Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: December 28, 2023, 12:08:33 am »Counterculture was total revolutionary opposition to the Democratic Western Civilization
The rightist's solution to the Counterculture
Source :
Posted on March 3, 2020 The ’64 Civil Rights Act and the Origins of Political Correctness Nicholas J. Kaster, American Thinker, March 2, 2020
https://www.amren.com/news/2020/03/the-64-civil-rights-act-and-the-origins-of-political-correctness/
Quote
In his new book The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, Claremont Institute scholar Christopher Caldwell explains how the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark legislation designed to end segregation in the South, gave unprecedented power to Washington and ended up dividing the country.
To be sure, Caldwell recognizes that Jim Crow was immoral and needed to be eradicated. But in doing so, he contends, the law enacted permanent emergency powers that vastly increased federal control over the private lives of Americans. The law created new crimes, outlawed discrimination in almost every aspect of public and private life and exposed nearly every facet of American life to direction from bureaucrats and judges.
What had seemed in 1964 to be merely an ambitious reform revealed itself to be something more. Caldwell writes:
“The changes of the 1960s, with civil rights at their core, were not just a major new element in the Constitution. They were a rival constitution, with which the original one was frequently incompatible–and the incompatibility would worsen as the civil rights regime was built out.”
This seems like extreme language today, but there were prominent figures at the time who pointed out that the civil rights laws were on a collision course with the Constitution. Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and law professor Robert Bork both pointed out that the Act created conflicts with the constitutional protections accorded to private property and freedom of association.
...
Needless to say, none of these policy ideas, from busing to affirmative action, had popular support. But they rolled on nonetheless, supported by the new regime of political correctness, which proved to be the enforcement arm of the civil rights revolution.
Caldwell traces the origins of PC to the student upheavals of the late 60s, especially the five-month strike organized by black students at San Francisco State that led to the establishment of ethnic studies departments at all major universities by the end of the 70s.
Caldwell notes that:
“Political correctness was a top-down reform. It was enabled not by new public attitudes toward reactionary opinions but by new punishments that could be meted out against those who expressed them. The power of political correctness generally derived, either directly or at one remove, from the civil rights laws of the 1960s.”
The rightist's solution to the Counterculture
Quote
Toward the end of the book, Caldwell writes, “Republicans, loyal to the pre-1964 constitution, could not acknowledge (or even see) that the only way back to the free country of their ideals was through the repeal of the civil rights laws.”
This is the most provocative statement in the book, yet it has the feel of a throwaway line. The author surely knows that ending the Civil Rights Act is not politically feasible.
But we could push for two major changes. First, eliminate affirmative action once and for all and make civil rights law color blind. Second, strike back at PC by enforcing freedom of speech on campuses so that students are exposed to a diversity of opinions and not just a diversity of races and genders.
Source :
Posted on March 3, 2020 The ’64 Civil Rights Act and the Origins of Political Correctness Nicholas J. Kaster, American Thinker, March 2, 2020
https://www.amren.com/news/2020/03/the-64-civil-rights-act-and-the-origins-of-political-correctness/