I think everyone should be given a chance to make up for their mistakes, reverse their previously held political positions and become a better person as it's the only way we can grow.
With that said, Jeb Bush has some questions to answer.
Someone actually read a book written by Jeb "the Smart One" Bush in 1995 and discovered within it a chapter titled The Restoration of Shame.
One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful.
I shit you not, Jeb Bush specifically cites The Scarlet Letter as an instructional tale for our times.
"Infamous shotgun weddings and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter are reminders that public condemnation of irresponsible sexual behavior has strong historical roots,” Bush wrote.
I grew up and went to a public city school in conservative central Kentucky, but even there the Scarlet Letter was not presented as an instructional video. We read the book and watched the film in my Sophomore literature class and the moral of the story, which we were required to summarize after the conclusion, was that this kind of shaming is bad; not good.
A lot has changed since 1995 (or 1999 for that matter), but Jeb Bush needs to explicitly say he no longer believes single parents should be publicly shamed with scarlet letters.
On the other hand, Jeb could confirm that he still believes that they should be branded and shamed.