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 39
... social engineering : justice for power . They have abandoned their role as statesmen and assumed the role of politicians : and . in so doing , they have tarnished the rich legacy they inherited . The civil rights mission has been cast ...
... social engineering , parasitism , and even violence . By recasting civil rights in this fashion . the movement has assumed a certain cannibalistic quality . for while it fosters a vested interest in promot- ing civil rights by some . it ...
... social contracts . " creating " societies " for the sole pur- pose of more effectively protecting their natural rights . Society is thus a volitional entity that derives its existence from the consent of its constitu- ents . But the ...
... social contract . Paine explained that [ i ] n a state of nature . all men are equal in rights but they are not equal in power : the weak cannot protect themselves against the strong . This being the case . the institution of civil ...
... social contract is that it incorporates into society the maximum individual liberty that existed in the state of nature . Equality in result . conversely , requires coercion by the state . which necessarily infringes upon the very ...
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 |