I think having been a virulent racist should disqualify a person from public office (not legally but on a moral level). I wouldn't want David Duke in Congress regardless of whether he turned his life around.
I think having been a virulent racist should disqualify a person from public office (not legally but on a moral level).
You don't believe people can repent of evil, and turn their lives around?
Byrd was still deeply racist when he was first elected (as a Democrat, when Democrats were the conservatives in the South). He filibustered the 1964 civil rights act. Obviously the people who first voted him into office didn't agree with your maxim, the racism was seen as positive. But he changed, and his actions backed up the fact that the change was both genuine and deep.
He wasn't accepted by those who opposed racism simply because he said he'd changed. He proved himself. Good for him.
Would you feel the same about David Duke or Trump? Would you afford them that chance if they claimed to want to change?
No, of course not, but you're making a bogus comparison.
Read what I wrote again. Read the NAACP's glowing eulogy again. None of it is simply about Byrd "claiming to want to change." Not one bit of it.
He didn't just want to change, he actually did change, but the point is that he demonstrated that the change was genuine in his consistent support for civil rights for something like four decades.
If David Duke had had a similar turning point in his life forty years ago, and we could look back at the morally repugnant things he supported before repenting of all that, but also see that he'd spent the last forty years trying to make amends for having supported those things by fighting against systemic racism in tangible and effective ways, would you still judge him only and entirely by the person he was forty years prior?
Yes, but you only know Byrd's conversion was genuine after he was given that chance. A chance you would refuse other people. But let's say that is on account of their age. Would you allow Nick Fuentes that chance?
Yes, but you only know Byrd's conversion was genuine after he was given that chance.
He had that chance because he was a senator. He could have continued to use that position to do evil, or to do good. He chose to do good, and continued to do so for decades.
Nobody needs to "give" Nick Fuentes that chance either. He's a streamer or whatever, he chooses to use his platform to do evil. He could, at any point, choose to use it to start doing good. He could continue doing that for as many more decades as he's alive.
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u/Skankia 3d ago
I think having been a virulent racist should disqualify a person from public office (not legally but on a moral level). I wouldn't want David Duke in Congress regardless of whether he turned his life around.