INTERVIEWER: I'm interested in your characterization of women's liberation people or as a group. In, in November 1972 in your newsletter, you wrote, "Their motive is totally radical. They hate men, marriage, and children. They are out to destroy morality and the family." Do you still feel that? Is that, is that quote still an accurate...?

PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY: Yes, I, I think that it is an anti-family movement. I think they target men as the enemy. Uh, they teach that women have been kept in a condition of oppression and serfdom for all these years, and that society owes it to them to take care of their children and to find them jobs at the expense of more qualified men or whatever. Uh, it is a negative view of life. It is a targeting of men as the enemy. It is a teaching of women that they've, that they've been oppressed. It's a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, and they, they wake up in the morning thinking the cards are stacked against them. Now, I don't think you get ahead in this world by, uh, by projecting your problems onto society and saying that it's society's fault. Everybody has problems, but the positive person who seeks fulfillment and gets it is one who sets about, uh, to solve her own problems in her own way.

But, you know, the, the Women's Liberation Movement's current vehicle is the Commission on International Women's Year, which has been having these state conferences all over the country. Now, it's interesting, if you look at those resolutions, they all call for Big Brother in Washington to solve their problems for them: take care of your children, find them jobs, uh, give you a shoulder to cry on. All their resolutions are, "The federal government should do this, and the federal government should provide this type of money," and so forth. And I think it's very interesting that these women who, who try to tell the world that they're self-reliant and independent and as capable as men, uh, look to the federal government to solve all their problems.

INTERVIEWER: Well, of course, what they're trying to do in that particular instance, are they not—for example, in the area of daycare centers—is to get some support for poor working women...

SCHLAFLY: No, that isn't what...

INTERVIEWER: ...who can then, who can then go out and work?

SCHLAFLY: No, that, it is not a project for the poor and needy. It flows from their rationale that it's so unfair that society expects mothers to look after their babies, and the code words that you should watch for in that debate are the words "universally available for all socioeconomic classes." They want this to be a right of all women, of all mothers, to park their children in a daycare center at the taxpayers' expense so the women can be out fulfilling themselves somewhere. And this flows from their, their rationale, their dogma, that it's so unfair that, that mothers are expected to take care of their babies. Now, of course, that's not my view at all. I, I think it's a great privilege to be able to take care of your baby rather than being compelled to join the workforce. I think the, the power to participate in the creation of human life is, is the great gift that God has given to women, and it's not... It's not an example of oppression. It's, it's an example of a wonderful gift that women have.

INTERVIEWER: We really should get to almost a kind of spiritual approach to this thing, a feeling approach to it. You really feel that the man should be the boss in the home, that there is such a thing as chivalry and all that sort of thing, don't you? All those old values that so many people today say are passé, you believe in, do you not?

SCHLAFLY: Well, as I look around the country, I see that all the successful organizations function with one head. We have one head of General Motors and the banks and the United States. We don't have a president and a co-president, we have a president and a vice president, and all the successful organizations that I know have one final source of responsibility. And I think it's the same way with a marriage. Now, you can divide up the jurisdiction. One can take care of one area and one another. But if you're going to get along in a family unit, you've got to make some social compromises, and you have to have one ultimate source of authority.

INTERVIEWER: "The Power of the Positive Woman" is the title of your new book. What do you mean by "the positive woman"? What kind of power do you think she has?

SCHLAFLY: I think it's having a positive outlook on life. I look upon the Women's Liberation Movement as essentially a negative view of life, and I think, if you're going to have fulfillment and success in life, you have to start from a positive outlook, the idea that you can do it. And I have many, many cases of women in, in all fields—some married, some single, some in business, some in writing, homemakers, and so forth—-who have achieved success because of their positive outlook on life.

INTERVIEWER: But isn't there a certain irony in that you're asking for a positive outlook when you are most famous for being anti-E.R.A.?

SCHLAFLY: Well, I... The reason we're against E.R.A. is because we are pro-family and pro-women's rights and pro-local self-government, instead of the federal government taking over. Now, there are two sides to the coin. And we think that, for example, that E.R.A. is a massive shift of power from the states to the federal government. It's true you're, you're anti-federal government taking more power, but you're also pro-local and state self-government.

INTERVIEWER: But isn't it true that you're generally portrayed as an aginner?

SCHLAFLY: Well...

INTERVIEWER: Isn't that the problem with conservatives, that they may be in their hearts and in their substance pro-this and pro-that, but they are portrayed as aginners?

SCHLAFLY: Well, what's the matter with being against sin? Now, seven of the ten commandments are, are negative. Eight of the ten articles in the American Bill of Rights are negative. In fact, the whole philosophy of government is saying what government cannot do, and that's the way you keep free... That's the way you keep freedom, is, is putting the shackles on government in order to keep them from doing things to you that you don't want them to do to you.