Prior to the recent British election, the U.S. national media were busy telling us what a right-winger Margaret Thatcher is. Since her landslide victory, the U.S. media have been telling us that her victory has little or no application to American politics.
But protestations of the liberals to the contrary notwithstanding, the political fallout in the United States from the Thatcher phenomenon (as anyone could see from the grin on Ronald Reagan’s face when he telephoned his congratulations) has been significant. One of the most dramatic effects of her election has been to blow the “cover” of the feminist movement.
If the feminist movement were truly a “women’s rights” movement, Mrs. Thatcher would be hailed as the prime example of women’s ability to achieve and win in competition with men. If the feminist movement were truly working for “women in politics,” Mrs. Thatcher would be their role model of success.
But the silence from the usually garrulous “women’s rights” organizations and activists is deafening! Feminists in the United States seem to be trying to pretend that Mrs. Thatcher doesn’t exist.
Feminist activists have shown the same non-support of Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, a truly talented woman who is doing a brilliant job for our country in the anti-American forum misnamed the “United” Nations. Indeed, in the recent controversy over the commencement speech insult heaved at her by Smith College, the feminist movement was conspicuously not on her side.
In the 1982 Congressional elections, the feminist groups turned their backs on female officeholders who had shown anything less than 100% servility to the feminist party line. Feminists abandoned Republican Congresswomen Margaret Heckler and Millicent Fenwick in favor of male liberal Democrats.
The number-one bill on the feminist groups’ legislative agenda in Congress this year is Unisex Insurance, which would cost women a billion dollars per year in additional automobile accident and life insurance premiums, for which they would get no additional benefits. Unisex insurance shows the dichotomy between the feminist agenda and true women’s rights; the bill is clearly designed to serve ideology rather than economics.
For the last decade, feminist activists have been courting respectability by appearing to espouse equal pay for equal work, and the advancement of women in business, professions, and politics. It is now clear that those are not the feminists’ goals at all. Not only do they not rejoice in the achievements of Mesdames Thatcher, Kirkpatrick, Heckler, Fenwick, Anne Burford, or even Sandra Day O’Connor, the feminists are distressed at the remarkable rise of women in the corporate world.
A recent article in the Nation (the leftwing intellectual journal) laments the career success and status of today’s businesswoman because she has become a member of the capitalist system rather than a revolutionary against it. The article is bitter about American capitalism’s success in attracting women to the private-enterprise values and institutions which the feminists attack.
It’s time to say out loud that feminist talk about women’s legitimate goals and aspirations is just sugar-coating on a radical political pressure group working in collusion with the old Left. Their goals are runaway federal spending programs (so their leaders can be either on the government payroll or administering federal grants), increased federal control (at the expense of the family, local schools, private enterprise, and state governments), pacifism toward the U.S.S.R., and the election of leftwingers over conservatives.
Margaret Thatcher has proved that the route to success for a woman is not the clenched fist, or even affirmative action. It is the same route as for a man: hard work, perseverance, and sticking to sound, conservative principles. She is our modern Horatio Alger.
When asked if she would be a “butcher” after her election, Mrs. Thatcher (a grocer’s daughter, who grew up in a home without an inside toilet or hot water) replied, “I’m not a good butcher, but I’ve learned how to carve the joint.” We can thank her for showing us how to carve the feminist joint out of the subject of women in politics.
