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The revival of conservative political fortunes is one of the most striking aspects of contemporary American life. Law and society scholars have increasingly recognized the centrality of legal ideas and language, especially the discourse of individual rights, to the political vision that inspires conservative movement politics. However, relevant studies have been limited thus far to the discursive practices that motivate movement activism at the grass-roots level. By investigating Ronald Reagan's nationalism, which relied heavily upon a particular version of "rights talk," this article begins to fill a gap in scholarly understanding. I shall argue that rights talk was one of the primary methods through which Reagan's nationalistic discourse distinguished good, productive citizens from bad, parasitic ones. The use, and abuse, of rights, in fact, marked one's efforts as either heroic or subversive - as emblematic either of the "ordered freedom" that underlay America's greatness or of the license and disorder that threatened to plunge the nation into chaos and, perhaps, communism. Moreover, by accosting them for their allegedly un-American rights-claims, Reagan's nationalism further stigmatized members of already-marginal groups (such as the poor, women, racial minorities, and the young), but did so in language that was facially neutral and avoided traditional stereotypes and ascriptions. Ronald Reagan's political vision, which is a model for contemporary American conservatives, thus emerged at the intersection of rights and nation. And the rights-based inclusions and exclusions that it enacted remain, like Reagan himself, a lasting feature of American politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars often remark that Ronald Reagan's public addresses were unusually persuasive to, and well-received by, popular audiences. Moreover, it is frequently noted that Reagan's addresses contained the essential elements of his political vision, which held out America as a "shining city on a hill," radiating outwards to all of the world's people the individual freedom that distinguished American democracy. In spite of Reagan's optimistic accounts of the American nation, he consistently warned against the overwhelming influence of "big government" on the initiative, morale, and liberty of the American people. Big government, Reagan advised, violated the individual rights that Americans held dear. I shall argue that this focus on rights also defined much of Reagan's foreign policy discourse. It was respect for the rights of individuals that distinguished responsible, mature democracies from the abuses characteristic of totalitarian regimes. Nowhere was this contrast more obvious, Reagan held, than in the distinction between the Soviet Union and the United States; the battle between freedom and tyranny was marked by respect for the rights of the individual. Given this focus, it is unsurprising that Reagan adopted the discourse of human rights, clothing American foreign policy actions and prerogatives in its legitimating guise. Yet his adoption was qualified. As seen in his condemnation of the Sandanistas, human rights led inexorably to market-style, representative democracy. Reagan's use of human rights discourse thus displays the ultimately ambivalent, unstable meanings that pervade it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]