Free Republic

Very few individuals who were not politicians or generals have had a major impact on American political history. Phyllis Schlafly is one of the exceptions. Twice. In 1964, she helped launch the grass-roots conservative movement that flourishes today, transformed by the internet, and in 1972 she inaugurated what came to be called “social conservatism.” More than any other individual, she was responsible for the nomination of Barry Goldwater, and thus, indirectly, Ronald Reagan. And virtually single-handedly, she defeated the so-called Equal Rights Amendment. Schlafly was born 90 years ago today in St. Louis, the daughter of John and Odile Stewart....

What did you do before you joined the mail order service? I just graduated from college. Why get into it? I was young and didn’t have clear intentions, just curiosity What was the appeal to the US? Russians have a romanticized vision of US – that is free, cool, and a land of opportunity. What were your perceptions of the US before you came? Has your experience been anything like what you were expected since your divorce? Perceptions before I came were shaped by Hollywood – so white picket fence and two story house with two kids and a dog....

In northern Iraq the threat posed by ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) has led to over 2,000 Kurdish women volunteering for combat duty. Another 5,000 had volunteered for support work in the combat zone. This is nothing new for the Kurds, or many other peoples around the globe. Throughout history women have often served in irregular combat organizations. In modern times, with the arrival of lightweight firearms, more women became capable of handling direct combat. This is because before modern firearms were developed in the 19th century lots of combat was dependent on muscle, which men have...

I’ve pondered with you before on this blog (HERE) of the disappearance of something we used to call “dating”  wherein a young man would summon the courage to ask a young lady out to dinner, perhaps to the movies. He would do something called getting “dressed up,” and go to the young woman’s house,  often meet her parents, take her out for the evening, and return her home at a respectable hour. Dating was something that one did beginning in late high school or in college. Youth too young to date were often encouraged by adults to meet one another, and so the adults often...

The White House has not narrowed the gap between the average pay of male and female employees since President Obama’s first year in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of new salary data. The average male White House employee currently earns about $88,600, while the average female White House employee earns about $78,400. Read More…

The world of feminism is a strange one. Some of us might see the cause as lost and irrelevant, while others might see it as an essential part of equality. There may have been a time when feminism served its purpose in North America, but it's difficult to justify its need today, especially since most of the archaic laws that barred women from doing basic things have been abolished. Since women won the right to vote and become CEOs, modern feminism seems to have deteriorated into mindless sophistry. From advocating for free contraception to complaining about "cat calling" and exaggerating...

Speaking with Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive recently, for the magazine's September issue, Hillary Clinton shared her views on combating sexism, and encouraged women to let go of perfection in their quest for success. It’s a sad reality that Clinton, despite her great success, must address the issues of sexism and physical appearance in every interview – imagine if a male politician was quoted encouraging men to throw down their grooming kits and just ‘go for it’, it’s laughable, right? But until women are judge only on their achievements and conduct, until the media’s obsession with women's physical appearance wanes, it’s...

As the late, great Eric Hoffer once said, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." So it is with feminism. There was a time in America when women couldn't vote, when they weren't allowed to work in the same professions as men and when they weren't really considered the equal of a man. Feminism grew in response to that and even many men embraced it because they saw the inherent unfairness of society. These men also had capable women they loved and respected -- their mothers, their wives, their daughters –...

The Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, authorized the Department of Health and Human Services to cut or increase categories of Medicare spending. Last year, former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced home health care funding would be slashed by 3.5 percent annually until 2017. According to industry analysts, these cuts disproportionately affect women—the majority of whom serve as home health care beneficiaries, caregivers and professionals in the home health care sector. See linked report: http://dailysignal.com/2014/07/16/this-bill-would-undo-medicare-home-health-cuts-under-obamacare/

The Deputy PM of Turkey Bülent Arınç said today that women should refrain from laughing in public, because it’s immodest. In response to Arınç’s remarks, hundreds of Turkish women posted pictures of themselves laughing on social media platforms. […] Arınç chided Turkish women saying, “Where are our girls, who slightly blush, lower their heads and turn their eyes away when we look at their face, becoming the symbol of chastity?” he said. This is not the first time that a member of PM Erdogan’s AK Party espoused misogynist views in public. …

When Sarah Palin stormed onto the scene in 2008, there was no denying the power of her brand. Whether you loved her or hated her, whether you thought she was the future or rolled your eyes at her moose hunting and seeing Russia from her house, you knew what she stood for, and you had some begrudging respect for her positioning as a hockey mom who didn’t believe in wasting a civic nickel. (You gotta remember the stuff on pigs and pork?) The previously unknown Alaska governor quickly became a new breed of working mother. A strong conservative woman. An...

A SOCIAL media trend #WomenAgainstFeminism is creating controversy overseas, going viral in the US and re-opening debate on how far women have really come. The movement originated from a Tumblr post in which photos have been posted of women holding up signs explaining why they don’t need feminism. The explanations vary from “I do like being feminine”, “catcalling isn’t rape”, “cooking for my husband is not oppression”, “I love to be sexy for my man”, to “I don’t need something that tells me the actions of a slut are okay”. Here’s a few posts we found on Twitter: The reaction...

Forget about that phony IRS scandal… The DOJ apparently has a real problem to handle. The Pennsylvania State Police are being sued by Eric “The Extortionist” Holder for alleged sexual discrimination. No, the Penn police didn’t do anything as egregious as force women to pay for their own birth-control; but apparently it was enough to persuade the DOJ to file a lawsuit. The offense: Women are being held to the same standards as their male counterparts! Apparently, requiring all candidates to pass the same standard physical fitness test is sexist. See, women are having a tough time passing the test...

Kristina Karjalainen was actually born in Finland, but later moved to Tallinn, Estonia with her parents when she was three. The green-eyed blonde competed-in and won the Miss Estonia (Universe) pageant last fall. But the Finns and Estonians are closely related racially, culturally, historically, and linguistically... so I doubt anyone was too offended, except runners-up maybe. She's now a college student studying the Hungarian language (also related to Finnish and Estonian) while doing some modeling, lovely girl with some class from the looks of things: More at Reaganite Republican... (should be SFW unless you work unless you work with...

Scientifically, nice (heterosexual) guys might actually finish last. A study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin recently found that while men were attracted to nice-seeming women upon meeting them, women did not feel the same way about men. Researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya in Israel investigated a possible mechanism explaining why women and men differ in their sexual reactions with receptive opposite-sex strangers.

Concerned Women for America (CWA) was founded in 1979 by Beverly LaHaye, wife of conservative activist—and later Left Behind co-author—Tim LaHaye. Irritated by the ascendance of Betty Friedan’s National Organization for Women (NOW), LaHaye founded CWA to represent traditionalist women who balked at feminist “liberation.” Since its inception, the group has worked to bring “biblical values” to bear on the American political process, with special attention to issues of sex and gender. Over the past three decades, CWA has become a powerful political force, claiming over half a million members. Leslie Dorrough Smith is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at...

The wide-open fight for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination appears certain to showcase a range of credible candidates, who differ from one another in both style and substance. What the next crop of top-tier GOP contenders may not feature, however, is a woman. The Republicans taking discernible steps to build the foundations required for White House runs are all men. And for a party trying to close the gender gap, the prospect of an all-male lineup may pose a significant public perception problem. After the 2012 race saw President Obama defeat Mitt Romney by a double-digit margin among women, one...

Just the other day when I was home in Dunn, a woman standing in the checkout line told me that she felt as though she had less money in her pocket. And, unfortunately, she’s right. Did you know that the average clothing cost for children has risen $310 during the president’s term and that food costs have risen an average of $210? Or that an average family of four is missing as much as $1,120 from their monthly budget? I bet women do. No one understands the true implications of these missing dollars better than women. Women are the ones...

Sally Quinn founded the “On Faith” section of The Washington Post, and she’s shown a repeated pattern of loathing conservative Christians, especially Sarah Palin. In Saturday’s , she went there again, trashing Sarah Palin as selfishly ruining our political culture, insisting she recommends a “long long silent retreat for her.” Rather typically, Quinn was cooing over a feminist Buddhist lecturer named Tara Brach: Brach quotes the spiritual teacher Swami Satchidananda as saying that the difference between illness and wellness is the I in illness and the We in wellness. What has been happening in politics in Washington lately is symptomatic...

Conservative women sexy, liberal women not so much? A British journalist who describes himself as a “liberal-lefty-pro-feminist” claims that politically conservative women are way more sexy than their left-wing counterparts. Writing in the London Spectator, Cosmo Landesman opines that right-wing women (and he specifically offered examples such as pundits Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter) are “super sexy” and that stereotypes and generalizations about conservative women in general being uptright or prudish are way out of date. He also argues that looks have nothing to do with it. Instead their attractiveness is about what he calls “a certain mindset and sensibility”...