Eagle Forum

Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafy brought on conservative historian Don Critchlow, who wrote a fawning biography of Schlafly, as her guest on Saturday’s Eagle Forum Live to promote his new book, Takeover: How the Left’s Quest for Social Justice Corrupted Liberalism. He told Schlafly that President Obama and today’s Democratic Party have a “more insidious” and “much more radical agenda, actually, than what the old communists were talking about,” as they plan to take away “real rights” and “control the way we live.”

Schlafly: When Barack Obama was running for President he bragged, he said that he wanted to ‘fundamentally transform America,’ what do you think he really wants to transform?

Critchlow: I think he wants to transform the way Americans live. I think what this transformation is is a clear cut agenda to extend the federal government into all parts of our lives. What’s happened, Phyllis, is that we’ve seen the steady erosion of real rights in America today. This is a very insidious agenda that has been imposed upon us and too many Americans are going along with it.

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Critchlow: I think the takeover of the Democratic Party, the new progressives were not communists per se. The old communists, the old Marxists were concerned with issues of production. This is a much more radical agenda, actually, than what the old communists were talking about. The new progressives want to control consumption. That’s the point of takeover — that they want to control — it’s more insidious because they’re going to control the way we live as opposed to just nationalizing a few industries as the old socialists and communists wanted.

Critchlow also didn’t rebuff one caller’s theory that Obama will soon nationalize pension plans in order to take the money from seniors after the death panels have them killed, saying that government will begin “extending its control over all kinds of things that we just can’t envision.”

Caller: One of the things that President Obama is talking about a lot right now is nationalizing the pension funds, he wants to take over all the private pension funds and have the government control them and I think give the people who should have received their pension funds give them a month annuity instead. I figure this is designed to mesh with Obamacare in the following way: sooner or later somebody getting this money that’s retired will have a medical problem, they’ll need to go see a doctor and when they go see a doctor under Obamacare they’ll be sent to the death panel and the death panel will have them euthanized and ten the government will grab up all their money and have the rest of their money, they will have only gotten tiny bit of the pension money they were saving up for and the government will have all their money. So I wanted to ask if he figures I’m right on my speculation on this point?

Critchlow: Well what we’re going to see in this financial crisis that we’re experiencing, government extending its control over all kinds of things that we just can’t envision. Obamacare is an unaffordable and cockamamie plan that now the Supreme Court has ruled is constitutional. So we’re going to see this full blown agenda being fulfilled as this crisis worsens.

Conservative organizations have come out strongly against the UN Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities, with Rick Santorum leading the charge. The groups are upset about the treaty ensuring that people with disabilities have equal rights because they claim it is “pro-abortion.”

Article 25 of the Treaty reads in part: 

States Parties recognize that persons with disabilities have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health without discrimination on the basis of disability. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure access for persons with disabilities to health services that are gender-sensitive, including health-related rehabilitation. In particular, States Parties shall:

(a) Provide persons with disabilities with the same range, quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programmes as provided to other persons, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based public health programmes;

Anti-choice activists are angry about the inclusion of the phrase “reproductive health” in the nondiscrimination clause, according to LifeNews:

Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, has previously noted the pro-life concerns, saying abortion advocates put language in the treaty in Article 25 that requires signatories to ‘provide persons with disabilities… free or affordable health care including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based health programs.’” “Translation: the global community could force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled–at taxpayer expense” he said. “Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tried to neutralize the threat during the mark-up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Unfortunately, his amendment (which would have stopped the treaty from forcing abortion policy on countries that sign) was thwarted by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) after a debate.”

Several pro-life groups are on record opposing the treaty, including Eagle Forum, Family Research Council Action, CitizenLink, Concerned Women for America, Liberty Counsel, and others.

In addition, the Home School Legal Defense Association and the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) have also came out against ratification.

But Perkins’s claim that the treaty “could force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled-at taxpayer expense” is simply false.

The State Department makes clear that the treaty “does not include abortion” and the phrase “reproductive health” in Article 25 “does not create any abortion rights, and cannot be interpreted to constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion.”

The Convention is firmly rooted in the principles of equality and non-discrimination. As the Chairperson and many other delegations, including the United States, have noted on countless occasions over the course of negotiations, the treaty reinforces existing rights and is aimed at assuring that persons with disabilities will be treated on an equal basis with others.

This approach was reflected in oral statements and in various places in the written travaux preparatoires, including in a footnote to the draft text of Article 25 that appeared in the report of the Seventh Ad Hoc Committee.

In this regard, the United States understands that the phrase "reproductive health" in Article 25(a) of the draft Convention does not include abortion, and its use in that Article does not create any abortion rights, and cannot be interpreted to constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion. We stated this understanding at the time of adoption of the Convention in the Ad Hoc Committee, and note that no other delegation suggested a different understanding of this term.

Even the National Right to Life Committee reported after the text was adopted that no delegate interpreted “reproductive health” to mean abortion and that “delegates from pro-life nations ultimately accepted this language.” “The committee responsible for enforcing compliance to this treaty would be going way beyond their mandate if they were to interpret the term ‘reproductive health’ to include abortion,” the NRLC said:

The legally undefined and controversial term "reproductive health" remains in the document despite the fact that the term has never appeared in any other UN treaty. However, all parties maintained that the term does not include abortion and that its inclusion in this treaty cannot be interpreted to create any new rights such as a right to abortion.

The final version of Article 25 (a) on health states that nations signing and ratifying the treaty shall: "Provide persons with disabilities with the same range, quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programmes as provided other persons, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health. . . . ."

Delegates from pro-life nations ultimately accepted this language because they were assured and became confident that it does not include abortion or create any new human rights such as a right to abortion.

For example, during the debate the Treaty Chairman, Ambassador McKay of New Zealand, stated repeatedly that the use of the term "reproductive health" in this treaty does not create any new human rights such as abortion. He even added a non-binding footnote to the record of negotiations, not the treaty itself, which he claimed would preclude any such misinterpretation of the term.

Numerous delegates from nations throughout the world including the European Union agreed with Chairman McKay that the term "reproductive health" does not include abortion. No delegate from any nation stated that it does.

In light of all these statements and the language of the treaty, the committee responsible for enforcing compliance to this treaty would be going way beyond their mandate if they were to interpret the term "reproductive health" to include abortion. It is crucial that they do not because nations that sign and ratify a treaty are required to change their laws in order to comply with the treaty.

But for the Religious Right, even definitive evidence that the treaty’s language does not refer to abortion doesn’t change their mind that the Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities must be defeated.

In late September, a month after his remarks about “legitimate rape” sent shock waves through the country, Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin addressed a St. Louis conference convened by Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, one of Akin’s most ardent defenders. In his speech, Akin wasn’t at all apologetic about his claim that women are unable to become pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.” Instead, he argued that “political correctness” had caused him to face greater backlash than Bill Clinton, “who was accused of doing something wrong, as opposed to saying something wrong.”

“It surprised me that the saying it wrong almost seems like it’s worse than the doing it wrong,” he said. Clinton, of course, was impeached. And Akin’s comments on abortion and rape are indeed reflected in his actions, such as his attempt to redefine rape and participation in militant anti-abortion rights activism.

He went on to compare criticism of his remarks to decapitation by Islamic extremists: “We see that all the time with [what] the Islamists pull out on us: we’re offended so we’re going to cut your head off.”

Later in his speech he said that the U.S. is facing conditions similar to those in 1930s Germany that aided Adolf Hitler’s rise to power: “We can’t underestimate what could happen when you continue to print money recklessly, inflate the currency and spend money we don’t have at a trillion-plus a year. The potential is pretty serious.”

WorldNetDaily’s Brenda Elliott, co-author of Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed, expressed her fears on Eagle Forum Live that the Obama administration is delegating all power over to the United Nations. Elliott told host Anne Cori, Eagle Forum head Phyllis Schlafly’s daughter, that President Obama will convert our defense forces into international peacekeepers dominated by the UN and “bow down to the will of the Middle East and to Islam.”

Elliott: The 2012 Unified Security Budget, which is sponsored by the Center for American Progress…that’s the organization founded in 2003 using funding from billionaire Democratic funder George Soros and headed by John Podesta, who was the co-chair of the Obama-Biden transition team…funding also sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, which is about the most pro-Communist, leftist think tank in our country. This 96 page document proposes right off the top a trillion dollars in cuts over ten years. We already hear Obama mention these cuts to the defense budget. And you know the most concerning thing here, perhaps, is the proposal that our defense forces could be turned into international peacekeepers, with the ultimate goal of coming under the auspices of the United Nations.

Cori: Well one of the promises that Obama made in ’08 is to restore our standing in the world. Do you think the world respects the United States more after four years of Obama?

Elliott: I think that the number of times that Obama has gone before heads of state and gone into an obedient posture by bowing and constantly going into a posture of appeasing, I don’t think that gains anybody any points, I mean, you go back to history and it tells us that a strong defense keeps our foes at bay, but when we posture that we’re prepared to be peacekeepers and bow down to the will of the Middle East and to Islam, that’s not a strong position at all.

Elliott’s concern about “the proposal” is entirely unfounded: the 2012 Unified Security Budget proposes to maintain and increase our funding to UN peacekeepers and create a standing UN peacekeeper force, not to hand over our defense to the UN. In fact, according to the report, the creation of such a peacekeeping force is an investment which would reduce U.S. military expenditures in the long run.

The Internet is also in jeopardy, claims Elliott, who believes that the Obama administration aims to dominate the Internet and allow the UN to control the web.

Caller: Hi, thanks, I want to compliment Brenda on the great work she’s doing on the Internet with all her blogging, and I want to ask her if a second Obama administration would result in controls of the Internet by the Federal Communications Commission.

Elliott: Well they’ve been trying to do this for a while, and thank you very much about the blogging, I guess you must be one of my regulars, RDO2.com is the most recent one. I think there has been several efforts, especially since the beginning of the administration, to control the Internet. I think the bigger problem we may face in the future if Barack Obama is reelected is the possibility of a treaty or an agreement where we will hand that over to the United Nations. The United Nations very much wants to control the Internet, and that would definitely not be a very positive sign.

Back in July, Eagle Forum Collegians hosted their 2012 Annual Leadership Summit at the Heritage Foundation where Rep. Michele Bachmann delivered a speech warning of the Muslim Brotherhood’s supposed infiltration of the U.S. government, her baseless pet cause. Bachmann told attendees that the Obama administration’s meeting with an Egyptian lawmaker, who was vetted by the Secret Service and both the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, was part of a string of “outrageous, unbelievable actions on the part of the administration to allow influence by the Muslim Brotherhood at the highest levels of power: the State Department, the White House, the Pentagon, the FBI.”

She then attacked the media for “saying we’re going after individual personalities and that we’re being mean to Muslims.” But Bachmann did in fact specifically name individuals, including Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, and other Muslims serving in the administration as part of a witch hunt denounced by Democratic and Republican leaders alike, including the Republican Speaker of the House and the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Bachmann went on to explain that “every day I’m in trouble for something, who cares, who cares?”

Watch:

Later, the Congresswoman suggested that attendees read “everything Phyllis Schlafly has ever written,” calling her an “absolute genius,” and also recommended books by extremist commentator Ann Coulter and disgraced pseudo-historian David Barton.

One of the main stories to come out of the 2012 London Olympics was the outright dominance of American female athletes, another sign of the success of the Title IX, which barred discrimination between men’s and women’s educational programs and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. But Title IX has always provoked the ire of Phyllis Schlafly and the Eagle Forum. In a radio alert today, Schlafly claims Title IX in fact “weakened our competitiveness” at the Olympics.

The US won 104 medals in London (58 for women and 45 for men), which Schlafly believes shows that male athletes suffered a severe injustice. “Feminist-imposed gender quotas hurt us at the Olympics in events which our Nation once dominated,” Schlafly claims, “While our Nation won the most medals for the fifth consecutive Summer Olympics, many of our medals were in contests of dubious value like beach volleyball. Title IX quotas have hurt our competitiveness in sports that are most helpful to the development of our young men.” Schlafly points to the US failure to win medals in wrestling as a sign of Title IX’s allegedly disastrous impact; however, throughout Olympic history the US has never dominated wrestling in the Olympics” And while Schlafly believes that the policy wreaked havoc on male collegiate sports, female athletes and women’s teams still receive significantly less financial support compared to their male peers.

Feminist-imposed gender quotas hurt us at the Olympics in events which our Nation once dominated. The systematic elimination of certain men’s sports from colleges has weakened our competitiveness. We won only four medals in all of men’s wrestling, less than half the total won by Iran, and only a fraction of the medals won by Russia in this masculine sport. Wrestling is an immensely popular and valuable sport; it’s inexpensive and safer than other sports. Wrestling develops discipline in boys. Many high-achievers, such as Donald Rumsfeld and pro-life attorney Phill Kline, developed their toughness as wrestlers.

But although tens of thousands of high schools have thriving wrestling programs for boys, at the college level Title IX gender quotas have cancelled wrestling at all but a fraction of colleges. Many hundreds of successful college men’s wrestling programs have been eliminated, not for financial reasons, but due to Title IX gender quotas. These quotas typically require that the percentage of men and women in intercollegiate sports at a college equal the percentage of men and women enrolled as students, even though many colleges have become 60% women and only 40% men.

Other men’s sports have also been hurt by this feminist quota, such as swimming and track. Private swimming clubs and a few aging stars like Michael Phelps filled that gap this time, but we nearly struck out in men’s track in the marquee events of 100, 200, 400 and 800 meters, events the Americans historically dominated. While our Nation won the most medals for the fifth consecutive Summer Olympics, many of our medals were in contests of dubious value like beach volleyball. Title IX quotas have hurt our competitiveness in sports that are most helpful to the development of our young men.

Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly yesterday spoke to the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios to denounce the Democratic National Platform’s support for reproductive freedom and marriage equality. According to Schlafly, “the feminists completely control the Obama administration” and “whatever the feminists want, the feminists get,” including endorsements of abortion rights and same-sex marriage. There is “support of everything the feminists want,” Schlafly lamented, “It’s a very destructive force in our society.”

Rios: According to the platform, there is no place for politicians or the government to get in the way of abortions, so they’re saying that abortion—

Schlafly: Sandy, let me explain. The feminists completely control the Obama administration. Valerie [Jarrett] is considered the most powerful person in the country. Whatever the feminists want, the feminists get. That’s why we’re getting support of abortion by the Obama administration, and paying for it, forcing is to pay for it, which is what they want, and support of same-sex marriage, and support of everything the feminists want. It’s a very destructive force in our society.

Rios: It’s certainly not a forward movement, it’s a backward movement, I think.

Schlafly even claimed that progressives want people “to look to the government for everything,” unlike during the Great Depression when “we didn’t look to the government for any solution and they didn’t give us any solution and we grew up to be the greatest generation.” While Schlafly denies that the government didn’t play a role in ending the Great Depression, she appears to forget that there was significant government intervention through the New Deal and other government-driven programs to stimulate the sluggish economy:

Rios: You know Phyllis just philosophically, this is what the left always says, they always say that conservatives are old fashioned, they mock the old sitcoms you know where they had separate beds, twin beds, they mock the sitcoms of the 50s, the Andy Griffith’s, the Dick Van Dyke’s, they think that’s funny and amusing and to be progressive, to be modern, to be in-this-decade—the Constitution is old and outdated too, by the way, that’s what they think—they always make that argument that to be forward moving is to throw off any of the constraints of the past. Can you just from your perspective of life, why would we hang on to boundaries, regulations and rules from the past? Isn’t this a new day?

Schlafly: Because they work. Our Constitution has lasted over two centuries; no other country’s has done that. When our borders are open people want to come in, they’re not trying to get out, I think that’s a pretty good test of whether a country is successful or not. We built a great country of great prosperity and enormous freedom and some people don’t like that, they want to look to the government for everything. I grew up during the Great Depression, we didn’t look to the government for any solution and they didn’t give us any solution and we grew up to be the greatest generation.

With a presence in the committee meetings, the FRC Action staff has been able to help delegates hold the line of social issues. Just this morning, our efforts made what was already a good document even better.

Before this week, the GOP’s draft platform included solid language defending the family – and FRC Action, in tandem with Eagle Forum, made it even stronger.

Phyllis Schlafly continued her book tour yesterday by speaking with Sandy Rios of the American Family Association, and accused Obama of “trying to wipe God out of our public life” and “wipe Christianity out of our public life.” She also suggested that Obama refuses to discuss his Christian faith, which is not true, and that his campaign is promoting a cult, “When he arrives his followers all stand around and chant ‘You’re the one we’ve been waiting for!’” Obama used the line “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” in a speech, citing a poem by an anti-Apartheid activist. It was not a campaign chant as Schlafly insists, but the falsehoods didn’t end there:

Schlafly: This is so ominous, this is so un-American, you know we’ve had several years Sandy and I’m sure you’ve reported on them where the ACLU and the atheists have been litigating to get rid of crosses, standing to honor our veterans and the Ten Commandments, pictures and monuments, and he just fits right into that, that’s why when he arrives his followers all stand around and chant ‘You’re the one we’ve been waiting for!’ He fits right into that. There are just so many ways that he’s just trying to wipe God out of our public life.

Rios: I’d like to give another illustration, because when I was on radio in Chicago we played this clip over and over again, I don’t have the clip this morning but he has said repeatedly, this always stunned me too Phyllis when he’s made speeches on allegedly to religious freedom or illusions to that topic, he has said repeatedly ‘we are a nation of’ and he gives a whole list, ‘Buddhists and Muslims and non-believers,’ and he always puts Muslims and non-believers right at the top of the list. He emphasizes always non-believers and Christians are just one of a series that he lists. The inference of course is that we are not a Christian nation, we are nation of Buddhists and Muslims and non-believers. That’s what he has said repeatedly and that was a huge red flag to me a very long time ago.

Schlafly: That’s right and over in the Middle East he repeated, ‘we are not a Christian nation.’ While he is trying to wipe Christianity out of our public life, he is giving a pass to the Muslims. He never says anything criticizing that. He says they are a peaceful nation, well I don’t know when I see those pictures of the World Trade towers I don’t think they’re very peaceful.

Of course, Obama was not the first president to say we are not a Christian nation. In fact, the Treaty of Tripoli, which was crafted under George Washington and ratified by John Adams after it was approved unanimously by the Senate, reads: “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,” [Muslims]. And Obama is also not the first President to condemn the argument, made by Schlafly, that radical terrorist groups like Al Qaeda are representative of all of Islam.

As for Rios’ claim that Obama downplays America’s Christian community and “always puts Muslims and non-believers right at the top of the list” in his speeches, that is simply not the case. She is referring to a 2007 speech where Obama said: “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.” Muslim is the third religion mentioned, and nonbelievers are mentioned last. Plus, there is nothing wrong with what Obama said. Indeed, America is not just made up of Christians, but is a nation that includes Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, among various other people of faith. That is simply a statement of fact.