Civil Society and Civil Rights

A libertarian viewpoint

civil society  In ancient times, more than two millennia ago, something like this referred to the ^*political aspects of a ^*civilised ^*society. In modern times, “civil society” has increasingly come to be used to mean all aspects of the voluntary society that exist outside politics or the ^*state (so even to receive any state-funding is to become quasi-political). As such, these are opposites: as civil society grows so politics must shrink, and vice versa. A completely civil society would be an ^*anarchy; a completely political society would be ^*totalitarian.

civil rights  ^*Rights against the ^*state. As with any other ^*criminal ^*organisation, the only right against the state is to be left alone by it. Thus, civil rights ought to be seen as identical with ^*civil liberties. But in recent decades there has been a great inflation of “rights” whereby people have decided there ought to be state-enforced rights to virtually anything they feel strongly is a “good thing” that all should enjoy. The problem is that such rights can only be respected by interfering with the real ^*liberties and rights of other people. When the so-called “civil rights” movement in the USA demanded that compulsory ^*racial segregation be replaced by what was in effect compulsory racial integration (for both state/government and certain private facilities), they were in fact demanding that the existing abridgement of the right of ^*freedom of association be replaced by a new opposite, and equally wrong, abridgement of that right.

(These are entries from A LIBERTARIAN DICTIONARY: Explaining a Philosophical Theory [draft currently being revised]. Asterisks indicate other entries.)