Month: July 2022

Wow! Extreme Ideology And Resistance To Stubborn Reality Leads To Astoundingly Unethical And Irresponsible Policies…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I don’t understand this at all. I don’t understand how intelligent officials—and by “intelligent” here I only mean “smart enough to put their socks on before their shoes”—-can possibly convince themselves that ignoring common sense and the collected wisdom of centuries as well as the acquired knowledge of recent decades will have anything but disastrous results. But here we stand:

  • In June, the California Highway Patrol arrested two men after a search of their vehicle revealed a stash of cocaine and 150,000 fentanyl pills. Based on the amount of drugs involved, they were booked into jail with an initial bail amount of $1 million each. (Fentanyl kills people.) But a pre-trial risk assessment of the suspects resulted in the men being classified  “low risk,” so they were released on their own recognizance without either the local D.A. or law enforcement officials being consulted. The two men, 25-year-old Jose Zendejas and 19-year-old Benito Madrigal, faced up to 14 years in state prison. They were expected to show up back in court on July 21. Shockingly, they did not. Nobody knows where they are.Their release is part of the social justice movement to eliminate bail because it discriminates against poor people. It also helps with the over-incarceration problem, because it allows criminals to get away with their crimes and harm society again, while broadcasting the message to other would be criminals that they are in a low-risk, high rewards profession as long as they stay where fantasy-blinded progressives run things….like California.

Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Bo Jackson

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

It’s still early on Saturday morning and I’m not quite up to the hard stuff, but this post is easy.

Retired superstar athlete Bo Jackson, who had memorable if tragically shortened careers in both the NFL and Major League Baseball before his hip gave out, has revealed that he flew to Uvalde, Texas three days after the 18-year-old gunman carried out the massacre, donated $170,000 and offered to pay for all funeral expenses for the victim’s families.

Jackson has never been a spotlight hound, and apparently acted because he had spent time in the city and was familiar with it, and because he was touched by the tragedy. The only pro-athlete to be both an NFL and an MLB All-Star told the Associated Press, “I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting old…It’s just not right for parents to bury their kids — it’s just not right.”

Continue reading →

Friday Ethics Fire Sale, 7/22/2022: We Didn’t Start The Fire!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Tip: Showtime’s “Billions” is streaming. It’s an excellent ethics series, with a plot-driven clash between legal ethics, business ethics, marital ethics and workplace ethics.

And Paul Giamatti (“John Adams”) remains the best actor related to a (late, much missed) Commissioner of Baseball ever.

1. AOC set up her reflex defenders to look foolish (not that they don’t deserve to) First, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) denied that her arrest outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday was “performative art,” and claimed, risibly, that she was not pretending to be handcuffed for the cameras. However, about 30 minutes before the arrests of pro-abortion protesters outside the Supreme Court including 17 Democratic House members, a staffer for AOC’s fellow “Squad “member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) let a metaphorical cat out of the bag. Jeremy Slevin tweeted, adding that the stunt would be live-streamed,:

“Members of Congress, including @IlhanMN will be participating in a civil disobedience at the Supreme Court, potentially including arrests, shortly. 1 PM ET/12 PM CT,”

After her indignant denials, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Instagram, “This was an activist-led civil disobedience, where activists & organizers from [the far-left Center for Popular Democracy Action Fund ] + others asked members of Congress to submit themselves for arrest in front of the Supreme Court.”

In other words, it was indeed “performative art.” Moreover, it is unethical for members of Congress to allow themselves to be recruited as advocacy props for other organizations. That’s not their job. It is particularly not their job because the Supreme Court is not constructed to conform its legal determinations to public protests or the desires of elected officials…nor should it or can it,

On a technical note ( which Ann Althouse, being the way she is, focused upon mightily), civil disobedience is when a protester violates the law they are protesting, and accepts the penalties for doing so. AOC and the rest were not arrested for performing illegal abortions, but for blocking traffic.

Continue reading →

Ethics Musings On The Transgender Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

Is being transgender a mental disorder? A lot of news and controversies around the suddenly militant minority seems to compel honest consideration of the question. It is definitely not a formal disorder, but that doesn’t deal with the issue. The medical profession, which is, as has been periodically documented on Ethics Alarms, is now politically-driven and in the directing of progressive positions and agendas.

Up until 2012, transgenderism was labeled a mental disorder; that year, the American Psychiatric Association revised its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and struck transgenderism from the list. Now, woke institutions like the Cleveland Clinic state outright, “Being transgender is not a mental illness. But people who are transgender face unique challenges, such as gender dysphoria and discrimination, which can affect their mental health….” The Clinic then adopts whole cloth the familiar transgender narrative, uncritically, as if it is scientific fact rather than an ideological position:

Healthcare providers assign a baby a sex at birth. Babies may be assigned female at birth (AFAB) or assigned male at birth (AMAB) based on their external physical genitalia. The term “cisgender” describes people who identify as the gender that matches their assigned sex. (For example, if you’re born biologically female and you identify as female, then you’re cisgender.) But for some people, as they grow up and understand themselves better, they find that their gender doesn’t match their assigned, biological sex.

Continue reading →

Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

Raise topics, expand on favorite issues, just keep the topic and your manner of discourse ethical…anything but memes. I hate memes. You know I hate memes.

Otherwise, have at it.

From The Book Of Great Stupid: Pat Benatar’s Virtue-Signaling Self-Censorship

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

It is kind of sad, really. So many progressive ideologues are so bereft of persuasive arguments, real facts and non-emotion-based analysis that they must resort to a paltry supply of tools, most of which are unethical: insults, fear-mongering, intimidation, race-baiting, bullying, protests and rioting, and attempted restriction of speech and expression. It is the last that is the topic here at the moment, and an especially stupid example.

Senior rock singer Pat Benatar now refuses to perform her hit song “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” as a protest against mass shootings. That song is 42 years old, and, correct me if I’m wrong, but is the song Benatar is most associated with. Her refusing to sing “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” is like Andy Williams refusing to sing “Moon River.” But you see, in increasingly delusional Woke Land, eliminating words, pictures and song lyrics that relate to bad things, event, people, places and things, like guns and shooting, is a step toward making everyone “safe.”

Except that “hit me with your best shot” doesn’t refer to guns or shooting at all, but never mind: anything to signal virtue, however moronically. Benatar is removing a popular, indeed classic piece of popular culture to accomplish absolutely nothing constructive at all, while standing for the fatuous proposition that banning artistic works that mention guns ( even though her song doesn’t) will help address the problem of homicidal gunmen. Or maybe her idea is to hold her own song hostage until the Second Amendment is repealed.

Hmmm…is that a more or less stupid theory than the first one?

Continue reading →

Observations On The Trans Dinosaur Emoji Appropriation Tragedy [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I guess Tucker Carlson does have his uses after all: somebody on his staff uncovered a head-explodingly silly NPR feature from January, and the topic was still so silly that it didn’t filter down into the rest of of conservative media until this week. What NPR felt was a matter worth spending taxpayer funds on and wasting listener’s ears on was this, and I am NOT kidding: in the words of a guest on the segment, “Many people who are queer, whether they are trans or some other form of genderqueer or whatever it is…We love dinosaurs.” Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month, Ethics Dunce And Ethics Corrupter: First Avenue In Minneapolis

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Wow! Congratulations! An Unethical Triple Crown!

The depressing thing is that I should have to explain to some people what’s unethical about this.

The show, it appears, was sold out. Never mind. People who were not going to be at the show didn’t want people who did to have the chance, and a cowardly, mealy-mouthed, censorship-embracing management didn’t have the integrity or ethical literacy to tell them to learn to live with the reality that everyone doesn’t have to think like they think.

Continue reading →

Double Standards In Law Enforcement Are Always Unethical, But Blatantly Partisan Double Standards Are Dangerous

/ Jack Marshall / 92 Comments

Why haven’t authorities moved to stop the harassing demonstrations outside Justice Kavanaugh’s home in Chevy Chase, Maryland? It is pretty hard to deny the reason: President Biden’s administration approves of the cause the protesters support, so it is reluctant to enforce a Federal law explicitly forbidding the conduct that is focused on punishing/intimidating/ harassing a Supreme Court Justice. Meanwhile, as this has been going on for months, House Democrats have been holding an endless, historically-rigged kangaroo “hearing” regarding an 18 month-old protest against Congress that morphed into a riot, as D.C. courts continue to hand out severe jails sentences for participants whose actions were indistinguishable from those of “good” George Floyd rioters who were not tried or punished at all.

Apparently Democrats and progressives believe 1) nobody notices the obvious double standard (that is, the public is stupid), or 2) their constituencies love it, so that’s all that matters, or 3) screw Republicans, they deserve it, or 4) the news media will spin it so it won’t be a big deal.

Having different law enforcement policies for one party and its set of political beliefs and a harsher one for its adversary party is asking for serious civil unrest. This is the calling card of totalitarian governments, yet the party currently in control of this government cynically argues that it is the lone bulwark against an existential threat to democracy. Attorney General Merrick Garland, the official who is charged with seeing that the laws are enforced equally for all, had the gall to complain to the Harvard 2022 graduating class that “we are also witnessing violence and threats of violence that undermine the rule of law upon which our democracy is based.”

So his justification for not enforcing the Federal law against pro-abortion protesters harassing Justice Kavanaugh is…what? There is no justification.

Yes, the news media is burying the issue, but when they try to justify what is happening, they look like the fools and toadies they are. PolitiFact, for example, by far the most openly partisan and biased of the so-called “factcheckers,” boldly tackled the question, “Is it legal to protest outside justices’ homes?” The answer is clear: no. Title 18, Section 1507 of the U.S. Code, enacted in 1950, states that it is illegal to picket or parade in front of a courthouse or a judge’s home “with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge.” Those found in violation of the law can be fined, sentenced to up to one year in prison, or both. That seems pretty clear, don’t you think? Obviously the protesters are attempting to influence Kavanaugh and the other justices who are getting similar treatment. Permitting the public to try to intimidate and harass judges because of their decisions is unquestionably an attack on the administration of justice. Yet PolitiFact’s verdict is that the unequivocal law “suggests” that the protests are illegal, and who knows? Some court somewhere might find that the law is a First Amendment violation!

It’s amazing that even hyper-partisans take PolitiFact seriously. It’s even more ridiculous than Snopes.

Continue reading →

Afternoon Ethics Woolgathering, 7/20/2022: Conspiracies And Condign Justice

/ Jack Marshall / 93 Comments

July 20 should be permanently recognized as Conspiracy Theory Day. It’s the anniversary of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969, and the event spawned one of the most hilarious of all conspiracy theories, that the whole thing was faked by NASA. Many believe it still. This one is an anti-government conspiracy theory, so perhaps the “Truthers” fantasy that George W. Bush bombed the Pentagon and Twin Towers on 9/11 has passed it. Or maybe the theory that a Kennedy assassination conspiracy involving President Johnson and the CIA is at the top of the list. My 8th grade history professor told our class that it was a fact that FDR conspired to let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor so the U.S. would enter the war.

A friend from childhood, smart to the point of brilliance, who once commented here often, sincerely believes that Barack Obama’s natural born citizenship is a hoax.

These conspiracy theories that cause people to believe their own government is a malign force are very harmful. More harmful yet is the current environment, where both political parties are vigorously pursuing conspiracy theories against the other.

It does not help the situation that some conspiracy theories, like the one that long held that the government was withholding evidence of unidentified flying objects, turn out to be true.

1. Condign justice dept. “Condign justice” was a term I never heard or read before George Will started using it. Then I stopped reading George Will, whose NeverTrumpism revealed him to be a classist hypocrite, requiring me to use it. Today’s example is the mayors of New York City and Washington D.C. complaining bitterly about being inundated with illegal immigrants. New York is suffering in great part because of its proud position as a “sanctuary city,” thus encouraging illegals to violate our laws. NYC Mayor Eric Adams demanded yesterday that the federal government help pay for what he said was a wave of illegal immigrants pouring into the city, as he whined about the city’s “safety net” being strained by busloads of people coming from border states and elsewhere. (CBS News helpfully apes Adams in calling the border-breachers “asylum-seekers,” hoping to cover-up what they really are.)  Awww. Well gee, Mayor, if you didn’t openly invite them and say they would be welcomed and protected from our mean old laws, maybe there wouldn’t be so darn many.

Some old saw about making beds seems to be appropriate here. Idiot. Continue reading →