Why We Should Repeal the Civil Rights Act

In his 1995 article titled “Repeal ’64,” Lew Rockwell argued against extending the Civil Rights Act 1964 to new areas of application, on the basis that, “Bad law should be repealed, not extended.” His primary objection to expanding civil rights protection to the new groups of victims that emerge daily was that the civil rights regime is incompatible with basic individual liberties such as freedom of association, freedom of contract, and freedom of expression. This was indeed why Charlie Kirk—an astute observer of contemporary politics—argued that passing the civil rights law was a mistake:

“I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it,” Kirk said at America Fest. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”

Far from constraining the growth of tyrannical government, the civil rights regime serves as a justification for increasing the size of government ostensibly to give it enough power and capability to enforce civil rights. An example of how the civil rights regime operates as a growth engine for federal government power is seen in the belief of the Trump administration that the best way to thwart the violent Democrats is by unleashing “civil rights” investigations into their political campaigns. The Democrats accuse the Trump administration of “weaponizing” the civil rights division of the Department of Justice against them, even though they did exactly the same thing to persecute Republicans when they were in power.

The civil rights bureaucracy is undeniably a favorite weapon of both wings of the uniparty, and the civil rights platform is one of the main justifications for both left and right to unite in maximizing federal power over the states. It is obvious that they do this because—just like the mantra of “social justice”—the concept of “civil rights” is one guaranteed to cloak any tyrant in false righteousness. The Constitution does not defend the citizen from civil rights tyranny; on the contrary, if you imagine the Constitution as a harmless poodle, the Civil Rights Act is an angry pit bull owned by a gangster who is determined to bend everyone to his will and plunder all that they own. The Civil Rights Act has aptly been described as “the law that ate the constitution.” Therefore, Rockwell is right to argue that

The Constitution has never stood in the way of civil rights enforcement. In the name of stamping out illegal discrimination, fundamental rights like freedom of association are denied daily. The ethical gloss of civil rights has long since vanished, leaving only the brute power of statism to enforce an egalitarian agenda… Until anti-discrimination law is repealed, nothing can block the march of big government.

Rockwell also has a more philosophical objection to anti-discrimination law, which relates to the importance of freedom of thought and conscience.

Think about the term “discrimination.” It means choosing among several options. Our every thought, word, and deed are choices among options. We stop discriminating only when we become slaves or when we die. When the government got into the business of regulating our choices through anti-discrimination law, it was attempting to regulate our thoughts.

One must not be surprised to see progressives being nonchalant about threats to fundamental liberties, because progressives are never concerned about anything that stands in the way of what they view as social progress. They see no problem with unlimited federal power because they believe their good intentions justify anything they may see as a good social policy. Of far greater concern for defenders of liberty is the fact that conservatives, especially the neoconservatives, have proved to be utterly impervious to any warnings about the threat posed by the civil rights regime. This is primarily because they believe they can tame this beast and use it to promote their goals and thwart their political enemies. Their instinctive reaction to any authoritarian scheme dreamed up by progressives is, “Let us use this authoritarian scheme to promote our own bigger and better goals.” The thought that no government—left or right—should coerce citizens seems not to occur to them. Rockwell explains:

It’s conservatives, not liberals, who are naive about the real meaning of anti-discrimination law. They say they love the Civil Rights Act, “Dr.” King, and the “ideal” of the color-blind society. They want to protect “individuals” from discrimination, but not “groups.” They like “equality of opportunity” but don’t like “equality of result.”

Further, Rockwell emphasizes that the alternative to the uniparty civil rights regime is individual liberty, meaning that citizens should be free to think and free to choose. Replacing civil rights with a new enforcement regime based on “merit-based opportunity” would only amount to replacing one form of government coercion with a different form of coercion. This would not solve the problem of government overreach but merely shift it from one goalpost to another. Liberty entails freedom to associate or not to associate; freedom to integrate or not to integrate; freedom to promote DEI or to reject DEI. Liberty means precisely this—that not everyone will make the same choices and not everyone will be happy about the choices made by others. As Rockwell explains:

If a college or university wants a racial quota, fine. Another can have an exclusivist admission policy. The same goes for business: the government should never again tell anyone they have too many or not enough of this or that group. We also need to give up the notion of a “color-blind society”—a goal as absurdly utopian as socialism itself—and settle for real fairness: a neutral legal environment of contract enforcement.

Imagine a world without anti-discrimination law. Every employee would be planned and wanted. Business would be free to advertise for job openings without fearing lawsuits. There would be no more quota loans from banks. The credit rating would mean something again. The university could get back to being a place of learning instead of a victimological remediation center.