"Phyllis Schlafly had a wonderful talent for driving men and women — especially women of a rigid political bent — mad.” So began the obituary for Schlafly by the editors of National Review upon her death nine years ago. That is why the inclusion of such a barbed piece about our organization’s founder in the magazine’s 70th anniversary issue is so odd. The other articles in this issue celebrate the thinkers and activists of the conservative movement. Why the animus toward Phyllis Schlafly?

In the piece on Phyllis Schlafly, “The Rise of a Populist Influencer in the Age of Print Media,” Rachel Lu calls Schlafly “mean-spirited and conspiratorial” and claims she wrote “shameless propaganda.” She alludes to the subject when she writes “shills and sophists will always be with us.” These charges draw from the same illogical hostility toward my mother that so many feminists of the 20th century harbored.

I am the youngest child of Phyllis Schlafly. I had a front-row seat to her life and her activism. One word describes her: genuine, which is the opposite of the image of a paranoid propagandist that this article paints. My mother carefully read what her opponents wrote, then distilled the ideas so she could argue against them. She told the truth. Her values were deeply held, and her opinions were well-thought out. Yet her opponents have always tried to slur her as a puppet for the patriarchy — not realizing that not even the patriarchy of the Republican Party could control her actions!

These baseless charges are not just wrong; they’re laughably wrong. Everyone (including opponents) who ever worked with her recognized her cheerfulness. The editors of National Review accurately described her in that obituary as “one of the original happy warriors: funny, gracious, and grittier than one might expect.”

Phyllis Schlafly had a knack for clearly articulating the issues in pithy and memorable phrases. She was called the Sweetheart of the Silent Majority because she voiced in the public arena what many average Americans were thinking to themselves. The coastal elites of both parties never liked her and viciously attacked her throughout her life. Her response was to smile graciously and to always speak truth to power. She was unafraid. She was a perfect role model.

As for “shameless propaganda,” Schlafly was prescient regarding the consequences that would come from the feminist revolution. As the leader of the movement to stop adoption of the so-called Equal Rights Amendment, she accurately predicted what that push for “equal rights” would lead to: same-sex marriage, women in combat, no-fault divorce, and increased economic insecurity for wives and mothers. Lu accuses her of peddling scare tactics, but how can the truth be a scare tactic?

As for Lu’s criticism of my mother’s self-published book, A Choice Not an Echo, she hints that the lesson may be that “the Goldwater takeover really wasn’t so principled in the first place.” But choice is a powerful word. It is a fundamental element of free and fair elections. No one wants a communist-style ballot where all the candidates are merely carbon copies of one another, sharing the same agenda.

Barry Goldwater’s campaign for president offered Americans a real choice — a vote against the status quo. Goldwater hated communism and loved free enterprise, as did William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan. Certainly, it is a principle of conservatism to hate communism and love free enterprise. So why criticize Schlafly for these positions?

The article’s other attack on Schlafly is that she was “paranoid.” It is worth remembering that Nikita Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union, really did tell Americans in 1956, “We will bury you.” Schlafly was accurate, not paranoid, about the threat of communism. Is it paranoia today to be worried about an avowed communist running New York City?

Lu writes that Schlafly’s “defining story was not true, or not true enough.” Lu appears to be calling Schlafly a liar, without ever identifying any points in her writings that were not true. She accuses Schlafly of using “agitprop,” which is a communist technique of weaving their political agenda into the culture. Lu is attempting to rewrite the history of Schlafly by painting her as a practitioner of communist techniques. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Schlafly built a movement, which is the evidence of her sincerity. Thousands of women joined her organization, Eagle Forum, calling themselves “Eagles” and working tirelessly in state capitals across the country on behalf of faith, family, and freedom for years. These women, all volunteers, have not given decades of their lives to propaganda. They give their time, talent, and treasure for the truth. They stay loyal not because of manipulation but conviction. If Phyllis Schlafly were a propagandist, she would have been a flash in the pan — and she certainly would not have built a movement that has lasted generations. Propagandists only attract crowds. My mother’s political life spanned 70 years; she built a legacy at Eagle Forum which thrives today.