I never thought I would spend this much time contemplating Strom Thurmond. I didn’t dislike him. His earlier views were the product of a racist South, the same South that I grew up in. I don’t condone his actions, but it seemed that he changed with the times, as obviously I changed as I grew up and realized that such behavior was unacceptable. The fact that I realized this at age twelve and that he did at age seventy-ish shouldn’t really be held against him. Again, he was a product of those times. I think what distresses me most about Thurmond was how later Republicans diefied him, and misused him, even after he had ceased to be a useful public servant. It was distressing at the end to see him in a wheel chair with almost no control of his facilities, yet still in office.