Human Failure…and Forgiveness
Don Peppers
Customer experience expert, keynote speaker, business author, Founder of Peppers & Rogers Group
By any standard, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren was one of the most humanitarian and liberal judicial forces ever to serve on the bench, with an unimpeachable record of promoting equality, freedom, and protection from discrimination and government abuse. Not only did he engineer and preside over the unanimous Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, ending nearly a century of segregation and Jim Crow policies, but he also helped bring Joe McCarthy down by overturning laws that discriminated against communists, he required police officers to give notice to suspects of their rights (the “Miranda” warning), and he struck down state laws against contraceptive sales on the grounds that everyone has a right to privacy (giving a kick-start to the nascent Women’s Liberation Movement).
Keep these thoughts in mind now, as I tell you something you may find jarring, if you aren’t already aware of it:
At the start of World War II, as Attorney General of California, Earl Warren drove the effort to forcibly inter more than 100,000 Japanese Americans.
Why am I pointing this out? Because I want to remind everyone about how fallible we human beings are. We are fallible; we make mistakes. Not only that, but we change our minds, we switch our views, and we evolve in our thinking from year to year and literally from day to day. We are none of us very far-sighted, rational beings, let alone impeccably moral.
In his 1977 memoirs, Earl Warren noted that he had been “conscience-stricken” by his role in the Japanese internment issue, saying he
“deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens...”
So keep this in mind, especially during the upcoming election season. The next time you see a hatchet job being done on some politician or other public figure, based on his or her past failings, think about Earl Warren, and what the country would have lost had we not benefited from his active and skillful contribution to human dignity, even after such a regrettable lapse.
If a humanitarian hero like Earl Warren could have erred so terribly, how much “holier than thou” should any of us pretend to be?
Author and Forbes manufacturing contributor. Keynote speaker. Industrial consultant. I help you share the unique story of your manufacturing business - one of your most valuable assets! Followed by everyone who’s cool.
5 年Great article, Don.
Consultant and coach! Developing top leaders!
5 年One of my favorite anecdotes is from Reader’s Digest (decades ago) where some justices were done lecturing at a school and were just casually talking outside with some students when security came by and obviously not recognizing them suggested that they might be subject to arrest for loitering! ??
Consultant and coach! Developing top leaders!
5 年SCOTUS issues opinions. They are called that for a reason.
Editor / Proofreader of business, nonfiction, and podcast content. ??BIZCATALYST 360° Columnist ????The Oxford Comma????Solopreneur??NOT A PODCASTER ??Dog Lover??Spunky Old Broad ??
5 年Next to what passes for apologies these days, Earl Warren's was extraordinary, Don Peppers. It comes across as from the heart and mind and a deep conviction of having been wrong and willing to see that.? We could wish for any semblance of that from those in power today ... of course, we could also wish to grow wings and fly.?