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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... 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 sud- den abandonment of those principles during ...
... need to re- plenish the nature and spirit of the civil rights vision and to offer a viable and attractive alternative to the seductive enticement of equality without effort . Only then can we recapture the moral high Introduction xiii.
Civil Rights at the Crossroads Clint Bolick. effort . Only then can we recapture the moral high ground and regain lead- ership in the fight for civil rights . For those who would complain that a focus on principles is too abstract , too ...
... effort required to preserve and advance them . Little consensus or prog- ress on the civil rights issues that confront us today is possible without addressing these threshold issues . Part I will address these issues as a neces- sary ...
... efforts . Men were distinguished from lower creatures by virtue of their capacity to reason . This reason caused them to observe the one constraint that was necessary to preserve a state of maximum liberty — the rule that a man's rights ...
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 |