Ah, yes…once again we have the weekly feature where all of you slightly right-of-center, occasionally libertarian clones can agree with each other,
Do keep it civil: that’s an echo I particularly encourage.
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Ethics Alarms 
In denial.
You asked everyone to take a quiz, received tons of comments (if you ignore that one commentator who responds to himself multiple times), and THATS your analysis? Almost everyone leans right here.
Michael West did a review of the responses to the quiz and made some worthwhile observations.
He said “ it most certainly is NOT an echo chamber in so far as the moderator does not actively police comments or focus on comments based on a *political* point of view.
The massive exodus of people on the political left was their own choosing.”
Why people on the left stopped commenting is irrelevant and the first part isn’t even accurate. And even if it was, it too is irrelevant.
Also the “spread” doesn’t make any sense. Practically everyone here leans to the right. Which we all knew anyway and I dont expect the members of said echo chamber to actually admit they partake in an echo chamber.
Maybe there’s a lot of clear thinking that goes on here?
What exactly would render EA not an echo chamber? What’s missing? How can the current state of affairs be remedied?
He’s triggered by the fact that the Left wing increased their unethical conduct so badly that when there would be traditionally time for focus on the Right wing with Trump’s election, the bad behavior on the right was drowned out by the hyperactive Left.
And instead of asking introspective questions he quit the blog like the rest of them. And has come skulking back as a bomb thrower.
Na.
I’m not even a liberal, I just call myself that to rile you all up.
Oh, so you aren’t here for discussion. Just bomb throwing.
Useless.
I’m here to challenge all the crazy crap that’s spread by this blog and the comments.
I’ve heard good things about this blog recently, decided to check it out, and have been reading some old posts with lots of comments.
“I’m here to challenge all the crazy crap that’s spread by this blog and the comments. ”
To what end?
A lib wrote, “I’m here to challenge all the crazy crap that’s spread by this blog and the comments.”
Question: How do you define “crazy crap”?
Sooooo, are you admitting to being a shit-stirrer?
Greatest descriptor of all time. Has to be Yiddish at its root. Or maybe Gaelic?
If that’s what you call people who challenge you and aren’t part of your little echo chamber here…then sure.
It’s what I call people who come in here and cause more trouble than they bring value.
Until today I have never read any comment by you. It seems to me that if you want to challenge someone’s thinking you must posit an idea which demonstrates a fact based analysis. The only argument you made was that comments here are crap. That is an assertion without evidence.
Chris Marschner wrote, “It seems to me that if you want to challenge someone’s thinking you must posit an idea which demonstrates a fact based analysis. The only argument you made was that comments here are crap. That is an assertion without evidence.”
I think you may be talking above A Lib’s ability to comprehend; therefore, from the point of view of someone like A Lib, you must be intentionally talking down to what you think is an intellectually inferior human being and, following in the social justice mindset that’s been presented over the last couple of years, your condescension makes you a white supremacist. 😉
A lib wrote, “Na. I’m not even a liberal, I just call myself that to rile you all up.”
Interesting when these type of commenters tell you exactly what their purpose is in their own words.
TROLL: noun (abbreviated version of internet troll) Those that post inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, often for their own amusement.
Well, it’s pretty obvious. Note that this character denied that he was trolling when I asserted that, and now literally states that this is his intent.
tick-tick-tick…
You intentionally give “A Lib” an opportunity to participate and the response is to literally squander it…
Where did I say that?
I’ll wait…
Tick tick tick
Ohhhh shit he’s about to drop the ban hammer on the dissenters of the blog. One more point for the echo chamber!
I said you were trolling, and you replied, “You don’t know what trolling is.” I do, and you admit to doing it.
Hurry up and stop quibbling. Say something constructive. You’re running out of chances. And time.
My name is Brandon.
No games. Email me with your full name. jamproethics@verizon.net.
More sarcasm and you’ll be doing your blog banking at the First National BONK!
Welp, that should be it.
This is a perfect example of why this place is an echo chamber.
Your little clique just loves to gang up on the dissenters so you can protect you’re little echo chamber.
The owner of this blog really has curated the creme of the crop boy I tell ya.
A Lib,
You’ve been given an opportunity to contribute here so this place will seem like less of a echo chamber but you haven’t contributed much. How about you pick one of the other comments outside of this deflection of yours and present your opposing arguments. I’ll offer up my comment below for you to reply to, it’s as good a place to start as any.
We await your opposing arguments so we can actually debate.
Make your choice.
Final chance, AL.
You have made it clear you think this is an “echo chamber.” Go ahead. Now it’s time to counter the echoes with some substantive, ethics -based analysis of something. So far, all you have done is throw insults, when you have a chance to record well-reasoned positions on anything you like. And it pollutes the forum. Nobody wants to read silly “It’s an echo chamber!” “No it isn’t!” exchanges ad nauseum.
Put your money where your mouth is, or you’ll be gone.
One more administrative matter: as the Comment Policies clearly state, I need to be informed of your real name, though screen names are still respected. You email me for that. End of day deadline.
A Lib,
You have been directly challenged multiple times to participate in a meaningful way and now you have to make a choice, do you actually participate or do you scream “echo chamber” as you vanish into the hillside with your tail between your legs. Personally I much rather you prove to all of us that you can participate in a meaningful way.
Choose.
Wrong. We just won’t fold when the left calls us names or says we are racist. I would welcome actual discussion with someone from the left. Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden, may he rest in peace, respected one another and had interesting discussions. Curtis Sliwa and Ron Kuby had interesting discussions. That’s because they actually talked about what the subject matter was and weren’t wedded to partisan talking points, at least not all the time. I’m happy to discuss any number of issues, and I will freely admit I don’t always get it right. I will also freely admit to doing some trash talking, partly to spice things up, partly because I’m human and I get angry like other folks. Usually, usually, at least some kind of substance results from these disgussions. What doesn’t result in substance, though, is parroting of partisan talking points and throwing insults. If I wanted to read Democratic talking points I could go on Dailykos or one of those sites. If you want to try to substantively point out where the right has gone wrong, ok. If you want to point out the gaps in the other side’s opinions, ok. If a lot of things, ok.
However, since you’ve gotten here I’ve seen nothing from you but gotchas, insults, and well-worn talking points. There is no value in any of that.
I’d like to say it’s because anyone with any sense leans right, but that’s simply not true. It’s also not true that Jack polices based on political viewpoint. I’ve gotten my knuckles rapped a few times and so have a few of the other righties here, and usually because we overreached or were wrong. The majority of the lefties here DID in fact leave on their own or deliberately get themselves thrown out, you can see for yourself if you do a deep dive. Chris insulted the host and then refused to apologize, full well knowing he was done if he didn’t. That’s on him. Charles walked away on his own, thinking Jack had drunk the rightist Kool-Aid. That may be his opinion, but it’s not how Jack sees it, and it’s not the truth. Fatty quit when Jack said Chelsea Manning should be executed for treason. OK, that opinion was one too many for him, then so be it. The one lefty I miss is Spartan, who at least saw the people here as people, not targets to throw darts at. That leaves brave old Valky as the last dyed-in-the-wool lefty here apart from yourself. Jack doesn’t want a righty echo chamber, he’s said as much, but you are so far a poor representative of the left, and I think you’re treading on thin ice.
Uh…he acknowledged the general lean of the commentariat.
I bet A Lib is Chris. Same manic intensity. Probably on a Dem payroll. It’s the only explanation for such rabid doggedness.
And it sure looks familiar.
In Jack’s Let’s Check That “Echo Chamber” thread, I wrote…
No, Chris deserves more credit than that.
I still think he was a paid internet warrior for the Dems or someone. He expended such a massive amount of effort and was so relentless. That sort of attention span can only come from being paid by the hour. Plus, he was so incredibly orthodox and spouted talking points like a DNC fax machine. Yes, he was smart, and articulate and very often thoughtful, but he default setting was pretty darned nasty whenever push came to shove.
Maybe a little more.
Recently a conservative friend of mine spent some of his conservative capital and posted his opinion in support of the January 6th riot being called an “insurrection” and the following is my reply..
My question is regarding the ethics surrounding using the word “insurrection”. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, made a public propaganda declaration yesterday that “It is essential that we preserve the narrative of January 6th”. It’s very clear that she wants to squash any opposition to the use of the word “insurrection” and push the approved “narrative”, she is publicly telling everyone that she approves the principles that Paul Joseph Goebbels the Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 put into practice:
It’s very clear that Speaker Pelosi, and others, want to squash any opposition to the use of the word “insurrection” and push the approved “narrative”.
Jonathan Turley ripped, in his own way, Nancy Pelosi and others for the use of the word “insurrection” again today.
Finally; is it “ethical” to use the word “insurrection” to describe the actions on January 6, 2020 or is it as I claimed “legally and morally wrong” to use the word.
The entire “insurrection” effort is just another lettered item in the list of efforts to “get Trump.” Any “news report” or opinion piece or statement by a politician that uses the term completely undermines its legitimacy by doing so and reveals itself as desperate propaganda.
Other Bill wrote, “The entire “insurrection” effort is just another lettered item in the list of efforts to “get Trump.”
You’re missing the larger picture, the smear is much more broad than just an effort to “get Trump”.
Anyone that disagrees with the use of the word “insurrection” is actively being smeared as supporting everything that happened on January 6th; in other words, opposing the use of the word makes you a supporter of the insurrection, supporter of the violence, supporter of sedition, supporter of toppling the government, anti-Democracy, supporter of traitors, supporter of evil, etc, etc and therefore you are an evil too.
I seem to remember there was a reason that the bar for treason was set deliberately high in the Constitution. Could it be that the governments it was trying NOT to be like had abused the charge of treason to get rid of those who dared speak their minds or disagree with the powers that be? Nah, that’s not what the Democratic party is doing now, couldn’t be. .
Steve-O-in-NJ wrote, “I seem to remember there was a reason that the bar for treason was set deliberately high in the Constitution.”
It was but that doesn’t stop the political left from bastardizing the definition of that word in their propaganda just like they’ve done with so many other words.
It’s all about the narrative, not truth.
Bullseye.
I agree, Steve. It’s “get Trump” in the near term, but that’s just a subset of “achieve single party rule by annihilating the Republican party and any of its adherents or any non-liberals.”
My 13 year old had a journal assignment prompt “Ethics should be at the center of your life… Respond”.
Walking him through some his options:
– What does center mean?
– What are the ramifications of some aspect becoming that which to all else answers?
– What happens if any given system never yields?
– What is the purpose of ethics?
– What about ethics has as a unifier and moderator in a selfish system?
That’s a cool assignment. After he’s submitted it, you should ask him if you can post it here.
Jon Stewart “clarifies” regarding Harry Potter and anti-Semitic tropes?
https://hollywoodlife.com/2022/01/06/jon-stewart-denies-j-k-rowling-anti-semitism-harry-potter/
He plays the “I was just kidding” card? Curious, non?
That was always Stewart’s game, the “Clown nose on, clown nose off” trick, as one conservative pundit perceptively described it. He’s a smart and perceptive guy, but he lacks integrity.
I guess my question is, “what’s the point?” Am I correct in assuming he didn’t like the reaction his comments were getting so he’s done an about face and backed off?
The problem is, as a joke, it was not particularly funny. I will give it a try:
“Yes, the bankers in Harry Potter were Jews. There’s no denying it. The scene at the bank? It was like a Stewart Family Reunion. Griphooks is a spitting image of my Uncle Shlomo. Ask any Jew; they’ll tell you.
-Jut
It’s my opinion that the following should be repeated to anyone that makes a serious claim that Ethics Alarms is an echo chamber…
I think “echo chamber” is a straw man thrown at any not liberal/progressive enterprise. It’s akin to that brilliant Marxist/Leninist term “reactionary” whereby anyone who has the temerity to disagree with or even question monolithic Communist thought is automatically dismissible without any effort or thought. Just as swallowing the Commie line is the only way to cure oneself of being a “reactionary,” the only way to clean out an echo chamber is to silence all opposing thought and have it overrun by doctrinal lefties. “If you can’t beat ’em, dismiss them.” You know, the huffy line from sixth grade: “I’M going where the air is cleaner!”
Yes, much like the Marxist/Leninist school of thought; for the 21st century political left, there are four tenants of “truth”; the left is right, the right is wrong, wrong is evil and evil needs to be destroyed, that’s the dead end of the 21st century political left’s critical thinking.
I consider the 21st Century political left Marxist/Leninist, Steve. Not “much like,” joined at the hip, one and the same. New boss, same as the old boss.
Did anyone see that CBS poll on what people think Jan 6th is? If I was smart enough to figure out how to embed on this platform I would, but the gist of it is you can choose insurrection or patriotism (there are 4 categories, but both of those are related to those two topics).
Talk about a loaded question.
Polls.
ALERT! “A Lib” is banned.
I’m sure you are shocked. Seldom has any commenter worked so hard at getting banned, or been tolerated for so long while doing so. And he successfully wrecked today’s open forum.
There were lots of reasons for banning him, but in the end he made it easy: I reminded him that Ethics Alarms requires commenters to,within a reasonable time, inform me via email what their real name is. “A Lib” stated that he would never do that.Case closed.
In basing his entire justification for commenting here on an insistence that EA was not tolerant of dissenting views, he merely helped illustrate why so many progressive shills fail here. There is no need or justification for being a contrarian or a dissenter to require also being an asshole.
If he tries to sneak back on, don’t engage. Your comments will vanish when his comment is sent to SPAM Hell.
Sometimes I think rule #1 of ALL online forums should be “don’t be a jerkass.” We all probably have our jerkass moments, and sometimes even deliberately go full jerkass. I know I have had my moments and deliberately gone full jerkass. Usually, it’s powered by anger, hatred, or a lethal combination of both and triggering. I wrote a comment in 2017 that was designated a comment of the day, which covers a lot of that: https://ethicsalarms.com/2017/06/16/yet-another-comment-of-the-day-on-comment-of-the-day-morning-ethics-warm-up-61417/
The bottom line is there’s really no value in going someplace and deliberately stirring up trouble just because you disagree with the people there or pursuing someone you don’t like to try to make his life miserable. If you do the former, you’ve just got too much time on your hands, or you are trying to avoid doing things you should be doing but might not necessarily want to do. If you do the latter, you are acting like an arrested 14-year-old. 14-year-olds throw insults and not much else. 14-year-olds deliberately seek out those they don’t like to give them a hard time. 14-year-olds harass others in attempts to make good days bad and bad days worse. 14-year-olds smirk and laugh and stick their tongues out (or their middle fingers up) with a smug, you-can’t-touch-me attitude. That’s why sometimes the adults in their lives get fed up with their nonsense and drop the hammer HARD. Usually that, combined with getting older and actually developing a functioning frontal brain, puts an end to that behavior, or it did when I was growing up and there was no internet, no texting, no blogging, no access to people outside your limited world, and no way of harassing anyone other than personally (the world stops looking the other way on this after 18), or via telephone (traceable) or the mail (easily thrown in the trash and ignored, or leaves evidence if serious).
Now though, there’s all these wonderful things like social media, blogs, e-boards, and so on where you can (or could) say pretty much whatever you damn well please. Some folks, actually a lot of folks, don’t move past that 14yo mentality and use them to keep right on hating and harassing and throwing insults. In fact, it’s BETTER than real life because maybe you’ll get kicked off this or that page or board, but it’s pretty easy to return if you’re tech-savvy, and there can’t be the very real-life consequences of someone you harass getting pushed too far and busting you one in the mouth. Somehow harassment loses its appeal if you get your nose broken or your head slammed against a dumpster. That can’t happen over the net, though, so guys like “A Lib” continue to spend their time bathed in the glow of their computer screens and banging away on their keyboards. Sometimes that even takes the place of real-life socialization, hence computer geeks continuing to carry their prankish bent into adulthood and a lot of millennials and Zers being 28 going on 14 or whatever numbers you want to use.
That’s where you get people like “A Lib” and why they are a waste of space. Did he really think, I wonder, that he was going to come on here, throw a few insults, and suddenly the commentariat would become perfectly balanced between right and left? Did he think if he called me a racist boot-licker whose comments made people dumber for reading them that I’d suddenly start buying a lot of Ta-Nehisi Coates books and leaning farther to the left than I lean to the right now? Complete waste of space. Solomon wrote in the Proverbs that you have to whip a horse, you have to bridle a donkey, and you have to beat a fool (Proverbs 26:3). Well, we can’t do that here, but Jack can slam the e-door on a fool. Too bad, but he gave him a chance.
I can’t take credit for this but someone has been documenting the “facts” SCOTUS made regarding COVID. So far they have come up with the following:
– over 100,000 children hospitalized
– 750 million positive cases yesterday
– vaccines stop transmission
– Omicron deadlier than Delta
– OSHA has broad police power
– 90% of hospitalized are unvaccinated
best policy is to get vaccinated
-“second best is to wear masks”
-Covid is “bloodborne”
-hospitalization growing by factor of 10
-masks mandate is no different from vaccine mandate
-humans are like dangerous machines spewing virus
-forced vaccines is political policy
I’ve read articles Jack has written about politicians making claims on things they know nothing about. It worries me this is the mentality of SCOTUS getting to rule on a major case.
This was mostly Sotomayor, who is a proven dolt, but Breyer also was spewing bad facts. This is the problem: even Supreme Court Justices can’t learn the truth from the news media. Very, very troubling.
Thanks for reading so far down the page!
Kagan brought some mess, too. With what little I’ve heard of the oral arguments, Kagan & Sotomayor have forgotten what their job is. The list of absurdities above notwithstanding, Kagan opined on whether COVID vaccines are a benefit to society. That’s not for a judge to decide. The matter for the court is to determine if the government has the legal authority to coerce Americans into a medical procedure against their will. That these two Justices could be so ill-informed AND unable to recognize the limits of their duties is yet another bad thing that I thought could never happen.
At least A lib is gone.
I let him stay too long. Sorry. I was hoping he’d calm down and start being constructive.
You can’t say: 1) he was not explicitly invited to contribute constructively; and 2) he was not explicitly advised of the consequences.
He got a fair shake. I was hoping he would come up with something.
But, it appears it was not worth his while to do so.
So, no big loss.
-Jut
VACCINATION CARD
Hello.
-Hi, table for two, please.
-Sure, and your name?
-Cody.
-Great. And do you and your guest have your vaccination cards?
-Hmmm well first..Can you tell us who our server will be?
-Um, looks like Brad will be your server tonight.
-Great. Can you show us Brad’s vaccination card?
-Um…
-And also, can you provide me with proof that Brad is not a carrier of HIV, Hepatitis A or B, or any other communicable diseases? Same for you and the kitchen staff.
-Um…
Also, we would prefer not to be served by someone who is on or uses recreational drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, meth, fentanyl, etc., so if you could provide us with Brad’s most recent tox screen, that would be great. Matter of fact, I will need to see all your employee’s medical history.
Um…Let me get the manager for you.
That would be great, thanks. Make sure they have their vax card and medical records please.
Here’s the thing, nobody needs restaurants and other places but they need us. Start standing your ground.
Stolen and passing along.