The Phyllis Schlafly Report

Last week, I traveled back down to DC for a 2-3 day trip to the Eagle Forum Collegians Summit. Check me out, I made the schedule in an incredible lineup of speakers,

(I spoke on "Day 2" at 1:45pm)

I spoke to about 50-100 students, introduced them to ISI and encouraged them "to reject ideology altogether" and "to find the truth of things." I tried to blend the ideas of Kirk, who warned us about adhering to any ideology, with Father James Schall, a professor of government at Georgetown, who has said that the human mind must choose "to achieve it's primary purpose, which is to find the truth of things." So, my message to them was: reject ideology, and pursue the truth, and that ISI and all of ISI's resources could help them to do this.

One of the coolest things of the day, besides meeting some really great students, was being introduced by Phyllis Schlafly. How cool is that? This woman is a "historic figure" herself, which I said at the beginning of my talk, and I was honored to be in her presence. She led the fight in the 70's and 80's to defeat the "Equal Rights Amendment", commonly referred to as the "ERA". This potential amendment to our Constitution would have been disastrous, despite its benevolent sounding name. Due to her victory over the ERA, Schlafly at the same time began the start of the current day"pro-family" movement in this country, a movement which has been a large part of the conservative movement in recent years.

One thing I also reminded the students of (as well as myself) is about all the great people that have "paved the way" for our generation of conservatives. Without figures like Phyllis Schlafly (and countless others), who fought the battle when there was no one (not even most Republicans) on their side, the success of the conservative movement wouldn't be where it is today.

When conservative college students feel they have such an "uphill" battle, they can look at some of our role models over the past half-century who have climbed most of the hill for us already. It's up to us to push ourselves over. Or, as Dinesh D'Souza often reminds us, there is an old Indian saying, "After you climb the mountain, what do you see? More mountains." Precisely.