Phyllis Schlafly on the Expelled movie and the meaning of "Darwinism"

Phyllis Schlafly, the nemesis of radical feminists who is just SO not invited to Hill Clinton's inagural (which may never happen anyway, the way things are going) puts in her two cents worth on the Expelled movie about the trials of being an intelligence design theorist in an ivy league of Darwin cultists:

Stein, who serves as his own narrator in the movie, is very deadpan about it all. He doesn't try to convince the audience that Darwinism is a fraud, or that God created the world, or even that some unidentified intelligent design might have started life on Earth.

Stein merely shows the intolerance of the universities, the government, the courts, the grant-making foundations and the media, and their determination to suppress any mention of intelligent design.

Schlafly sounds like one smart gal because she picks up on a point that has eluded many columnists:

Liberals are particularly upset because the movie identifies Darwinism, rather than evolution, as the sacred word that must be isolated from criticism. But that semantic choice makes good sense because Darwinism is easily defined by Darwin's own writings, whereas the word evolution is subject to different and even contrary definitions.

Yes, exactly.

It's one thing to think that evolution happens. Most people do. It is quite another thing to believe that survival of the fittest (which Darwin said was a convenient synonym for his natural selection) acts as an immense creative force in nature. If natural selection really acted that way, it would be one stout plank in the edifice of materialism. But there is very little evidence that it ever does, as Mike Behe demonstrates in Edge of Evolution.

Some commentators believe that Phyllis Schlafly single-handedly circumvented the Equal Rights Amendment, the would-be cornerstone of American feminism. As I recall that era, the story was a bit more complicated. She was one canny lady, but the Amendment's partisans played a key role in scuppering it themselves. They made no secret of the fact that they would use it to overrule or overturn masses of legislation that enjoyed considerable support.

Anyway, amending a Constitution isn't easy - we haven't yet managed it in Canada, for example, and lots of our politicians can tell you harrowing tales of defeat.