Month: December 2024

The Ethics Conflict In The Daniel Penny Case

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

With yesterday’s developments in the Daniel Penny trial, it is appropriate to ponder the various ethical issues involved.

Below I have reposted the 2023 essay titled “Ethics Quote Of The Month: Heather MacDonald.” Its main thrust was to highlight MacDonald’s excellent article about how his arrest and prosecution reflected another outbreak of the “Black Lives Matter” bias of presumed racism. Penny is white, the violent lunatic who was menacing NYC subway riders when Penny stepped in and, the prosecution claimed, murdered him in an act of vigilantism, was black. It is highly doubtful that any prosecution would have followed the incident if the races were reversed. For example, the colors were reversed in the Ashli Babbitt shooting by a Capitol cop on January 6, 2021, and the black officer was not only exonerated but given a promotion.

Yesterday, Judge Maxwell Wiley dismissed the second-degree manslaughter charge against ex-Marine Penny in the death of Jordan Neely at the request of prosecutors after jurors said they were deadlocked on the primary charge. He then told the jury to continue deliberating on  the lesser charge of whether Penny committed criminally negligent homicide when he put the black, disturbed, homeless man in a choke-hold resulting in his death. The dismissed second-degree manslaughter charge carried a maximum 15-year sentence; criminally negligent homicide carries a four-year maximum sentence. While this was happening, Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) told reporters that he was planning to introduce a resolution to award Daniel Penny the Congressional Gold Medal. “Daniel Penny’s actions exemplify what it means to stand against the grain to do right in a world that rewards moral cowardice,” said Crane, a retired Navy SEAL.  “Our system of ‘justice’ is fiercely corrupt, allowing degenerates to steamroll our laws and our sense of security, while punishing the righteous. Mr. Penny bravely stood in the gap to defy this corrupt system and protect his fellow Americans. I’m immensely proud to introduce this resolution to award him with the Congressional Gold Medal to recognize his heroism.”

You can hardly highlight an ethics conflict in brighter colors than that. Penny could be found guilty of a crime, and at the same time be officially recognized as a hero. An ethics conflict is when two equally valid ethical principles oppose each other and dictate a different result. That’s the situation here, and the answer to the starting point for ethical analysis, “What’s going on here?“

The racially biased motivation for charging Penny may be another example of authorities doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. If you listen to Fox News regarding the trial, you will hear laments that the prosecution sends the wrong message to Americans. One commentator cited the 60-year-old Kitty Genovese incident, which Ethics Alarms has frequently referenced. A woman was murdered as many residents of a nearby apartment complex heard her screams, but none of them called the police or sought to intervene. The prosecution of Penny validates their non-action, the commentator said. It encourages passive citizenship and rejects the duty to rescue.

No, that’s an analogy too far: the man threatening passengers on the subway was right in front of Penny; the people who ignored Genovese’s screams only had to pick up a phone. Nobody held them to blame for not running out to rescue the woman and fight off her attacker. They didn’t perform the minimum acts of good citizenship required in such a situation. Penny’s trial raises the legitimate question of when maximum intervention is justified, and what the consequences should be if something goes wrong.

Does society want to encourage and reward vigilantes? The “Death Wish” movies explored that issue, albeit at an infantile level. At very least, shouldn’t part of the message sent to citizens be that if you choose to intervene in a situation that would normally be handled by law enforcement, you had better be careful, prudent and effective or else you will be accountable for what goes wrong as a result of your initiative? After all, isn’t it certain that a police officer whose choke-hold killed Neely under the same circumstances would probably be tried, or at very least sued for damages (as Penny will be, if he is ultimately acquitted)? Indeed, based on the George Floyd fiasco, Neely’s death at the hands of an over-zealous cop might have sparked a new round of mostly peaceful protests and Neely’s elevation to martyr status.

As a society and one that encourages courage, compassion, and civic involvement, we should encourage citizens to intervene and “fix the problem” if they are in a position to do so and have the skills and judgment to do it effectively. Yet a society that encourages vigilantes is courting chaos and the collapse of the rule of law.  I absolutely regard Penny as a hero, but even heroes must be accountable for their actions. What is the most ethical message to send society about citizen rescuers?

I don’t think it is as easy a question as Penny’s supporters claim.

Now here’s the article from past year:

***

“When government abdicates its responsibility to maintain public safety, a few citizens, for now at least, will step into the breach. Penny was one of them. He restrained Neely not out of racism or malice but to protect his fellow passengers. He was showing classically male virtues: chivalry, courage and initiative. Male heroism threatens the entitlement state by providing an example of self-reliance apart from the professional helper class. And for that reason, he must be taken down.”

—Heather Mac Donald, in her scorching essay, “Daniel Penny is a scapegoat for a failed system”

That paragraph continues,

A homicide charge is the most efficient way to discourage such initiative in the future. Stigma is another. The mainstream media has characterized the millions of dollars in donations that have poured into Daniel Penny’s legal defense fund as the mark of ignorant bigots who support militaristic white vigilantes.

There is no way law enforcement can or should avoid at least exploring a manslaughter charge when an unarmed citizen is killed after a good Samaritan intervenes in a situation that he or she sees as potentially dangerous. Nevertheless, what appears to be the planned vilification of ex-Marine Daniel Penny by Democrats and the news media to put desperately-needed wind back in the metaphorical sails of Black Lives Matter and to goose racial division as the 2024 elections approach graphically illustrates just how unethical and ruthless the 21st Century American Left has become. (I know, I know, we don’t need any more evidence…). Mac Donald’s essay is superb, as many of hers often are. Do read it all, and them make your Facebook friends’ heads explode by sharing it.

Here are some other juicy and spot-on excerpts:

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Karine Jean-Pierre and Rationalization 19 C

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I would hope that even the most Trump-Deranged Democrat would agree that it will be a multilateral boon to have a White House spokesperson who is minimally competent even at the unethical main function of the job (that is, lying), rather than the current embarrassing occupant, Karine Jean-Pierre. She routinely demonstrates poor reasoning abilities and barely rudimentary comprehension of ethics as well as the Constitution; she is slow-witted, inarticulate, frequently unprepared and unprofessional.

I wonder if said Trump-Deranged Democrat might even agree that it will be a welcome change to have a President in office willing to fire someone he hired who hasn’t broken the law while holding a job in the administration (like Sam Brinton). I can’t swear that my research is conclusive, but so far, I’ve found no record of Biden dismissing anyone who was appointed, nominated or hired under his authority unless they were criminals. I am confident that this is an all-time record, and an ugly one, with Jean-Pierre standing as the poster girl for Biden’s acceptance of mediocrity (or worse) in government service.

This is the petard of DEI hiring: a President who makes “historic” selections based on group membership rather than ability is thereafter trapped: the hiring announces that what matters most is the sex, sexual preference, gender, race and/or ethnicity of the individual rather than that individual’s performance in the job. When my sister was complaining about Trump’s major agency nominations, I responded that if any of them proved to be disasters, he or she would be fired….unlike Pete Buttigeig, Tony Blinken, Alejandro Mayorkas, Merrick Garland, Lloyd Austin, the head of the Secret Service, the director of FEMA and others, such as Jean-Pierre. She had to concede the point.

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Impressed With The Incompetence Of Ana Navarro’s False “He Did It Too!” Defense Of Biden’s Hunter Pardon? Esquire Says “Hold My Beer!”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

True, Navarro’s statement on “The View” that Woodrow Wilson pardoned an imaginary son-in-law named “Hunter de Butts” was funnier than Charles P. Pierce’s declaration in Esquire that President George H.W. Bush pardoned his son Neil. But Navarro’s made-up precedent for Hunter Biden’s sweeping pardon by his father was only stated by a member of “The View’s” panel of opinionated dolts who has no credibility with anyone whose IQ tops that of the average sea sponge. “Esquire” is supposed to be at least somewhat more reliable and professional.

Pierce, a frequent contributor to the magazine and the author of 2009’s “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free,” rushed to Papa Biden’s defense with a Esquire essay titled, “A President Shouldn’t Pardon His Son? Hello, Anybody Remember Neil Bush?” The subhead read, “Nobody defines Poppy Bush’s presidency by the fact that he pardoned his progeny. The moral: Shut the fuck up about Hunter Biden, please.”

The problem is that Neil Bush was never charged, indicted or implicated in any crimes that might require a pardon or clemency by his POTUS dad, and indeed never received either. Pierce’s obnoxious, insulting and smug essay was based on completely false information that he probably got from the same unreliable source that spat out the “Hunter de Butts” fiction to Ana: a chatbot. It didn’t take long for many to point this fake history out to “Esquire,” so the online piece was slapped with this disclaimer:

“Editor’s Note: This story has been updated. An earlier version stated incorrectly that George H. W. Bush gave a presidential pardon to his son, Neil Bush. Esquire regrets the error.”

However, the corrected article made no sense after its cornerstone, the lie that Bush I did what Biden did, was removed. So in short order, down came Pierce’s article, replaced by, “This Column Is No Longer Available” and “Editor’s Note: This column has been removed due to an error. The original article stated incorrectly that President George H. W. Bush gave a presidential pardon to his son, Neil Bush. Esquire regrets the mistake.”

Does Esquire also regret giving a platform to a partisan hack who wrote an entire article based on an A.I. hallucination that he didn’t bother to check, and having editors so lazy that they don’t require authors to provide citations when they make such assertions in Esquire’s pages?

Maybe Esquire should tell Charles Pierce to apply to join “The View.”

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Last week’s forum was a dud, but it was a holiday week, so I have hopes that this one will be more lively. I’m counting on you, since the previous post was written with great difficulty after my head exploded from reading that Barack Obama told an audience that using the criminal justice system against political foes was “crossing a line.”

I’m still wiping blood, bits of skull and brain off my computer screen and keyboard…

Former President Barack Obama Runs For 2024’s “Hypocrite Of The Year”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Oh, shut up, Barack!

In a speech yesterday at his foundation’s Democracy Forum, Barack Obama demonstrated his abundance of gall by calling for an end to “divisiveness” and for Americans to embrace compromise while building coalitions, something he refused to do as President.

Obama, after pledging to be a President of all the people, “bringing black and white together,”also exacerbated racial divisions like no President before him since Woodrow Wilson, a big Jim Crow fan. He chose to avoid political compromise during his entire term, laying the foundations of the gridlock we have seen since with the enthusiastic assistance of Nancy Pelosi in the House and the now thankfully dead Harry Reid Senate. As a former President, Obama did not extend his successor the same courtesy George W. Bush extended to him, which was to stay on the sidelines and withhold public criticism. He vividly illustrated why the unwritten rule and “democratic norm” in the U.S. has been that former Presidents, as the New York Times stated in 2007, “should speak respectfully of their successors, or at least with some measure of restraint.”

Did you know that Donald Trump doesn’t respect “democratic norms”?

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Trump-Deranged Exploding Axis Head of the Week: LA Times Senior Legal Columnist Harry Litman

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’m going to send you over to Harry Litman’s substack to read his whole rant against Donald Trump and the LA Times: who knows, some of you may want to subscribe. As for me, “Why I Just Resigned From The Los Angeles Times” just fills me with sympathy for the poor guy, and hope he finds some help. He’s not an idiot, or wasn’t: he’s a lawyer with an impressive CV, and has all the markers of a normal, functioning citizen like you and me. This is what living in California, allowing yourself to be lobotomized by the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s Big Lies, and and being blind to the misconduct and flaws of your own party will do to you. Litman just metaphorically set himself on fire to protest Trump’s election and signs that his trade, which has completely disgraced itself over the past decade, might be slowly reforming.

The thing is more than 2000 words, almost all of them you have read or heard before from Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, The View, Charles M. Blow, Jonathan Capeheart, Van Jones, the Lincoln Group, among others, including…

…you know. Here are some choice excerpts:

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On Pete Hegseth’s Strange Drinking Pledge

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host and Army veteran told Megyn Kelly on her Sirius/XM radio show that he would stop drinking alcohol completely if confirmed as Doanld Trump’s Secretary of Defense. He referenced “general order number 1,” which prohibits military personnel from consuming alcohol during deployment, saying, “This is the biggest deployment of my life, and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it.” He continued, “That’s how I view this role as Secretary of Defense is, I’m not going to have a drink, at all. And it’s not hard for me because it’s not a problem for me.”

This is an issue because along with allegations that he has engaged in sexual misconduct in the past and the uncovered email in which his mother accused him of abusing women, CBS News has reported that when Hegseth accepted a six-figure severance payment and signed a non-disclosure agreement in his 2016 exit from Concerned Veterans of America, there had been reports (from unnamed sources, of course) that he was intoxicated on the job more than once.

I find Hegseth’s pledge more than a little strange. It is like a man being accused of beating his wife saying, “I have never beaten my wife and if you give me this job, I promise that I will never beat her again.”

“A drinking problem” typically suggests alcoholism, though there are non-alcoholic alcohol abusers. The latter can, in fact, just decide not to drink any more and do so successfully. Alcoholics, in contrast, have metabolic and psychological disorders that make sobriety a lifetime battle that they are likely to occasionally lose.

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Ethics Quiz: The Surveillance Society

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Above we see that there are now photographs of the face belonging to the man who assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson yesterday. Those images will doubtlessly be subjected to facial recognition software that will make use of Big Data containing the images of millions of Americans who have allowed photos of themselves to be posted on social media.

My wife loved British procedurals, and frequently expressed her opinion that it seemed creepy and Big Brotherish that everywhere and everyone in Great Britain seemed to be under surveillance by CCTV, which was the key to solving the crimes in those shows with boring consistency. It is evident that the United States is rapidly getting to the same point. In cases like yesterday’s brazen daylight hit job, this development seems like a means justified by the desired end, but what guarantees do we have that the government and law enforcement will stop at that end?

In “Minority Report,” the film version of Phillip K. Dick’s dystopian future (well, one of them) showed everyone’s retinas being scanned constantly for both government and commercial purposes as they walked along the streets of D.C. In the latter case, the technology allowed street advertising to speak directly to individuals as they passed by: “Mr Williams! You have a cold! Come on in, CVS has just what you need to make you comfortable!” If this is science fiction, it is just barely so.

Like my late wife, I find this creepy and ominous. So…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it ethical for the government to subject citizens to complete and constant video surveillance in public places?

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Condign Justice For The Biased News Media

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The incoming Trump administration has signaled that it will be giving some podcasters, bloggers and news commentary websites access to White House briefings. As the night follows day, the Axis media is freaking out. The James S. Brady Press Briefing Room only has a capacity of 49 seats (the room could be changed to a larger one, of course) and adding participants means that some legacy media reporters will have to go. Good.

Here’s the objective, fair, unbiased headline at NewsCastStudio, the trade publication for broadcast news media: “Report: Trump officials may meddle in White House briefing room seating, add pro-MAGA outlets.” Allow me to translate: “pro-MAGA outlets” means non-Axis propagandists, those who may not see it as their duty as ‘advocacy journalists’ to undermine Republicans in general and Trump in particular.

The White House Correspondents’ Association is technically in charge of deciding seating access and assignments, but the White House controls who gets access to the building and room. Having the White House Correspondents Association decide who can be part of the the press corps questioning the White House spokespeople in daily briefings is a classic “fox in the hen house” system. Still, the White House has the power to block the access of a particular reporter or an entire network (Bye-bye, MSNBC!) by denying security passes. This would, of course, be condemned as undemocratic and something Hitler would do, but the Biden team kicked the conservative Daily Signal out of the briefings because it was inadequately supportive of Joe.

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OK, Prof. Appiah, Enough With The Stupid Ethics Questions From The Trump-Deranged…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Since the election, the New York Times ethics advice columnist “The Ethicist” has been featuring a series of hopelessly dunderheaded questions from Trump-Deranged New York Democrats. “Should I cut off my Trump-supporting mother?” was one that Ethics Alarms discussed recently. I have to assume Kwame Appiah is getting a lot of these questions and thinks they really need more of an answer than “Grow up” or “Here’s the number of an affordable therapist.”

They don’t.

There were two more of this ilk today: “Is It Fair to Assume a Best Friend Is Bad and Selfish if She Supported Trump?” and a woman who felt her husband divulged a damning confidence by telling his adult children that her grandson had voted for Trump, as if he had informed them that the kid was a member of the Klan. Nobody who voted for either candidate should feel ashamed of their vote or feel they have to defend it.

Since The Ethicist’s employer is significantly responsible for these people’s current disability, being one of main purveyors of the “Trump is a fascist” fearmongering, I hold that Prof. Appiah has an obligation to give tough-love to these fools. Tell them that bias has made them stupid, that it is no more “selfish” or “ignorant” to vote for one candidate over another, and that the toxic delusion that those who reach a different conclusion than you regarding society, the culture, national policy and leadership are evil as opposed to merely having a different opinion.

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