Posted on 01/24/2020 3:45:29 PM PST by karpov
Christopher Caldwell’s new book, The Age of Entitlement, offers a striking revision of recent American history that has the advantage of being readily summarized. The polarization of political opinion and the dissolution of the American fabric, he argues, has its roots in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which represented a sharp break with the past. “The changes of the 1960s, with civil rights at their core,” he explains, “were not just a major new element in the Constitution. They were a rival constitution, with which the original one was frequently incompatible.”
The common narrative surrounding civil rights, he maintains, is that it represented a fulfillment of the American promise of liberty. Since then, America has been steadily expanding the franchise to more classes of people. From the elimination of property requirements for voting to the post-Civil War due-process amendments, from the Nineteenth Amendment granting suffrage to women to the bestowal of full citizenship on Native Americans in 1924, from desegregation and the civil rights movement to lowering the voting age, and all the way up to the Windsor and Obergefell Supreme Court decisions extending full rights to gay people, America has become fully invested in treating all its citizens as “created equal.”
As Caldwell sees it, this standard version of American history ignores the disruption caused by the key judicial decisions and legislative actions of the fifties and sixties surrounding desegregation and civil rights. The Deep South under Jim Crow was a cruel “sham democracy” and an embarrassment to American self-regard as the standard-bearer of liberty. Hence a radical adjustment of the legal status of African-Americans was immediately necessary. The unanticipated result of the legislation, however, was a constitutional crisis that we have not only not gotten over
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
I read another article about this guy’s thesis and his book. I think he’s really on to something. Worth checking out. I’ll be buying his book.
No, we’ve been living under the electronic curtain (PROPAGANDA ARM) of the lying, thieving CRIMINAL STATE players in this once fabulous republic.
In the name of cosmic justice , those amendments assigned powers to the Federal Government that took away the control from natural property owners and handed them over to the Federal Government. Don't like a companies hiring choice? Appeal to the real master, Uncle Sam, for a remedy!Mozlems love this feature and have been happily forcing businesses to accommodate their evil religion with it.
Those amendments passed by blackmailing the South into accepting them or they didn't get to rejoin the Union. While one hand eliminated slavery the other hand instituted it in a larger less obvious form. Taking someones property without compensation is slavery, The only argument is to what degree you are a slave.
I suspect that the alternate Constitution of which he speaks actually really got going in the 1930s when FDR threatened to pack SCOTUS, and some of the justices subsequently caved in to his ideals.
I also previously posted an excerpt from a New York Magazine article about this book.
The 14th Amendment was originally meant to deal with freed slaves. The subsequent interpretations of it to protect hommosexuals, Moslems, children of illegal aliens and other groups are horrendous distortions of its actual intent. Even the original Civil Rights Act, in its intent to protect the descendants of the freed slaves, went too far with its “public accomodations”-style mandates on private businesses, according to people like Rand Paul and Barry “You can’t change a man’s heart” Goldwater.
Yes, I think I’d seen that. In any case, this is the second article on this I’ve seen. I think he’s really on to something.
For those criticizing him for not having a solution, I’m just glad to have a thesis that provides a better theoretical understanding of what is going on. It’s up to all of us to come up with solutions.
The most fundamental of rights is the freedom to associate with, deal with, trade with whomever we choose. We have the right to discriminate for any and every reason including, but not limited to, race, color, creed, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual proclivities.
If for any reason you do not want to have any relationship with another, that is your right. Might not be nice. Like whom you choose.
We also have the right to use our property as we choose. Including excluding and including at will.
I like your thesis.
I am reading his book now and find it fascinating. He definitely is onto something.
Being able to put events into an understandable framework is the first step toward being able to formulate solutions.
Exactly.
The author fails to take into account the Tribal Doctrine of Sovereign Immunity which effectively created separate countries within the US.
It strikes me he is pretty accurate in describing what has happened.
I think he is wrong in stating that Black people, generally, subscribbed to the second version. That was sold to them by the Progressives.
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