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
Results 1-5 of 31
... basic freedoms has not been an easy one . We are today still reminded of our often shameful past — and distance we have yet to travel — by such specta- cles as the gang killings of blacks in Howard Beach . N.Y .: by the presence of the ...
... basic freedoms we all share equally as Americans into special priv- ileges for some and burdens for others . based solely on the same charac- teristics they once fought to render irrelevant . They have exchanged " color blindness " for ...
... basic rights that were essential to their survival — the right to life . liberty , and the fruits of their efforts . Men were distinguished from lower creatures by virtue of their capacity to reason . This reason caused them to observe ...
... basic tenets . which were forcefully propounded by Thomas Jefferson . Patrick Henry . Benjamin Franklin . George Mason , and others . But more than any of his compatriots . Thomas Paine under- stood the necessity of basing the moral ...
... Basic Documents on Human Rights ( Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1971 1 . p . 8 . 20. Paine . Dissertation . p . 199 . 21. Hayek . p . 85 . 22. Id . at 87 . 23. Id . 24. de Tocqueville . p . 254 . 25. James Origins of the Quest 11.
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 |