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If you said to someone like columnist George Will or radio personality Rush Limbaugh, "You must really hate women if you feel that negatively about feminism," they'd deny it to their dying breaths.

But Will doesn't think women's rights are important enough for a constitutional amendment, nor does he think that such an amendment would do much good anyway.

"And what mature person thinks the Constitution should be cluttered up with consciousness-raising pieties or affirmations, on the theory that, by some mysterious causality, the social climate will be improved?" Will asked in a recent column.

I wonder if Will feels this way about the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, the 14th Amendment forbidding any state to "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," the 15th Amendment forbidding racial discrimination in voting, the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women's suffrage or the 26th Amendment guaranteeing 18-year-olds the right to vote.

Do these cornerstones of justice and equality "clutter up" the Constitution "with consciousness-raising pieties or affirmations" that have only a "mysterious causality" in improving the social climate? Should we rescind them and see how the nation works without them?

That's an absurd notion on the face of it, of course. But what makes the proposed Equal Rights Amendment for women any different? Nothing at all.

The ERA will read when ratified, "Equal rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

That's hardly a consciousness-raising piety. Only misogyny - the fear and hatred of women - would cause someone to think so.

I wonder if Will, often the conservatives' most rational commentator, would see himself as belonging in the same general category of moronic women-haters as Rush Limbaugh?

On a recent radio diatribe, Limbaugh gives mouth to the core brutality and idiocy of women-hating in certain circles of far-right America. Limbaugh blasts feminists while grousing and lamenting how hard it is for him to find a good, old-fashioned gal anymore to cook and clean and genuflect for him.

Limbaugh says that feminism and the ERA are supported only by what he calls "ugly women and lesbians," whom he accuses of not being able to make it on their own. This comes from the same guy who once compared the looks of a 12-year-old girl named Chelsea Clinton to those of a dog.

The best thing about Limbaugh and Will, when it comes to feminism, is that they reveal the true abusive sentiments and bludgeoning thought-patterns of people who detest, trivialize and scapegoat women.

It seems impossible to understand why women are such a fearful danger to them. But such opinions never seem to go away. Getting rid of them is as tedious and nasty as trying to scrape dog doo off the bottom of your shoes.