"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex."

That was the ERA, introduced in the 1920s and then dormant for decades, until 1972 when Congress sent it out to the states for ratification within seven years. The ERA failed to make the cut, despite support by three presidents (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter), despite an extended ratification period, and despite much noise from NOW, a group representing not women but militant feminists. Now the same old ERA is making a comeback, wrapped with a new label containing a specific reference to women, as though this was somehow a spontaneous resurgence from the masses. It's nothing of the kind.

The WEA is the work of liberal politicos who have better things to do. Backers include Senators Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California, with their House counterparts; Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler of New York. They are probably banking on a new generation with no memory of the ERA campaign. Fortunately, no new arguments against it are required.

One need not be an attorney or constitutional scholar to recognize that the "persons" mentioned in the Constitution include women, nor that current constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process need no enhancement. Not that the ERA-turned-WEA would be up to the task.

Its meaning has never been clear and the language, particularly the phrase "on account of sex," is broad enough to accommodate just about anything in the hands of an activist judge. As Steven Chapman wisely observed in the Chicago Tribune, "When you approve a constitutional amendment setting the minimum voting age at 18, you can be confident that it will not turn out to be 19 or 17. But when you issue a broad mandate, you buy a surprise package whose contents will become known only after it is too late."

Such a surprise package we don't need, so better not to buy in the first place. As George Will and others have pointed out, there can be little doubt that this is all by design, part of a campaign to use the Supreme Court as a kind of robed politburo to impose policies that did not find favor with the people. That's what this is about, not equality for women, who are doing rather well at the moment.

This column has pointed out that women now run universities such as Harvard and Princeton and serve in all levels of government, including the Supreme Court. One woman wants to be President of the United States, and is raising a lot of money toward that goal. Women are serving with distinction in the military and, as we have also noted, women run think tanks and major corporations. They accomplished all this, and more, on their own, without an ERA. The campaign to bring it back, however, need not be a complete waste of time. Indeed, it can be a defining moment.

The Women's Equality Amendment, as the second coming of the ERA, is a long overdue confession that feminism of the NOW variety suffers from a bankruptcy of ideas and has little or nothing to say. This is a movement that preaches independence but still relies on the Big Brother of government.

This is also a movement that doesn't know how to lose. Legislators can repeat the lesson by giving the WEA the back of their hand and, for the time being, enrolling the U.S. Constitution in the leave-us-alone coalition.