r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 12h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/Cummyshitballs 10h ago edited 6h ago

He also supposedly renounced his views a year or so prior to his death.

Edited to add, after doing some more research, family members have stated he was a civil rights lawyer solely for monetary gain, and he’d regularly use hate speech when discussing the clients he worked with once he was no longer in their vicinity.

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u/Evolations 9h ago

By the time of his death he'd been completely cut off by the family apparently. A sad end, really.

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u/DTPVH 9h ago

They didn’t even give him a funeral, all because he stopped hating

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u/BongoProdigy 8h ago

Did they at least protest at his funeral?

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u/DTPVH 8h ago

They didn’t have a funeral to protest. His daughter excommunicated him and buried him in an unmarked grave.

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u/BongoProdigy 7h ago

That is some next level commitment to hate.

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u/DTPVH 7h ago

But it’s at least consistent

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u/BongoProdigy 6h ago

Yeah, at least she's not a hypocrite.

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u/Bitter-Marsupial 6h ago

The hypocrisy would absolutely be the worst part about it

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u/Ok_Birthday_489 4h ago

Shirley Phelps Roper? She's just as bad as he was.

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u/DTPVH 4h ago

I’d argue she’s significantly worse.

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u/Ok_Birthday_489 2h ago

Vile woman. No one would counter-argue.

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u/Murky_Translator2295 2h ago

She's getting hers now. The children she liked have all turned their backs on her, leaving her with the children she was ambivalent towards (they're still desperate for mommy to love them), and although she was supposed to take over the church she can't: her father was excommunicated before he could do it and she has been replaced with men who aren't even Phelps's by blood.

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u/DTPVH 2h ago

No church that conservative was ever going to let a woman be in charge

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u/Murky_Translator2295 1h ago

Not a hope. She was deluding herself. Still, I'm delighted to see she's reaping the chaff of her lifetime of hate.

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u/Ok_Birthday_489 33m ago

Are they still going out and protesting? I feel like I haven't seen them as much as I used to.

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u/magicmom17 6h ago

TBH- with all of the military funerals they protested at saying it was good the soldier was dead, him not getting his own funeral seems fitting, change of heart or not. https://baptistnews.com/article/grandson-says-fred-phelps-changed-mind-about-gays/

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u/DTPVH 6h ago

Fred Phelps is a good example to use when discuss a person is judged. Should you look at the sum of a persons life, or is it more important who they were at the end? It says a lot about a person by whether or not they can accept another as having changed.

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u/PineappleShades 5h ago

Ironically, excommunication by the hate group he founded is just about the best gift they could give him, at least in terms of public perception.

I wonder how many of his family inside the church had this thought.

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u/FlashyChemical2231 5h ago

a civil rights lawyer solely for monetary gain

Yeah, if there's one group of people that you can steal a lot of money from, it's poor black people.

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u/Cummyshitballs 3h ago

The money wouldn’t necessarily come from the clients hiring him for their services but more so from the giant lawsuits for breaking civil rights laws.