Changing Course: Civil Rights at the CrossroadsChanging Course traces the rise and fall of the civil rights movement in the United States. It locates the origins of the civil rights vision firmly in the intellectual soil of the American Revolution. This vision carried the day through the abolition of slavery to the triumph of equal opportunity in the 1960s. Throughout, Bolick argues, the efforts of the civil rights movement were rooted in principles of natural law, and anchored in concern for fundamental rights and equality under the law. Bolick explores the movement's sudden abandonment of those principles during the 1960s, and examines the nature and consequences of the revised civil rights agenda during the past two decades. The book is particularly timely, appearing in the midst of growing polarization over civil rights and at a time when both liberals and conservatives are grappling to set a course of action for the post-Reagan years. "Changing Course "identifies clearly real civil rights problems of today as government-erected barriers to entrepreneurial and educational opportunity as well as a vicious cycle of dependency and despair. Bolick outlines a vigorous course of action that would eliminate those barriers based on traditional principles of civil rights. The book provides an intellectual and practical framework for a positive alternative to the agenda of the present-day civil rights establishment. It challenges advocates of individual liberty to reclaim leadership in the quest for civil rights for all. |
From inside the book
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... Paine , to William Lloyd Garrison . to Frederick Douglass , to Abraham Lincoln . to Booker T. Washington . to W.E.B. DuBois . to Martin Luther King . The legacy of the quest for civil rights in America is a steadfast commitment to the ...
... Paine . Dissertation on First Principles of Government ( 1775 1 The quest for civil rights in America is well into its third century . But despite this history , perhaps less agreement exists today than at any time before over such ...
... Paine under- stood the necessity of basing the moral justification of the new nation on the protection of " civil ... Paine's definition of civil rights is based upon the concept of natural rights . He explained that civil rights are ...
... Paine and others recognized that an unchecked dem- ocratic system posed grave dangers to individual rights . A system in which rights could be compromised through the coercive power of the legislature was antithetical to the social ...
... Paine declared , is " clear and simple , " for " where the rights of man are equal , every man must finally see the necessity of protect- ing the rights of others as the most effectual security for his own . " " A member of a majority ...
Contents
5 | |
Abolitionism The Quest for Freedom | 13 |
The Triumph of Opportunity | 31 |
The Quest Abandoned | 53 |
RECHARTING THE COURSE OF CIVIL RIGHTS | 79 |
Introduction to Part II | 81 |
The Failed Agenda | 84 |