Part One: Phyllis Schlafly: The Mother of all Culture Wars

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Do you know how I start my introductions with like,
what's axing my wise sort of thing? A lot of
the time people seem to like that. It's become a
little bit of a trend. You know, that's the thing
that we do sometimes. What what if I were to
open the show by loudly shouting what suporting my fetuses?
Would that be a good idea? Would that work? I mean,

(00:22):
I'm not her, but no, I was going to say
something smart. No, just no, no. I shouldn't have done that.
I shouldn't have started the show that way. That was
a bad call. What's aborting my fetuses is not a winner?
I would go, not a winner. Well, that's a shame
because we've already recorded it. I'm Robert Evans. This is
Behind the Bastards. It's a podcast about the worst people

(00:43):
in all of history. Today we're talking about someone who's
relevant to the issue of legal abortion anyway. My guest
is to recently. Yeah, it's good to be here. I
had no idea what we were talking about, and boy
am I excited? Theresa? How do you feel about me

(01:05):
opening the show by calling out what's supporting my fetuses?
Was that a good idea? Do you think I'm a
third opinion is necessary? And I don't know anything. Nothing
surprised me, but I was I said boy and I excited.
I should probably have said boy or girl. But we'll
never know because you know, once it's supported, you won't
know so exactly. That's the beauty of of of abortion anyway. Um,

(01:27):
there's no beauty asee Okay, okay, there's a lot of
there's a lot of good things about it, it being
it being available, that are that are lovely people being
able to take charge of their lives in a lot
of one anyway, we don't need to that's not necessary
at the top of this episode, But Theresa, what what what? What?

(01:48):
What are you? Theresa? In podcasts, you are a maker?
You create things? No, like, what do you know? What
do you? What? Do you? What? Do you? What do
you want? What do you want the kids at home
to listen to, to go to go know about I'm
gonna come in super hot because I just read an
article not about my podcast, but I was a guest
on it and it described me as so tranquol. She

(02:09):
didn't know it was being recorded. I think he meant
it nicely, but I was like, Damn, that's who I am.
I'm just I just reek of our a energy. I
was a former r A um, I am a I
guess I'm a former all right, let's leave with that.
Like like in colleges and yes, in college okay, and
what you was expensive? I needed to find ways to

(02:30):
pay my housing. So you're basically a cop, is what
you're saying. Well, no, because I was there for the support,
like I did a lot of the programming and like
behavioral health and like one on ones, and honestly, I
just didn't like to enforce the rules. I was all about,
you know, supporting the emotions of the kids. But yeah,

(02:51):
I guess technically that's what ris do is they are
kind of cops. But there's actually cops in New York,
so I don't have to worry about that stuff about crime.
You know. I'm sad I didn't have you as my
aria in college. We had a total narc. I feel
like I give off narc vibes, but I'm not an arc.
I swear. I am also a podcaster. You can listen
to my podcast which is called You Can Tell Me Anything,

(03:12):
which is kind of an r A podcast podcast where
you interrogate people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just really like
you don't even know they're on it. I just kidnaped them,
put them in at undercover. Is this why you kept
trying to get me to saw down those shotguns? Yes?
I have no idea what you're talking about, but I

(03:33):
feel like I'm a few seasons late. On your Twitter.
There's just a Ruby Ridge joke. We do those all
the time when we're not doing wago jokes. Theresa, have
you ever heard of Philish Laughly? No, I don't think so.
Oh boy, um, okay, so the name's net ringing any bells? Huh? No,
I can't say I know any phyllis is really that
are in real life. I feel like I know the

(03:55):
phillis from Monsters, Inc. But she would hate my T
shirt that says feminism is Law now created by Jamie
Loftus of the beckdel Cast hig Caitlin. She would hate
the shirt. Hate. Yeah, it's um, she would hate that shirt.
Not a fan of cotton or was it polyester or feminism? Feminism?

(04:18):
Philish Laughly was probably the most famous anti feminist in
all of history. Um, she's a one of the I
don't know so like we have We have a couple
of different kinds of bastards on the show. Right, We've
got like the guys, We've got like the dictators, which
is what our show kind of started to talk about.
Hitler and Stalin and these these people who are like
very famous, like mass murderers in history. Um. And you

(04:43):
know those folks, it's really easy to tell, Like you
can usually like throw an exact death toll at them, right,
Like we're talking about Hitler, we can be like a
Hitler was responsible for roughly this many millions of people dying.
And Stalin, you know, got this many millions of people killed,
and YadA, YadA, YadA, Sadam killed this many people very easy.
The first one we're talking about to as someone who
never ordered a single execution or invasion. Um. But it

(05:04):
is possible that in the long run of time, Philish
Laughley will wind up with a body count that actually
eclipses a lot of our other guests. Uh. And with
things going the way they are, she might be the
person who gets a lot of the people listening to
this podcast killed. That's a good there's that that that's
all still up in the air. Um. Now, if you've
seen or read the Handmaid's Tale. You're familiar with you

(05:26):
watched The Handmaid's Tale. It's a little too graphic for me,
but I'm I very much know the content and the
stories and the themes. There's that character, Serena Joy, who's
like the main female villain of the series. Like she's
the lady who's married to the commander um in her
back story in the both the show and the book
is that she was like a major political conservative political

(05:48):
icon and author before the dominionust Christians took over the
United States. Uh. And Margaret Atwood, who wrote The Handmaid's Tale,
actually had a specific real person in mind when she
wrote Serena Joy, and it was fish laugh Like that
character is based on Philish not know that Serena Joy
is basically like before before everything goes down, is like

(06:11):
speaking at colleges being like the women's places in the
house and like there is like what's wrong with that?
And I'm just God and it's just all are in
the house now that everyone's places in the house. Yeah,
um damn. So she sounds really evil. So she because
for some reason when you started this, I the way

(06:32):
you phrase it, I was like, wait, so she for abortion?
Or against because I would say and antifeminist should be
would be against abortion. But then she Okay, so I
guess I'll hear your story. But I'm trying to piece
this together. I know about planned parenthood, and she's not around.
That's not her. No, no, no, no, no no, She's
the opposite of all that. So, so Phillis. The big

(06:53):
thing she gets credited with usually is that she stopped
the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment UM, which she did.
What she's less often credited for is creating American conservatism,
the Republican Party as it exists today as a as
a meaningful political force. Like she's the person who kind
of invented the Republican Party strategy that led to them

(07:16):
reaching the exact demographic that put Donald Trump into office.
Without Without she goes back quite a while. So without Phillis,
we probably don't have President Ronald Reagan. We may not
have either President Bush, the Iraq War, the push demand abortion,
the Trump campaign, or any of a lot of other
terrible things that are currently pushing our country to the
brink of a nightmare. Philish Laughly is the person who

(07:37):
took like straight up fascist Christian right wing politics and
took them into the mainstream. Like, the Republican Party was
not always that party. She made at that party. That's
that's her accomplishment, is she turned the Republican Party into
the party a fucking qan on right, Like that's that's

(07:58):
what what. Yeah, she's the person. There's also like the CNP.
Is she related to that at all or I'm not sure,
the like Council on National Policy. It's sort of in
that shadow network with you know, Cook Brothers money and
divorce money and oh yeah, I mean she was kind
of in I'm she was in that vague universe of

(08:19):
people who were part of think tanks and got paid
a lot of money by sketchy Republican millionaires and stuff like.
But her big affiliation was with the Moral Majority, with
the Fallwells, like she had a lot of she was
a big player and all that. Yeah, the American Enterprise
Institute with Jerry, Yeah it's good, Yeah, Jerry. Jerry kind

(08:39):
of stole her ideas to make the religious right into
a thing in a way. Kind of Yeah, we'll get
into the whole story right about now, So let's do it.
Uh So. Phillis was born Phyllis McAlpine Stewart on August fifteenth,
nine in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Dottie k from

(09:00):
a moderately prominent family. Her dad had been a successful
like in Phyllis's granddad had been a successful attorney, and
unusually for the area, Dottie had both a bachelor's degree
and a two year certification in library science, So she
was an educated woman in an era when that was
like not the most common thing in the world, although
it was starting to be more common. This is like

(09:20):
right around when women are getting the vote. Uh. In
nineteen one, Daddy met and married Bruce Stewart, a heavy
equipment salesman for Westinghouse, which are the guys who made
typewriters and along with a bunch of other stuff. Uh. Now,
Bruce was seventeen years older than Daddy, which I think
we would all consider problematic today, right, not always, Like
there's definitely age gaps like that that are that that

(09:43):
that have existed and have been okay, but as a rule,
something like like, oh, that's kind of weird. But at
the time everything was terrible and it was totally normal
that your husband would years Yeah, you know, you as
a as a man in his forties. You know, you've
at about fifteen years left before your heart gives out,
So you really want to marry a twenty year old

(10:04):
so she can take care of you once you start stroking?
What was her name? Daddy? Is here? Dotty, Dottie, It's
d d I name a girl daddy, But now I
want to I'm not going to call her in my
I don't think it was daddy, and it makes me
uncomfortable to call her that the entire podcast. So we're
gonna go with Dottie. He almost you almost me a

(10:25):
podcast joke, you almos said, I was almost gonna call
her daddy. Get it? Anybody? Oh, I don't really know
what that is. I've seen that meme around, but I'm
not well versed in that. Yeah, don't worry about it's
over your head, Robert. Okay, So Dottie is married to Bruce.
So Daddy gets married to Bruce. Uh, and Phyllis is

(10:47):
born three years into their marriage, which actually is kind
of interesting to me that like they wait that long,
because like normally this time, especially like something like that,
you you get married, you just start you just start
firing off kids. But but Dottie um waits a little bit,
which is interesting now. Both Dottie and Bruce are very
traditional religious conservative Republicans. Um but partisan politics at that

(11:10):
point wasn't really what it is today. Like there were
a lot of political movements that had really divided the country,
but they weren't like they didn't fall along like Republican
Democrat lines and kind of the way that they did today.
Um So, Phillis did not hear a lot of political
discussion as a little girl, like she doesn't recall, she
never as an adult, never recalled it being a major

(11:30):
part of her childhood. She was a precocious and happy child,
at least according to the biographical interviews conducted by a
Chicago journalist who studied her upbringing. It's hard for me
to verify this for certain, because the most detailed picture
I found of her early life comes from a very
biased biographer, Donald Critchlow his book Philish Laughly and Grassroots
Conservatism is not like it's not like just a puff piece.

(11:52):
It's a pretty deeply reported book, but he's super sympathetic
to her um and as a result, we get lines
like this one. No tos between the parents were evident
to their children. Or revealed and correspondence or diaries. Dotty
was an attractive woman, devoted to her family, Like it's
all very whitewashed, and maybe her childhood was like that. Um,
I don't know. Life does seem like it was broadly

(12:14):
good for the Stewart family up until nineteen thirty. So
the twenties did pretty well for them, as they did
for the rest of the city at St. Louis, which
was like, had eight hundred thousand people in it at
that point. Like St. Louis used to be a big city. Uh,
and then you know, uh yeah, So in nineteen four,
the year Phyllis's birth, St. Louis went Republican, voting for
Coolidge in that election and Hoover the next. Uh. This

(12:37):
did not prove to have been a great idea. In
nineteen twenty nine, the Great Depression hit and the city
sunk into an apocalyptic collapse that it is still not
recovered from. St. Louis's population today is just a bit
over three hundred thousand, which is less than about a
third of the population it had when Phillis was born.
So the city that she comes from kind of collapses

(12:57):
when she's about, you know, six years old um. Yeah,
and her father suffers along with the rest of the city.
He loses his job as a sales engineer to Westinghouse
and this left him broken, pensionless at the age of
fifty one, with a wife and two children. Uh. Now,
thankfully it wasn't quite as dire as it sounds, because
the family actually had some money. Uh. They had a

(13:19):
wealthy uncle, and Dottie and her kids were able to
move to Los Angeles, where they lived with him for
a while, while Bruce stayed back in St. Louis to
try to get a job. By nineteen thirty two, though
he had more or less given up, the economic situation
was pretty hopeless. Now. At this point, Phillis was in
the fourth grade, and her family's dire financial straits don't
seem to have really gotten through to her. Instead, she

(13:40):
wrote in her diary about the excitement of taking a
three day train ride from St. Louis to Los Angeles
in an unair conditioned car. Again, phillis biographer assures us
that despite the dire circumstances, her family kept her safe
and insulated. And again, I'm not really sure how much
I believe this. Like the way the three day train ride.
Is that. Yeah, yeah, that's what she had to do
back in the day. I'm not sure I believe that

(14:04):
her biographer when he says that like this period she
was kind of insulated from the stress, just because I
kind of have some some personal, um background stuff that's
in line with us. Like, for one thing, I was
born in St. Louis too, But when I was a
little kid, I saw my dad. My dad lost his
job and my mom had to move away to the
family farm, which was like this tiny little household by

(14:24):
my grandpa, and my dad had to live thousands of
miles away in New York, like living on a friend's couch,
trying to make money. Um. And my parents did their
best to not make this like traumatic and anxiety in
Duson for me, and I didn't really talk about it
to them because I didn't want them to know how
bad it was. But like it really fucked me up
as a kid, and I have to imagine I have

(14:46):
to imagine young Phyllis picked up on some of this,
being separated from your dad having to move across the country. UM,
I just can't imagine that didn't leave some sort of
a mark. But that definitely is like whether not you.
I mean, it seems like she maybe didn't process it,
so she may not be aware. But that's the kind
of thing as a developed it's you're not an adult

(15:07):
as a child, literally, that's the definition of child and
you're developing. So any changes like that that takeaway, pull
the rug out, or challenge your sense of safety and security,
even if there's a reason and logic behind it, it
is going to affect your patterns as an adult. And
so I yeah, I'm with you on that. Yeah, And
like the specific way in which it challenges her security
is kind of she becomes this big fighter, big warrior

(15:30):
for like traditional family order and all this stuff, and
like her her childhood is very much not a traditional
childhood at the time, and kind of the role that
her parents take isn't very traditional because her dad is
out of work for a huge chunk of time, out
of a picture for it. So there is kind of
this feeling you get throughout her life that maybe that
maybe this was a lot more traumatic to her than

(15:51):
she ever even realized herself, and it had an impact
on why she why she became this sort of warrior
for for this like trying to kind of reset at
her childhood in some way that Yeah, it's almost like
she's a pinning all of her personal trauma onto this
bigger issue as to not look within herself and deal

(16:11):
with it. And I'm saying, like, oh, if everything just
stayed the same, I would have stayed the same in
life would have been good. But it's like, or maybe
life is up and down. My family wasn't able to
be traditional in the way that I think it ought
to be, so I should force everybody else to have
this childhood I didn't get to. I don't know whatever.
In ninety two, Dottie and the family moved back to St. Louis,

(16:32):
where they rented a house, and Dottie took a job
selling yard goods at a department store. So in thirty
two she becomes the chief breadwinner of the family because
Bruce just can't get a job and he's like old
and not in the best health and he can't find
work again. Philish Laughley's biographer glosses over some things here,
but it does look like like the family was helped
out by their relatives so that they could all move

(16:53):
back in together. Um so they're poor. Family has some
money though, um so they have a safety net, right
in this kind of period where most people don't you know,
this is the Great Depression. Um. So, Dottie became the
family's main breadwinner. She labored nine hours a day, She
had a two hour commute. She tended to work six
days a week. UH. And during this time, like Phillis

(17:15):
is in school and seems to be doing pretty well,
she was an active and well behaved child. She edited
the elementary school newspaper. UH. If she took any particular
pride in seeing her mother as the family breadwinner, we
have no evidence of this. Uh. Dottie was clearly a
very intelligent and ambitious person, and she moved quickly on
to teaching English at a public school. In a nineteen

(17:36):
thirty seven she became a librarian at the St. Louis
Art Museum, where she worked until she retired. So, by
the time Phillis was fourteen years old, she lived in
six different homes. Her family had rented every single time,
and her parents had never seemed to come particularly close
to owning property. Dottie, who by this point where the
pants economically in the family, decided that they should spend
what resources they had on getting their kids the best

(17:58):
education possible. She was want to get them free tuition
at a nice Catholic school by volunteering to catalog and
maintain the school's library. So Phyllis is very Catholic family
gets to go to this Catholic school. Her mom is
uh not just making the money, but like you know,
volunteering on her day off in order to get them
free tuition. Um. So Phillis grows up with Dottie. This

(18:19):
mother is like a very liberated uhig like female figure
in her life. Um. Now, throughout all this period, phillis
father was unemployed. He didn't work regularly again until World
War Two, when he got a job as an electrical
engineer for the War Production Board. Now, after this point
things got a lot better economically. He went up building
I patenting the new type of engine at some point

(18:40):
after this. Throughout the Great Depression, though, he refused to
take any unemployment money from the government out of fear
that his grandchildren would have to pay for what he
called Roosevelt's war on the free enterprise system, this planned economy,
and the welfare state he was building. Here, I'm hearing
buzz words already. Yeah, it's kind of being planted so
early on and associated with these other historical events we're

(19:01):
talking about, like war and the Great Depression. Like sounds
like there's other factors. But then as you tie it
all together, it's like, you know, future generations will be like,
well things are bad because of buzzword buzzword, when it's like, well,
things were bad because of historical event. Yeah, I mean
things were bad because, yeah, the economy had collapsed. Um.
And it's kind of worth noting that, like as he's

(19:24):
jobless for most of the depression, UM, Bruce is refusing
to take government aid and that makes his wife have
to work you know, nine hour days really eleven hour
days when you have the commune supporting the family, um,
which is like that yeah, so, but so he'll take
family aid. He took us rich family's aid and he

(19:46):
but not government aid. It's interesting because Phyllis will become
this like warrior against the welfare state and all that stuff, um,
and also a major advocate for like the traditional family.
Like those are her two big things. But as a kid,
her family is unable to be like her mom is
not home because they her dad refuses to take government aid. UM.

(20:08):
So it's like the as a child, the welfare state
attempted to make it possible for her to have a
traditional family life, and her dad wouldn't let that be
the case. Um. Now, that said, it seems like Dottie
enjoyed what she was doing. Said, it really adds to
the effect that his name is Bruce. Yeah, he's definitely

(20:31):
yeah and Dottie. See, I think Dottie would have probably
wanted to be a career woman in any case, Like,
she's clearly a very ambitious person. But like, it's just
interesting to me that the thing that that Phillis becomes
a crusader against is the thing that would have allowed
her to have her mom at home when she was
a kid. It's very very fun. Well, it's also this
weird framing because the idea of you know, like a

(20:53):
traditional family often people talk about like the mother's places
to be a home and or the woman's plants to
be home and be a mother. But if you frame
it a different way, it sounds like Dottie did the
extreme version of being a mother. Like she was like,
all right, my child needs support and care, so I'm
gonna work for her tuition. So like, in a lot
of different framings like that is doing the motherly job

(21:14):
even more motherly. But I feel like that goes against
the idea that the mother's at home, even though it's
still driven by this motherhood not a drive to work.
It's driven by a drive to provide. Yeah, yeah it is. Um.
I mean she she's clearly is a great provider and
like is a I I think most people would agree,
A really like like being a very responsible mother here,

(21:36):
like putting in a lot of work and time and
effort in order to take care of and give her
kids the best possible chance. Uh. And Phillis inherited her
mother's obsessive work ethic. She was an extremely competitive student
uh and was actually like brokenhearted and her sophomore year
when she failed to win the covid AT Highest Average
award in her school because she had to stay home

(21:57):
for a chunk of the year with the measles. And
through phillis biography in this period, she seems like the
platonic ideal of an ambitious nineteen forties girl. Uh. She
graduated valedictorian. All of her friends were these wealthy, gifted
children of aristocratic Catholic St. Louis families. Um. Her grades
earned her a four year scholarship at Maryville College, which

(22:17):
was a local Catholic school, and Phillis went there for
a year, but she was disappointed, finding it too easy,
so she enrolled instead at Washington University, where she would
have to pay her own tuition. I should note here
that at one point in the past, it was possible
for students to pay their own tuition to college without
you know, being rich, Like that was the thing that
you used to be able to do. Now, World War

(22:38):
Two was in the middle of like happening at this
point when when Phillis starts doing college and in the
middle yeah, so she needs a full time job in
order to pay for college, and thankfully there's this horrible
war going on, so it's actually really easy to find work. Uh,
And she gets a full time job at the St.
Louis Ordinance Plant, testing ammunition by shooting machine guns all day, um,

(22:59):
which is at the sick job and also non traditional
in the like in the old timey gender roles. Since like, yeah,
totally only bringing that up because it sounds like she
she's gonna get worse, and I'm like, m interesting, Yeah,
it's a pretty cool gig um she gets and fifty
dollars a year to shoot these machine guns, which is

(23:21):
about the equivalent about twenty a year now. But that
was a living wage back then. Like that was enough
for her to live and pay for college. Um, because
it was just a different time. Uh. So Phillis like
was working constantly between school and her job. She didn't
really have any free time. But she seemed happy, happy,
and she was able to live independently working for the government. Uh,

(23:42):
Phillis earned her bachelor's degree, and she went to Harvard
and got a graduate degree. And and to talk like
I want to at this point kind of zip ahead
sixty years to elderly eighties seven year old Phillis when
she was giving a speech in two thousand thirteen, because
she brought up this part of her life, her time
at Harvard, during a speech fun of a bunch of
white right wing activists. Uh. And I want to tell

(24:03):
I want to read this to you so you can
see kind of how she framed her time in school. Quote.
Let me tell you, I worked my way through college
and got my college degree at a great university, Washington
University of St. Louis in nineteen forty four. No discrimination
of any kind she's highlighting that she liked there was
there was no discrimination of women before feminism. I then
went to Harvard graduate school and competed with all of

(24:23):
the guys, no discrimination whatsoever, got my Harvard degree in
nineteen forty five, and my mother got her bachelor's degree
at a great coed university in nineteen twenty. So all
these opportunities were out there before you were all born,
and the feminists had absolutely nothing to do with it.
So that's the way she frames this is like no
discrimination as if discrimination is like as long as you are,
as long as you make it, there's no discrimination that

(24:45):
exists at all. Like it's like, well, if you didn't
get in or you didn't get something, it could be
discrimination might not be, but that doesn't imply that there's
none at all, Like how many people were, like how
many women were you know in the class versus men?
Or was it just that you sounded like you did
really well And then you're like, well it doesn't exist. Yeah, yeah,
And there's that whole statement is a pack of lies.

(25:08):
And I'm gonna quote now from a writeup by journalist A.
Dell Stand to kind of break down why in truth
Laftly would have been barred from entry to Harvard's undergraduate
programs in nineteen forty five, as well as from its
law school, and while she studied with the men, Harvard,
under pressure from feminists, had just begun admitting women to
some of its graduate programs. Her degree was conferred not
by Harvard, but by the women's college with which it

(25:30):
was affiliated, Radcliffe. She Laughtly also failed to mention that
at the time her mother earned her degree, the Nineteenth
Amendment to the Constitution, which, thanks for the efforts of
first wave feminists, granted women the right to vote, had
not yet been ratified. So, like she she leaves out
a lot here, like the fact that she wouldn't have
gotten to go to Harvard at all without pressure from feminists,
and the fact that Harvard was so bigoted it would

(25:52):
not give her a degree. She had to. She did
the studying at Harvard, but she had to be given
a degree by an affiliated college because they didn't want
Everard didn't want to be seen as giving degrees to women.
This is a little like Stockholm syndrome, like the way
she is, because it's almost like the lady doth protest
too much like I don't go back and talk about
all the times I haven't been discriminated against. But if

(26:13):
you're going to bring that up in your speech, and
it's like, hmm, perhaps you're defending something you know in
your heart to be true that you don't want to
look at. Yeah, and I yeah exactly, So let's get
back to yes before you get back to it. It's Sophie,
that's not how we do things here. We have to
start by saying something horrible and then we use that

(26:36):
and to lead into a podcast ad like Teresa, how
often do you think about the Armenian genocide? Where are
you going with this one? Buddy? Is this rhetorical? I
that was not a good way to lead into Sophie,
how do we I've forgotten how to do this job?
What are you trying to sell? Nothing? The products here?

(26:59):
Haven't I add? We're back? Uh? And boy, howdye? I
watched that last transition. I was expecting you to go
full wake Ago and then you just like didn't. It
was weird. I I you know, I'm fighting a cold.
Maybe I don't know. I just I don't have the

(27:21):
Waco inmate. Today. You're doing great, Robert, the spirit of
corresh is not okay, thank you. So here we go,
let's get back to it. Um. So Phillis, uh, you know,
goes to Harvard, gets her degree from an affiliated school
because Harvard doesn't want to give degrees taking girls. Uh.
Phillis does not seem to have been particularly political at

(27:44):
this point in her career. When she did write about politics. Um,
she didn't really exhibit a hard right bias like we
have some of her essays from this period, and she
was actually really into the idea. This is again right
around the end of World War Two to the creation
of the Unit. She was really into the idea of
the creation of the United Nations and like establishing a
national order which could act as a bulwark against the
aggression of dangerous countries, which is like so you know,

(28:08):
n She's like, oh, yeah, of course there should be
a United Nations that helps keep the peace internationally. Um. Now, obviously,
as Philish Schlafly, you know, when she became a major
active as she would reject any hint that there should
be an international order or like cooperation for peace. But
in nineteen forty five she wasn't like a nativist, hard
right cynic. Yet the shift in her seems to have

(28:30):
started after the end of World War Two, without great
global threats to confront the US, the government began to
disassemble the various agencies that had created to like build
the army that was necessary to find World War two.
So in an instant, the job market went from this
wide open place flush with cash to a contracting market
where returning veterans got preferential treatment and young women like

(28:51):
Phyllis were unable to find work. Uh. And I'm gonna
quote now from a segment of her biography that highlights
what I think is probably the clearest first evidence we
have of her embraceve right wing ideology. In November, Phillis
Stewart when a reader's essay contest sponsored by the Washington
Daily News, declaring the cards are stacked against the enterprising
and ambitious person and in favor of the mediocre adults

(29:14):
or the unqualified veteran UM. So she's basically talking about
like the fact that the government is giving preference to
UM two people who aren't like her for employment, and
like that's the thing. It sounds like a lot of
people on Twitter right now. Yeah, But also just the
idea of like calling an unqualified, Like it's like they've

(29:34):
fought and I don't know, because there's so many layers
to this, and I'm it's interesting. I'm seeing your brain
kind of like going to overdrive, and I feel like
at one point it just crashes, like it's like too
many things and thoughts. And she's like, I don't know
what to believe. I guess we'll just reset it. Yeah,
I don't know. I don't I don't know about that. Um.
In terms of like what's going on in her head

(29:55):
right now, I think there's actually a pretty straight point,
like she seems to start at, like like like her
issue here is that like the government is giving actual
preference to veterans and stuff, like there are a bunch
of different kind of like job benefits that they got.
But she's trying to get work right now, right, So
she's still kind of pro working woman. Yeah, she's it's
more that she's anti UM. She's anti like these the

(30:20):
people who are coming in and like taking the jobs
that she wants to get, like even though they're kind
of like veterans and the people you'd think are supposed
to be heroes, Like she she developed this kind of
issue because there um they're they're they're taking the work
that she wants, and she sees it as like, well,
the if the government wasn't like sticking its business, sticking
its nose in business and like trying giving these people

(30:41):
a leg up, um, then I wouldn't be having this problem,
um because I'm clearly very qualifyed. Like, yeah, I think
that's kind of what's going on here. And she so
she starts taking angry, like really angry kind of at
the government's you know, um, at its meddling in the economy. Um.
And she winds up finding a group of conservatives who

(31:01):
seem to be angry about some of the same things,
and she gets a job with this think tank they've
organized called the American Enterprise Association, which later becomes the
American Enterprise Institute. This is still around a day, so
you may not have heard about the a EI or
the American Enterprise Institute today. They're just one of a
bunch of conservative think tanks in d C arguing that
schools should be open and like a bunch of their

(31:22):
more recent arguments and be like, we need to reopen
schools and also Taiwan needs US fighter jets and like
a bunch of like standard kind of conservative stuff. But
the a EI but that's the Taiwan that I'm Taiwan
is a conservative. Yeah, yeah, because they were they started out,
but they didn't used to be. I mean, well, I
don't want to get too into it, but the US
like literally are the communists in China and we're pro

(31:45):
splitting China in half, which helps lose, and now they're
all anti China. But it's like, you guys made this happen. Yeah,
I mean that's that's the US foreign policy in a nutshell.
As we aim we arm everybody involved, and then it
comes back to bite us in the ass and we're like,
how could this have happened? That's that's like seventy years
of US foreign policy summed up right there. Um. So

(32:09):
the AI was was like okay, so the the AI
to day is kind of like a pretty normal right
wing think tank. Um. In nineteen forty three, though, they
were kind of the very first, like the very first
sign of what would become the organized conservative movement in
the United States. Um. Yeah. Prior to World War Two,

(32:32):
there really wasn't a conservative like movement in the United States.
There were a bunch of different right wing groups and
had been like a lot of different right wing like
political organizations. Um, but you had sort of these this
smattering like a mix of anti New Deal groups, so
like right wing groups that thought the New Deal was
creeping communism. Um. You had these like nativist organizations, um,

(32:53):
you know, like supporters of Father Coughlin, that right wing
radio preacher, or like supporters of Charles Lindberg, people who
hadn't wanted to get involved in World War Two. So
you kind of had like this this disorganized chunk of different, um,
different and very separate kind of right wing uh political organizations.
You had anti communists, corporatists, you know, uh, anti Semites,

(33:14):
anti Catholics, and all of these people, um like they
they had they never really come together in an organized
conservative movement before. And that's kind of why the Democrats
like are consistently winning presidential elections and dominating politically during
this time because there's really no organized right wing movements
and there is an organized left wing movement um, or

(33:35):
at least kind of liberal movement. So what became the
organized conservative movement what we know today is like the
right wing got it start by opposing FDRs run for
a third term. This is the kind of the first
thing that united anti New Deal Republicans with like conservative
Democrats in the South who were on the edge of
flipping parties because of racism. Um. It brought in a

(33:56):
lot of anti interventionalists, like people who had been with
groups like America First and the Mother's Anti War Movement. Um.
So yeah, this was um like, all these groups start
to come together and there there's some pretty nasty people
in them. Like the Mother's Anti War Movement sounds like
something that you'd see. It's like it sounds like it
would be a left wing group today. But the anti

(34:18):
the war they were against in the nineteen thirties, Like
they didn't want to go to war with the Nazis,
which meant that there was a lot of anti Semitic propaganda.
Kind of they are pro Nazis almost yeah, broadly pro
Nazi and that like that's true of like the whole
genesis of the conservative movement. All of these people, Um,
they won't all say it, and after World War Two,
everybody gets very careful about their Jewish conspiracies. It's like

(34:41):
Mother's against drunk driving, but instead of being against drunk drivers,
they're just like no more cars, like we don't like cars,
and you're like, what, that's not the point. Yeah. Yeah.
And the these different groups are all kind of the
different conservative groups that kind of like come together to
form like the nascent right wing in the post war
or period. They are all kind of sprinkled with anti

(35:02):
semitism um and and the way that they have to
kind of change it. Like prior to the war, you
can say Jewish people are trying to like Jewish influence
and Jewish money is trying to keep us I was
trying to pull us into war um. And after the
war you have this like it kind of changes to
people saying that like, well there's all these secret Marxists
in the United States and they're trying to like make

(35:24):
a Communist takeover, and they're still talking about Jewish people,
but they've gotten a lot more careful because of the Holocaust. Yeah.
And phyllis biographer insists that she at this point in
time when she gets involved in the American Enterprise Institute
like knows nothing about like sort of the racist, anti
Semitic chunk of the of the right wing. And that's
a lie. But we'll we'll talk about that a little later.

(35:46):
Just like she knows nothing about discrimination. Maybe she's just
bad at observing things around her. Yeah, So in the
wake of in the wake of World War two, she
she she's working with this American Enterprise Association, And in
the wake of World War two they focused really on
economics in part because, um, like there were a couple

(36:09):
like the battle again for international against internationalism had been lost,
Like the right wing prior to the war had really
wanted the US to like stay on its own and
not get involved in global politics. The fucking that ship
that cats out of the bag by the end of
World War two. Um And it had also been super
anti semitic, but you couldn't be that anymore, at least
for a while, So it focused instead on like economic

(36:31):
conservatism and like corporatism. Um. And that's kind of the
thing that it starts to to build from. Um and uh, yeah,
the American Enterprise institutes um like statement of purpose. The
thing that it is sort of like rallied around. Like
the single statement that it's rallied around. At the time
when Phyllis gets involved is was quote the tide of

(36:52):
radicalism maybe receiving momentarily, but this certainly does not mean
that America has returned to sound fiscal policies, put an
end to deficit financing, economic experimentation, and stopped making utopian
plans for the future. Um, which I find is interesting.
They're like it at the end of world, Like the
FDR is out of the picture, and people aren't you know,

(37:13):
pushing for as many socialist policies anymore. But like that
doesn't mean that they won't try to look into a
utopian future, you know, at some point in the like
that's our goal, that's what we're stopping. She's like, UM,
don't worry. What if I was in charge, I would
not be trying to make things better. I would definitely
try to make things worse as they were before people
try to make things better. So just trust me on that. Yeah,

(37:37):
well that's kind of what that's kind of the core
of this conservative movement that that that starts to come
about is like it is impossible for things to be
better if you were trying to make things better you
are a communist. The best that we can do, like literally,
anti communism is kind of the the entire center of
this new right wing that forms because it's that that

(37:58):
you can be anti communist in this period, Um you
couldn't you know, And and that's like there there, their
existence is entirely in opposition to something right, Like there's nothing. Yeah,
it's always anti Yeah, it's just an attempt to destroy things.
Like I'm a you know, very liberal and left and
radical in that way, but like I've always just grown

(38:18):
up in like conservatism, but hearing this, I'm like, that's
not even really act. There are some people who are
like truly American conservatives who kind of believe more like well,
it's it's all meddled up now, but there there. Let's
say there are a few people who are more like
the idea of like less government intervention, more like old
traditional values without the racism, without that, like plus human rights,
you know, like yeah, let's do progress for humans, but

(38:40):
like less the government economic meddling. That to me, I
feel like gets so lost now because it's been co
opted and I'm like, as a liberal, I have been
brainwashed to hate all conservatives when I'm like, you know what,
there are versions of conservatism that would make sense if
you added human rights and reason to it. Well, it's
like there's version is of like I don't know, there's

(39:01):
there's aspects of like how people frame their conservatism. Like
when people say I just think the government should leave
people alone, that's there's that's not a bad thing to want.
The problem is that generally what they're saying is that
I feel like I'm kind of in at a top
position or a good enough position in this society that
if the government stays out, um, nothing will happen to me.

(39:25):
And I don't really care about the people who actually
need help right now. But this is when that this
is when. So that's always been an aspect of American politics,
right There's always been people who have been like, fuck
you got mine, um, But what kind of never existed
was a a movement that could stitch kind of that
attitude together with um, social conservatism, which with this idea

(39:48):
that like things should go back to the way they
were and we should have these more traditional values like
this is what's that's what starts happening right now. UM.
So yeah, the American Enterprise Association. Phillis works for them
for about a year UM and by the time she
finishes her affiliation with them, she's like a hardcore right

(40:08):
wing uh fundamentalist. Um. When she'd started working for them,
she'd actually been a member of the United Nations Association
and supported the new organization. Um. All of that ends
for her during her time with the A e A.
By the end of it, she is a dedicated right
wing partisan. Um. As her biographer notes, quote, her religious faith,
now combined with a well formed conservative ideology, created a

(40:30):
formidable political outlook. Equally important, she learned from her work
experience at a e A how to articulate complex issues
and arguments into a simplified form easily understood by an
average reader. Much of her early political writings and speeches
were derivative, based on an extensive reading of conservative books
and periodicals, government reports, and liberal newspapers. Her originality lay

(40:50):
in the way she framed issues. UM. So like someone
uh I can think of in the White House. Yeah,
he speaks just simplifying it, but getting to the emotion
of the thing. Yeah, that's that's going to prove to
be her her strong suit. Um is like kind of
cutting everything away, but yeah, we're building it. So she

(41:13):
moves back home after her time with the A e
A UM to St. Louis, and she reaches out to
a congressional candidate named Claude Bakewell, who was running in
the eleventh district. So at age twenty two, she she
reaches out to this guy and offers to be his
campaign manager. Um and she's so impressive, like the the
way that she's able to kind of like call up
facts and statistics of local politics. Um uh, just like

(41:38):
shocks this guy into hiring her immediately, even though again
really uncommon for women to be campaign managers and congressional
campaigns in this period. As Bakewell later recalled, I had
to keep looking at her to remind myself I was
not talking to a fat, old cigar chomping ward healer.
So like she she's she's this young twenty two year
old woman girl who talks to him like an old politico.

(42:01):
Um and she she had never done any nitty gritty politics.
She all of this, all of her knowledge came from
just reading the newspaper very closely. But she clearly pays attention,
like pays attention well enough that she's able to kind
of mimic the way these old Republican like political you know,
ship fighters talk, and she's able to kind of convince
this guy that she has what it takes to be

(42:22):
one of them. And it seems like she does Um,
she does well at the job, and Bakewell gets elected
to Congress in nineteen forty six. Now he gets kicked
out of Congress in nineteen Um when when he loses
his next election. But Phillis, you know, runs a campaign
and gets a guy into office. And so by nineteen
forty nine she had a real career going as a
political operator. She was unmarried, you know, and twenty four

(42:45):
years old at that point. Um. And at at about
twenty four, Um, yeah, she meets this guy named Fred
schlaf Ley. So she's like this unmarried political like independent, um,
making money on her own, running a major political campaign
on her own. Uh. And she meets French Laughly in

(43:05):
ninety nine and Schlaughly is a conservative activist in it
about Catholic Um, which is kind of Phyllis is two
big qualifications that whoever she marries needs to have money
and needs to be connected. Um. He came from wealth. Uh.
They moved right into a mansion as soon as they
got married. Um. And he had a high powered job
representing a bunch of major businesses, including several banks. And

(43:27):
he heard about Phillis through the Republican Grapevine and St.
Louis because she was really the only woman doing what
she was doing at that period of time, and he
was like, that sounds hot to me. Um, I want
a woman who sounds like a cikar chopping old politico.
So he reaches out to blurt with her. Donald Critchlow,
her biographer, writes about what happened next quote. What followed
was a rather unusual courtship in which they usually saw

(43:49):
each other once a week on the weekends, while the
rest of the time they exchanged poetry and letters. These
letters were intellectual exchanges about political and theological questions, written
as much to display the author's intelligence as to vain knowledge.
Fred and Phillish Laughly married on October twentieth, nineteen nine,
and a ceremony at the St. Louis Cathedral. Duly reported
on the Society of pages of local newspapers. On their

(44:09):
honeymoon in Mexico, they took an extra suitcase full of books.
So why not I would do that. Yeah, they're big nerds.
Fuck on or just I think it. They probably fucked
on the books. They were probably sucking on like a
bunch of like different I don't know, fucking uh right

(44:30):
wing economics, textbooks, and ship. Um, because that that is
kind of what gets them both horny, is right wing politics.
So they find each other's perfect match and they stay
married the rest of their lives. So that's great for them. Um.
They they they had a loving relationship while they fucked
to the world. Uh. Oh no, well I wouldn't. I
do think we should bring back poetry and courtship. I

(44:53):
might be alone on this, but look, oh no, send
a DIPI send up, send up, send a poem, send
a poem, or in lieu of a dick, pick a
suitcase full of books. Um, that can be the new
and you can. You can have a note. My dick
is like the suitcase full of books. Uh, filled with knowledge.

(45:17):
I don't know. So from this point forward, Phillis Stewart
began to live under the name she'd have for the
rest of her life Philish laughly Um. Now Philis shot
through the turgid waters of mainstream Republican politics like a speedboat.
After this point. Her obsession was anti communism. And when
I say anti communism, I don't mean like she just
hated actual communists. I mean like she was deranged. She

(45:40):
was convinced that Harry Truman was a diet in the
wool communist, Like that's the that's the level of right
wing she is, like the guy she thinks, the guy
who dropped Adam bombs on Japan to scare the Soviet
Union was secretly a communist infiltrader Um. So the people
with a lot of money living in the mansion that
are anti commune is like it was like they're just

(46:02):
scared you'll take their money. Yeah, And she she becomes
I don't know, like she she kind of goes from
somebody who it seemed like she was a pretty reasonable
person at like age to Harry Truman is a secret
comy in the space of like two or three years,
which is I guess it's just because she kind of

(46:23):
she finds herself in this far right political world where
all of these people are like passing around these these
pamphlets on politics and stuff, and it just takes her over. Um.
Marriage will drive you crazy, I guess. I don't know.
I don't know. I think it happened before the marriage.
I think the marriage happened because like she had she
had really like and her parents were clearly like very

(46:45):
anti New Deal and stuff. But like she's it's not
clear to me exactly why she gets to this this
kind of unregional, unreasonable fringe of the movement. But by
ninety nine she's she's there. Um, she's she's attacking Harry
Truman for being a comedy. That's so that's like that change.

(47:06):
It's extreme. Yeah, I'm sure it didn't seem that extreme
to her, Like she was World War two horror. Yeah,
like yeah, I I can't tell you exactly why it happens,
but she's she's not alone in this. There's this growing
right wing movement and again this is the period where
there's still no concerted conservative movement in the United States.

(47:26):
It's starting to form at this time. And one of
sort of like the big nexus is that conservatism forms
around is what's known but to historians is grassroots anti communism. Um,
and this is this is not like just opposing the
Soviet Union. This is uh, like grassroots anti communists are
kind of associated with like they would pass around all

(47:47):
these books that would detail like how communists had come
to power in other countries and like sort of starting
to We're starting to make these different conspiracy theories about
what commies were trying to do in the United States
like it was this it was this specific fear that
communism was was like actively attempting to take over their lives, um.

(48:09):
And there was a lot of things that were wrapped
up in this. First off, there was a populist appeal
against the elites um, who even the the elites and
the Republican Party were seen as being like members of
this this communist conspiracy um. And there was this there
was this growing belief that communists centered in the Kremlin
had infiltrated agents into the highest levels of American government um.

(48:31):
And so a lot of the stuff that you you
see today and like quent On right where like there's
this supposed to be the secret battle in the United
States governments and all of these bad actors who were
like Marxists and Satanists and stuff who have gained power
in the shadow government or whatever. That this is where
that all really starts. Like that, Yeah, and so Phyllis
is on the ground floor of this kind of thing.

(48:54):
It's it's kind of bizarre because I feel like it
is through that all countries have like agents everywhere, but
when they're tied together like this, it doesn't make sense,
Like it's it's I wouldn't be so bold to say
like no, um, suspicions are ever true and there's no
shadow dealings, because of course there are. But this idea
that there's like a concentrated nucleus, a very coordinated like

(49:15):
shadow dealings just to go against you and your family specifically,
is like just that nobody spends the time and money
to do that. But yes, there are hints of shadow dealings,
and I think that's enough to get these Q and
ON people going and excited, even though the reality is
it's just like not that big. It's not what they think. Yeah,
there's definitely like communist spies, just like there were, you know,

(49:37):
just capitalists or whatever we like, and some of those spies,
like you've got like the Rosenberg's who give the Soviet
Union information on the atomic bombs, like that kind of
ship is going on. Um. But Phyllis and her fellow
grassroots anti communists are convinced that like the whole government
has been infiltrated um by by the commies and that

(50:00):
like they're they're working in concert to to carry out
a takeover of American society. Um, do you know it
won't take over the American society. Do you know it
is a secret communist infiltrator trying to replace our capitalist
system with them with I don't what is the products

(50:23):
love communist? I ship's break. Yeah, alright, we're we're we're back.
Um talking about Philish Laughly and her fringe beliefs about communism.
So running on this grassroots anti so like Phillis adopts

(50:46):
grassroots anti communism, it gets like really into this subculture
that's forming UM and she runs for Congress UM and
she actually wins like a really shocking upset victory and
the Republican primary UM and this so she defeats like
Republican candidate UM to go run against the Democrat. And
this it might be the first time in modern political
history that like a normal conservative ran up against like

(51:09):
a fringe far right candidate UM that everybody just kind
of thought was a was a nutter and then suffered
a shocking loss. So like the kind of thing that
has happened a bunch in our lifetimes that happened with Trump,
it happens with Philish Laughley's campaign. And this is kind
of like the first time it happens to the Republican
Party where You've got like the folks who are sort
of the the moneyed elites who have been running the

(51:30):
party since forever, looking at this person that they never
would have supported beat their candidate and go like, what
the heck is happening here? Um, So what you're saying
is it's very traditional what happened here? Just yes, pure tradition.
This is the start of the tradition. Yeah. Now, the
good news is that at this point things were not
so far gone in our society that Philish Laughly could

(51:52):
actually win a general election. Um. So she gets beaten
in the actual election, but the fact that she had
won the I Mary earns her a place in the
Republican National Convention for the rest of her life. So
she's a voting member of the Republican Party for forever.
And this starts her her kind of being a part
of the Republican institution. She hadn't one, but she had

(52:13):
effectively grafted herself onto the mainstream of the party and
over the next fifty years she and her ideas would
grow like a cancer inside of it. So Philish Lapley
was one of the very first people. Yeah, or a
fetus inside of it, which you know, again, if only
there'd been, If only you could, there's an r U
four D six joke. I just don't know how to

(52:34):
make it, so we're just gonna moolve. Yeah. Philish Laughley
was one of the first people who like starts writing literature,
UM pamphlets and stuff to provide intellectual framework for what
we today know is just like the right with the
like the religious right in the United States, like the

(52:54):
anti this this um like this is. She's one of
the first people who starts like thinking in a concerted
way about that and providing reading material for people. And again,
initially it was really focused on anti communism. Her first
big book was called A Reading List for Americans, and
it was just a bibliographical guide to anti communist books

(53:16):
that people could read UM and Phillis kind of promised
that if you read the different anti communist books that
she had put together in this you would come to
understand quote American, the American failure to grasp that we
are already engaged in a total war with the communists. UM.
So that's that's the angle she's really pushing at this point. Now.

(53:36):
That book was published in eighteen or nineteen fifty eight
and in the early nineteen sixties, Phillist gets involved with
a group called the American Security Council, which is another
right wing think tank that had been initially started to
quote help corporations avoid communist influence in their companies and
had over time expanded yeah, fighting unions basically, but it

(53:56):
overtime expanded to a dedicated group of right wing military
industrial complex folks obsessing over communist dangers to the United States.
So Phillis gets involved with these like defense industry people
who are obsessed with the idea that a communist attack
is coming um. And one of these folks was a
rear admiral named Chester ward and he and Phillis hit

(54:17):
it off, and so the two of them became research
partners and writing buddies. Now, the a s C had
a bunch of different files on communism, and again this
is like a library of you know, they call them
credible sources. Who knows what's actually in there, but it's
supposed to be kind of outlining how all these different
communist movements around the world in different countries had like
organized and gained power, um. And so they spend years

(54:40):
reading through this ship and Warden Schlafly get become convinced
of two central principles uh. Number one, that the Soviet
military threat is real and an escapable, so the United
States must have superior military strength to avoid war. And
number two that the Soviet Union seeks to bleed the
resources and morale of the United States through satellite wars
of attrition while Russia tests its weapons and bides its

(55:01):
time to confront a weakened United States. Um, So, Phillis
begins calling on the US to have a first strike capability.
She's one of like the people who's who, She's one
of the conservatives who's who. Starts in like the nineteen fifties,
being like, we need to be able to into the
world with nuclear weaponry before the Russians can in order
to to stop there from being a war. Um. Yeah,

(55:26):
So she calls for the United States to maintain superiority
of military striking power and for a few years, like
she and Ward are just like writing these books about
how the only thing the US can possibly do at
this moment is to continue is to build up this massive,
omnicidal UH nuclear arsenal Right, Like that's her first big
political issue is that the United States needs to build

(55:48):
like a wall of nuclear missiles to protect it from communism. Wait,
so let me. I know you haven't gotten to the
abortion part, but I'm already hearing contradictions in her police system.
Like you, she believes in order to feel safe, she
needs a button she can press at any point to
literally abort the entire world. But yeah, she feels safer
if no woman, no matter what her case is, is

(56:09):
allowed to abort a baby, even if she's at risk
Like that already, I'm like, it sounds like she's maybe
dealing with more trauma than beliefs she Her argument would
be that the communists are so evil that the only
thing that can keep them from taking over this country
and killing millions of people is to be able to
kill basically the entire world with an enormous nuclear arsenal.

(56:30):
That's the only way. What if the babies are a
communists though, is there a clause for that or um?
I think she? Then she supports throwing them in prison
or having them executed, or we have the birth and
then throw both mother and child in prison after the
baby is born safely. Yeah, after the baby is born safely,
then they can die in prison. Okay, gotcha. Her initial
big political charge is that, like there should be this

(56:52):
eternally spiraling cycle of armaments where the United States just
throws more and more money into building an impossible nuclear stockpile.
Did she have money in this because you said she
was hanging out with she's rich. Yeah, so it's like
the more that they go make arms, the more money
her and her friends would make. Right, Like, she definitely

(57:15):
has friends in like the defense industry. Sure, I'm not sure,
like they're already rich. I don't know how much personal
financial interest plays into this for her, um, but she
and her husband do use some of their family money
to establish the Cardinal uh Min Sinsei Foundation, who was
like a Catholic anti communist guy. Uh And Yeah, this
foundation acts as a mouthpiece for anti communist pro nuclear propaganda,

(57:43):
anti communist pro nuclear propaganda. Yeah, I just didn't you
just say that one more time? Yeah, So, among other things,
she uses this foundation to put out propaganda trying to
convince Americans that nuclear weapons were quote a marvelous gift
give to our country by a wise God, which kind
of makes you wonder well, the Soviets have them too?

(58:05):
What were they to the Soviets? Like, did God give
them to the communists or was that the devil? Like?
How does how does this work? In your cousin moos?
She described communists because I mean I'm already getting I mean,
I know, like the anti communist movement. It's kind of coded,
but like is it does it ever really describe? Like
what does she mean by that personally? Because it's obviously
not just what you know, it's not just the idea

(58:26):
that people should have access to resources. It seems like
it's specifically anti is it anti Soviet or just anti
fascism or she's just anything her like anything that any
anything that is the government trying to enable people to
help each other. Um is communism? Like if it involves

(58:47):
the government and it helps people, it's communism and she
wants no part in it. But nuclear weapons a okay, yeah,
the only thing the government should be doing in Philish
Laughley's mind is building new Yeah welfare terrible idea, gonna
kill us all nukes a gift from God, that's Philish
lovely everyone there's less people who need welfare. So yeah,

(59:10):
anti communist, pro nuclear propa like what Yeah, she's fucking unhinged?
Um and she an Admiral Ward wrote in a series.
But but also so is the whole The birth of
the conservative movement is in this like wild overreaction to
communism that leads us into a bunch of horrific things. Um. Now,

(59:32):
she an Admiral Ward wrote this series of very bad
books about the Soviet first strike that all Americans ought
to fear every day. That's always her like focus in
these books is to convince Americans the Soviets are going
to get the drop on us, that they have better technology,
and so we have to keep building better and better
missiles otherwise we won't be able to kill them first.
Uh So. Titles of the book she and Ward wrote

(59:53):
include Strike from Space, a mega death Mystery, um, which
is a hell of a title that sounds like a
cool sci fi movie. Yeah. Then there was Kissinger on
the Couch, which was a very anti Semitic psycho analysis
of Henry Kissinger, who she hated for his interventionalist leanings.
I was gonna say that that's a terrible description that

(01:00:14):
you said, But I was like, that could be a
fun porn I mean, but yeah, I mean it could
be like I'd watch a Henry Kissinger porn. He's hot. Yeah,
nobody disagrees with that. Um. Yeah. So in one of
the areas in which she is right in this period
is she's very like anti well. I mean, I think

(01:00:34):
her feelings on Vietnam or Korea and Korea were more
like we should just nuke them. Um. But she certainly
thought that the policy lb J was like following in
Vietnam was a bad idea and she wasn't wrong about that.
Like obviously JFK and lb J made a whole like
everything they did in Vietnam was a horrific mistake. Is
there anybody on any side that Kissinger like really? Like,

(01:00:59):
I don't know. I watched Good Morning Vietnam. It seemed
like things were going pretty well there for a while. Um.
And had they had Robin Williams, So like really, what's
the complain about? So? Yeah, anyway, show she other Shlaffley
Ward books book titles included uh Ambush, A Flativo Stock,
and The Betrayers. So they've got all these like this

(01:01:20):
is like fucking Robert Ludlam novels. Um, But they're all
basically making the point about like the Soviet Union is
better armed than us, and if we don't spend all
of our money on better nukes like We're fucked um,
and I found The Betrayers. I found a copy of
it on Amazon, and so I went ahead and I
just like read through some reader reviews because I wanted
to get an idea of, like how the people who

(01:01:42):
read this book have interpreted it. So in the interest
of journalistic balance, I pulled one positive review and one
negative review, and I'm gonna read you before star review
right now. Whatever impression this book made at the time
nineteen sixty eight is it is an astonishing read today.
Written by Eagle Forum President and under Philish Laughly and
Admiral Chester Ward. The thesis of this book is that

(01:02:03):
key members of the Johnson administration, in particular Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara, had actively sought to weaken and impair the
defenses of the United States, motivated a belief by a
belief that the cause of freedom was doomed, that the
Soviet Union would surely win the Cold War, and that
preparing for the eventual, inevitable surrender was the best means
for survival. So she's arguing that Robert McNamara is a

(01:02:26):
secret like the one of the architects of the Vietnam
war is a secret Communist agent trying to weaken the
United States. Um, which I guess is one way of
trying to like settle in your head how the United
States could do something as dumb as the Vietnam War
is like, Oh, it must have just been we must
have been trying to funk ourselves over because it was
such a bad idea. I do think that's kind of funny. Um.

(01:02:49):
The review continues, regardless of the validity of that position. Uh,
the information used to make the case bears examinations. Laughly
and Ward walk the reader through a panorama of Johnson
administration defense and for and policy positions, compellingly outlining a
defensive disaster. The astute reader will recall without reminder that
in nineteen sixty the United States possessed overwhelming military superiority

(01:03:09):
over its communist opponents, and that by nineteen sixty eight,
just eight years or two presidential terms later, that had
turned into mere parody and in some cases inferiority. If
nothing else, this caused extreme, needless problems for American diplomacy
over the following two decades, and of course it had
the potential to cause far, far worse. So basically, what's
going on here is the United States makes a bunch

(01:03:31):
of very dumb decisions that are in many cases motivated
by extreme paranoia over communism. Um. And this leads extremely
paranoid people like Philish Laughley to assume the these couldn't
just be that these people made horrible mistakes because they
were bad at their jobs. They have to have been
part of a communist conspiracy. Yeah, it's almost like, I mean,

(01:03:52):
I always think about it all comes raiser. I know
it doesn't always apply, but it's sort of like when
the easiest like explanation often is the true one. Like
what you're saying is like they just made some bad
decisions that had bad consequences. But even in the wording
of this review he says a mirror eight years, Like
there's like kind of leading wording, like a mirror eight years, Um,
well eight years isn't objectively a mirror like eight years.

(01:04:14):
A lot can happen, especially if you've got a lot
of money and people and armies involved, like in a
person's life eight like eight years ago. I'm like, I
was like twenty two years old, you know what I mean,
Like I think I was straight when you know, so
it's like a lot changes in eight years. So I
feel like the fact that he's already leading in the
review makes me feel like the book has a lot

(01:04:34):
of language like that too. Yeah, it's it's it's frustrating,
and it's like so okay, here's the bad review. On
the other side of things, here's this like yeah, one
star review. Uh and yeah quote Philish laughlely associated with
extreme ast xenophobic John Birch society. We'll talk about them
in a second, puts together a paranoid philo nuclear diet
tribe here that completely ignored the situation. In the nineteen sixties,

(01:04:58):
the idea that a ballistic missile defense is somehow still
useful as sold like as snake oil by right wing
crackpots and defense contractors. But back then, as now, it
simply doesn't fly. The recent remarkable advances and missile defense
were only made by incorporating GPS transmitters into targets. Engineers
speaking honestly without a financial stake in the outcome have
known this and spoken about this for decades. It's a
big welfare program, plain and simple. The idea of a

(01:05:20):
winnable nuclear war is hideously immoral, and the strange loves
and their consorts such as Slaughly, should be consigned to
the ash heap of history pronto, which I find really interesting.
So this guy is basically being like the you know,
the thing that this she's she's this right wing firebrand,
but the thing that she always is arguing for this
like massive nuke focus defense policy is just welfare for

(01:05:41):
a specific group of grifters because like none of it's
ever worked, right. That is kind of the deep, the
the ugly secret of like all missile defense um is
that like none of it would would do anything. Yeah, yeah,
you keep stockpiling and then like it's I mean, it's
almost genius if it didn't call so many lives. But

(01:06:01):
it's like instead of trying to fix problems that you can,
because you may fail, like right, like solving poverty and
all this, Like I think we can make a lot
of progress, but we haven't done it yet, so we
don't know for sure. But you if you solve a
problem that doesn't exist, which is like to just keep
staking fear, you can never fail because the problem does
won't go away, like it's continuous. So it's almost like

(01:06:22):
I feel like they're projecting a lot of their own
insecurities onto the government there. You know, what they're trying
to do is take money that ought to go to
helping to build up our society and to help people.
Uh And because they hate that idea, but they don't
want they don't want to give up the money. They
just want to throw it into something that could kill
the entire world instead. That's Philish laugh least conservatism um.

(01:06:45):
So that last review mentioned the John Birch Society, and
I guess we probably ought to start talking about them
now because they're a really crucial piece of what's happening here,
this kind of coalescing um sociopathic right wing movement. And
the John Birch Society was founded in night again, very
crucial year there you're hearing about, like a bunch of
stuff happened in fifty eight. It's one of the most

(01:07:07):
important years for the right wing um. And it was
founded by one of the guys behind the Welch's Candy
Company after he retired from the business of making sweet
things and decided conspiracy theorist was a better gig. So Welch,
the founder of the John Birch Society, believed a lot
of very wrong things about communism. But his most famous claim,
and the one that like made him a controversial figure,

(01:07:29):
is that he was obsessed with the idea that Republican
President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a secret Communist. UM. And
I've mentioned this a couple of times on the show
because it's very silly, Like when you think about, like
the idea that Dwight fucking Eisenhower was a Communist infiltrator
is it's absurd, UM. But I think when I mentioned

(01:07:50):
it kind of in the past, people assumed I was
referring to like like Welch had just sort of like
dropped this in a couple of lines in his book
or maybe like put out a pamphlet. The reality is
that he was so obsessed with this idea that he
wrote an entire two hundred and eighty seven page book
titled The Politician, laying out the case that Ike was
a quote dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy who

(01:08:11):
had been serving communism all of his adult life. The
United States, Welch believed, was in nineteen fifty eight under
the operational control of the Communist Party. UM. So that's
what these people believe, because like Ike is building highways right, like,
because he thinks that it's a good idea to spend
national money on a highway system. He's he's literally an

(01:08:31):
infiltrator from the Kremlin who has become the president in
the United States is completely a Communist controlled country because
we have highways and like the g I Bill Like,
it's kind of wild because I do feel like if
you strip away the labels of um left wing and
right wing, I hear similar conspiracies from the left now

(01:08:53):
of you know, the White House. And I'm not even
just I'm not even getting get into any of that.
I'm just pointing out how sometimes we like project a
little bit. I don't know, I just think there's something
really interesting in the way that they they they are
like trying to create this fear. And then meanwhile, you said,
Phillis really knew how to study the politocols and then
became one. She's kind of studying the communists and becoming obsessed.

(01:09:16):
Like perhaps there was a moment when the right wing
almost took on these tactics. Who knows that they absolutely did.
That's actually that's actually exactly what we're getting to here,
because the John Birch Society UM, we'll talk about them
a bit because that that that's you've predicted something here.
The John Birch Society was named after the guy after
what was claimed to be like the first American combat
death against communists. That's who John Birch is, UM, and

(01:09:40):
it kind of in nineteen in the late nineteen fifties,
early sixties. It's occupies a cultural place that's kind of
similar to the right. Mainstream Republicans considered them really toxic
because their founder had slandered Eisenhower. UM. But a lot
of Republicans, like a shocking amount secretly agreed with a
lot of core Bircher tenants. They just didn't want to
be like super identified with the John Birch Society UM

(01:10:02):
and the like because they were sort of because they
were sort of politically toxic to be associated with. They
had to be careful about how they organized and solicited
funds and handed out propaganda because they didn't want to
necessarily be identified doing that. In order to figure out
like how to get around this, UM, they actually studied

(01:10:25):
communist movements that had succeeded in foreign countries in order
to like figure out how they should organize. The John
Birch Society in order to like get their propaganda out
um and so like a lot of communist parties in
other countries, they had secret membership roles. They would have
these like secret cadras who would set up in different
cities and operate out of front organizations so they could

(01:10:46):
hide donations and people wouldn't be like tied to helping
out the John Birch Society. So they actually do look
at how communist movements succeeded in other countries and deliberately
go out of their way to imitate them. I'm gonna
quote from a write up in The New Yorker that
kind of explains this process. In the nineteen sixties, Welch
became obsessed that even the communist movement was but a

(01:11:07):
tool of the total conspiracy. This master conspiracy, he said,
had four runners in ancient Sparta, and sprang fully to
life in the eighteenth century in the uniformly satanic creed
and program of the Bavarian illuminati, run by those who
called the Insiders. The conspiracy resided chiefly in international families
of financiers such as the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers. Government

(01:11:29):
agencies like the Federal Reserve System and the Internal Revenue Service,
and non governmental organizations like the Builderberg Group, the Council
on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. Since the early
twentieth century, they had done a good deal of the
their evil work under the guise of humanitarian uplift. One
brought avenue down, which these conspiratorial forces advanced was known
as progressive legislation. Welsh declared in nineteen sixty six. The

(01:11:51):
very same collectivist theories and dimago get pretenses which had
destroyed earlier civilizations were now paraded forth into disguise of
new and modern concepts. This really interesting to me for
a lot of things. For one thing, you go through
that a lot of that you could graft right onto
Q and on right Q and On. Followers believe that
what they're fighting is this satanic conspiracy. They talk about
how it goes like. One of the things that is

(01:12:13):
a big part of Q and On is the idea
that it goes back centuries. In a lot of cases,
there's this ancient Pedophilix satanic cabal that they're fighting against.
You know, they call it the cabal. He called it
the insiders. But it's in a lot of ways the
same conspiracy. Another thing that's really interesting to me here
is that welch Is again doesn't identify as an anti

(01:12:36):
Semite openly, but the you can graft a lot of
what he's saying directly under the ship Hitler was saying.
So Hitler was obsessed with the idea that any sort
of so like social welfare or social justice, like in
the idea that it was starting to be conceived of
in the thirties, um in any like moves towards anti discrimination,
you know, anti racism, anti colonialism, these like any any

(01:12:57):
sort of social movement that was base star around empathy
was Jewish infiltration, attempting to bring on Marxism. That like
that that was a big aspect of what the Nazis
were saying, is that like if if you're if you
were encouraging a society to be more empathetic, you're making
it weaker and that's going to lead to it getting
wiped out because you know, the world is just this

(01:13:19):
cold competition of different races, and so you have to
fight against social justice sort of like ideology with extermination.
Like that's what one of the reasons we have to
kill the Jews is that they're going to like infect
our society with this stuff. And Welch is saying the
same thing. He's just not saying the Jews, but he's
saying that, like any humanitarian uh policies being pursued in

(01:13:41):
a society are part of a Satanic conspiracy to bring
it down. And that's Yeah, in the very worst case,
Welsh believe that military action might be necessary to dislodge
the totalitarians. But for the moment, the question, yeah, absolutely
does he like Their whole thing is that there's secret infiltration, right,
Like they believe that infiltrated the government and their secret right, So,

(01:14:03):
did there at any point consider like, Okay, let's say
they actually believe this in good faith and it wasn't
just a demagogue approach to control people. Do they ever
at any point consider like, if they can infiltrate the Communists,
they can infiltrate America, couldn't they also infiltrate the Conservatives? No,
they believe that the Conservatives have been infiltrated. They think
the mainstream Republican party has been compromised. Oh not there

(01:14:27):
people right, Like they don't believe that they could be
co optent. I I think they think that they're this
like smaller like cell of real of true believers. But
like part of why they organize themselves the way they
do is so that they can't be infiltrated, right, Like,
that's why they And ironically enough, Welch kind of adopts

(01:14:48):
a Marxist Leninist model of a van of having a
vanguard revolutionary party. So like he builds a series of
small cells that work in secret to agitate the populace
and elect, you know, candidates to office who were in
line with their beliefs. Um it is. He was quoted
as saying, it isn't numbers we have to worry about,
but the courage on the part of our followers to

(01:15:09):
stick their necks out and play rough the same as
the communists do. So they're the John Birch Society hates
communism and explicitly patterns its organization off of communist vanguard
parties because they see that it works. Um and Philish
Laughly was a member, a secret member of one of
these vanguard parties. She was a dedicated member of the
John Birch Society from the beginning, um and she held

(01:15:31):
to its principles her entire life. Now. She denied this publicly,
and her biographer argues that she was never a member
of the society. UM. But this is factually inaccurate. Just
this year, researchers gained access to letters written by Philish
Laughlely herself, where she blithely refers to her own membership
in the John Birch Society as starting back in nineteen

(01:15:52):
fifty nine. UM. And it's become clear that at a
certain point, when the John Birch Society got toxic, she
stopped openly admitting her membership and became a secret member,
denying her affiliations in public because she could do more
good by working within the Republican Party and making it change.
So she was an agent of the John Birch Society
embedded in the Republican Party. UM. Now she started the

(01:16:15):
process of trying to change the Republican Party into the
Party of John Birch in nineteen sixty at the Republican
National Convention. UH and Nixon. To give you an idea
of how fucked up things are here, Richard Nixon, that
year's candidate, is going to be the good guy in
in this part of the story. Because Nixon and his
allies in nineteen sixty, we're fighting to add a new

(01:16:38):
plank to the Republican Party platform, one that enshrined anti
segregation and anti discrimination as fundamental Republican values. Now again,
Nixon himself very racist guy. You can listen to hours
of him using the in word and being just like
a horrible racist. But Nixon was also like kind of
a as political operators. He was more of a politician

(01:17:01):
than he was an ideological Republican, right Like, he was
a guy who wanted to do certain things in power,
but also wasn't Like his kind of assumption was like, oh,
look at how things are trending socially. Americans are fed
up with segregation, and like with racism, we should at
least announce, we should at least make it a plank

(01:17:22):
of our party that we we don't support segregation, because
that's clearly where the wind is blowing. And Phillis saw
this as pure communism, like the fact that Richard Nixon
was like, yeah, we probably shouldn't support segregation anymore. She
thought this was communism because again, any humanitarianism is communism.
That's like, that's what she believes. So she leads a

(01:17:42):
revolt of what she calls moral conservatives and remember that line,
because this is the first time anyone starts talking like this.
This is before fallwell in the moral majority starts. She
has her organization of Moral Conservatives UM, and they run
an insurgent fight against Nixon to stop anti discrimination planks
from being added to the Republican Party and they win

(01:18:04):
UM and like not coincidentally, Nixon then loses the election
to jfk Uh. Now, like all good extremists, Laughlely didn't
see the fact that Nixon had gotten his ass kicked
by Kennedy to be at all emblematic of like conservatism
being unpopular and needed to change. She decided that the
party just hadn't gone far enough in the right direction

(01:18:24):
yet uh, And that was fine for her. She had
a plan to wrench the Republican Party in the American
right out of the hands of men like Nixon forever.
All she needed was a man to help her with that, because,
of course, a woman could never be a presidential candidate.
In nineteen sixty four, Philish laughly found her man in
Senator Barry Goldwater. You ever heard of Berry Goldwater, Big

(01:18:45):
Berry g Yeah. A lot of people call him the
first Trump Um, he was a lot smarter than Trump,
but also a lot less successful. So I don't know,
the times were different, like most of America's greatest nightmares.
Barry Goldwater comes from Phoenix, era Zona. He's born there
in nineteen o nine. UM. One side of his family

(01:19:05):
was Jewish, they'd fled from Poland during the Revolutions of
eighteen forty eight. The other half of his family were Episcopalian,
and Barry stayed Episcopali in all of his life. He
joined the military as a pilot in World War Two,
and he spent most of that conflict delivering supplies. Goldwater
got into politics once he left the military, and like
Philish laughly, he was a rabid anti New Deal crusader.

(01:19:26):
He was initially elected, though on an anti corruption platform,
sweeping the Phoenix City Council meetings of nineteen forty nine
as part of a nonpartisan coalition dedicated to cleaning up
the city. And you see this a lot with these
guys is like they come into power planning to fight
like like like promising to fight corruption like that. That's
a story we here today. They have the power, they're

(01:19:46):
they're one in power. It's like the whole idea is
paradox all to begin with the reality of situations that
you can't come into power and fight corruption because power corrupts.
But whatever, he used this as the baseline to build
to rebuild Arizona's week and in a active Republican party.
Arizona used to be a solid Democratic state UH. In
nineteen fifty two, he won election to the Senate. Now

(01:20:07):
the young senator from Arizona quickly gained prominence for his
willingness to attack the head of his own party, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
seeing some some some similarities here. Obviously, Goldwater was not
an open member of the John Birch Society. He didn't
call Eisenhower a communist, but he criticized Eisenhower's budget proposals,
which he saw as unreasonably wasteful. UH. Financial criticisms of

(01:20:29):
Eisenhower soon gave a way to Barry's real issue, which
was that Eisenhower supported forcibly integrating schools. So Eisenhower said, yeah,
we should send in the military to make these southern
states integrate their schools if they won't do it themselves.
And that was Barry. Goldwater's big issue is and and
in the way he and like his defenders, so conservatives today,

(01:20:51):
you know, will defend both he and Philish Laughley, who
was also anti integration, like her biographer Critchlow, will defend
them both as saying that like, they didn't oppose integration,
and they just opposed the federal government and federal troops
being used to integrate schools. Now they also pose enforcement
of it, because whenever people argue for like state school rights,

(01:21:12):
for charter schools and things, they're basically saying they don't
want to have to force integration. They're not against it,
but given the choice, they're not going to do it. Yeah,
And it's it is one of those things where it's like, oh, well,
we're just against forcing people to do it, and it's like, okay,
but we still want schools to be integrated. And then
you ask them, okay, well how do you integrate schools?
And they never actually have an answer because they don't
want schools to be integrated because they're just racists. But

(01:21:34):
they know you can't run on that anymore. It sounds
like a lot like another argument about choice. I can't
quite think of it, but it's just making me think
of something. This idea that you just want a choice,
not that you want to do that. I can't think
of it. It's off the top of my head, but
you know, just at the tip of my tongue, it's freedom. Yeah.
So okay. So Goldwater and Shlafley were both viryle and

(01:21:54):
anti integration crusaders. Um. And the reality is that this
isn't because they were angry at federal overreach. They just
knew that their ideal constituency was white men and white women. Uh.
And again, this was actually something that Philish Laughly was
pretty consistent about admitting. You know, her biographer likes to

(01:22:14):
hide this. A lot of folks who will support her,
or folks who will like support Goldwater, will will try
to defend them on this. But Laughly was very consistent
about the fact that she only gave a ship about
representing white people and white people's political interests. In two
thousand twelve, after Mitt Romney's defeat, the Republican Party conducted
an autopsy to determine why they had lost. Uh. That

(01:22:35):
autopsy advised them to seek to engage with black and
Hispanic voters more effectively, and Shlaughley was one of a
few prominent Republicans at the time to reject this openly
saying the people the Republicans should reach out to are
the white folks, the white voters who didn't vote in
the last election, and there are millions of them. The
propagandists are leading us down the wrong path. There's not
any evidence at all that these Hispanics coming in from

(01:22:56):
Mexico will vote Republicans. Yeah. So this was exactly the
same way she felt in the early nineteen sixties, because
once she became a conservative, she never ever changed again. UM.
And she and Barry Goldwater again wanted to get wanted
to get the white people's vote. UM. And they were
specifically kind of organizing an insurgent campaign against a more

(01:23:20):
you know, mainstream appealing Republican presidential candidate, uh Nelson Rockefeller.
And Rockefeller started out as like he seemed like the
guy who was initially about to win the nineteen sixty
four nomination for the Republican candidacy, and back in nineteen
sixty he had actually been the guy who had proposed
the anti segregation plank and the Republican Party platform that
Slaughly had organized against UM. Meanwhile, Senator Goldwater had voted

(01:23:43):
against the civil rights Act of nineteen sixty four. Um,
So this guy in sixty four Rockefeller is running and
he's like Republicans should be less racist, and Barry Goldwater
is the no, no, no, We've got to go whole
hog into racism. That's my entire thing, because I'm literally
a fashion I should note here that, like, there was
never any chance of either of them winning the election, right. Uh,

(01:24:05):
nineteen sixty four is right after JFK was gunned down
by a young Bernard Sanders, and the Vietnam War was
like not yet at its favorite pitch. So lb J,
who did like one of the most masterful pieces of
American political maneuvering, is kind of like how lb J
handled the immediate wake of JFK's death. He's extremely popular
at this point, um, and he's just the war on

(01:24:26):
poverty has gotten started, the Voting Rights Act has been passed,
there's like all this progressive stuff that's being slammed through Congress.
You've got this incredibly popular and effective Democratic president, Um,
who has taken over from this tragically murdered young Democrat.
There's no way the Republican Republicans are gonna win in
nineteen sixty four. So it's something that's of a lost
cause from the beginning, but it becomes kind of this

(01:24:46):
fight over what the future of the Republican Party is
going to be. So on one hand, you have Nelson Rockefeller,
who's like, he's like Michael Bloomberg. Actually he's a very
very wealthy guy who's popular with the elite of the party,
but normal Republicans hate him as much as like normal Democrats. Reality. Yeah,
I was gonna say, he's sort of in history books,

(01:25:07):
he's sort of I mean, he he reeks of someone
who's just another rich guy who bought his way into
good graces. But I remember reading about him as a philanthropist,
and you're like, that's not the first thing. He didn't
get his money by being a philanthrop business he got money,
and then he decided to pay his way into being
remembered as a philanthropist. Yeah. Yeah, And so like the

(01:25:27):
right the fact that the right wing hates him, they
all wind up hating him for the wrong reasons because
they weave him into these conspiracy theory theories. But like
he was he sucks, uh And yeah, the John Birch
Society considered him a communist agent, and he still winds
up in right wing conspiracy webs to this day, you'll
find him in a ship let a quin on stuff.
They can't stop talking about the guy. So Philish Laughlely

(01:25:49):
is was probably the most influential of a kadra of
right wing organizers who in nineteen sixty four throws their
support behind Barry Goldwater. During this period that's going to
determine what the Republican already becomes in the future. The
nineteen sixty four elections are where the Republicans voted on like,
what are we going to do next? What are we
going to be next? We're going to be this more

(01:26:09):
kind of technocratic, corporatist but open party where we try to,
you know, appeal to a wide variety of voters. Or
are we going to just go straight for white people?
And like that's us forever, is just getting white people
to back us, um and fucking over everyone who's not
a white person. Yeah, straight for white sounds like a
really shitty dating app And Philish laughly decides like she

(01:26:30):
wants the Republican Party to be the party of white people,
and god damn it, she's going to fight to make
that be the case. And we will talk about what
happens next in part two of this episode. But Teresa,
you know what it's time for right now? What time
is it? It's time for you to to do some plugables.
Plug plug them out, okay, with your plug up your

(01:26:52):
holes with by following me online, right Larisa T on Twitter,
on Instagram. And I think I'm gonna be selling um
limited hats. Let's say cancel me, daddy, because enough people
told me I should make them. So if you guys
like those, I love it and they'll probably be out
by the time this is out. But yeah, yeah, yeah,
And I'm not Larisa T. But you can find me

(01:27:13):
elsewhere on the internet, or so the legend goes. No
one's ever proved it one way or the other if
I'm on the internet, so go seek me out and
if you find me, uh, listen to my teachings and
we will become lovers. Uh, Sophie, how do I end this?

(01:27:33):
You guys follow Robert on Twitter right, Okay? You can
follow us on Twitter and Instagram. At Bastard Pot you
can buy someone from our key public merch store. You
can listen to Robert on Worst Year Ever. You sure
wear a face mask and washer hands what else to
do it? Yes, that's good. Great, the podcast is over.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Phyllis Schlafly: The Mother of all Culture Wars