By Nicholas J. Kaster
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.
“Those who opposed the legislation,” Caldwell observes, “proved wiser about its consequences than those who sponsored it.” .............To Read More
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