Seymour Martin Lipset
o achievement of 20th-cen- tury American politics sur- passes the creation of an enduring national consen-sus on civil rights. This consensus was forged dur-
ing the past quarter century a civil-rights
movement that compelled Americans fi-
nally to confront the wide gap between
their treatment of blacks and the egalitar-
ian values of their own cherished national
creed.
In recent years, however, the leaders of the civil-rights movement have shifted the focus from the...