I think the example of Lyndon Johnson agrees with you. He was a Southern Democrat who had wanted to do something about civil rights for some time. Because of what the people he represented were like, he had to wait until he came into a high enough office to get anything done. The Civil Rights Act was then possible. Even then, if Kennedy had not been assassinated it might not have passed. I think that, even though Johnson was responsible, you could find all sorts of gaffs on his part throughout his career which people today could use to preclude him - and call him a racist. I suppose he used the wrong language even after he introduced the legislation. Johnson was a man of his time. He was flawed, but probably no more than the average man is today, relative to his contemporaries, in relation to the truth we are trying to discover when we get into these arguments.vtsnowedin wrote:Might I suggest to you that the Southern politicians of both parties voted against the civil rights act because voting for it in that year would end their political careers. The majority of voters in the south were white, still ticked off by the "War of Northern aggression" and wanted to keep Jim Crow segregation laws in place forever. Truth be told much of that sentiment still exists in the white population of the South even though expressing it has been harshly suppressed by political correctness.
If you had read a book or two you might know that.
There isn't any forgiveness right now. We aren't empowering people to change. That's an aspect of repentance. What we are doing by not including forgiveness when we see repentance is to interpret people as coming from some basic seed that doesn't change, not as products of the decisions they make or their environment. Wisdom is a trial and error thing. We aren't born with it. If we had bad parents, and who didn't, then we were not likely to come along rightly, so that we might have the appearance of at least being able to judge others, even if we don't really have that standing. It's like we are saying that a person's character is entirely embedded within their DNA. That's not much different than judging someone for the color of their skin.
There may be certain crimes that a person could commit in their early years that we shouldn't forgive them for. I think concentration camp guard may be one of those. Why should wearing black face in a person's early twenties be the equivalent of that? It should, certainly, if they show that they never learned otherwise, but what about when it is obvious that they have? Has nobody else besides me ever done or said something that they took a look at and said to themselves that they never wanted to hurt another like that again? I can't change what I've done, but I can let that thorn in my side of regret guide me throughout my future.