-Blacks gaining the right to eat in any restaurant they want
Oh, you mean those laws that were limited to the Southern states and were first introduced by the Democrat Party, and even when Republicans later began to support those laws, it was still isolated to the South.
It irks me when people conflate the Democratic party of the late 20th - 21st century and the pre-realignment Democratic party that originally represented rural America and the South. In short, the Democratic party was socially conservative until Roosevelt, and even then it took until the civil rights movement for conservative southern Democrats to abandon the party for the Republican ticket.
It irks me when people conflate the opinions of some Republicans with the opinions of all Republicans, or some conservatives with all conservatives, or holding some views with holding all views. It really irks me that, just because there are racist Republicans or uneducated conservatives or a moron Republican for a president, that so many liberals feel that they are so obviously right on every issue that there is no debate about anything.
By the way, did you actually read the rest of that sentence you quoted?
We seem to be saying the same thing. It’s just that your use of ‘Democrat party’ could be interpreted to imply that the modern Democratic party has more than a nominal relationship to the party as it existed a century ago, and I wanted to give more historical context in this regard. The fact that many constituencies which were solidly Democratic many years ago in the south are now solidly Republican is not exactly in dispute.
I apologize, both for my snarkiness, as well as for my confused message. I was trying to say, as it seemed to me that Frink was painting Republicans or conservatives as hindrances to these progressions, that conservatives and Republicans have actually advocated for disadvantaged demographics and brought progress to the nation. Sure, the nature of both parties has changed drastically, but many of the core principles remain, and conservatism has done a lot of good for the country.