I really enjoy writing columns in Fayette County, where most of the readers are likely to agree with me, but sometimes I miss my old job at the Southside Sun, where I was in a tiny minority.

Not that there weren't those who agreed. South Fulton is probably the most diverse area in the Southeast, and the diversity of response to the editorial page was stimulating.

But my conservative point of view was certainly in the minority there, no question.

A former reader from South Fulton who is now in Fayette told me he liked my opinions a lot better now that I was in Fayette. "You used to be a lot more liberal," he said.

That puzzled me, but thinking back I realized I must have written a good number of articles on race issues in those days, since those issues were hot for South Fulton back then, and I tend to be a lot more liberal on race issues than I am on fiscal issues.

The NAACP didn't send me an invitation to join, mind you. I couldn't pass the test when it came to affirmative action. But when I saw discrimination, I called it. And when local issues arose in which race was involved, I often agreed with the black perspective.

I suppose that confused some white readers who equated conservatism with bigotry. They shouldn't make that mistake. There is room for people of all races, creeds, colors and national origins in most conservatives' vision of how our city, county, state and nation should be.

Gubernatorial candidate Guy Millner spent a lot of time courting the black vote in this year's election, and some pundits have hypothesized that this actually hurt his campaign effort. By going into the black community and campaigning, he brought that community's attention to their own disagreement with his proposals and stimulated many to go out and vote against him, the theory goes.

Maybe so, but I hope more Republicans follow his example, and I hope they listen as much as they talk. It's possible to keep bringing minorities into the mainstream without being unfair to anyone else, but we will only discover the solution through open dialogue.

The only reason an entire race of people votes pretty much as a block is because of tradition and because that tradition hasn't been challenged. ("How shall they hear without a preacher?")

Affirmative action and hiring quotas are the big sticking point, and I think it's possible to articulate a vision of a world in which we can do two things:

* Encourage companies and require governments to actively look for qualified minority, as well as non-minority, applicants.

* Keep improving race relations to the point that affirmative action becomes a laughable concept. If we're all busy making a living and making the world better, we won't have time to argue over such nonsense.

It's going to take time, but the day will come when members of minority peoples won't feel they must choose one party or the other as a block in order to be adequately represented.

One other subject I don't get into very often gets me into trouble with folks on both sides of the issue: conservation and the environment.

Conservatives have let a golden opportunity slip through their fingers where environmental issues are concerned. This should be a defining issue for conservatives.

Conservatives care every bit as much about the environment as liberals, except for a few on the fringe, yet they've sat quietly and let liberals claim the issue as their own.

What conservatives are not for is turning the country's economy over to wild-eyed radical environmentalists who don't have enough vision to figure out that if we destroy the economy we also destroy the environment.

Let a really deep recession happen and see how much success you have slapping environmental controls on companies.

Extreme environmentalists are like a ship's captain who sinks his ship to keep from running aground. The problem is to be preferred over the solution.

For instance, if we want to save the rain forest, we need to encourage the development of logging in rain forest areas. What's destroying those forests is slash-and-burn agriculture carried out by people desperate for a living. So give them a living, working for logging companies that will replant the trees they harvest. It's called enlightened self-interest.

Yes, the replanted trees will take a long time to grow, but logging companies live for the long term. They plant and wait, and while they wait the forest grows. At any given time there are more trees growing than there are being cut. In the U.S., there are more trees now than there were in 1900. Why? Logging.

Meanwhile, there are times when you have to write regulations and stop commerce from happening because it's too damaging. Yes, we have to find alternatives to fossil fuels. Absolutely, our streams and lakes have to be cleaned up and we have to stop polluting the ocean.

Conservatives should be at the forefront of these efforts, and reasonable, thinking environmentalists should be in the conservative camp. It's a logical alliance.

Why is all of this on my mind? Could be some of the characterizations I've heard concerning conservatives from the entertainment/news media recently mean-spirited attacks, often as not.

I've been known to refer to myself as a bleeding heart conservative. I'm not alone. Conservatives care about their world and care about things that matter to minorities, but we don't talk very much about that side of our movement.