Another Really Bad Trump Idea: “The National Garden of American Heroes,” Part III: The First “Hall of Fame”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here.

To put a final period on this fiasco, we should recall that Trump’s idea was tried before.

The Hall of Fame for Great Americans was established in 1901. It was the country’s first hall of fame, inspiring the Cooperstown baseball hall and all the rest. For a while, it was a tourist attraction. Located at the uptown campus of New York University (now Bronx Community College), there were bronze busts of Presidents, generals, scientists, artists and scholars. Then it fell out of date, new inductees were not inducted, and The Hall of Fame for Great Americans was ignored and forgotten, as were many of the names on the busts. Who, for example, was Sidney Lanier?

There are 98 busts in the Hall. How many can you idientify? (And yes, Robert E. Lee is among them…)

John Adams

John Quincy Adams

Jane Addams

Louis Agassiz

Susan B. Anthony

John James Audubon

George Bancroft

Clara Barton

Henry Ward Beecher

Alexander Graham Bell

Daniel Boone

Edwin Booth

Louis Brandeis

Phillips Brooks

William Cullen Bryant

Luther Burbank

Andrew Carnegie

George Washington Carver

William Ellery Channing

Rufus Choate

Henry Clay

Grover Cleveland

James Fenimore Cooper

Peter Cooper

Charlotte Cushman

James Buchanan Eads

Thomas Edison

Jonathan Edwards

Ralph Waldo Emerson

David Farragut

Stephen Foster

Benjamin Franklin

Robert Fulton

Josiah Willard Gibbs

William C. Gorgas

Ulysses S. Grant

Asa Gray

Alexander Hamilton

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Joseph Henry

Patrick Henry

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Mark Hopkins (educator)

Elias Howe

Washington Irving

Andrew Jackson

Stonewall Jackson

Thomas Jefferson

John Paul Jones

James Kent

Sidney Lanier

Robert E. Lee

Abraham Lincoln

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

James Russell Lowell

Mary Lyon

Edward MacDowell

Horace Mann

John Marshall

Matthew Fontaine Maury

Albert A. Michelson

Maria Mitchell

James Monroe

Samuel Morse

William T. G. Morton

John Lothrop Motley

Simon Newcomb

Thomas Paine

Alice Freeman Palmer

Francis Parkman

George Peabody

William Penn

Edgar Allan Poe

Walter Reed

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

William Tecumseh Sherman

John Philip Sousa

Joseph Story

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Gilbert Stuart

Sylvanus Thayer

Henry David Thoreau     ]

Lillian Wald

Booker T. Washington

George Washington

Daniel Webster

George Westinghouse

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Walt Whitman

Eli Whitney

John Greenleaf Whittier

***

I rate this selection, despite being 125 years old, as far better than the proposed members of Trump’s “Garden of Heroes.”




Another Really Bad Trump Idea: “The National Garden of American Heroes,” Part II.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Part I is here, and you should read it first.

Warning: My head exploded several times while writing this part. Also: For some reason WordPress insists on listing the names weirdly. I tried to fix it once. I’ll keep trying. Sorry.

One of the stunning aspects of the proposed list of 250, other than its general incompetence, is that there was so much DEI pollution of the various categories. For example, there are very few, if any, respectable legal scholars who regard either Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Thurgood Marshall as belonging among our most admirable jurists. Marshall was the first black Supreme Court Justice, but that alone doesn’t make him a hero. Why is his trail-blazing credentials sufficient to get him a slot as one of the 250 “heroes,” but Ginsburg gets the nod over the first female Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor? What landmark ruling did Ginsberg produce.

This is a terrible list. I would hope (probably in vain) that a well-educated freshman at a state college could do better. Well, on with the critique…

4. Jurists: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Robert H. Jackson, Thurgood Marshall, William
Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia.

Comment: Ugh. In addition to the absurd inclusions (Rehnquist? Why?), the omissions are striking and unforgivable. John Marshall (no relation) is the most important and influential Chief Justice as well as the longest serving. Marbury v. Madison is the basis of the Supreme Court’s modern power. Where are the acknowledged giants of the Court: Benjamin Cardozo, Louis Brandeis, Hugo Black and both Harlans? Earl Warren was probably the second most influential and consequential Chief Justice, and the Warren Court, liberal as it was, still hold the record for transformative rulings. I’m not a big Oliver Wendell Holmes fan, but even his detractors (like Popehat’s Ken White) would concede that he was a major legal theorist who deserves to be listed among the greats. Moreover, nobody but a legal illiterate would believe that only SCOTUS members are great judges. Judge Learned Hand was dubbed “the Tenth Justice” and “the greatest judge never to be appointed to the Supreme Court.” His opinions and quotes are standard fare in law school. Judge Richard Posner, more recently, was an acclaimed legal thinker; so was Robert Bork, robbed of his place on the Supreme Court when the Democrats decided to violate a “democratic norm.”

Military Heroes and Patriots, defined as “Defenders of freedom who risked everything on the battlefield to preserve the Union and protect the innocent.”

1. Revolutionary & Early Era: Crispus Attucks, Joshua Chamberlain, David Farragut, Nathanael Greene, Nathan Hale, Henry Knox, Tadeusz Kościuszko, the Marquis de La Fayette, Paul Revere, Robert Gould Shaw.

Comment: I see Paul Revere turned up here. If he’s here, so too should William Dawes, who shared the task of alerting town a around Boston that “the British are coming!” Why is Crispus Attucks any more of a hero than the Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, and Patrick Carr, who were also victims in the Boston Massacre? Oh, right, he was black. Got it. Race equals heroism. Similarly, why is Shaw on the list for losing an obscure battle with black union soldiers? Generals Sherman, Sheridan, and Hancock deserve the honor more. So, in fact, does George Armstrong Custer, as I explained here. Andrew Jackson won the most decisive military battle in U.S. history against crazy odds at the Battle of New Orleans. And what are non-Americans doing on the list, when deserving Americans are missing?

2. World War Leaders: William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Jimmy Doolittle, Gabby Gabreski, William Frederick “Bull” Halsey, Jr., Douglas MacArthur, GeorgeMarshall, George S. Patton, Jr., John J. Pershing, Matthew Ridgway, Hyman Rickover, Norman Schwarzkopf, Maxwell Taylor.

Comment: Where’s Admiral Raymond Spruance, who won the Battle of Midway? Where’s Dusty Kleiss another hero in the same battle, as the dive bomber who managed to hit the Japanese fleet with sub-par airplanes? Omar Bradley had far more to do with the U.S. victory than McArthur. Why are the officer heroes of D-Day omitted, like General Theodore Roosevelt Jr, and Gen. Norman Cota? Didn’t Trump watch “The Longest Day”?

2.Medal of Honor & Valor: Roy Benavidez, Desmond Doss, Audie Murphy, Alvin C. York

Comment: I get it, the only Medal of Honor recipients who count are the ones who have movies made about them.

3. Athletes and Competitors (Champions who demonstrated the American virtues of discipline, perseverance, and sportsmanship): Muhammad Ali, Herb Brooks, Kobe Bryant, Roberto Clemente, Lou Gehrig, Vince Lombardi, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Cy Young.

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Res Ipsa Loquitur: Reuters’ Unethical Headline

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“Spirit Airlines shuts down, industry’s first Iran war casualty”

Today I was a guest on The Steven Speirer Show, talking about ethics. In the final minutes, Steven, a California lawyer, asked me what I regarded as the greatest ethics issue facing the U.S. today. Without hesitation, I named the corruption of journalism and the collapse of ethics in the journalism profession. Readers here are familiar with that conclusion and why I am confident that it is correct. A republic cannot function with out an informed populace. “Advocacy journalism,” the elevation of the profit motive over integrity, responsibility and honesty, and the increasing intrusion of the techniques of “fake news” into reporting has transformed journalism into a toxic combination of propaganda and indoctrination.

“Professions earn that label by being trustworthy,” I told Steve. “Our news media today cannot be trusted, and those who do trust it are uninformed or misinformed.” My host said that he wished he could disagree, but in good conscience could not.

Then I checked my emails after the session, and saw the link to the Reuters headline above, re-posted on Yahoo! Finance. (Arthur in Maine gets the pointer for the link; my apologies for misidentifying the source in the original version of this post). It’s a classic, typical of how journalism operates today. A story about a company bankruptcy that was long in the works is framed as an indictment of the Iran War, and by extension President Trump.

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Another Really Bad Trump Idea: “The National Garden of American Heroes,” Part I. [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

President Trump’s method in some of his madness is to restore and reinforce the core American values that have been eroded, corrupted and in some cases denied by the ethics and cultural rot wreaked by the Far Left’s capture of our national institutions. The motives deserve applause, but his execution in many cases, like his “National Garden of American Heroes” obsession, is often hopelessly flawed. I’m being too nice: the theory that it is possible to create a fair and historically valid list of “American heroes” is, as Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers) so sagely remarks above, is stupid, and ultimately harmful.

The latest plans for the monstrosity include reflecting pools, dining facilities and an amphitheater alongside 250 life-size statues of notable Americans. It will require a significant redevelopment of West Potomac Park in D.C., and the statues alone could cost more than the $40 million approved for the project by Congress. But never mind all that: the fact is unavoidable that choosing just 250 Americans to be honored as “heroes” guarantees exorbitant praise for some prominent Americans and unjust exclusion for others. There are probably thousands of American lives that meet the Ethics Alarms criteria for the public to have a “duty to remember” them. Furthermore, perhaps reflecting President Trump’s limited public vocabulary, not all important and productive Americans qualify as heroes, and not all American heroes had much effect on the country and its history. Is the proposed “garden” intended to honor character, achievements, or both? Finally, the choices of who to honor in such a project will be distorted by bias and politics. In fact, that has already occurred.

The list of 250 that has been published confirms all of these fears; indeed, its even worse than I expected.  Here are the current proposed “heroes” by category; the list is introduced as being categorized by their primary contributions to our national story, representing “the tapestry of American greatness, men and women who, through faith, courage, and hard work, built the United States into a beacon of hope and industry.”

Right.

I’ll comment after each section.

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Why Do People Suddenly Snap And Start Shooting People? Things Like This:

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Further evidence that there is a conspiracy to drive me crazy…

Alex Renew, the Alexandria wastewater service, just sent me an emergency email beginning with “Your scheduled payment did not go through.” You can see the email above. I was directed to click on a “Pay Now” button. That took me to my invoice, which stated that my balance was “0.” See?

I called AlexRenew and finally reached a manager, who checked my account. She confirmed that I don’t owe anything. She confirmed that my last payment went through.

“So why did I get this alert?” I asked.

“Honestly, sir, I have no idea.” was the answer.

In Maine, the Graham Platner Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

How did this happen?

Maine’s Democratic governor Janet Mills announced yesterday that she is dropping out of her campaign for the U.S. Senate. Now certifiable wacko Graham Platner is her party’s presumptive nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Mills had been regarded as having a good chance of unseating RINO Senator Susan Collins, a key piece of the Democrats’ quest to flip control of the U.S. Senate in November. Platner, in contrast, either is unelectable or should be. The RNC quickly crowed, “In November Susan Collins, a proven leader with an indisputable record of delivering for Maine, will face a Nazi sympathizing self-proclaimed communist with a record of hate-mongering and dishonesty.”

Well, the part about Platner is true, at least. He has said women who are raped are at fault. He said that blacks don’t tip. He has called called white, rural Maine dwellers stupid. He uses “fag” to describe gays. Platner praised Hamas, rationalized urinating on corpses, and has denigrated police officers. He once referred to Jesus as a “zombie” and the Virgin Mary as a “skank.” He also had a Nazi tattoo on his chest and defended it for years.

On the plus side, Platner approves of political violence, so at least in that sense he’s a mainstream 2026 Democrat.

Conservatives are confident that Platner will be an 800 lb. albatross around the necks of other Democratic candidates, as they will be placed in political zugzwang, with their choices being to condemn fellow Democrat or endorse sexism, misogyny, homophobia, bigotry, violence and blasphemy. Once again, as in 2016 when Donald Trump was running away with the Republican primaries, I don’t understand why a either political party cannot, in an extreme situation, announce that Candidate X does not represent that party’s values and therefore is rejected as a party candidate. Democrats and Republicans have an obligation to the Republic to place only competent, responsible Americans on the ballot. True, neither party is very good at doing that, but it still is an ongoing obligation.

The Democrats, to have any claim to competence and responsibly at all, should tell Platner that the party will not allow him to run as under the party banner. Let him sue, let him run as an independent, let him rant. At least they would demonstrate that the party has some standards, and cares about the public good.

Of course, we now know that today’s Democratic Party has no standards or principles, so this is a useless flight of fancy on my part.

Never mind.

In fact, it is not inconceivable that Platner can win. He was leading Mills in polling 2-1. And Trump Derangement among Democrats and progressives is so rampant that many would literally vote for Satan if they thought it would rid the nation of MAGA madness. After all, Bernie Sanders has endorsed this creep, who is, in addition to all I mentioned above, a Neo-communist like Bernie. As Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote last Fall,

“Andy O’Brien, a former Democratic state legislator and newspaper editor, told me that outsiders didn’t fully understand how radicalizing the second Trump presidency has been for ordinary Democrats. Even senior citizens, he said, were becoming “fire-breathing leftists. They’re just pissed off.” These voters understood that Platner had made mistakes, but they saw him as a fighter. “Five years ago, he would have been dead in the water, I think,” said O’Brien, who now works with the labor movement. “But this is such an unprecedented time. I think a lot of people really believe that we need somebody who can effectively fight against fascism.”

Yikes.

Friday Open Forum, God Save The King Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

As usual, a tour of the U.S. by a major head of state is causing a news stir and ethics issues. Perhaps nothing will ever top the uproar over Nikita Khrushchev’s visit during the Kennedy administration, when Nikita wanted to go to Disneyland and Walt wouldn’t let him in. President Trump has been on good behavior with King Charles and didn’t even slam the monarch on Truth Social after Charles delivered a number of subtle shots at Trump during his speech before Congress.

What is it about the royal family that makes so many Americans go all weak in the knees? My father strenuously objected to it, saying more than 50 years ago that the U.S. public should treat Great Britain’s kings, queens, princes and princes as what they are: embarrassing relics of a feudal system that we rejected and that should have died out in the 18th Century. He said he wouldn’t cross the road we lived on (Brunswick Road, Arlington—it had a “dead end” sign on each end) to greet any of them.

Dad would have probably approved of Mayor Mamdani’s brush off regarding King Charles, as when asked what he would say to the king if the two spoke, answered, “I would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond.” That’s one of the crowns jewels.

Meanwhile, there is much to talk about in the Wide, Wide World of Ethics. So talk, already…

“You Know…Morons”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Seldom has that Ethics Alarm clip been more appropriate than in response to the video below:

Stipulated: I have no idea how many people were interviewed to compile that selection of angry protesters unable to articulate what they were angry about. In my experience, however, it wouldn’t have taken many. At least the guy who defaults to Trump’s penchant for putting his personal brand on things has a point, but if that’s the first thing that comes to mind, the required retort is “Seriously? That’s what you’re out here demonstrating against? The name on the Kennedy Center?”

I wish there were more answers to work with. At least they would form the foundation for discussion. As with the previous post about people who criticize Supreme Court decisions without reading them, I believe it is incontrovertible that if one is determined to protest in public, one must be capable of articulating what is such a substantial grievance that it justifies doing so.

A NYT “Good Illegal Immigrant” Sob Story That I Sympathize With..

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In the past, I have registered disgust with the New York Times (and others) pushing illegal immigrant/open borders propaganda with features highlighting “good” illegals who are allegedly selfless, hard-working, honorable, long-time residents whose only transgression is that they have no business living here in the first place. Ethically, being in the U.S. legally is a condition precedent to my venturing any sympathy for someone facing deportation.

The saga of two teenage brothers from the Republic of Congo who have fallen into I.C.E.’s clutches, however, is different.

Israel Makoka, 18, and Max Makoka, 15, entered the United States legally on F-1 student visas. They were to attend the Piney Woods School, a “historically Black boarding institution” (whatever that is). The brothers weren’t comfortable at Piney Woods so they transferred to a public school in their host family’s neighborhood, Hancock High, in August of last year. A lawyer advised their host family to become their legal guardians so that they could remain in the country, and a judge granted the family’s guardianship request.

No one warned the family that the transfer to a public school would affect the brothers’ immigration status. Nobody knew until the teenagers’ arrest last week that moving from Piney Woods wiped out their legal immigration status. Hancock High is not allowed to host people on student visas, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement got wind of the snafu. The brothers are now facing deportation through, it can be argued, no fault of their own.

The rest of the Times piece is, like all the other “Good Illegal Immigrant” features, full of testimonials about how wonderful the Makokas are. This pattern reminds me of a comic’s routine I heard in which the wit marveled at how the murder victims in all the “Dateline” and “48 Hours” episodes are always described as lighting up every room they enter, being universally loved, and having no flaws or faults. Maybe the brothers are Golden Boys, and maybe not: it doesn’t matter. What matters is justice.

The maxim of the law is that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Mistake of law, however, can be a viable defense. What happened in this case is somewhere between the two, but the youth of these “Good Illegal Immigrants” should, I think, carry the day.

I hope this is recognized as the unintended mess it is, and that I.C.E. gives the Makotas a reprieve.

It’s the right and just course.

The Ethical Obligation To Confront People When They Literally Don’t Know What They Are Talking About And Are Opining Anyway

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

A very good friend whom I respect tremendously (but who lives in a bubble: he is a theater artist) just posted on Facebook:

“I’m heartsick that the Supreme Court–in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines–has now thoroughly gutted the Voting Rights Act. The right-wing majority has just upended legal provisions that for 60 years have helped ensure that you could not be denied political representation because of your race. Republicans will now be free to gerrymander districts with the intent of minimizing Black representation. It’s a disgraceful decision, undoing one of the major accomplishments of the Civil Rights Era.”

Naturally this standard issue progressive lament received immediate hosannas and replies about evil Republicans and racist SCOTUS Justices. Neither my friend, who is not a lawyer, nor any of the angry commenters had read the opinions in the decisions, and it was obvious from their content. I have read the decision and the opinions in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down a clearly racially motivated Louisiana gerrymander. I also discern that only the dissenters, the Wise Latina, the DEI black female, and the smart lesbian who apparently feels obligated to back her progressive sisters even when they are dead wrong, decided on their position based on ideology and partisan loyalty. The six Justices in the majority decided the case based on the law and reality.

The ignorance and bias of the non-lawyers attacking the decision is depressing. Yes, the Voting Rights Act was one of the major accomplishments of the Civil Rights Era, based on the conditions that prevailed during that era. 1965 was 62 years ago. The civil rights workers who were murdered in Mississippi ( the core of the film “Mississippi Burning”) died in 1964, the year before. To understate the case, Southern states are different now, but Democrats have been using the outdated formulas prescribed in a 1965 law to justify anti-white racial discrimination to this day.

In the majority opinion, Justice Alito correctly wrote,

“The question before us now is whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act should be added to our very short list of compelling interests that can justify racial discrimination. To answer that question, we must understand exactly what §2 of the Voting Rights Act demands with respect to the drawing of legislative districts…. §2 imposes liability only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race…. In [Rucho], we held that claims of partisan gerrymandering are not justiciable in federal court. The upshot of Rucho was that, as far as federal law is concerned, a state legislature may use partisan advantage as a factor in redistricting. And litigants cannot circumvent that rule by dressing their political-gerrymandering claims in racial garb…. [T]he Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, [so] no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8….”

The whole opinion is worth reading. If one is going to opine publicly about how terrible the decision is, it has to be read: one is ethically obligated to know what the decision was and what the law is supporting it before offering criticism. None of those fuming over the case had read the decision, and neither had my friend. They just listened to MSNOW and read indignant protests by race-hustlers like Barack Obama. They are exactly like George Costanza in a memorable “Seinfeld” episode where he is too lazy to read “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” for his book club so he watches the movie instead. That George! What a lazy idiot. How could he think the movie would be an accurate version of the book?

I asked everyone on the thread whether they had bothered to read what they were condemning and being “heartsick” about. Crickets.