Phyllis Schlafly on Clarence Thomas

Phyllis Schlafly: How do we keep going?

Excerpt from Phyllis Schlafly speech, “Eagles Fly Head-on into the Storm”
Eagle Council XXX, September 22, 2001

So the question we sometimes ask ourselves is, “How do we keep going?  and why do we keep going?”  Or, as Justice Clarence Thomas asked me several times when he came to Eagle Council several years ago, “How do you stand it when they keep coming at you?”

There’s a prayer I say regularly, one of mine of which goes like this:  “From the malignant enemy defend me.”  And every time I say that prayer I think of Betty Friedan, (laughter) and how the first time we debated, she said, “I’d like to burn you at the stake.”  I just figure I irritate the feminists lots more than they irritate me.  And furthermore, I’m not going to let them rain on my day.  

Reporters are always asking me how I deal with stress.  My answer is, I don’t have any stress.  I don’t believe in stress.  I said that on a radio debate a few weeks ago and the feminist I was debating said, “The problem is, you give stress to everybody else.”  (laughter)  I figure that’s their problem, it’s not my problem.  There’s no reason to have stress about all these political storms.  Just look at Ronald Reagan.  He didn’t have any stress.  You just have to engage the enemy, firm in the belief that we are on the side of truth, justice, and the American way.  “A just man falleth seven times, yet he still rises up again.”

Now, here are a few principles that help our eagles keep our equilibrium in political storms.  

First, we must keep our sense of mission.  Our founding fathers did that amid much more dangerous storms than we have to face.  Samuel Adams said it very succinctly in a speech in 1771:  “Let us contemplate both our forefathers and also our posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us by the former for the sake of the latter.  The necessity of the times more than ever calls for our utmost fortitude and perseverance.”  

Second, in GeneralDouglas MacArthur’s famous words, our guiding principles should be “Duty, Honor, Country.”  He said, “Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, and what you will be.”  It’s our responsibility to live up to the theme of this Eagle Council XXX, the words of St. Paul, “Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,” and you eagles are called to the vocation of political action.  

Choose limited goals.  Eagle Forum is an organization involved in dozens of issues.  And we try to represent you on many issues.  But you as an individual can’t be involved in all of them, so choose the ones that are best suited for you.  We’re involved in the sovereignty issues, the matter of the treaties that are Clinton’s legacies and are so damaging to our sovereignty.  We’re involved in the life issues:  abortion, the funding issues, stem cell, and euthanasia.  We are in the liberty issues, electronic profiling, the Second Amendment issues, and the property rights issues.  We’ve been involved in the health care issues and the problem of the mandatory unnecessary vaccines.  We are very involved in the importance of literacy and the English language to our country’s future.  We are involved in the immigration and the illegal alien issue, and the tax issue, and the issue of the imperial judiciary with the courts that are out of control with activist judges.  And of course, we are very much involved in the education issues and parents’ rights.  And tomorrow you will see that we are also involved in the issue of election fraud which is becoming terribly important.  And we do it all for the greater glory of God and the protection of America.