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The revival of conservative political fortunes is one of the moststriking aspects of contemporary American life. Law and societyscholars have increasingly recognized the centrality of legal ideas andlanguage, especially the discourse of individual rights, to thepolitical vision that inspires conservative movement politics. However,relevant studies have been limited thus far to the discursive practicesthat motivate movement activism at the grass-roots level. Explorationof the legal discourses employed by prominent public officials thuscarries significant scholarly potential. Investigation of PresidentRonald Reagan, for example, reveals that his political vision wassuffused with legal categories and expressed with particularly legallanguage. And that language was influential. Indeed, Reagan's legaldiscourse had constitutive effects that registered in two domains.First, that discourse was critically important for the popularizationand, especially, the naturalization of the stock villains whosesubversive misdeeds fuel conservative movement participation in theAmerican "culture wars." Second, these national villains, imprintedwith Reagan's distinctive legal brand, have worked as the ideologicalcornerstones for a great deal of contemporary American public policy, asevidenced by prevailing trends in the areas of higher education,criminal justice, and welfare administration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The willingness of American conservatives to claim the symbolism of equal rights is, arguably, one of the most surprising aspects of contemporary American politics. No longer on the defensive, conservatives now consistently deploy their own forms of rights talk. They do so as a resource both for imagining and promoting their interests and for vilifying the rights-claims of historically marginalized Americans. Their rights discourse at once sanctifies their personal and group privilege and, because it stigmatizes the activism of relatively powerless Americans, contributes to the cultural logics and material practices that have propelled the nation's "right turn" - its shoring up of traditional hierarchies.Accordingly, conservative rights discourse, which habitually opposes legitimate equal to allegedly illegitimate "special" rights, is simultaneously a ritual through which the identity of the speaker is both expressed and consolidated and a strategy meant to regulate (either positively or negatively, to initiate or mute) the behavior of others. Indeed, conservative claims of equal rights are efforts (at once constitutive and instrumental) to discipline, or regulate, the behavior of those who challenge ingrained, structural forms of inequality. Making certain kinds of rights-claims shameful, conservative rights talk imposes a regime of self-regulation.Consideration of popular and elite responses to the treaty-rights claims of Native American tribal nations grounds my analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper explores the ways in which conservative activists have mobilized public and elite support in order to oppose the civil-rights claims of historically-marginalized Americans. I argue that conservative activism is propelled and shaped by its own form of rights talk, one that distinguishes legitimate claims for equal rights and equal treatment from illegitimate claims for 'special rights' and preferential treatment. Interpreting the civil-rights claims of groups such as Native Americans, gays and lesbians, African-Americans, and women as claims for special rights, conservative activists emphasize that these claims threaten a variety of core American values, including equality, individual merit, and community harmony. I argue further that the successful definition of the civil-rights claims of historically-marginalized Americans as special and unfair is politically important in two, intertwined ways. First, use of the special rights logic, because of its focus upon the allegedly endangered values of equality, individual merit, and community harmony, amplifies the resentment that conservative activists feel over the political participation of historically marginalized groups. Convinced that that participation is not only unfair but also un-American, activists redouble their opposition, which is now propelled by nationalistic sentiment. Second, I find that the use of the special rights logic expands the scope of conflict; it helps activists persuade otherwise disinterested popular and elite audiences of the dangers that 'special rights' present for the American community. In so doing, the special rights logic encourages those audiences to lend support to activists' attempts to block the social changes that historically-marginalized groups seek to accomplish with their rights mobilizations. A case study of reactions against the contemporary treaty-rights claims of Native American tribal governments puts flesh on these insights. My paper would fit well on panels that explore the impacts of rights mobilizations on American politics and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]