The original "Progressives" were highly racist.
Were it not for Republicans the various Civial Rights Acts would never have passed!

Quote Originally Posted by SadisticNature View Post
Different people have different life experiences. It's also debatable how much the politics of individuals actually shift. I know plenty of people who are just as liberal or conservative at 40 as they were at 15. At least part of the reason that people are more conservative when they are older is that the politics of just about every country in the world shift to the left over time.

One particularly polarizing issue was race relations, which has historically been progressed by the left-wing party of the day in the US (Republicans in the civil-war era, and Democrats once the parties had switched who was on the right and who was on the left). In analyzing this issue we can look at two questions:

(I) Are people born in year X more likely to be anti-minority rights over their lifetimes than people born in year Y?
(II) Are people more likely to become anti-minority rights as the grow older?

I think the answer to (I) is without a doubt yes for X < Y by a generation. The answer to (II) is probably yes in some cases as well, but my own experiences based on my life and my interactions with people of different generations is that (I) is the much larger factor.

If you want to take a less touchy example consider the following:

Someone who voted Democrat for social programs in their 20's and 30's might be voting Republican in their 60's because they trust the Republicans to maintain the specific programs they believe in while they fear the Democrats will expand them or add ones they don't. Has their view of policies shifted to the right, or has the nation shifted to the left while their views have remained pretty consistent?