by subsidizing them with expanded welfare, day-care,nunisex job training, and other feminized government programsnthat richly earn the disdain they receive in streetnsociety. But many conservative men are little better.nLacking the guts to rebuff the upper-class feminist ladies,nthey go along with most of the feminist agenda, which shllnprevails in Washington bureaucracies under the ReagannAdministration. They fail to show the resolution andndecisiveness needed to develop a complex of new socialnpolicies designed to strengthen families and socialize men.nThus the problems keep getting worse, and the people,ndemoralized and confused, show a rising and justifiablencontempt for the world of polihcs.nEnhancing that contempt is the effort of feminists tonemasculate the political order itself One of the mostnnotable concerns of the moderate wing of women’s liberationnis equal representation in politics. In 1984, thenmovement induced the Democratic Party to nominate fornVice President a woman with no apparent qualifications fornthe office, and the Republicans to pad out their conventionnschedule with unqualified female speakers. Displayingnindifference to American democratic principles, the movementnhas managed to get both political parties to accept thenidea that a truly representative national convention wouldnbe half female. Although willing in practice to acceptnsomewhat smaller proportions, both parhes required everynstate to make a good-faith effort to achieve a delegationncomposed 50 percent of women.nSuch disguised quotas bear the implication, radicallyninimical to any democratic process, that the electoratenconsists of separate, homogeneous, and identifiable groups,neach best represented by one of its own kind. Such anconception of American voters is obviously wrong. Womennvote for men most of the time; young people vote for theirnelders; blacks vote for whites and whites for blacks. Thenwomen’s movement ranks high among the groups fromnwhom women seem least likely to choose their representatives.nThis flaw in the case for quotas emerged dramatically atnthe Democratic Convention of 1972 when the issue wasnfirst joined. The Democratic credentials committee foundndeeply suspicious the small number of women (9 percent)non Mayor Richard Daley’s regular Chicago delegation. Thenregulars had been overwhelmingly elected in the primaries,nbut the democratic test of election was of little avail againstnthe evidentiary test of quotas. After citing some trivialninfractions of the rules, which could have had no effect onnthe result (no one denied that Mayor Daley was the choicenof the people), the Democratic Convention seated annalternate Chicago group. Consisting of men and womenndefeated by the regulars or unwilling to challenge them atnthe polls, it was an impressive reform assemblage ofnvariegated sex and color. Us failure to include significantnrepresentation from the blue-collar ethnic groups thatndominate the white neighborhoods of Chicago was compensatednby a high sense of moral and financial worth. Innfuture conventions, this unrepresentative result became anmatter of course.nThis is a familiar story, but a key facet of it was littlenremarked. The women chosen were almost totally unrepresentativenof the city’s females. Helen Lopata in her booknOccupation Housewife summarizes her in-depth interviewsnwith a demographic sampling of some 600 Chicagonwomen. She found that they overwhelmingly left politics tontheir men. In a city where many men do work of uncommonndrudgery, this system may have been a significant partnof the sexual constitution. What the movement demandednwas not representation of Chicago women but a culturalnrevolution in the city. Whatever one thinks of this goal, itnhas nothing to do with democratic processes.nIndeed, the demands themselves symbolize feminists’nfailure to comprehend either democracy or the fundamentalnrelations between men and women in every society.nAgain and again—on ERA, abortion, employment quotas,nand all-male clubs and associations, from the military to thenLittle League—the feminists turn to the courts for coercivensolutions when voters refuse to give them what they want.nBut coercive solutions are necessarily enforced by malenpower and ultimately hostile to women’s interests in politics.nA social system based on physical force, even ifndisguised by court orders, will eventually become a patriarchynfar more oppressive than any democracy dominated bynmen. It is only a democracy, spontaneously devoted to thenrule of law and the restraint of male force, that can easilynaccommodate a feminist movement or ensure femalensuffrage.nThe “moderate” demand for quotas in polities underminesnthese democratic protections. Politics has been chieflyna male domain in all societies ever studied by anthropologistsnand historians. Women everywhere, unless hectorednby feminists, tend to turn to men for leadership on generalnpolitical issues. Male dominance in politics is part of thensexual constitution of all civilized societies. This does notnmean imposition of limits on the extraordinary women whonoften rise to key positions by their own efforts and on theirnown merits. But the effort forcibly to feminize our affairs bynquotas violates profound human propensities. By preventingngovernance from conforming to human nature, sexualnliberalism provides a perfect opening for the familiarnexcesses of abstract ideology and totalitarianism.nPolitics is ultimately based on force, and the mostneffective wielders of force are groups of men. If young mennare estranged from the leadership of the society, the socialnorder is threatened by its young men. In contemporarynAmerica the effects of this destabilization may be seen mostnclearly in the ghetto, where youths express far more respectnfor the Mafia than for any American public institution andnwhere the women and elderly all too often cower in theirnapartments for fear of the hoodlums who rule the streets.nBut throughout history, alliances between military officersnand male groups of mesomorphic thugs have alwaysnemerged when the established leadership has lost its hold onnthe public.nTo replace the legitimacy of the vote with the legitimacynof the warrior group has always been an essential revolutionarynidea. The Nietzchean exaltation of tribal valuesnagainst the effeminacy of democratic ideals, the celebrationnof the hunter against the domesticated man of the city andnfarm, the legendary rule of a male bond of blood in tribalnGermany, the mystical worship of war and the warriornbrotherhood, all served the Nazi stormtroopers as legitimizingnmyths. Similar ideas have informed all the mostnnnJUNE 1986/13n