For most modern Americans, the issue of “rights” is talked about in spiritual terms, more than practical or legal terms. The concept of Natural Rights has lost all meaning to the modern person, even though our system depends upon the concept. That is not necessarily a bad thing. As Western societies have evolved since the Enlightenment, the concept of rights has expanded and evolved as well. Today, what we think of as “our rights” fall into three general areas, civil, political and social.

For Americans, the concept of civil rights has been tangled up in racial politics, mostly because of baby boomers nostalgia. As a result, three generations of Americans have been steeped in the mythology of the Civil Rights Movement, thinking it only applies to black people. Putting that aside, we expect equality before the law and due process. The law should apply to everyone equally and the administration of the law should follow a transparent and predictable process.

While civil rights are about equality before the law, political rights are about equality in formulating the law. That means having an equal shot to participate in the political process which creates the laws. Equality before the law is not worth a lot if your enemies have the exclusive right to dictate the law. The real change in the Civil Rights Movement was in the political realm. Blacks are now fully included in the nation’s political process.

As civil and political rights have expanded, social rights have contracted. The right to live your life unmolested by others is increasingly difficult. It used to be a given that a man had a right to anonymity. That is just about impossible today. More important, it is increasingly difficult to hold unorthodox opinions and beliefs. Half a century ago, people dreamed of a colorblind future, but today, people dream of not getting fired for posting FBI crime stats on Facebook.

This relentless intrusion on our social rights is in the news on a daily basis. This story from Tampa is a representative example. Here is a woman, hounded by bigots, because she holds unapproved opinions. You can be sure that the ululating fanatics will be badgering her school system to fire her from her job. We now live in a society in which thinking things that were commonly understood a generation ago, is used to ruin a person’s life, making them a pariah in their own community.

This erosion of social rights is not just in the public sphere. If a group of people holding unapproved thoughts wants to socialize privately, the bigots will seek them out and call down the rock throwers on them. This story from Michigan is typical. These people are going to great lengths to avoid drawing attention to themselves, yet the local progressives are hunting them down, hoping to prevent them from having a private dinner together. Iran has more social liberty.

Of course, the war on social rights is just the start. The orchestrated assault on the nation’s oldest political rights organization is one example of the effort to extend the denial of social rights to the denial of political rights. The ongoing legal effort to deny Americans their civil rights, based on their thoughts, is another aspect to this war on our general liberties. The plaintiffs are asking the court to create a new legal status for heretics, which denies them the rights and privileges of citizenship.

Now, the reason Western societies evolved political systems that respect civil rights and allow for near universal participation in politics is to reduce political violence. When the working class can organize around the candidates of their choice, they do not have to stage bread riots. When minority groups can expect equality before the law, they do not have to make war on the majority. Participatory democracy, in theory, gives everyone a stake in the system and a reason to defend it against subversion.

What is happening today is a unilateral declaration that a growing list of opinions and ideas are off-limits. Anyone that embraces them, or is suspected of embracing them, is outside the sphere to which civil, political and social rights apply. These outside people become fair game, as they have no legal avenue to seek redress. A person who loses his job because he agrees with what his grandfathers thought, is quickly becoming a man without a country.

In this Tucker Carlson profile, he makes the point that he lives in a great neighborhood with smart wonderful neighbors. It is America as it was in 1955, so naturally the people living there are deeply satisfied with their work as a ruling elite. The reason for that is they have no idea what is happening out in the hinterlands. They avoid the consequences of their preferred polices. If hordes of migrants show up in their schools, they will not be so self-satisfied.

The same logic applies to what is happening in this social war being waged against political dissidents. The people hounding schoolteachers out of their jobs can feel self-satisfied, because they get to avoid the same treatment. The people harassing companies to break ties with the heretics, have no skin in the game, so they are free to overindulge in righteous indignation. At some point, this leads to violence, either against the victims or by the victims.

That is why the current climate is so dangerous. Nature supplies more men with nothing to lose than any society can need. A political system that systematically marginalizes large swaths of young men, telling them they have no place in the world, is a society begging for political violence. Rebecca Klein of the Huffington Post may be feeling smug, for having “outed” a bad thinker, but she is not going to be so smug when her Prius blows up when she tries to start it.

During the Civil Rights Movement, there came a point where the people in charge faced a choice. They could let reasonable men on both sides find an accommodation, or they could let the unreasonable men on both sides fight it out. Today, the people in charge have that same choice. They can put their unreasonable people on a leash and deal honestly with the reasonable people in dissent, or they can continue to wage this social war and invite the war into their streets and their neighborhoods.

This will not end well.