Phyllis Schlafly may not be a familiar name to many, but in her prime time during the 60s she was one of the most influential American conservative activists. Her groundbreaking book, A choice not an echo, aside from being a best seller, would essentially set the tone that would eventually usher in the Reagan era.An outstanding student, her achievements are even more remarkable given that this was an America still not comfortable with an independent woman, let alone one with strong views.
While the political situation in the book requires some background and indeed may not be wholly applicable to a parliamentary democracy like India, many of the ideas in it will be immediately familiar.
A choice not an echo is an ardent appeal to American voters, before the presidential elections of 1964. Phyllis Schlafly exposes the ugly underbelly of the unholy influence big business wields on the political process. The book details how easily national interests are set aside, how conveniently idealistic candidates are buried by a conniving media.
An excerpt from the book readers can immediately relate to:
Chapter Six: The Pollsters and the Hoaxers (1944)
They discovered and developed a new political weapon: the Gallup Poll. Dr. George Gallup began asking lot of questions of a very few people, and - funny thing - he usually came up with answers that pleased the New York kingmakers.
The Gallup poll has been used repeatedly as a subtle propaganda machine to sell the Republicans on the false propositions that the GOP cannot win unless it (1) continues the New Deal foreign policy and (2) names candidates who will appeal to left-leaning Democrats and liberals.
The Gallup Poll worked so well that, in 1944, there was hardly any need to have a Republican Convention. The Gallup Poll had already announced that Dewey had 68 percent of Republican voters in his camp, and that he was the only Republican with a chance to win.. The Convention was cold, dull and colorless. The delegates met merely to ratify the Gallup Poll decision.
5 comments:
What the excerpt doesn't tell us is that Dewey was labeled victorious even before the counting was done. He was advised not to do anything say anything unusual, repeat the same message etc. Good ol' Harry Truman won, of course.
Nothing captures it better than the famous Chicago Tribune masthead page.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
media/photo/2008-01/34569547.jpg
Barbar,
What's wrong with you? Phyllis Schlafly an A-grade misogynist woman? This is the woman who campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment, and thinks that women are better off staying at home and submitting to their man. The Gallup organisation made a name for itself during the Roosevelt-Landon race in the '30s, when George Gallup not only predicted the result with a small sample, but also predicted what the survey conducted by "Literary Digest" a Landon mouthpiece would predict! Schlafly is a pseudoscientific kook among other things, and this passage illustrates her ignorance. If you want to discuss FDR and the New Deal, a deal that remade America and ranks with the Revollution, Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement as the defining phenomena of America, you are welcome. In short FDR made capitalism possible by a successful application of Keynesian economics - the only economics that works. And he banished the dirty gilded age and its robber barons, rubbishing the ill read thoughts of such ignoramuses as Calvin Coolidge.
is this a message for LKA?
Anon with the longer comment:
You might want to read Schlafly's profile. With achievements like that,, she didn't stay at home for sure. Also, the New Deal'ers were the most vocal opponent of the ERA.
Barbar,
You are not right. There is a long line of progressive action in the US from Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, through, Frederick Douglass, Robert Ingersoll, the anti-slavery activists, the suffragists, and the various workers' movements that culminated in support for the New Deal. The feminists, civil rights, and post-civil rights activists all emerged from the New Deal, especially once the Democrats in the South defected to the GOP. There is absolutely nothing constructive that Schlafly has created. Her example offers the worst lessons for India. The Left-Right or liberal-conservative axis of the West, particularly the US is inapplicable to India. In our disgust with allegedly "liberal" activism in India we shouldn't go all the way seeking precedent in the odious and obnoxious tradition of what is called "conservatism" in the US. FDR is the most significant US President of the 20th century and he remade America much in the way Lincoln preserved the Union 70 years earlier.
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