Mr. Bartlett,
It was revealing to hear your conservative take on the history of racial issues and political parties on the CSpan Book Review program with Clarance Page. You said that Trent Lott got in lots of trouble for telling Strom Thurmond that he (Lott) wished he (Thurmond) had won the Presidency. Remarkable that you seem to have "forgotten" that his trouble started with the "we wouldn't have all these problems we have now" sentiment ( I wonder why Mr. Page did not point out the obvious). What problems? Blacks voting in the South? The possibility, at least, of home ownership in previously all-white neighborhoods? Equal employment opportunity? Access to previously all-white schools? There certainly was much to cause anxiety in the souls of the defenders of Jim Crow (white conservatives). Anyone alive during the "Civil Rights" era was aware of the prevailing white conservative perspective that "the n....s were taking over" and Thurmond was their great white hope. The "hope" later became stalwarts of the anti-civil rights reaction (Goldwater, Helms, Duke, Reagan, Gingrich, etc.)
About the Democrats and civil rights: I am old enough to remember President Johnson's comment at the time of signing civil rights legislation that "this will cost us the South for a generation". Two generations, now and counting . . . .The resultant flood of millions of white "social conservatives" (as the segregationists and white supremacists called themselves) out of the Democratic Party to the beckoning arms of the "Southern Strategized" Republican Party changed the Electoral map. Our racial problems, after all, had not to do with "Democratic vs. Republican", but liberal vs. conservative. As a Democrat who cheerfully watched the "unseating" of the Mississippi delegation at the 1972 Convention, I watched the Party do the most noble thing about its ignoble past. What a great opportunity for the GOP. too. to tell those bigots it was a new era; there was no room at their inn, either. But the GOP, which had been a somewhat progressive party on civil rights, took up the rallying cries of their new members. If you didn't want blacks in your restaurants, neighborhoods, workplaces,colleges, voting booths, etc. (the "problems" Trent was talking about), well, there was a party for you! Of course, the party didn't say it outright: Why, it was only against "reverse discrimination". It was for (Thurmond's) "States Rights". "Neighborhood schools". "Property rights". Nod, nod. Wink, wink.
White conservative politicians, authors, etc., have since tried to convince each other, and themselves, of theae preposterous fantasies. Overwhelming majorities of black Americans, as well as all conscientious Americans, are not misled by these transparent and self-serving efforts, though I am sure they do rally your "base".
Let me tell you about our liberal nightmare: That one day the GOP will confron and make a full confession about its Southern Strategy "deal" with the unreconstructed forces of racial injustice and sincerely repudiate it. So far, I have heard one (1) conservative do that: Jack Kemp. Now if you can get the other tens of millions to go along.....When that day comes, it will change the electoral map again (but then, where will your bigots go?)
Yours for a better America,
Rick Ravenscroft
Yours for a better America

Re: Rick Ravenscroft; Sir,...All these so called conservatives living in the past isn't half the problem of them wanting to take us to that happy place with them. It was not happy. It  was  never nice. It was ugly on an ape. It was brutal. The one reason everyone has worked hard, even giving their lives, working themselves into an early grave -was the thought that the future could not possibly be worse than the past; and now, look! The past has some how gotten ahead of us, and has become our future. It is the past all over again. When you thought the great depression was gone for good; Oh Oh! It's back. Stock market crash? Oh Noooooo! Here it comes again. I think the conservatives/reactionaries need a big dose of the past...The puritan revolution,  the beheading of Charles Stewart, The American revolution, the French revolution, the Russian revolution. What lessons do you take? I take the lesson that national bankruptcy leads to revolution. You might take a different lesson completely; that the past was not so great after all, and that the future could be better still; if we learn to live with people, and share the wealth, and the liberty, the justice and the hope. So... See you in the disappointment line...with all the failed conservatives..Thanks...Sweeney