Moral judgment should rest on what people actually do, not what they think or intend. The speaker argues that good intentions don't excuse harmful actions, pointing to communism's supporters as people who believed they were righteous while promoting something he sees as enslaving and destructive.
How do you explain religious people who are demonstrably not good people? Now I know we get into the debate, well, are there any good people? I never understood why that is a debate. Of course there are good people. Are there bad people? Well, if there are bad people, and everybody would acknowledge that, then there are good people. And how do you know who's good? Very simple— by how they behave. I've dealt with this on a few occasions. I will deal again with the issue of sinful thoughts versus sinful behavior. I believe that we judge people by their behavior and not their thoughts. The number of people with good thoughts and horrible behavior has been in the hundreds of millions. Supporters of communism often thought that they were doing good, and they were supporting the most vicious, bloodthirsty, enslaving doctrine in modern history. Yep. So I don't give much credence to what you think. There are people with bad thoughts who do a great deal of good. And there are people with good thoughts who do a great deal of bad.
Life, Legacy, and a Dangerous Mission in the Soviet Union | Sunday Fireside Chat
