From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 20:59:55 -0400

This woman just never quits.

    Open Letter to VMI Alumni

         June 11, 1996                              by Phyllis Schlafly

         This is an open letter to Virginia Military Institute Alumni.

         Dear Alumni:

         Your VMI training not only taught you to be tough, courageous
    and honorable, but also to survive humiliation and harassment. You
    are now facing your greatest challenge.

         You've lost a major battle. Are you going to be survivors, or
    are you going to let the enemy wipe you and your kind from the face
    of the earth, pour salt in the soil that produced you, and drop you
    down the Memory Hole?

         The most important factor in any confrontation is the ancient
    maxim "Know your enemy." I'm not sure you ever understood the
    nature of your enemy.

         The massive government lawsuit against VMI wasn't about "ending
    sex discrimination" or "allowing women to have access to the same
    educational benefits that men have at VMI." It was a no-holds-barred
    fight to feminize VMI waged by the radical feminists and their
    cohorts in the Federal Government.

         The radical feminists just can't stand it that any institution
    in America is permitted to motivate and train real men to manifest
    the uniquely masculine attributes. Feminists want to gender-
    neutralize all men so they can intimidate and control them. The
    feminists' longtime, self-proclaimed goal is an androgynous society.
    Repudiating constitutional intent, history, tradition and human
    nature, they seek to forbid us, in public or private life, to
    recognize the differences between men and women.

         Feminist strategy is straightforward: whine that women are
    victims of centuries of "oppression" and "stereotyping," lay a
    guilt trip on men, and use all the stereotypical cultural techniques
    that women have always used to wheedle what they want out of men.
    Then, use feminists on the public payroll in all three branches of
    government to change the laws in order to force us to conform.

         Since feminists successfully got women admitted into the
    military academies, and got the Clinton Administration to assign
    women to military combat positions, VMI and the Citadel remained as
    the most visible fortresses of the concept that men and women are
    fundamentally different. The feminists hate you just because you
    exist.

         The notion that a military institution that has functioned with
    success, public acceptance, and significant prestige for 157 years,
    suddenly, one day in June 1996, can be rationally said to violate the
    Constitution is patently ridiculous. Black robes and Ruth Bader
    Ginsburg's devious rhetoric about "scrutiny" can't make such judicial
    arrogance any less ridiculous.

         The idea of setting up a VMI course for women at Mary Baldwin
    College to save VMI from an adverse decision was a futile gesture,
    and Ginsburg held this expensive effort up to ridicule as "invented
    post hoc in response to litigation." You need to understand that
    the lawsuit against VMI had nothing to do with securing opportunities
    or benefits for women; it only had to do with destroying the
    masculine integrity of VMI.

         Ginsburg's opinion asserted that "women's successful entry into
    the federal military academies" proves that women can successfully
    matriculate at VMI. That assumption is false because VMI's regimen
    is very different from the military academies'.  The VMI trial record
    proved that women's so-called "successful" experience in the federal
    military academies is based on quotas, dual standards, and gender
    norming. Female cadets compete against other female cadets for
    designated female slots, rather than competing against the men.

         The VMI decision was wholly predictable when Clinton appointed
    Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Court. Her activist determination to
    write her radical feminist goals into the Constitution was all
    laid out in her published writings, but no Senator questioned her
    about them. Every Senator who voted for her confirmation shares in
    the shame of this decision.

         VMI Alumni, your response to this Supreme Court defeat should
    be to reject the state subsidy and embark on a national fundraising
    drive to raise the money to keep VMI functioning exactly as it always
    has. If the still-existing single-sex colleges, such as Wellesley and
    Smith, can survive on private fundraising plus government student
    loans, and if Hillsdale College can survive without any government
    funds at all, there's no reason why VMI and the Citadel can't do
    this, too.

         Don't make the mistake of changing VMI's unique lifestyle to
    try to accommodate Sister Rats. The women who seek a military career
    based on dual standards and gender norming can go to West Point,
    Annapolis, or the Air Force Academy.

         VMI Alumni, if you allow Ginsburg et all to do to VMI what Pat
    Schroeder et all have done to the United States Navy, you are not
    the exemplars of manhood we thought you were. And that goes for
    Citadel alumni, too.

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