Last month's RED rant, "What Went Wrong With Feminism," could well serve as a primer on how and why the Tea Party in particular, and the cowed moderate rump of the formerly GRAND and now indisputably OLD Party has lost the support of the vast majority of women in Virginia, in the United States as a whole and among significant numbers of moderate Republican women as well.

Modern "feminism" RED argues, has become "the enemy of everything feminine," as if all those he considers modern "feminists" can be defined by his truly oddball and narrowly defined notion of what constitutes modern feminism or by his notion that feminists must not only meet his criteria, but be female at all.

"Modern" feminism is "all about abortion and gay rights," RED pontificates. Nonsense. Those obsessions clearly define the modern Tea Party, and any number of adherents to assorted religious cults claiming special insights into the mind of God, but certainly not to modern feminists.

Modern feminists, RED continues, favor killing children "when their presence becomes burdensome." That's not only nonsense, but an affront to every human being, male or female, who ever had to face the necessity of terminating a pregnancy, or counsel those in that position. It is especially galling when bandied about by a passionate defender of denying healthcare to women, children, and the elderly, not to mention indiscriminate carpet bombing of civilian populations (but that's another story.)

Feminists, RED contends, "confuse equality with sameness." Nonsense. I know of no feminists (and I count myself among them) who suffer from an inability to draw the distinction between "equal" in the "eyes of God," or "equal before the law" and some sort of "sameness," sexual or otherwise. Indeed, no feminist I have ever known or read dismisses biologically determined differences between men and women as either "bad" or "merely cultural."

Our good RED colleague next argues that feminists don't like the notion that women have babies. (!!!) The feminists I know love babies, adopt them, nurture them, mentor and teach them, and all too often continue to put up with infantile behavior on the part of their spouses, friends and partners well into their dotage.

Hillary Clinton, RED insists, is not only the feminist "ideal" but "a woman who has never accomplished anything except as an adjunct of her husband." One could argue, of course, that precisely the opposite was true, though, to the Clintons' credit and the world's gain, neither of them would do so. Personally, I look forward to the day when RED, if in uniform, will stand and salute Ms. Clinton as his Commander-in-Chief.

RED's notion of "feminine" perfection, "independence" and "success," of course, is none other than Sarah Palin. It is at least arguable that all the things that endear Palin to RED and her fans, and all the things that contributed to her singular lack of success in nearly every field of human endeavor, politics not least among them, are precisely the demands of an isolated, oddball religious and anti-feminists society whose norms, much beloved by RED, she did her best to live up to.

Perhaps the most striking, sad and infuriating elements of Red's anti-feminist rant, however, at least in the view of this old white male, was his complete lack of appreciation for the centuries-long struggle for fair and humane treatment of women in even the most "enlightened" of "western" societies.

Women, RED argues, were somehow, magically, "given" their rights to vote by "men"...as if the right to equal treatment before the law, freedom from abuse, injustice and unconscionable discrimination were ever "men's" to "give"...and as if the struggle to obtain those rights and freedoms had not cost lives, and fortunes, and "sacred honor" of generations of good women (and men) who, then and now carry on the struggle and proudly label themselves "feminist."

Goodbye and, with All Due respect, Good Riddance