You've got to be taught to hate

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Socialist Action today! Clip and mail to: Socialist Action, 3425 Army St., The Rev. Pat Robertson is doing his best to live up to the song from South Pacific that explains how it is necessary to begin teaching hate at an early age.

Robertson wrote a letter to Iowa voters in opposition to a state Equal Rights Amendment, which will be voted on Nov 3. In it, he stated that the proposal is not about equal rights for women but part of a "feminist agenda."

He raved on, "It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. " Believe it or not, this is what he wrote!

In his letter, which was mailed to thousands of voters, the old Bible-thumper did not mention in which order these activities were to be carried out. Should women kill their children before leaving By their husbands, or should these socialist feminists simply destroy capitalism first and then carry on with this very demanding agenda?. Should all of this be done on their lunch break or after the women come home from work and have prepared supper? Or should they just send out for pizza and then commence these mammoth chores?

Rev. Pat simply doesn't supply enough details. But he is certainly willing to peddle this garbage to millions of voters in Iowa.

Three hundred years ago, in Salem, Mass., little children would fall down and writhe in pain at the sight of a woman who was thought to be a witch. Can you visualize what the children of Iowa will do when they are told that not only does their mommy want to kill daddy but them also? How many will fight going to sleep at night fearing at what moment mother will strike?

What is amazing is that some mental health workers haven't yet strapped a straight-jacket around the Rev. Robertson and put him away. But remember, he is a major spokesman for the Bush election campaign. He also gets heavy support from the capitalist class. Why? Because he and the rest of his sewer-mouthed evangelist ilk are needed by the ruling class to protect their right to exploit and oppress the overwhelming majority of the people.

The ruling-rich are a small minority in this country. They are, of course, protected by the two political parties-Democrats and Republicansby the armed forces, the police, and all other institutions of state power. But they are still a tiny minority compared to the millions of working people. So capitalism needs this incipient-fascist bunch to help divide the majority. That is the only way they can maintain their power.

Women want equal pay for work of comparable value. They want affirmative action to guarantee them equal access to better paying jobs and they want child care for their children when they are forced to work to support their family. Women support an Equal Rights Amendment because they have never had equal rights and do not have them now. Do these demands threaten America? No, sir. Do they threaten capitalist profits? Yes indeed!

The labor power of women has been used as a great resource for superprofits. Women and Blacks in this country have always been put back, condemned to be part of the "reserve army of unemployed" that is used to keep wages down as low as possible for all workers—male, female, Black, and white.

Women's labor has historically been undervalued and underpaid. For poor working-class women working conditions and wage differences are even worse today. Two out of three poor adults are women and one out of five children is poor. Women head half of all poor families, and over half the children in female-headed families are poor—as are 50 percent of white children and 68 percent of Black and Latin children.

A woman over 60 years of age is almost twice as likely as her male counterpart to be impoverished. One-fifth of all elderly women are poor. Among Black women over 65 and living alone, the poverty rate was 82 percent in 1982. Fifty percent of women with children over age six are working outside of their homes. Most must work to help feed, cloth and house their families.

More women are working outside their homes because working-class families have taken a beating economically. In 1991, the number of jobless persons in the United States was 16 million—a jobless rate of 13 percent. The government's "official" unemployment rate (which is a joke) is 6.7 percent.

Even more important, by the beginning of 1992, average weekly wages for production workers in U.S. industry, adjusted for inflation, had fallen to 79.7 percent of their level in 1973. At the same time, there was a sharp increase in inequality of income distribution in the United States. The position of the bottom 20 percent was worse than it was in 1947.

By far the greatest loss of jobs, 2.2 million from 1979 to 1991, has occurred in the highest paying manufacturing jobs. By contrast, the service producing sector of the economy has generated 21.8 mil lion jobs during the same years. However, 73.5 percent of these jobs are in the two lowest paying categories of the service sector, namely, retail trade and health and business service. The majority of workers in this sector are women.

These are the reasons that more women are demanding not only control over their own reproductive rights but full equality on the job and equal access to better paying jobs. This is bad news for capitalists, and is the reason the most holy Rev. Pat Robertson is working so hard to teach people to hate. And especially to hate women.

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