There are countless examples of noble, virtuous ideas being hijacked and corrupted by political parasites and used as an excuse to reduce human freedom and increase authoritarian power. In fact, almost any good idea can be co-opted by the ruling class, who will promise to use the power of the state (i.e., violence) to serve the noble cause, but it always ends up making things worse. A few examples:
1 - Nice thought: “It would be good if poor people got some help.”
Political corruption of the idea: Massive forced extortion and redistribution of wealth which is drastically wasteful, inefficient and corrupt, rewards laziness and punishes productivity, and keeps millions of people perpetually dependent.
2 - Nice thought: “Wouldn’t it be neat if school was free for all children?”
Political corruption of the idea: Almost all property owners are robbed (via “property taxes”) to pay for “government” indoctrination camps that a lot of people don’t use, don’t want, and don’t support.
3 - Nice thought: “I wish bad guys didn’t have guns.”
Political corruption of the idea: Ruling classes outlaw or severely limit the private ownership of firearms, leaving the common people susceptible to threats and attacks by crooks—both private crooks and “government” crooks.
4 - Nice thought: “It would be good if fewer people were addicted to harmful, mind-altering drugs.”
Political corruption of the idea: “Governments” criminalize the mere possession of substances, dramatically increasing drug-related violence, making mind-altering drugs far more dangerous, imprisoning millions of people for victimless “crimes,” and creating an excuse for widespread police state powers.
Incidentally, “nice thoughts” can also be hugely misguided while still being the result of good intentions. But the intentions of those in power, when they hijack those ideas and turn them into legislative “solutions,” is always increased power of the state and decreased individual freedom.
And the same is true of the authoritarian garbage now mislabeled as “civil rights.”
It started well enough, with a nice thought: “Wouldn’t it be nice if the majority wasn’t nasty towards minorities?” Many of the valid objections were about blacks being mistreated by “government” agents, although private race-based violence also occurred (and occurred in all directions, among different groups and races). The complaints were based on two distinct categories of nastiness: 1) people initiating force against others based on their race, religion, nationality, etc., and; 2) people being rude, racist, bigoted buttheads, but without actually committing aggression. The former constitutes violence. The latter doesn’t. The former justifies the use of (defensive) force. The latter doesn’t.
When it comes to actual aggression, regardless of the reason or attempted justification, I’m all in favor of people using defensive force to stop it. For example, Malcolm X was absolutely right when he spoke of blacks having the right to forcibly defend themselves—with firearms, no less (“Goodness me! Armed negroes!”)—when “the law” wouldn’t. And when “the law” was the aggressor, he was still right. (Yes, I know that Malcolm X also had his own racist tendencies, which it seems like he eventually outgrew.)
But those with a political agenda are never content to limit “government” power to merely defending people from aggression, because that gives the ruling class little or no power. Since normal people already have the right to defend themselves and others, no one runs for office with the intention of just using force defensively. They run for office to subjugate and control others in ways that normal people have no right to.
And so, as always happens, the “government” solution to immoral aggression (in the form of the violent victimization of American blacks) was to add more immoral aggression in a different direction. The political parasites went from imposing forced segregation to imposing forced integration, at no time just allowing individuals to decide for themselves who to associate with and who to trade with. They went from requiring people to discriminate based on race, to forbidding people from discriminating based on race.
This is where people who do more feeling than thinking start to get offended. Racism, discrimination, bigotry and rudeness, in and of themselves, do not justify violence, from “government” or anyone else. If some racist white restaurant owner doesn’t want to hire or serve minorities, forcing him to is a worse injustice than allowing him to be an asshole. Why? Because even obnoxious buttheads own themselves. And, of course, this applies in all directions. If some store owner wants to hire only blacks, or serve only blacks, he has the absolute right to do so, no matter what anyone else thinks of that.
One problem is that people are so stuck in the “There-ought-to-be-a-law!” mentality that they assume that if you don’t want something crushed via the violence of the state, then you must approve of it. Because that is how they think: if they don’t like how their neighbors act, talk, and think, they will be first in line to beg the ruling class to force their neighbors to change. However, not only is this immoral, but it almost always makes the problem worse.
What it leads to is different groups and factions vying to see who can have “government” forcing their preferences on everyone else. And that is absolutely by design. Those who crave political power rarely have any actual principles, and will flop-flip, change sides, or change policies, in whatever way will enrich and empower themselves. As long as people keep looking to “government” to fix things, the division, resentment and hatred will continue.
The only way the trick doesn’t work is if the people—of all colors, religions, etc.—stop asking the state to forcibly control everyone else's choices and behaviors. In other words, what ends totalitarianism is the people understanding and embracing the concepts of non-aggression, self-ownership and individual freedom. Yes, even the freedom of other people to make choices that you find stupid, short-sighted, silly, irresponsible, counter-productive, or even offensive.
(P.S. The only “civil rights”—or any rights—that anyone has is the right to have others not forcibly aggressing against you. You don't have a right to free stuff, or a right to not be offended, or a right to have others be who you wish they were.)