SINCE the Pilgrim Fathers wisely abandoned their “naive and nonsensical” socialist experiment, America had thrived on hard work, motivated by family, in a climate of freedom, lately defended by the atom bomb: “a marvellous gift that was given to our country by a wise God”. Such was Phyllis Schlafly’s creed and as every liberal-minded American agreed it was outdated, extreme and repellent: obsessively anti-communist, anti-immigration, anti-abortion, anti-gay. Yet those who patronised or ignored her regretted it.

She cut her political teeth chewing up the internationalist Republican establishment, personified by the 1964 presidential contender, Nelson Rockefeller. Her first book, “A Choice not an Echo”, a 121-page, 75 cent self-published polemic, sold 3m copies and helped the populist Barry Goldwater (“in your heart you know he’s right”) snatch the nomination. He plunged to defeat against Lyndon Johnson, who countered: “in your guts you know he’s nuts.”

Her next target was the treacherous, weak-willed foreign-policy elite: people like Robert McNamara who blundered into Vietnam but were scared to fight properly, or that deluded appeaser Henry Kissinger, whom she lambasted in a densely argued 800-page tome. Rather than wasting money on the “moondoggle” America should scare the Soviet Union by maintaining an overwhelming superiority in those God-given nuclear weapons. Arms-control talks were a dangerous distraction too: the Communists would cheat as they always did—the only deal they honoured was the one with Hitler in 1939.

Her consuming interest in the Soviet menace meant she came late—almost too late—to what proved to be her most notable fight: stopping the Equal Rights Amendment. By 1972 the ERA had passed both houses of Congress overwhelmingly. It was quickly adopted by 30 of the 38 states required. Her decade-long crusade to block “lesbians, radicals and federal employees” from seeking a “constitutional cure for their laziness and personal problems” was one of the most striking feats of grassroots organisation in American political history.

She united socially conservative Catholics, Protestants, Mormons and Orthodox Jews, previously mistrustful and distant camps, with tens of thousands of women enraged by their supposed champions. In halting a juggernaut backed by almost the entire political establishment she also brought the ultraconservative right from the fringe to the mainstream, paving the way for the Moral Majority of the 1980s, the Tea Party and ultimately Donald Trump—the first Republican nominee since Reagan, she said, “who actually represents the average American worker”.

The “men’s liberation amendment”, she argued, destroyed women’s rights to be mothers and homemakers, and to be gently treated in hard manual jobs. Mandatory equality would mean conscription for women—even into combat units; she mockingly sent quiches to legislators who failed to see how cowardly that was.

Cooked up

Her wider battle was against what she claimed was the feminist aim to make women and men interchangeable. Her arguments ranged from history (the Christian age of chivalry) to theology (the honour and respect due to Mary). The claim that American women were downtrodden was the “fraud of the century”, she wrote in “The Power of the Positive Woman”, a book published in 1977. If women were underrepresented in Congress, that was because they mostly wanted to do more important things, like having babies. Free enterprise helped far more than feminism—household appliances ended drudgery. Above all: marriage was the best deal ever devised for women.

She delighted in the ire she aroused. In a debate in 1973 Betty Friedan, a leading American feminist, called her an “Aunt Tom”, adding “I would like to burn you at the stake.” She was doused in pig’s blood, hit in the face by an apple pie and lampooned in the “Doonesbury” comic strip (delightedly, she framed it). Her opponents saw her as an arch-hypocrite: married to a wealthy lawyer, a fortunate lady of leisure who sought to deny equality to her sisters. She thought the abuse proved her point: her opponents were smug, intolerant and out of arguments.

In fact Mrs Schlafly (not “Ms”, which stood for “misery”) was no more the child of privilege than she was a powder-puff. Born into a family hard-hit by the Great Depression, she worked her way through college doing night shifts in an ammunition factory, testing machineguns. Under her carefully coiffed locks—like a treble clef, the New York Times wrote unkindly—was a formidably effective brain. It was honed by a master’s degree from Radcliffe gained at 20; at 51 (having gained her husband’s permission) she whizzed through law school.

A deeper paradox, which she fiercely denied, was that sexism in her own ranks held her back. A male politician with her brains, charm, drive, grit and following—and 20-plus books, a syndicated column and a radio show—would have surely landed a job in Ronald Reagan’s Pentagon. But she never held or won public office. Not that she cared. Her biggest achievement, she insisted, was raising her six children: all breast-fed, against (like so much) the fashion of the times.