So we are essentially on the same page: Democrats are not the root or even an important cause of the conservative nature of US politics - they are simply trying to stay atop by riding on the wave of popular sentiments, which in turn are stirred by business interests and various moral entrepreneurs of whom this country has more than a far share. How does that metaphor work for you?
> Circumstances (i.e. courageous civil rights mobilization) compelled the
Oval
> Office under Kennedy and Johnson, at first reluctantly and then more
> proactively, to eviscerate the Jim Crow order in the South. Divested of
the
> "solid South" and given the antiquated and retrograde nature of the US
I think you are overestimating the clout of the Civil Rights movements while ignoring the big picture. After years of isolationism, the US entered the world stage as a major leader (the old Europe being in shambles) and faced the strong competition with the Soviet Union. At that time the outcome of the cold war was anything but certain - and the Soviet social model, supported with successes of Soviet technology (the Sputnik) had a lot appeal not just to the third world countries, but to the raising from its ashes Europe as well.
The US elites understood it very well that they could not win the cold war without having their own house stuck back in the 19th century - with the remnants of slavery, lynching mobs, reactionary populism, anti-intellectualism and know-nothing attitudes prevalent throughout the society. They knew that they had to keep the Boobus Americanus in check to win the cold war and they did.
Without the cold war, the Soviet challenge, the sputnik and the global ambitions of the US elite -the Civil Rights movements would be lynched and beaten into submission by Southern rednecks while Washington looking the other way. I would go as far as saying that the Civil Rights movement was 68% an initiative of the elites with global ambitions and 32% a popular response to that initiative. Without the elite threatened by the Soviet 9and socialist) challenge, there would be no Civil Rights movement and other progressive reforms of the 1960s and 1970s.
A corollary to this proposition is that after the Soviet challenge has subsided, the ugly reactionary nature of the US society crawled back from under the rock where the Kennedy administration placed it and is slowly raising back to its dominant position - OK, it is maybe 50 -60% of the US society but still enough to shape the tenor of the US politics.
Wojtek