Bill_Thompson wrote:Try attacking the argument instead of the arguer. Can you handle that?
Obviously, since I did both at the same time.
me wrote:You want us collectively to use todays laws and attitudes towards car accidents to condemn Ted Kennedy for his past actions (for which he was correctly held accountable according to the norms of that time).
Bill wrote:In what reality is that true?
Are you saying that since the laws were lax at one time we should forgive and forget. That is insane. That is like saying that because of the particular condition at the particular time in jury for the OJ Simpson murder case was a particular way, we should also forgive and forget.
Are you saying that since we can argue that so-n-so from the oposition of his career did just as bad or worse we can also forgive and forget. That is insane too.
Ted Kennedy was held accountable
at the time of the incident, according to the laws in effect at the time of the incident. You, by virtue of your posts here, want us collectively to hold him more accountable than he already has been.
Let me try and break it down further:
Many years ago, Ted did something bad. He was convicted of the bad thing then. He completed his sentence. He's gone on and done tremendous amounts of good things.
You want us to only look at that bad thing, to ignore anything else he did positively afterwards, and, in effect, continue to hold his entire being in contempt in perpetuity. That would hold him
more accountable for the bad thing he did back then, than any law in effect then, or indeed any law in effect now for what he did. Therefore, you're attempting to have us treat him differently and more seriously than any other person (and I named several) for doing some bad thing.
You have no justification for that, other than your obvious inherent inability to see anything good in anyone w/whom you disagree politically. That trait puts you at the bottom of the "good morals" standard, which makes it incredibly ironic that you want to point at anyone else as being morally deficient.