Amendment. That fight led to the formation of a voting bloc that remains an unstoppable Political Force and has become the base of todays Republican Party. But enough hearing from me. Id like to introduce now our guest lecturer, Phyllis Schlafly. Shes been called the godmother of the modern conservative movement. Shes been a conservative leader since 1964 when she selfpublished her best selling book a choice, not an echo. Shes been a leader of the pro Family Movement since 1972 when she started her National Volunteer lobbying organization, eagle forum. In a tenyear iafly trainedsch and led a Grassroots Army to victory over radical feminists when they, she stopped the ratification of the equal rights amendment. Economist George Gilder wrote in his book men and marriage, and i quote, when the histories of this era are seriously written, Phyllis Schiafly will take her place among a tiny number of leaders who made a decisive and permanent difference. She changed the Political Landscape of her country. Gilder went on iafly one of the countrys best speakers and debater and best pamphlet tier since thomas paine. Phyllis who is a young 87 years old, still publishes a weekly newsletter and has written or edited more than 20 books on subjects as varied as family and feminism, the judiciary, child care and phonics which we use with our children. Phyllis is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington University in st. Louis. She worked her way through college by working the night shift testing 30 and 50 caliber ammunition at a local factory. Shes received her masters degree in government from harvard university, her juris doctorate from Washington University law school, in 1978. Shes the mother of six children, she was named illinois mother of the year. And the ladies home journal named her one of the most important women of the 20th century. It gives me a great deal of pleasure and a great honor to welcome mrs. Phyllis schiafly. [applause] thank you. Iafly thank you very much, Mallory Factor for all of those nice words and thank you students for caring to learn about details of American History that may not be in your textbooks, and thanks to the guests who are coming today. I appreciate this opportunity to talk to you about some other side lights of the issue that other speakers may not have covered. You know, youve had all of these distinguished lecturers who have preceded me in these series, and im sure youve read all the books that they recommend edmond burke and john lock and russell kirk and ludwig von mesis and john adams and blackstone and those are the scholars who laid the foundation for what we understand is the conserveby what we understand is the conservative movement but today i want to take an example of something that has nothing to do with the conservative movement but shows how technology can do a leap forward that could not be done in any other way. In 1975, the people who were meeting and talking about their gripes against the British Crown were all trying to make the king shape up and be a good fellow and recognize their rights. All of their entreaties were addressed to the king, and the idea of not having a king really hadnt occurred to them. When they had their convention in 19 irn 1775, i think ther petition was called the olive branch petition. Theyre continuing to make entreaties to the king to give them their englishmans rights. That was in july of 1775. In january of 19 of 1776, a little pamphlet was published. It was called common sense by thomas paine. It was only 46 pages. It wasnt written in the scholarly method of those other writers who wrote at that time. It was written for the guys who went to the coffee shop. The guys who went to the pub. It was in plain language for plain people. And basically he said weve got to get rid of the king. And it was published january 10th, 46 pages. And by july the 4th, we had the declaration of independence. Its one of the most amazing literary accomplishments in literature. And it probably is the best selling book in history considering the population that we had at that time. It had it gripped people. It created the movement for independence. It was Something Like it was a different technology. It was Something Like moving from the horse and buggy to the automobile or from the typewriter to the internet. Thats what the pamphleteer did. He made it the pamphlet of the new technology, the language of ordinary people. He didnt have his piece decorated with latin phrases. It was just direct, political language that anybody could understand. Now lets fast forward to the 1930s. The time of the great depression. High unemployment. Even worse than today. But even then, americans were not looking to government to solve their problems. Franklin roosevelt, who was expected to be and was elected president in 1932, supposedly to end the depression, ran on the democratic platform. And let me tell you what that 1932 democratic platform said. We advocate an immediate and drastic reduction of government expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance to accomplish a saving of not less than 25 in the cost of the federal government. We favor a federal budget annually balanced. Well, that sounds like the tea party, doesnt it . It certainly doesnt sound like the new deal which professor i thinkme folksome explained to you in a previous lecture. Fdr, Franklin Roosevelt knew that the american that was what the American People wanted to hear. However, once he was elected, he embarked on a big spending program, expanded bureaucracy, use of the Commerce Clause to do all kinds of things that we thought then and now think were unconstitutional, the same arguments that were used in the obamacare case that was argued before the Supreme Court last week. By the time fdr ran for his third term, a prominent democrat had left him. The American People really hated fdr. Very much like the significant number of people who really hate obama today. Nevertheless, they elected him four times. That does not mean the people approved of his spending programs and what he was doing. He certainly did not solve the unemployment problem hasrofessor fulsome explained to you. He spent the money in states where they would get him votes to be reelected. But they continued to do spending and continued to be reelected. And then another thing happened which brought a very little book into the fore. It was written by an austrian named frederick hiyak who had become a british citizen. And its a very short book in which he directly attacked collectivism, the planned economy, and the whole idea that Central Landing was the way to run an economy. And he took the position that in order to preserve liberty, we had to make a choice, do we want the government to plan everything, or do we want to have the rule of law . It sounds like ron paul really the way it was written. But in any event, the initial printing was only 2,000 books. And then something happened to bring it to the grassroots. And that was that the Readers Digest reprinted it. Now, its hard to remember or believe today but the Readers Digest then had 5 million subscribers, and everybody read the Readers Digest in those years, and so this reached the plain people, the grassroots, and they believed it, and it had a tremendous impact on our country in explaining what was wrong with the new deal and how we didnt want to go to Central Planning of our economy. Now, i happened to be at the Harvard Graduate School that year, and dont let anybody tell you that opportunities for education for women only started when the feminists came along because i was getting my degree at the Harvard Graduate School in 1945, long before all these feminists were born, and compared with all and competed with all the guys, had no problem. And hiyak came there to speak on his crosscountry tour. And i remember how the professors gathered us to explain to us how we were not supposed to believe what hiyak was saying. They were preparing us for his coming and how to refute him and to answer him. And they were all new dealers, my professors at harvard then. I remember one whose favorite saying was, we shouldnt talk about balancing the budget. We should talk about budgeting the balance. And then we had another one who devoted one whole lecture in his constitutional law class to telling us that Henry Wallace was the greatest political thinker of the 20th century. Now if you studied your history you know he was the closest thing to a communist we ever had anywhere near the white house and he was so way out left wing, that he was too bad even for roosevelt who dumped him as Vice President when he ran for his fourth term in 1944. And replayed him with harry truman. But in any event, the conventional wisdom in america then was that the planned economy was the wave of the future and the way to go. And the there was a lot of opposition that was building to roosevelt. There were a number of organizations organized by the grassroots to oppose him. There are only two that i know that have survived till this day. One is the association of American Physicians and surgeons, which is the conservative doctors and they filed three briefs in this obamacare case, but they started mid1940s, and the other is americas future which still publishes a newspaper and still is around. But most of the others died out. And so what was the kind of opposition, political opposition to all this . Well, you look to the Republican Party. Now, the Republican Party in those years was pretty well run by what we call the kingmakers. And they were headquartered in new york and particularly in the chase manhattan bank. And they thought they were divinely appointed to select the republican nominee which wouldnt who would not very much challenge what roosevelt was doing. In 1940, they forced on the republicans a man named Wendell Willkie who wasnt even a republican. He had been a democrat, and he was kind of a 90day wonder. They enlisted all the media. They did a lot of crooked things, and they put him over as the nominee and he ran for president on the republican ticket and lost to roosevelt. And then in 1944, they tried a governor, former governor of new york, named tom dewey, the one whom somebody called looking like the little man on the wedding cake. And he didnt do very well in and then came 1948 1944 and they had the gall to nominate tom dewey again, which we the grassroots were very much opposed to. But they forced him on us and there was a lot of opposition to the grassroots. I remember Alice Roosevelt longworth said you cant make a souffle rise twice, but at any rate, tom dewey was the candidate. And there were all kinds of wonderful issues that he could have talked about. The truman scandals, the korean war, the communist infiltration of our government, the alger hiss case, but tom dewey waged a me too campaign and he lost. And roosevelt was elected for his fourth term. Then came 1946, the off year election and by this time, the grassroots were really getting angry about the whole thing. And they went out and carried on a campaign under the slogan had enough, and they elected what was the biggest republican majority in congress in the 20th century. So as we approach the Republican Convention of 1952, everybody expected a republican year. And the contestants were bob taft, senator bob taft who had the support of the grassroots and was, i think, the first authentic conservative as we understand it in the modern terminology. However, i can tell you in those days, nobody called themselves conservatives. It was not a word that we used. He was just a run of the mill garden variety republican. And the kingmakers put up eisenhower who was a military hero whom they had installed as a University President to keep him safe until the time of the convention so that he wouldnt have to take any stands on controversial issues. But the grassroots wanted bob taft because he spoke up for typical american values, foreign and domestic. And he had his book Foreign Policy for americans, another short book which we liked and we distributed, and he was the guy we hoped to nominate in 1952. Well, if you read about it, you will find that it was another one of these crooked conventions, and they succeeded in nominating eisenhower after they went to the governor of california, who was then earl warren, and promised him the next vacancy on the Supreme Court if he would deliver the big california delegation for the vote on the Credentials Committee and the vote on the rules committee, both of which they had changed. And he did. And eisenhower was not part of the deal, but he was persuaded to fulfill that commitment that his handlers had made, and it was a terrible, terrible mistake because the Eisenhower Court was really the beginning of all of these bad decisions. We began to discuss later and find out what was happening. In in fact, eisenhower was asked one day, did you make any mistakes while you were president and he said yes, two, and theyre both sitting on the Supreme Court. But anyway, eisenhower was nominated and we all supported him and he won. But after that, we began to realize the enormity of the communist threat both the soviet missile threat and the infiltration of our government by communist spies and people who were spreading our secret information to the soviet union. There was also infiltration in the universities and in hollywood. And we had investigations of communism by the various congressional committees and reports that were widely read by the American People. In those days, everybody could read. And its not like today where we have all this widespread illiteracy in our country but everybody could read and they did read the congressional reports. And they understood what communism was and why we wanted to get rid of the infiltration in our government because the grassroots took up the study of communism from the congressional reports. Now, in 1956, theres one man again, you talk about what one person can do. But one man named Fred Schwartz had an enormous impact in building the conservative movement. He was an australian physician who was invited one day to debate a communist, and he beat him and then he realized how evil communism really is. And he realized that the United States was the main battleground. So he came to this country and he worked in this country for 50 years. He had an enormous impact in building the start of the conservative movement. He brought thousands of people into what we didnt call conservatives. Again, were not conservativem of but it was the anticommunist movement so that we had a grassroots that was he will well informed and i got him to put on his first school. He conducted these fiveday schools, 9 00 to 5 00 all on communism. He had a couple other speakers shz gave several of the speeches himself but had he other distinguished speakers on the subject. And i assisted him in putting on the first one in 1956 at the tower grove baptist church. St. Louis. And he realized what he could do by training people with a fiveday class. So he then had them all over the country and all the time i meet people who came into the conservative movement attending one of the schwartz schools. It was such a big thing that when he got to california, he filled the Los Angeles Sports Arena with 16,000 people for one of his schools. Now, his he ultimately has a book that ought to be in your library called you can trust the communists to be communists. In other words, unlike some of our enemies today, the communists told us exactly what they were going to do. We are going to bury you and they told us exactly how they were going to do it, and the reason his book, which probably didnt have a big sale but the reason its so readable is it was all his speeches and a lot of books which start out as speeches are much more readable for the grassroots and ordinary people and he called this organization the christian anticommunism crusade. So it had a certain evangelical aspect to it. So at the end of this first school, i said, well, weve got bring the catholics in too and have them join. No, he said you cant put the catholics and the protestants in the same room. It just isnt going to work this the catholics need to have their own organization and we got them to start their own organization and we promoted study groups all over the country. At one time, think we had 5,000 of these study groups because it was based on the congressional reports, and i repackaged it for Republican Federation for the dar and for the Catholic Group which was called the card and a half foundation. So people were learning about government, learning about our enemy enemies, learning about communism all the time and just to show you what the ordinary republican in those days, were talking about the 19, late 1950s, early 1960s, thought, i looked up some of the resolutions passed by the Illinois Federation of republican women, which wa