such demands, quickly resonate in the brain, "If you don’t pay me what I want, I’ll not agree to the divorce."
"If you don’t sign over all our property to me, I’ll not agree to a divorce." On and on and on....
This so-called "law" would no-doubt become known as the "Law of Spousal Vengeance" - a ruthless idea instituted and protected by our legal system.
Unbelievable you say? Not according to Dr. Baskerville. This is what he is working for today.
One of Dr. Baskerville’s Problem Premises:
A Baskerville Premise is that marriage can only be defined a legal contract.
In spite of the fact that there is no logical/moral/legal (or historical) basis to arbitrarily define the marriage relationship today as inherently a legal contract, it is insisted that marriage can only be defined a legal contract in the United States.
Because marriage can be a legally defined relationship within the United States doesn’t mean that people who live within a sexually and financially faithful relationship and make the choice to be married within that choice, aren’t married (within/under their system of morality).
Marriage by personal contract is marriage to the couple who wish to design their marriage through this legal means. The "State" has no presumptive (or constitutional) right or basis to define and control marriage for every citizen.
Legal marriage within any given system of Law is a man-made relationship (defined and framed) by instituted family law.
Marriage can only be defined as a "relationship" within human society. Depending in the country lived in, it may or may not have held legal requirements on the couple.
In early America, marriage had no legal (national or state) requirements on the couple within it.
There were some religious communities that provided a level of control on marriages and divorce for those who chose to be members of that community, but there is no historical or legal basis for Dr. Baskerville to present marriage or divorce in the light that he does today as being inherently a legal contract.
It is a mistake in the logic to claim the right (through the power of the "state") to control all adult citizen’s personal choices in regards to the right-to-divorce because of a stated effort that to stop possible harmful consequences of divorce actions on children, we must give the spouse who does not want the divorce the legal right to stop it (this would result in a legal assertion that assumes that the spouse who wants the divorce is inherently guilty of hurting his/her children merely because he/she wants a divorce).
In other words, getting a divorce is an act of child abuse.
A very dangerous precedent to set-up in law.
This Baskerville type of mind-set (the all-powerful "state") was rampant during the movement toward prohibition. The American people did not and do not want the "state" to control their every personal choice and they rejected prohibition (in spite of a failure of some people to drink responsibly). They were right in this desire.
It is arrogantly mischievous and immoral to claim as Dr. Baskerville does that the 'state' should control the divorce right and deny "no-fault" divorce to couples who have children because he thinks the "state" (and one spouse) should control the other person in marriage who wants a divorce. This is the arrogant claim made by all those who think they know what is best for all others. They are called tyrants.
That his idea, his claim, that his desired "one-spouse" legal control over the other spouse (who does want the divorce) is being worked-for because of children of the marriage, claiming it would be his real reason for supporting such a change in law... can reasonably be seen as in actuality to serve to mislead and manipulate the system, because when a couple agree on divorce, he apparently sets no challenge to the divorce taking place.
So, what happened to his declared basis for this change in law as being for "children" ?--- If he finds it okay for a couple who agree to divorce, divorce, his entire alleged basis that divorce, itself, harms children disappears. Clearly, he is admitting at this point, that the manner by which divorce is undertaken and lived out is what may provide harm to children of divorced couples.
The truth is that it is not divorce, itself, that has the potential to hurt children but the way divorce is undertaken by the couple that may bring stress into the lives of children of divorce and the lack of shared-parenting support/incentives by the present family court system.
Therefore, it is clear to me that the claim that divorce, itself, may bring injury to children is not the underlying reason for his work toward providing a "one-spouse" control over the divorcing spouse’s life, but supports his desire toward outlawing "no-fault" divorce, itself.
His ideas about divorce rights have fatal flaws and they should be exposed to those who might be and are being influenced by them.
Another Baskerville problem premise:
The 'point' that Stephen Baskerville continually attempts to make, that '....there is no other contract in law except marriage that can be broken unilaterally by one party...' implying to the reader, as though in marriage today each person has been given individual power (immoral license) under 'no-fault' over the spouse that business contracts do not have.
To state the no-fault divorce right, this way, is manipulative and untrue.
No-fault divorce makes one legal statement.
It is this: That the 'state' will not define who is to blame when a marriage fails. The court, however, remains within legal marriage obligations and attempts through family court to see justice prevail (because this family court system may be badly flawed today has nothing to do with the 'no-fault' process wherein couples choose to leave their married relationship).
It is a misuse of reason and fact to attempt to equate business contracts with a marriage relationship. Every civil/business contract that is entered has every aspect of the requirements regarding each person involved in the contract spelled out (most marriage contracts under the legal system do not have them spelled out).
The word, 'unilaterally,' is misused (abused) by Dr. Baskerville.
Within all civil/business contracts, one person may break that contract unilaterally (I’m using his manipulative use of that word here to make a point). It’s called factually, 'breaking the contract'....
The consequences of 'unilaterally' breaking any contract still allows legal redress for the other person(s) named in the contract.
This is true within the 'no-fault' divorce system of today. The spouse that obtains the "no-fault" divorce under our legal system is still required to undertake the obligations that come along with the marriage laws within our society.
Dr. Baskerville is offensive to the truth (and illogical) for using the term 'unilaterally' to confuse the truth about the domestic court system failures (when it does fail a spouse or children) with the right to divorce under the "no-fault" divorce laws.
He intentionally or ignorantly mixes up the issues.
The facts are important: 1. One issue he speaks to is the failures within the family court system that should be remedied by requiring evidence of wrong-doing before an ex-spouse is allowed to make claims (charges) against the other spouse. And, 2. The other issue he clearly is working for is to have United States divorce law changed so that it will be able to control the right-to-divorce, itself (based on his personal views of what should be a basis for ending a marriage).
I’m convinced he "uses" children as the suggested compelling reason for allowing the law to give the spouse who doesn’t want the divorce, the legal right to stop it, because he wants to wipe out all "no-fault" divorce laws. This is what his ideas about controlling the right-to-divorce serve.
No-fault divorce laws interfere with that stated desire.
The potential for children to be injured by divorce is not a compelling reason for taking away the constitutional rights of any individual in the United States to a right-to-divorce. Antagonistic marriages also have the potential for harm to children.
We live in a Republic that has provided the right of due process for every citizen. No individual citizen should ever have a legal right to suspend these rights or take away these rights at any time or for any length of time from another citizen.
This dangerous idea can be defined: It is called slavery
Divorce is a result, not a cause.
The idea of giving one spouse (the spouse who doesn’t want the divorce) the overreaching legal right to control the right-to-divorce of the other spouse (merely because the couple share children) is eminently incompatible with our Constitutional right of due process for every citizen within our country and any attack on this right should be vigorously challenged.
In my view, he makes the case against his own book by his inconsistent and contradictory reasoning and unethical use of words regarding the issues examined. These realities indicate that his book should no longer be published as it now is written, or that, he should rewrite his book within a consistent position of arguing for a change within the domestic family court system that upholds the right of shared-parenting whenever divorce is undertaken under civil law.
Respectfully Submitted for your review:
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