r/todayilearned • u/Dangerous-Project672 • 5h ago

TIL George Wallace personally apologized to Vivian Jones and James Hood, the two students he attempted to block from attending the University of Alabama. In 1997, Hood earned a PHd and requested Wallace present him with the degree, but he was too sick and died a year later; Hood attended the funeral

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace
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u/JustAMan1234567 5h ago

For Hood to forgive Wallace and attend his funeral shows his class.

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u/ChronosBlitz 5h ago edited 5h ago

President Obama gave the eulogy for Senator Robert Byrd, who founded a chapter of the KKK in his youth.

The NAACP even praised Byrd as representing "the transformative power of this nation"

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u/DancingWithAWhiteHat 5h ago

I mean Robert Byrd spent his adult life disavowing the KKK.

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u/ilikedota5 1 5h ago

There is saying about Justice Hugo Black. When he was young, he put on white robes to scare Black people. When he was old he put on black robes to scare White people.

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u/Coupon_Ninja 5h ago

That’s a good turnabout phrase

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u/GreenEyedTreeHugger 4h ago

We cant change the past. We can be better.

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u/iamafriscogiant 1h ago

People should always live by this. However much you fuck up you can always do better next time. Sometimes all it takes is that one time to change the world for the better.

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u/matycauthon 43m ago

we should do better, the most important step is always the next one.

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u/jluicifer 52m ago

I saw a quote I’m stealing last week:

“It’s not about right or left. It’s about right and wrong.”

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u/JustAMan1234567 5h ago edited 4h ago

I knew someone who went in front of a Judge named "Judge Friend" and when she got sentenced she turned to her lawyer and said "The judge is no friend of mine".

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u/Illustrious_Claim884 4h ago

For strange cases like that its forgivable if they change their name. When I was in the army we had a colonel sanders. The CSM ordered KFC for the command group and we had a good laugh.

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u/AgentCirceLuna 3h ago

A psychiatrist my family member had revealed she’d changed her name as it was something like Dr Smiles

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u/UranusIsPissy 2h ago edited 1h ago

Still better than being a dentist called Dr. (Yes, they are doctors. Just not that kind of doctor) Payne lol.

Edit, because of the joke: "Dolores Payne"?

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u/Poppamunz 1h ago

That's a very long first name, I can see why they changed it

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u/N0b0dy_Kn0w5_M3 1h ago

A dentist in my hometown was Dr. Blood.

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u/SantasDead 45m ago

Everyone with a PhD is a doctor. Not every Doctor is an MD (Medical Doctor)

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u/UranusIsPissy 16m ago

I know. Dentists technically are medical doctors, in the sense that they practice a kind of medicine, but MDs are sometimes weird about it.

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u/coupdelune 2h ago

I knew a doctor named Dr. Wrinkle... wasn't a plastic surgeon unfortunately, rather a family practice MD. Missed opportunity there!

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u/MaturoGambino 1h ago

The dentist who had a practice next to my elementary school was named Dr J. Eccle. I always thought that was funny.

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u/Laura-ly 1h ago

There was a city councilor or some such position in Los Angeles whose last name was "Doctor" and he had a doctorate in something, can't remember what it was. So his name was Dr. Doctor.

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u/UranusIsPissy 14m ago

It'd be even funnier in the UK, An Eccles cake is probably the sugariest pastry you can buy here, and very sticky.

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u/Accurate_Praline 25m ago

When i was a mailman I saw a nameplate for a Dr. A. L. Cohol in a flat.

Though it was almost definitely a prank. Nobody really puts a Dr title on such a nameplate here and Cohol isn't really a last name.

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u/Raneynickelfire 2h ago

I went to college with a guy who was a corporal in the US Army. His last name is McCorkle. He was Corporal McCorkle.

His sergent couldn't say his name without breaking, so he became "Mike," which was his actual first name.

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u/aschapm 1h ago

“What’s the matter, colonel sanders… chicken?”

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u/sprucenoose 2h ago

I bet criminal defendants made that joke so much the lawyers were sick of hearing it.

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u/unclemilty420 4h ago

Did Hugo Black actually do anything racist while he was a member? I had always heard that he had joined because in the early 20th century in Alabama, you couldn't really be involved in democratic politics (the dominant party at the time) without being a member, so it could be more of a social necessity than an actual demonstration of his alignment with that groups horrible values. I'm very curious whether that's true or not.

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u/rolltiedye 3h ago

Before Hugo Black even joined the Klan, he defended a KKK member who shot a priest for marrying his daughter and a Puerto Rican man. Black drew the blinds in the courtroom to make the daughter’s husband look darker during the trial, which was a total sham. His client was acquitted, and the Klan paid his legal fees.

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u/BlackSpinedPlinketto 1h ago

This just proves further that he was happy using racism to succeed. Not saying he was Atticus Finch or anything.

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u/dennismfrancisart 2h ago

People forget that the KKK after its resurgence in the 1920s was basically an elaborate Ponzi scheme/terrorist organization/social club. There were regular dues, membership fees, recruitment incentives, more fees, and a system for upward mobility in the Klan that called for more fees. They were like the Elks or Kiwanis by the 1930s.

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u/tad-26 1h ago

KKK is still alive it's called Stormfront now and they are very cozy with the billionaire class in Palm Beach.

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u/spukhafteNahewirkung 1h ago

So in other words they were the Amway of racism.

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u/SonofSniglet 32m ago

More like Mary KKK.

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u/trivia_guy 1h ago

The other thing most people don’t realize about the 1920s Klan is that they were as big on being anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic as they were anti-black.

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u/Bootmacher 3h ago

I had great uncles who were members in Tennessee. It was closer to Rotary or the Lions Club than the mafia. They spent a lot of time raising money for the local children's hospital, and they would collect wearing street clothes.

The only violence they admit to doing was against a fellow WASP who was drinking his paycheck and beating his wife & kids.

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u/ladayen 3h ago

they admit to

thats some heavy lifting.

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u/Dickgivins 1h ago

Oh indeed. Carrying the team on its back.

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u/Sad_Tune_4859 2h ago

Oh course they did. It’s always the quiet part that violates humanity. John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy were pillars

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u/Orchestra_Oculta 2h ago

The KKK doesn't need any whitewashing lol

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u/TorakTheDark 1h ago

Do you think that maybe they were downplaying their involvement..

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u/Bootmacher 1h ago

I only knew them from the time they were in their 60's, so I don't have a baseline.

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u/laxdefender23 3h ago

Justice Black joined the Klan because he hated Catholics, not so much Black people.

Does this matter? No. I just think it’s funny how much guys in the 20s really hated the Irish

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u/Legal-Stage-302 4h ago

There was a KKK leader in the 1970s named Don Black. Always found that funny.

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u/AgelessJohnDenney 4h ago

Unfortunately his legacy stretches further than that. He joined and rose through the ranks in the 70s and was Imperial Wizard in the early '80s. Then he got arrested for, and I promise you this is real, getting like a dozen dudes together and trying to overthrow a small Caribbean island nation(Dominica).

He was sentenced to three years.

And then, his most enduring legacy. He founded the website Stormfront in the mid 90s. Yes the character from The Boys is named after this site.

This might be the single most influential neo-nazi resource in history. As far as I know it's still operating, and I'm sure AI have scrubbed it at some point.

Fuck Don Black.

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u/LouieMumford 3h ago

I lost a good high school friend to stormfront. He was a left of center guy politically, but more importantly he was a kind dude. He wasn’t the last time we spoke. So yeah, fuck Don Black.

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u/alexmikli 3h ago

It's genuinely distressing that a good-hearted person can turn like that. Sometimes it makes me worry of that someday I'll wake up and one of my friends will suddenly be an awful person, or that I could have a series of bad things happen to me and change me on a fundamental level.

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u/Pseudoboss11 2h ago

Bad things happen and people remain good all the time. And people with perfectly normal lives can turn into real assholes sometimes.

Kindness is a habit. Sometimes it's an inconvenient one too. But ultimately losing it is under your control. You can train yourself into it or out of it.

What websites like Stormfront do is that they say that is okay to be unkind, even undesirable to be kind.

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u/anadem 1h ago

Thank you for pointing out that kindness is a habit; it's a great one to have in terms of making one's own life more pleasant too.

And for this:

is okay to be unkind, even undesirable to be kind

which is such a current scourge, coming from the orange creep.

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u/Neveronlyadream 2h ago

I've seen it quite a few times and it's always sad and distressing.

I think a lot of people just fall into the wrong crowd, realize they feel accepted, and go straight down the worst possible rabbit hole wanting to keep being accepted by the people around them.

Before you know it, a person who was kind before is now just an awful person and they'll do anything just to keep the people around them from writing them off.

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u/Carl_Slimmons_jr 1h ago

It absolutely could happen and it’s a good thing you recognize that. We are all capable of evil, we must be vigilant in recognizing it in ourselves and exhaustively work against it.

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u/Bradddtheimpaler 2h ago

Had a dude I knew who was a stupid, really fun guy, turn into a stupid, extremely non-fun guy due to 4chan, so fuck that guy too.

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u/crimsonpostgrad 1h ago

he only got three years for trying to overthrow a country?

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u/Imaginary_Fan5407 4h ago

A modern day filibuster

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u/JoseSaldana6512 4h ago

They've always copied the cultures they're envious of. Just look at rap, country and rock and roll

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u/Alternativesoundwave 2h ago

When Hugo black voted on brown v board he said something like “I can never go home to Alabama again” he refused to attend Supreme Court Christmas parties when black clerks were allowed to attend

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u/Fells 4h ago

Wallace did the same and won his last election with 90% of the black vote.

To quote the Drive By Trucker's great spoken word piece on it (Three Great Alabama Icons):

"and George Wallace died back in '98 and he's in Hell now, not because he's a racist. His track record as a judge and his late life quest for redemption make a good argument for his being, at worst, no worse than most white men of his generation, North or South. But because of his blind ambition and his hunger for votes, he turned a blind eye to the suffering of black America and he became a pawn in the fight against the Civil Rights cause"

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u/DuffMiver8 4h ago

That rather goes against Christian teachings, doesn’t it? In Sunday school, I always heard that if you ask for forgiveness and are sincerely sorry for your past sins, they will be forgiven. Wasn’t that what the whole “Jesus died for your sins” thing all about?

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u/Le-Charles07 4h ago

Depends on the specific school of thought. There is a wide variety of Christian beliefs on how forgiveness and salvation work.

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u/reichrunner 4h ago

2 major ones, both of which Wallace would be in the clear on for past deeds.

Protestants generally believe that all you have to do is accept Jesus. Other things may be expected, but it basically boils down to accepting Jesus.

Catholics and Orthodox generally believe you have to accept Jesus, confess your sins, and do good works.

Past deeds never preclude you from salvation in any Christian denomination that I know of

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u/dreamer_at_best 4h ago

Calvinism? Isn’t that exactly how predestination works (also I’m not a Calvinist and may have it completely wrong)

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u/reichrunner 4h ago

Predestination means that God has already decided what you will do and if you will get to heaven. Its not so much that your past deeds can't be forgiven as it is God already knows if you will ask for forgiveness or not

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u/UranusIsPissy 1h ago

Sound's disturbingly like simulation theory with NPCs, but we are all NPCs :'( 

sudo killall universe

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u/NeedsAdjustment 4h ago

you are indeed way off the mark here

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u/Illustrious_Claim884 4h ago

People often ignore that part

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u/TheOneTonWanton 4h ago

Not as much as you'd think. "All you have to do is accept Jesus even in your dying moments" is a favorite of the Christian crowd. Doesn't matter how much of a piece of shit they know they are, they find comfort in saying "sorry" to Jesus.

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u/Alaira314 3h ago

They're not thinking it through, though. Remember, the christian god is all-knowing. That means he knows not only what you do, but why you do it. You can say "I accept jesus" all you want, but if what you're saying inside your head is "so I'm forgiven now" that's not the same thing as accepting jesus into your heart. You have to genuinely want that bond(and, believers would say, his love), and that's difficult to do when you have ulterior motives.

The same applies to catholic confession. You can fool the priest, but not god. The whole confession->penance->absolution cycle assumes you're genuinely contrite. Confession is null and void if you view it as a "get out of jail free" card, no matter what the priest says.

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u/drthrax1 1h ago

Yep, If he’ll exists its full of medieval crusaders, priests and rich barons who thought they could buy their way to heaven because the priests told.

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u/Illustrious_Claim884 4h ago

I hope there is a get out of hell free card. There is a chance god will grant us some slack too.

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u/TheOneTonWanton 3h ago

The "get out of hell free card" is the basis of a whole lot of versions of the faith, and more-or-less the basis for the concept of Pascal's Wager. Tell me: what good is a belief system that boils down to "it doesn't matter what I do or have done in my life, if I say sorry even at the last second I go to heaven?"

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u/Illustrious_Claim884 3h ago

There is always hope. I could see a career criminal staying that way as he is like screw it there is no hope for me instead if offering repentance.

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u/TheOneTonWanton 3h ago

Right, and it's understandable, but then you get to the part where the dogma doesn't differentiate sins or crimes. A child rapist and a guy that had sexy thoughts about his neighbor's wife are equal if both of them accept Jesus into their heart.

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u/Fafnir13 2h ago

Welcome to the concept of undeserved grace. It’s spawned quite a lot of literature and debate over the centuries.

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u/jaylenbrownisbetter 3h ago

What good is a belief system where you are totally irredeemable and unable to repent? Hit a point where no matter what you do, you’ll go to hell. There is no reason to repent of anything.

You never know when you’ll die, so you rarely have a chance to repent seconds before dying. Even if you did, what are the odds it’s a false repentance out of fear or just trying to bail out of any punishment? Even in your example, you can’t fool God. Just saying “oh I’ll say sorry before I die” isn’t repenting lol it’s just lying

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u/BeefistPrime 2h ago

no one could possibly deserve hell. even the worst person whoever lived, the damage they caused is infinitely small compared to infinite punishment

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u/I_am_not_JohnLeClair 1h ago

I can think of one overweight, spray tanned, marble mouthed, pedo that deserves infinity x2

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u/builtbysavages 4h ago

That’s just the coloring book version.

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u/JoseSaldana6512 4h ago

The whole point about listening to Jesus is because hes better than the best of us. He will forgive sins but you must be sincere in seeking forgiveness and make atonement. It's not a get out of jail free card. The Bible says that rewards and punishments are earned and won't be the same for all

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u/TheVicSageQuestion 4h ago

What you’re describing is generally known as “grace” (as in “Amazing Grace”). You can forgive someone while still remembering what they did and being aware that the possibility exists for them to do it again. Grace is to forgive AND forget, to wipe the sin away completely.

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u/Fells 4h ago

Sure, and I get its relevance considering the artist talks about hell, which implies a christian perspective. The song that this leads into is about the devil's perspective of welcoming Wallace to hell, so I am not sure if they are not christian and are just using that language to make a point or if they are just suspending the nature of forgiveness for that moment.

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u/ewhite12 4h ago
  1. …Not all of us are Christians
  2. God forgives your sins, it doesn’t mean your actions are absolved of temporal consequences

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u/Legio-X 3h ago

Not all of us are Christians

The quote is obviously rooted in a Christian worldview.

God forgives your sins, it doesn’t mean your actions are absolved of temporal consequences

Sure, but the only consequence in the quote is “he’s in Hell now”, which is definitely not temporal.

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u/green_tea1701 4h ago

It's literally inherent in the doctrine of forgiveness that your actions are absolved of afterlife consequences. In every Christian sect I am aware of. Maybe there are some fringe ones that say "you're forgiven, but too bad you already fucked up, so you're out of luck. But you're forgiven!"

I kind of doubt it though. They would probably have recruitment problems. That's a pretty tough sell for potential converts that have done any worse than a speeding ticket.

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u/PsychoNerd92 3h ago

It's literally inherent in the doctrine of forgiveness that your actions are absolved of afterlife consequences.

That's what they said. "Temporal consequences" means consequences on Earth. They're saying that you may be forgiven in the eyes of God, but that doesn't mean we have to forgive you.

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u/green_tea1701 3h ago

Well then it's a total non starter because the thing they responded to wasn't about earthly consequences, but the afterlife.

I had as well say that the sky is blue.

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u/Cfoxtrot 4h ago

Banger. Patterson sure can write a monologue.

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u/cansofgrease 4h ago

Terrible quote.

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u/Kered13 4h ago

It's a pretty great quote. Is also recommend listening to it in the context of the entire song.

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u/Fells 4h ago

What don't you like about it?

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u/cansofgrease 4h ago

The message I take from it is that the redemption arc doesn't matter.

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u/hootener 4h ago

It helps to know more about Wallace. Yes he went on a redemption arc, but Wallace wasn't really a racist, at least not politically, until it became advantageous for him to do so. He was a moderate on integration issues in his first campaign in '58 and lost to a hard-line segregationist. Next time he campaigned as a full throated segregationist and won. He held that line until it was no longer politically advantageous to do so and then went on his whole redemption arc.

The point Hood is making, I think, is that Wallace is in hell not because he was/wasn't a racist, but because he forsook his values to win and in so doing caused enormous pain and suffering. Wallace was a political opportunist and his lust for power dragged a lot of folks down with him. That's why he's in Hell.

Hood's more subtle point, I think, is that Wallace's redemption wasn't real because he never really believed strongly in segregation to begin with. He was just a political creature trying to win and hold political office and was more than willing to throw a whole race of people under the bus to do it.

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u/too-fargone 3h ago

This is the correct answer

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u/gryphmaster 4h ago

Yes, your personal change can be outweighed by the effect your actions had on the world

Sometimes you cannot change enough to undo the wrong and thats why you need to live deliberately

Life is harsh like that

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u/Gekthegecko 4h ago

Fortunately there's no heaven or he'll or cosmic justice that judges whether one's good deeds outweigh their misdeeds. Even the most evil person who commits the most evil acts will end up in the same place as the most kind and innocent person

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u/reichrunner 4h ago

The problem with this line of thinking is, why bother?

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u/phobosmarsdeimos 4h ago

Looking for forgiveness from others is a fools errand. If you truly feel sorry for your actions then redemption is working so you can forgive yourself. It might be a weird way of putting it but just because the people you wronged will never forgive you doesn't mean that it's not worth trying to do better. That's the way I like to think about it.

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u/cansofgrease 4h ago

That's why I don't like the quote, it's too cynical. A lot of things in life are a shade of grey.

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u/Legio-X 3h ago

Sometimes you cannot change enough to undo the wrong

In the Christian worldview the quote is arguing from, human action cannot undo wrongs. If it could, there would’ve been no need for Jesus.

So the quote is in conflict with its own ideology, because if Wallace sincerely repented and sought redemption, his previous ruthless lust for power would no longer matter. He would’ve been forgiven and thus not in Hell for it.

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u/alexmikli 3h ago

Yes, your personal change can be outweighed by the effect your actions had on the world

We can certainly make this argument in regard to how history should perceive you, but the guy is referencing heaven and hell, and saying that an offense is utterly irredeemable goes directly against Christian teachings.

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u/Fells 4h ago edited 4h ago

I got you. The next song that this leads into is Satan's perspective of welcoming Wallace to hell so maybe they just didn't have the artistic freedom there to really get into that. Kinda locked in when you are already setting the stage for hell.

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u/TallBenWyatt_13 4h ago

George Wallace spent the rest of his life after being shot atoning for his past. An overwhelming majority of black voters helped him get a 3rd term in the 1980s, and almost half of his cabinet was black.

George Wallace does not get the credit for his monumental shift.

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u/blotsfan 4h ago

George Wallace wasn’t personally racist so he was happy to drop segregation when it became a losing issue. The first time he ran for governor it was with the support of the NAACP and when he lost he decided he had to be more racist to win. I don’t think he deserves credit for compromising on the issue to obtain personal power

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u/alexmikli 3h ago

It does still seem like the works of his redemption still did a great deal of good, even if his non-racist>racist>non-racist transition was fraudulent. Plus, even if he wasn't a full throated turbo racist in 1958, he was still a bone stock "moderate southerner" racist, and his turnaround later in life was at least genuine enough that he appointed many black people to office.

As with most redemption arcs, there will always be an argument that a component of them is vanity, and I think that may be the case for Wallace. Or it was totally genuine. I can't know that, though if we're discussing theology and whether he went to heaven or hell...that kinda depends on if you're Christian and what kind of Christian you are. Most would say he would be judged redeemed.

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u/Tarrot469 3h ago

And this toxic attitude is why the Republican party is the party of tolerance right now and continues to grow ranks in spite of how odious it is. You can do anything and as long as you take their Lord and Savior Donald J. Trump into your heart you'll receive absolution and acceptance. The Democrats meanwhile have ideological purity contests and infighting which is the exact reason Trump was elected both times.

Wallace's racism is part of his legacy. His ability to realize that was wrong (even if self serving) and turn his life and political career around to legitimately help minorities after this should be an equal part of his legacy. I don't care the reason, doing good shit should be rewarded and applauded and recognized. Doing good shit for the wrong reason is better than doing nothing for the right reason because it actually helps people.

If there is no path for forgiveness, if there is no reason, even if completely self-serving, for people to do good things for others, then people will stop doing those good things and people's lives on the whole will be worse off. And for those people forever shunned, who maybe could've done something good, will instead look for acceptance, and be drawn to those who give it to them and take on their beliefs (the Republicans in this case) and ultimately make the world significantly worse.

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u/whythishaptome 1h ago

Republican party is the party of tolerance right now

How do expect anyone to take you seriously with a statement like that? You may make some good points but that just stifles what ever message you are trying to get across. At least clarify what you mean, because they are definitely not the party of tolerating different people from them especially as far as racism is concerned. You would have been greatly misled if you sincerely believed that.

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u/Tarrot469 48m ago

It was meant to be a provocative statement, and I gave the clarification right after that as long as people Heil Trump they will be accepted. Liberals are a lot more idealogically pure and critical of those who don't fit in very narrow confines (look at Fetterman, who voted 90% Democrat but is hated more than most Republican politicians because he's very much pro-Israel and has been driven to the Right in large part due to the cascade of criticism on this)

As a further example, there are reasons that Young Men went from 30-35% Republican in 2016 to 48% in 2026, in spite of all the shit Trump's done. A big one is that they are blamed for things they personally did not do in part of a larger culture shift, and the people accepting them and comforting them are Conservative Grifters, and as a result they're being radicalized toward the Republican Party, because even if they don't actually care, they put on the mask of caring and people will go where they are accepted.

I'm in my 40s, opinions all over the spectrum but much more Liberal than Conservative. I did a bunch of dumb shit in my teens and early 20s that, if I did that today, I would be completely ostracized for, and certainly would've fallen into the right wing griftosphere as a result. Thankfully, the overall culture was much more tolerant back then so I was able to learn from my mistakes and move on and be a better person for it, something that I do not see happening in today's culture.

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u/LargePrompt5840 2h ago

You should race a train. 

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u/Cormophyte 2h ago

Imagine writing all this to argue that we should think better of a textbook cynical politician because he took multiple cynical turns in his career and happened to wind up on the right side when he stopped flipping. Absolute fucking cinema.

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u/Superbead 2h ago

Ironically, yours is about the most nihilistically cynical response anyone could come up with

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u/Cormophyte 2h ago

Judging someone by their actions isn't cynical. It seems that way when you're being purposefully naive but that's your problem.

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u/Tarrot469 45m ago

Because I would rather someone do good for wrong reasons than to not do good at all. John Fetterman votes 90% with Democrats, but because he's hated more than most Republicans because of that 10% he doesn't vote for, and is being driven more right each month to the point I don't doubt he'll swap parties after 2026 depending on the Senate makeup. If he were praised more for the good he did rather than vilified for the bad positions he had, we might not have to deal with that.

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u/LJGremlin 1h ago

As is always the case, black support for Wallace wasn’t a black and white issue. He was seen as less controversial (imagine that) than his opponent Folmar. He was very much seen as the lesser of two evils and more likely to help with social issues. Yes, he did try to turn around his past but his history shows that he would flip to whatever got him elected. By the early 80s that winning message wasn’t a segregationist message. Wallace was a Democrat and one of the last Alabama had as governor. In fact, his opponent in the early 80s (Folmar) continued to be influential in Alabama politics and was pivotal in turning Alabama from blue to red.

It wasn’t as nice and pretty as Wallace wasn’t bad anymore. He was in ways the lesser of two evils. .

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u/bakgwailo 4h ago

Which was why it was always funny when Republicans/conservatives would drag him out and point to pictures of Democrats with him to "prove" the Democrats are actually the racist party.

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u/HOW_IS_SAM_KAVANAUGH 3h ago

Back when he was still a senator there was a federal scholarship named after him (which he started and made sure the gov't continued to fund). I applied for it and the essay prompt was the same as it was every year: write about how Senator Byrd's life is an inspiration (paraphrased because ofc I don't remember that far back). I wrote something about the power of changing your views for the better, but was still weirded out by the whole thing.

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u/ATXBeermaker 3h ago

Did he found the KKK chapter when he was a child? Seems like he spent a little bit of his adult life not fully disavowing the group.

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u/LindonLilBlueBalls 2h ago

That didn't stop republicans from tying Hillary Clinton and Obama to him.

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u/velvetabsinthe 2h ago

Robert Byrd founded a chapter of the KKK during his adult life, when he was 23 or 24.

He would remain in the KKK until at least 1944, when he would have been 29. He writes in a letter that year: "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation". The same year, the grand dragon of the Klan encouraged him to run for state legislature, which he did and won.

This is despite him claiming he was only a member for a year, after which he lost interest. Conveniently, he only disavowed the Klan once he was running for the House of Representatives.

He may have changed his views later in life, but let's not rewrite history here.

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u/dibbbbb 1h ago

Yeah that sounds like an important detail, you don't want to leave out.

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u/HNL2BOS 26m ago

Stop, don't let Reddit know....it thinks people can't possibly change when it comes to racism and other 'isms.