A provocative new essay at American Thinker argues that the path back to American greatness requires a “radically anti-feminist approach” that will upset not only leftist women but also self-proclaimed conservative ones. Written by Olivia Murray, the piece contends that feminist instincts have infected even the right — and that this emotional reasoning is corroding the civic and moral foundations of the country.
Set against the backdrop of the Lindsay Clancy case — where a judge declared a mistrial after seven days of jury deliberation — the essay takes aim at what Murray calls the “feminist rot” that pervades reactions to Clancy, a mother accused of murdering her three children. Clancy had admitted to the killings, but Murray observes that many conservative women have rallied to her defense or softened their judgment with qualifiers like “I’m not saying she didn’t do it, but…”
For Murray, that response is emblematic of a deeper problem. She recounts a conversation with a woman who identified as conservative and pro-life yet argued for government-funded postpartum mental health treatment for all mothers, invoking a friend’s tragedy and another’s $10,000 treatment. Murray calls such positions “well-meaning, but completely idiotic” — emotional, unreasoned, and overtly socialist, despite the speaker’s stated fiscal conservatism.
From empathy to ‘twisting the truth’
Murray is direct about her frustration. “Empathy is the Christian response, Olivia,” she imagines critics saying — but she argues that empathy is being misdirected toward the mother rather than her victims. “I can pity Lindsay and hate her sin,” she writes, “but to pity her more than the children? I just can’t relate — but feminists can, even the ‘conservative’ ones!”
In her view, this inversion of sympathy reflects a larger cultural sickness: feminism, even when worn with a conservative label, prioritizes female emotional experience over objective truth and over the uncompromising principles that built the nation.
The masculine foundation of American greatness
Murray’s argument extends well beyond the Clancy case. “Everything we love about our great nation is a product of uncompromising masculinity,” she asserts. She is careful to say women have had roles in history — they inspire men to make function beautiful — but she draws a firm line: “Women’s opinions and ideas aren’t what made this country the greatest one that’s ever existed in human history.”
She points to George Washington seeking no one’s “Christian opinions on empathy” before becoming “really violent on the battlefield” to win a war, and to Thomas Jefferson drafting the Second Amendment without consulting “the local ladies” on guns because he understood self-defense as a God-given right. Then she adds the sharpest sentence: “These men didn’t even give women the privilege of voting, because they knew women shouldn’t have any serious influence in matters of great civic importance.”
The essay does not pursue that point further as policy advocacy, but it frames the exclusion as a foundational judgment rather than a historical oversight. Feminism, in her telling, undermines the masculine clarity needed for justice and national survival.
Of mistrials and holdout jurors
The Clancy proceedings are central to Murray’s ire. The judge declared a mistrial, and Murray presumes the “heroic holdout” was a man — “one brave man… against two simps and nine feminist women.” leftist sympathizers, she says, love Clancy “because they love what is evil and hate what is good,” but the more damning betrayal comes from those on the right who mirror that compassion.
She calls out the emotional storytelling and policy pivots that follow — the switch from defending Clancy to proposing expansive social programs — as evidence that feminist thinking disarms conservatism’s core commitments to self-reliance, fiscal restraint, and moral clarity.
A provocative plea for ‘anti-feminist’ restoration
The essay positions itself as a wake-up call. “If we want to restore any of that,” Murray concludes, “it has to be done with a radically anti-feminist approach, and we’re going to have to upset not just the leftist women, but the ‘conservative’ ones too.”
She acknowledges the charged nature of her language, and how she has been on an “anti-woman kick” in recent writing — a phrase she refines to “anti-feminism bent in my character.” The self-aware framing suggests a deliberate provocation, a refusal to soften her critique for the sake of perceived politeness or conservative decorum.
The piece is not a policy memo or a legislative argument; it is a cultural broadside. Murray is making the case that the fundamental aesthetic and moral logic of America was masculine — from innovation to battlefield courage to self-governance — and that feminism, including the conservative variant, substitutes feeling for principle precisely when both families and the republic are most vulnerable.
Whatever one makes of its claims about voting rights or the Founding era, the column is a clear artifact of a forceful strain in contemporary conservative commentary: one that views gender-based pity as a political weapon, and that sees no reliable ally in the softer language of “maternal well-being” or “mental health crisis” when those words are used to argue for expanded state power.
For Murray, the stakes are nothing less than the moral inheritance of the nation. Her answer is not reform but repudiation — a return to uncompromising, unmistakably masculine foundations, and a willingness to break with fellow travelers who flinch at the consequences.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/feminism-is-rot-even-when-it-s-conservative-feminism/