Better yet, just THINK…
Here is another reason Why Our Children Will Grow Up To Be Cheats And Liars: ethically obtuse thinking like that expressed by the Washington Post editors this morning.
The Jackie Robinson West Little League team was stripped of its national title for a very good reason: it had an unfair advantage over its competition, so its victory was corrupt. Its coach and administrators cheated, manipulating league boundaries to assemble a team fortified by “ringers.” The victory didn’t count because the victory was a sham. The team wasn’t playing by the rules. This is not a difficult concept, or shouldn’t be.
Yet the Post’s editors are aghast, writing, “The fact is they punished a group of children who did everything right, on and off the field — punished them for the sins of adults who did wrong and an organization that was willfully oblivious.”
Yup. That’s the way life works. That’s the way it has to work and has always worked, and the sooner children learn that lesson, the less likely they are to grow up as ethically muddled as the adults who write Post editorials.
If the kids can keep their championship and the honor of winning it, what is to stop a future coach and a team’s parents from saying, “Well, there’s only one way the Bad News Bears can win this year, and that’s if we cheat. But the great part is, if they do win, and we’re caught, they still get to keep the championship! So we get fined! At least little Tatum and Tanner will have a thrill they’ll remember always! Plus, they’ll learn the valuable lesson that cheating pays, which will guide them through life, especially in journalism, business and politics!”
What will stop it? Nothing. The risk/reward ratio will be in place to make cheating an attractive options, because that way the kids can’t lose.
I understand why the Post is seduced by such reasoning. The immigration system created by the so-called “Dream Acts” work exactly the same way. A parent knows that if he smuggles his illegal immigrant child over the border, the U.S. will make sure the child not only doesn’t suffer because of the parent’s crime, but can benefit from it. This is, we are told, “the right thing to do.” It’s the right thing to do if you want to encourage illegal immigration (which, to be fair, Dream Act supporters generally do), and it’s the right thing to do if you want to make certain that children benefit from their parents’ illegal conduct. But the right thing to do if you want to discourage the conduct is to make it clear that the kids will not benefit, and indeed will suffer for their parents’ deeds.
The exact same principle applies to Little League cheating, and should. In fact, it has to, or you have declared that cheating works.
It is never too early to learn that human beings pay dearly for the crimes, transgressions, blunders and lies of their leaders and superiors. I have a close friend who was a lawyer at Arthur Andersen. He lost his job and much of his marketability when the firm collapsed due to a series of events that eroded its trust. Was that unfair? To him, sure, but it is necessary if organizations are not to be filled with blithely blind subordinates who take no interest in the values and conduct of their leadership, as long as the paychecks and bonuses keep coming. No individuals can belong to a team, a company, an army, or any organization and still claim no accountability for what their leadership and colleagues do. They are accountable.
The rest of the Post argument slips into hand-wringing, excuses and hindsight bias. Yes, it would have been better if the League had acted sooner, but the fact is the team still cheated, and the championship would bel illicit the facts came out. “Why didn’t Little League learn from earlier incidents in which player eligibility was an issue? Shouldn’t an organization that has parlayed the success of its young players into a lucrative television contract invest money in protocols to enforce its rules? Given information that was in the press and online about the suburban roots of some of these players before the team won the title, why was an investigation started only after a rival coach complained?” the Post asks. All good questions, and completely irrelevant to whether the Jackie Robinson West team should keep its ill-gotten gains, regardless of who ill-got them. It shouldn’t. The championship passed to the team that played by the rules and lost to one that didn’t. Good.
Then we have this closing sentiment:
“Punishing children who played their hearts out, by contrast, is probably not the best way to attract new players — and certainly not the way to honor the game.”
Is the best way to attract new players to allow cheating teams to prosper? Is the best way to honor the game to give teams incentives to cheat at it?
The Post has provided a classic example of “Think of the children!” ethics rot.
There’s a lot of it going around.
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Source: Washington Post
Ethics Alarms 
Of course there is a connection between what adults do and what children observe. Nice call!
There is also a measurable incidence of what children do, based on what they see adults around them do.
Even more disturbing, disgusting and entirely predicable, the loathsome Jesse Jackson says this is racist, that the only reason they took the championship away was because the kids are black.
Waiting to see if the President sticks his nose into this as well…
Guaranteed!
Two quotes from http://myworldofbaseball.com/wordpress/?p=3476 — commenting on dealing with the JRW situation:
“The first Little League team to have their title stripped was the team from the Philippines that had won the World Series in 1992 … (which had) used players from outside their boundaries … (and some also) overage.”
“In 2001 Rolando Paulino Little League from Bronx, New York was stripped of its third place finish for using Danny Almonte, a pitcher who was two years older than Little League rules require.”
I remember the news of Almonte, long since gone on to a brief and mediocre baseball career finishing in a restaurant job (with recreation in an adult league) while his teammates lost championship credit accrued and possible proud advancement in the sport. That too was a situation created entirely by adults, and acquiring much sympathy for the children. But I don’t recall that there was a major argument, much less any “scandal” over the outcome.
There wasn’t. This is race-baiting, and the double standard now in vogue regarding African Americans. I will say this until they carry me away: it’s Obama’s primary legacy, and the black community will suffer for it for years and more. He’s made it respectable to use racial bias as a defense against criticism for misconduct,lies, corruption, incompetence, cheating, failure, criminal conduct, anything.
I am somewhat surprised that the Post fell for it in this case. They did not issue the same opinion in the other cases.
Of course they can suffer from it. U.S. birthright citizenship (which is something of a parallel) has imposed unsought burdens on many people, from those Puerto Ricans who did not want to be brought closer to integration with the U.S.A. to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who was confronted with financial problems. It all depends on their situation, though these days it is unlikely to render them liable to conscription.
Good observation. Puerto Rico would be better off as a state, but that ship has sailed.
No, it’s not a question of “better off” but of what they wanted. Those Puerto Ricans didn’t want citizenship with statehood rather than citizenship without statehood, they didn’t want to be brought closer to the U.S.A. either way (change “Puerto Rico” to “Hawaii” throughout for an illustration where the statehood issue doesn’t muddy the waters; many Hawaiians wanted not to be part of the U.S.A. at all, and indeed the favourable statehood vote only came up as a result of “manufacturing new facts”, as the Israelis call it, including making short term military residents eligible to vote). Even when Prussia conquered Schleswig-Holstein the Danes there didn’t have Prussian citizenship thrust upon them the way the Danish nationals of the Danish Virgin Islands had U.S. citizenship thrust upon them; they were granted optant status that let them choose either, with time to decide, and see out their time in place if they stayed Danish.
The thing is, ideas of “better” can lead to the unaware genuinely thinking they are conferring a benefit without thinking to ask if it is wanted, and the slightly more aware into thinking those who don’t like it ipso facto have “false consciousness”, so they should be given what they would want if they only knew “better”. But you probably know what C.S.Lewis wrote about those who torment people for their own good.
Applying the Post’s parting shot, which Jack cited, to its infallible reasoning regarding another little matter:
“Punishing human beings who immigrated their hearts out, by contrast, is probably not the best way to attract new citizens — and certainly not the way to honor the Reconquista.”
Children need to learn early that bad actions have bad consequences; whether by them or by the adults who supervise them. They, themselves, are innocent in this and take take a modest satisfaction in knowing that they, at least, held their end up. The lesson they learned (hopefully) from what happened afterward may be the most valuable life experience of the whole affair.
The problem, Steve, is that with Jesse Jackson’s appearance, cadaverous as he was, what they will learn is that if they scream “RACISM” loud enough and long enough (sounds a bit like the Big Lie, doesn’t it?) they can get away with anything.
Like I said; “hopefully”!