[lowdose]

It seems extreme but I think we should give everyone a chance to learn.

He changed his opinions on a range of subjects. If everybody has to step down from a CEO position because of opinions and affiliations they had 30 years ago we will severely limit leadership options to a more narrow group of people than we should.

I think zeitgeist and thereby society is moving quicker than we realize and thereby we shouldn't hold people accountable for every thought they had for an eternity. We should narrow it maybe down to a maximum of decade or so.

The boom of data recording on individual level is otherwise going to hunt people down into infinity.

Especially around the most controversial topics like sexism, racism and other bigotry people will make mistakes and what we are doing today is likely to be seen as immoral by a majority of the people living next century.

In 1901 a woman was sentenced 30 days to jail because she smoked in public in New York City.

In 1958 the government of Belgium decided to invite 500 people out of a colonial of Africa , to put these people on display next to the chimpanzees.

Today both examples from last century would at least end in a career suicide.

[sudosysgen]

I don't know, it's more complicated that this. He was a terrorist. Would you give a second chance to a terrorist? It is a bit more complicated than how he wrote it.

Indeed, he was involved in a terrorist attack against a synagogue, as the getaway driver.

[artificial]

There are people in entertainment who were in gangs. Nelson Mandela was also a terrorist who got a second chance. This deeply gets into philosophy and I don't really have a good answer.

[sudosysgen]

Nelson Mandela had questionable means, but no one has a leg to stand on to critique his goal. As for people in gangs, there is a difference between a criminal and a Nazi terrorist.

Let's not defeat by analogy here. He was not a guerilla fighter that assassinated people in order to stop an oppressive regime. He was not a run of the mill criminal.

He was part of an operation to kill Jews, because they were Jews, in an attempt to bring upon genocide and misery. This is not a philosophical question; it is a question of experience. In different places of the world, your hear a very good argument that he's the only kind of criminal that deserves the death sentence, possibly the most heinous type of person imaginable.

[anxman]

I love this trail of thinking though. Like, what if I told you that there are museums named after a violent domestic abuser? Should we judge Picasso for who he was, for his work, or for both?

[artificial]

I think so, the harm comes from judging someone from the past through the lens of the modern day. Maybe there will be a movement to add asterisks to everything? *the painter, not the domestic abuse performance artist.

[lowdose]

Life is complicated especially when people are traumatized. I don't know about his particular case.

Interpret my comment more in general as a plea for the term we should hold people accountable for what is recorded in our digital memory than a plea for forgiveness of terrorist.

[vikramkr]

Sure, but he participated in a drive by shooting. I'm on board with giving people a chance to learn etc, but I don't see why giving someone a second chance involves contracting with them to purchase surveillance services, and give them access to security camera footage, 911 calls, etc. Especially with already existing concerns about bias and privacy rights with these platforms. I don't think that a good second chance for someone that participated in a racially motivated drive by shooting is putting them in charge of a very sensitive part of the criminal justice system...

[UncleMeat]

People get a chance to learn. But they have to do something with that chance.