There is a commonly believed idea that the Political Parties of today at some point in the past "switched" with each other, kind of like the Chicago Blitz and Arizona Wranglers exchanged everything, including their uniforms, back in 1983. So now, we are told, "everybody knows," that the Democrats of today are the Republicans of the 2nd half of the 19th Century; and that the Republicans of today are the Democrats of the 2nd half of the 19th Century.

In the past months, I have found that there are a great number of people who accept this claim of a complete and total switch as a historical fact. But so far, only one has given me any explanation of how - and when - this exchange happened.

A fellow writer explained to me that it was as a result of the Depression in the 1930s and that Black Americans saw Franklin D. Roosevelt as more "caring and compassionate" in the face of economic hardship than were the Republicans. Consequently, African-Americans abandoned the GOP in droves to support FDR's New Deal. It was at this point, he argues, that the switch occurred, because the Republicans, he says, completely stopped caring about African-Americans, while the Democrats fully embraced them.

Of course, the reality of things is seldom what populist belief hold them to be. If we are going to honestly study the issues we face today, we have to be willing to fully examine the "everybody knows-isms" and reject those that are untrue.

The issue of the "switch," if there was such a thing, happened much earlier than the Depression...

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