Yesterday was the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi attack on the Jewish community that launched the Holocaust. I found mention of the event rather muted compared to past years; maybe it was my imagination. However, it seems to me that the news media would have been doing its job to make a special point of reminding the public of “The Night of Broken Glass” (which would more accurately be called, “The Night of Brutalized Jews). May be then more Americans would understand why that catchy chant that begins “From the river to the sea” is just a bit more chilling to Jews than “Hey hey, ho ho, LBJ has got to go…”
But that’s just what I’m thinking about. What are YOU thinking about in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of ethics?
Ethics Alarms 
On Tuesday November 7th, Jillian Ludwig from New Jersey, an 18-year-old student at Belmont College in Baltimore, was shot and killed while walking on a trail in a park not far from the College. As CNN and other media report, she was shot in the head by “a stray bullet”.
It goes without saying that this is a great tragedy and that words are inadequate to capture the depth of tragedy that her death brings to her family, friends, and collogues, and, really, to anyone who thinks about it.
29-year-old Shaquille Taylor was arrested and admitted shooting at a car. Taylor had previously been charged with aggravated assault for firing into a car that held a woman and her two children. Per ABC, “Taylor, the suspect arrested in the case, had been arrested twice before for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. But according to court papers, he was found incompetent to stand trial-yet insufficiently disabled to be involuntarily committed. His mother testified Taylor “developed pneumonia at birth that led to a brain infection.” That he was diagnosed as a child with an intellectual disability, later graduated with a special education degree and “still functioned on a kindergarten level.” Two doctors had testified that he was incompetent, and the judge dismissed the charges.
If I had an exploding head graphic like Jack’s, I’d insert it here. Taylor appears to have a perpetual “get out of jail free” card. Who’s at fault here (not Taylor, of course, because he’s incompetent you see)? It’s almost like an ethics quiz. Should the judge have worked to find a legal means to get this guy off the street, or was he just phoning it in? Is the Maryland legislature at fault for not providing the judge with such a legal means? Are the citizens at fault for electing said legislature?
I mean, if this guy is incompetent, and charges must be dismissed, then he can go shoot at every car in the state. Heck, Nancy Pelosi can send him after former president Trump, because he’s incompetent, and charges must be dismissed. From now on apparently. Human lives…no people’s lives, Jillian’s life…have low value at this point of societal evolution. Maybe it’s no big deal; Jillian was just a (very) late term abortion.
As I see it, a big part of the problem is the psychology and psychiatry community. These communities exclusively get to determine who is ‘competent’ and they are almost exclusively left-wing. Jordan Peterson once dismissed the critique that several areas of psychological research were dominated by ‘right-wing psychologists’ by stating that “All the right-wing psychologists in the world are in this room, sitting in this chair!”.
Now, that was one data point. I watched a video by a professor giving a lecture at a professional conference. He addressed the crowd of 200-300 research psychologists and asked them “How many people in this room voted for Donald Trump?” Not a single hand went up. He then pointed out that their professional society has stated that it was ESSENTIAL to have diversity in the psychology field to minimize bias due to the background of the researchers. He pointed out all the diversity programs the field had invested in over the last few decades. Then he asked, “Do you think that excluding 50% of the population from the psychology field might lead to some biased interpretations?” The overwhelming answer was ‘No!’.
This is a completely leftist field and they have the legal monopoly on declaring people ‘competent’.
Wanna bet that there were Trump voters who didn’t have the guts to raise their hands?
It is signature significance that Judge Engoron had used the Ukraine phone call as an example.
https://www.rferl.org/a/armenia-amberd-school-grows-sells-food/32654539.html
A school in Armenia started its own farm, which the students work at, in order to raise money for school meals and uniforms. The students learn useful agricultural skills, and the community benefits.
I think this story is an ethics win, and such programs should be examined here in the United States.
Sounds like “Hard Work U” (College of the Ozarks) in Missouri. cofo.edu
Berea College, in Kentucky might qualify as might Berry college in N. Georgia.
Berea College, founded with a lot of money from Cassius Clay, who the boxer felt wasn’t worthy enough to keep the name.
It’s called Ag Ed, 4-H and FFA in the United States. Our local chapter raised lettuce, cucumbers and other vegetables for the school lunchroom in a greenhouse. It’s entirely possible some chapters do have working farms, I know a few have livestock pens or portable facilities.
Where I live, Ag is required in 7&8th grade and in high school they have Plant, Animal and Ag Mechanics as well as general ag. The kids in high school all learn to weld, woodworking and public speaking in Ag. If you truly want this, you need to approach the school board. Ag programs are expensive.
Here is an article worth discussing.
https://groups.google.com/g/Sci.Med.Cardiology/c/U_bD_aelf5k
This businessman years ago moved his business out of NYC because of the horrible ways the city has been dealing wth him. He’s still being fined and threatened years later, and has hours of videos of him on hold working with state employees to resolve the “violations”.
Ethical? I fault him only on handing it off to an employee to package and mail.
An article worth commenting about.
https://archive.li/1WJGk#selection-757.0-757.74
Sadly, I think this actually might be needed. The left just keeps getting more and more authoritarian and tyrannical, with no fear because they know conservatives won’t retaliate in kind. I am afraid the only way to end this is either for all of us to become enslaved to the government, or for a conservative government to respond in kind. If Trump is elected and goes after the Clintons, the Bidens, the Obamas, every FBI director and assistant director, every CIA operative that spied on him, the FISA court system employees, the DOJ employees and everyone else who have been abusing their positions for political purposes as hard as they have gone after him, we might see some positive change in this country. I’m not even sure it would count as unethical. All the people above broke laws and abused their positions for personal reasons.
Think about Trump’s first impeachment. A Lt. Col. evesdropped on a conversation between the President of the United States and the head of a foreign government. He then wrote up the results of his evesdropping, gave it to another government employee, and had that person file a complaint. Such a complaint was not allowed by the policy of the time, so the inspector general falsified a form (not when filling out the form, he altered an official form and put a false date on it) just to allow the impeachment of Trump to happen. All three should be prosecuted and I don’t think that is unethical. Of course, to get the full effect, their homes will all need to be raided by a 30+ person tactical team at 5 AM, their doors kicked in, their homes ransacked, and the images of them being paraded or carried while hogtied into the police station widely broadcast. That last part is unethical, but it is what the DOJ is currently doing to conservatives across the country. This kind of behavior won’t stop until the head of NBC and the New York Times has it happen to them and their families as well.
What if Trump makes an announcement through the Dept. of Education that discrimination based on race violates the law, even if that discrimination is against whites? What if they go after every school that had a program against ‘whiteness’ or a class on the ‘problems of whiteness’ or had awareness of ‘white priviledge’ in their orientation sessions? What if ALL those schools lost access to federal grants and student loans for 5 years? Why not? Isn’t that what they actually deserve under the law and based on the precedent of what has been done to conservative schools? What if he points out that Title IX applies to male students as much as it does to female students? What if he cites every school that had a biased sexual assault policy for Title IX violations?
Maybe we really need a God Emperor to make the left rethink their position. Maybe then they will realize that we need due process, we need the 1st and 2nd amendments, we need civil rights and equal protection under the law. Maybe they will decide that we need Magna Carta. Maybe it will take the God Emperor to make the left realize that they are not special, not better than everyone else, and they need to stop trying to push everyone else around. We really might need a God Emperor and I can’t think of anyone who could fill the role except Donald Trump.
We have allowed so many things to just go without challenge, and I am afraid it will require a God Emperor to fix them. After Obama’s reelection, I joked that I should run for President. I would try to win by outright bribing the voters. I would promise the following things:
(1) The citizens of every state that voted for me would be exempt from federal income taxes.
(2) The citizens of every state that did not vote for me would be exempted from all federal income tax exemptions and deductions.
I feel this is currently allowed because President Obama on several occasions created arbitrary classes of people and exempted them from federal laws.
(1) He created a class of businesses with fewer than x employees and exempted them from arbitrary sections of the Affordable Care Act.
(2) He arbitrarily exempted states from parts of the Controlled Substances Act, while enforcing the act on other states.
Again, will it take a God Emperor to make everyone realize how dangerous this precedent is?
First I would argue that while this corruption needs to be cleaned out, it shouldn’t be Trump doing it. He’s built up no goodwill with the opposition party, or even the majority of his own party, and he has his own legal troubles separate from the presidential scandals. For a president to clean house like this, that president needs to be squeaky clean, popular, AND they need an utterly airtight case for each miscreant. Anything less, and the miscreants may well get off, and the President looks like a third world leader. The opposition will then be free to continue the tit-for-tat until we have Civil War II.
Second, First, are you making a Warhammer 40k reference with “God Emperor”?
Yes, this is what we need.
Examples must me made and in this instance no cost is too high to pay.
It was no coincidence that the nationwide student walkout organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement occurred on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. What is also missing is the understanding that the Arabs in the 30’s and 40’s sided with the Germans because the Jew was the enemy to them long before Israel was established.
These students have never been taught about the Hitler Youth Movement that by 1940 comprised 82% of Germany’s young and how they are being indoctrinated in the same manner. If I hear one more teacher talk about helping students develop critical thinking skills I am going to scream.
“When the Nazis came to power in January 1933, the Hitler Youth movement had approximately 100,000 members. By the end of the same year, membership had increased to more than 2 million (30% of German youth ages 10-18). In the following years, the Nazi regime encouraged and pressured young people to join the Hitler Youth organizations. Enthusiasm, peer pressure, and coercion led to a significant increase in membership. By 1937, membership in the Hitler Youth grew to 5.4 million (65% of youth ages 10-18). By 1940 the number was 7.2 million (82%)”
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hitler-youth-2
I would suggest that we start hanging the Nazi label on all these kids who are following the crowd because it is cool. This will not change until they incur a cost.
Jack often laments the lack of cultural literacy. I was in Sam’s this morning and there was a man about 30 years old serving up spiral ham and cranberry sauce samples. As a joke I asked him if the ham was kosher, and he looked at me in a befuddled manner and told me he did not understand what I meant by kosher. To me, this is like someone telling you that you don’t understand the concept of Christmas. We are in serious trouble.
In addition to discussing unethical activity and reflecting on what the ethical thing to do should have been, do we also discuss ways to promote a wider understanding of and adherence to ethics?
Because it seems like most people here just lament that people aren’t better people and leave it at that. There may be some interest in leading people to become better people, but I haven’t seen any of that take form.
Another tweet worth commenting about.
EC
I would be happy to engage anyone in a legitimate debate or simple conversation. I would be willing to be persuaded with facts but I have no time for scripted talking points.
The problem is that most people are woefully ignorant on the issues and are not willing to research the issues to provide information that backs up their points of view.
One of my chief complaints is that both sides offer little of substance to counter the arguments of the other side but simply rely on trying to hang offensive labels on them. I did just that in my comment above but not to smear these kids but to wake them from the trance of narcissistic fealty to the latest progressive fad. Kids need a metaphorical kick in the pants occasionally to get them to understand what is important to know.
I find the most effective way to inspire people to listen is to identify their values–what they care about and what they fear–and address those directly. What people are willing to risk treating as fact (and who people are willing to trust) depend on what consequences they are confident they can deal with if they’re wrong.
That means that trying to talk about facts and evidence is almost impossible without talking about values first, but talking about values first makes everything else much easier.
This approach can be invoked unilaterally; you can shift a conversation from vacuous talking points to a constructive discussion is to paraphrase someone’s values. With this method, they will gain a way to describe what they want that doesn’t prejudicially exclude constructive options, and they will respect you for demonstrating understanding and appreciation for what’s at stake for them.
Would you like to see how it’s done?
EC
What you write makes perfect sense but this is a two way street. What too often happens is that any willingness to identify values or be in any way open is seen as a weakness to be exploited
That’s why validating people’s values is important. It shows that you don’t consider those values to be a weakness. It’s not the same as vindicating a person’s decisions–it just lets people know that you’re actively going to look for ways to address their values, even if the results are not what they had in mind originally. That’s what makes it work unilaterally.
Most of these points of view you criticize are driven by fear. Giving people a way to escape that fear other than by doing what they’re doing is the easiest and most effective way to change their minds.
Have you been engaging with people and struggling to change their minds? I can walk you through the process and we can review your success at reaching people afterwards.
Has anyone seen this nonsense about the country remake of the song “Fast Car”? [Originally a pop tune by Tracy Chapman in 1988]
Apparently it was recently covered by Luke Combs and has now won Country Song of the Year. Congratulations to him.
I’m not a fan of “Fast Car” [then or now.] Never moved me, especially when they overplayed and beat the living shit out of it in the late 80’s.
Leave it to the Washington Post [Emily Yahr, or is it Yawn?] to try and stir up race, gender and sexuality…on everything –
An excpert below from https://www.aol.com/news/why-luke-combs-cover-tracy-215432835.html
“So, what’s the controversy over ‘Fast Car’?
Though many celebrated the recognition for Chapman’s work, questions arose for some surrounding the roles of race, gender and sexuality in Combs’ success.
In a Washington Post article considered to be the genesis of the debate, Emily Yahr wrote, “Although many are thrilled to see ‘Fast Car’ back in the spotlight and a new generation discovering Chapman’s work, it’s clouded by the fact that, as a Black queer woman, Chapman, 59, would have almost zero chance of that achievement herself in country music.”
Yahr interviewed Black individuals working in the music industry, who expressed mixed feelings about the situation: They are glad to see Chapman’s music receiving recognition and exerting influence, but they also feel “uneasy” about Combs’ overwhelming success in light of his white male identity.
“On one hand, Luke Combs is an amazing artist, and it’s great to see that someone in country music is influenced by a Black queer woman — that’s really exciting,” Holly G, founder of the Black country music organization Black Opry, told Yahr. “But at the same time, it’s hard to really lean into that excitement knowing that Tracy Chapman would not be celebrated in the industry without that kind of middleman being a white man’.”
Why must we go there?
JL
And why is Black spelled with uppercase, but not white? What the fuck is that about?