Civil rights survived because it proved an extraordinary tool—unlike any in peacetime constitutional history—for contravening democratic decision-mak… - Christopher Caldwell

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Civil rights survived because it proved an extraordinary tool—unlike any in peacetime constitutional history—for contravening democratic decision-making. By withholding money, by suing states and businesses, the federal government can use civil rights law to coerce local authorities ­into changing policies; it can alter the behavior of private citizens. When Bill Clinton broadened the remit of civil rights, he didn’t have to spend money to do it. His predecessor, George H. W. Bush, had taken the first steps down this road. Bush’s Civil Rights Act of 1991 introduced punitive damages in a broad range of civil rights cases, creating major incentives to file lawsuits for race and sex discrimination.

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About Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell (born 1962) is an American journalist, author and a former senior editor at The Weekly Standard, as well as a regular contributor to the Financial Times and Slate. He is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and contributing editor to the Claremont Review of Books. Caldwell's writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He was also a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Press and the assistant managing editor of The American Spectator.

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Additional quotes by Christopher Caldwell

The policing of tolerance had no inbuilt limits and no obvious logic. Why was 'ethnic pride' a virtue and 'nationalism' a sickness? Why was an identity like 'Sinti/Roma' legitimate but an identity like 'white' out of bounds? Why had it suddenly become criminal to ask questions today that it was considered a citizen's duty to ask ten years ago?

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In order to work, free-trade systems must be frictionless and immune to interruption, forever. This means a program of intellectual property protection, zero tariffs, and cross-border traffic in everything, including migrants. This can be assured only in a system that is veto-proof and non-consultative—in short, undemocratic. That is why it is those who have benefited most from globalization who have been leading the counterattack against the democracy movements arising all over the West.

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