The Conservative Movement Has Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Race, Voting Rights Edition

Via Yglesias, this gem from the 1957 National Review (the flagship publication of the American conservative movement:

The central question that emerges–and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by meerely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal–is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced ace. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between civilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is by no means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes’, and intends to assert its own.

You see, what liberals fail to understand is that this was 50 years ago. Since then, the American conservative movement changed completely. In those days, conservative efforts to disenfranchise blacks were part of an organized campaign of racial supremacy. These days, conservative efforts to prevent voter fraud just coincidentally happen to stop large numbers of eligible blacks from voting. There's obviously been a total and complete turnabout in conservative views on race; can't liberals get that?