Month: March 2026

Oh Canada! The Government Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia Slippery Slope…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
@the.free.press

One out of every 20 deaths in Canada is now caused by the government’s assisted suicide program. What’s even more shocking is how fast the deaths are approved.

♬ original sound – The Free Press – The Free Press

It is reassuring to know, at least for me, that the ethics issues EA has been most adamant about continue to inspire the same analysis from me. On the topic of legal human euthanasia (assisted suicide), the position here hasn’t changed since the policy, now legal in Illinois, California, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Montana, Maine, New Jersey,New York, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington first began to spread. Gee, I wonder what those states have in common? Oh…right. An ideology that devalues life: that’s today’s progressive movement and its Democratic Party.

This toxic and corrupting culture holds that individual life is not precious, but rather is subordinate to the needs of the many. Letting people kill themselves, or, if necessary, allowing their families and care-givers to let them be killed, costs a lot less than letting the old, sick, depressed and poor try to hold on to every last minute of existence. Masquerading as individual “choice,” the versatile word that encompasses letting mothers snuff out burgeoning young life in their wombs for their convenience and career advancement, the right to have the government kill you quickly metastasizes into a cultural norm where autonomy, courage, fortitude, individualism and reverence for life erodes in the interests of affording a nanny state.

Euthanasia is a straight violation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative; it also, in cases where the object of this kind of “palliative care” is forced on victims, as it frequently is in Canada, a Golden Rule breach. The only ethical system it can be squared with is Utilitarianism, but only of the most brutal kind that was used as the justification for the mass murders under Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

I personally authorized the hospital pulling the plug on my 89-year-old mother when she lapsed into a coma after unsuccessful surgery. My father, who always told us that he would not be a financial or other kind of burden on his family, managed to die during a nap, also at 89, apparently by force of will. My ethical assessment of the Left’s fondness for assisted suicide has been aired frequently on Ethics Alarms, most thoroughly in a series of posts in September of 2019: The Euthanasia Slippery Slope: A Case Study, Comment Of The Day: “The Euthanasia Slippery Slope: A Case Study”, and Addendum: To “The Euthanasia Slippery Slope: A Case Study,” Hypothetical And Poll.

In the first post, I wrote, “I believe that permitting an individual to kill another with the victim’s consent is so ripe for abuse—Dr. Kevorkian comes to mind—that it crosses an ethical line that should be thick, black, and forbidding.  The alleged consent of the doomed can too easily be coerced or manufactured for the convenience of others.” That position hasn’t changed one whit.

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Welcome To Unethical Rationalization 31A, “The Hypocrite’s Balm,” or “Any Port in a Storm!”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This is the first new rationalization added to the rationalizations list in a long time, though I have at least two others I have been pondering for a while. Rationalization #31 A, however hit me like Pete Buttigieg’s imaginary maul when a respected legal ethicist wrote on the listserv for the Association of Professional Liability Lawyers today that “Lefties” like him were suddenly embracing state’s rights in response to the need to “resist” President Trump, and attempted to justify this reversal by shrugging, “Any port in a storm!”

And there it was. I could hardly believe that wasn’t on the list already, but it wasn’t. I assigned “The Hypocrite’s Balm” as a sub-rationalization to the infamous #31, The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now.” I also could have placed it under #25. The Coercion Myth: “I have no choice!,” but it is distinct from both.

#31 stands for brutal Utilitarianism, “the ends justify the means.” #25 is the whine of someone who is too cowardly to make the kind of tough ethical choice that has unpleasant non-ethical consequences. But “Any port in a storm” is the motto of activists who decide that their minds are made up, facts and logic no longer appeal to them, and they are willing to ally themselves with beliefs, organizations, individuals and missions that they have previously reviled in order to avoid admitting they may have been wrong, or that they should reassess their position based on new information, experience, or the metaphorical ice water of reality being thrown in their faces.

Rationalization #31 A describes the warped, desperate and destructive mindset of the Axis of Unethical Conduct today along with the Trump Deranged. So obsessed are they with their hatred of Donald Trump and the fact that he has at least temporarily derailed the Mad Left’s march to single party, nanny state, multicultural, anti-American DEI dominance that they are willing to anchor themselves in “ports” sane liberals would have avoided like ebola in the recent past.

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Oopsie! I Forgot To Put Gavin Newsom On the Ethics Villain List!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Let me fix that right away. I knew I would forget someone on that update, but he deserves to be there more than most.

The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, in an appearance in the Presidential primary state of New Hampshire, again used the term “apartheid” to describe Israel. When his interviewer claimed “every expert” had described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide,” Newsome, the epitome a human weasel, said nothing. When called out later on his “apartheid” smear, Newsom said that he was just quoting Axis New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, thus resorting to the rationalization, “Thomas Friedman does it!”When called out on his “apartheid” smear, Newsom said that he was just quoting Axis New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, thus resorting to the rationalization, “Thomas Friedman does it!”

The Democratic himbo also endorses the confiscatory plan pinko Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D. Calif.) have proposed for an annual 5 % wealth tax on billionaires.

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Comment of the Day: “’Is We Getting Dummer?’ The Primaries This Week Tell Us ‘Yes’”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Master commenter A M Golden had a stand-out week, with several COTD-worthy posts, including this one, and a Guest Post that arose out of yesterday’s Open Forum.

I am also grateful any time I’m given an excuse to re-post one of my favorite—and, sadly, most relevant—clips from the Ethics Alarms archive.

Here is A M’s Comment of the Day on “Is We Getting Dummer?” The Primaries This Week Tell Us “Yes”:

…

“Is We Getting Dumber?”

There is some evidence for that. Beyond statistical proofs that we are failing to properly educate generations of students in basic skills, there is a sort of – shall I write it? – malaise about being responsible adults in this country. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe it’s our high standard of living that emboldens it. Maybe is a misapplication of American individualism that has turned into the oft-unethical slogan, “My way or the highway.” It may, in fact, be a broader misapplication of the also oft-unethical slogan, “The customer is always right.” Because, in fact, the customer is not always right.

It is a rationalization that encourages a form of classism (customers consider themselves socially, educationally, financially above the ones who are tasked with serving them), incentivizes unethical behavior, such as fraud, theft, demands for special treatment and, occasionally, results in horrific behavior like sexual harassment, assault and/or battery.

We have started to commoditize large aspects of our lives. Whatever you may say about poorly-educated, biased teachers, there are plenty of good teachers out there who cannot run their classrooms because the administration acts like the store manager who allows customers to abuse the employees under some misguided notion that this is how to run a successful business. The teachers who can teach but are expected to look past misbehavior and abuse while still doing their jobs eventually leave and what are left are the ones who can’t and won’t teach. That’s what happens in a poorly-run business such as the one I described above. Eventually, you have only the employees who don’t care about their jobs.

Some reasons for this lack of maturity and growth include what (commenter) Steve Witherspoon pointed out above – laziness. We have large swathes of the population who can’t be bothered to do very basic things. They are manchilds and womanchilds, prioritizing their shallow wants over their very real responsibilities. Expecting them to pick up a broom and sweep the floor rather than playing four hours of video games per night is tantamount to crushing their souls. Expecting them to be fiscally aware, to save, to monitor spending, means they can’t spoil themselves with destination weddings and pricey vacations.

I am also going to add distraction to the list. Prior to mobile phones, we had to memorize important telephone numbers. Now, there are people who cannot even provide their own numbers without looking them up. The internet and the capabilities of the internet have made brain muscles weak. It has also contributed to the collapse of the work ethic and civility in general. Restaurants routinely have to put up with people on their phones while ordering in person which often leads to miscommunication and to the aforementioned abuse of staff when the order is wrong. Increasing numbers of restaurants will not serve customers until the phone is put down.

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A Quick Ethics Villains Inventory…[Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

A lot of unethical junk has been flying around lately, and just to keep my brain clear (and yours) I feel the need to take stock. This isn’t a complete list, of course, just one that includes miscreants whose conduct and/or character I feel need additional attention here…

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Another Unethical, Misleading and Biased Anti-Trump Hit Piece In The NYT: When Will Americans Recognize This For What It Is?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Note: That graphic illustrates the context of this post, not the topic.

Peter Baker, who has “covered Presidents at war since Bill Clinton’s intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s,” delivers a jaw-dropping example of dishonest Axis journalism in “Trump is the First Modern President to Take US to War Without Public Support.”(gift link). That’s its title on the Times home page: someone must have realized how slimy it was after the “analysis” was first posted, so now the article itself is headlined, “Wars Often Lose Public Support Over Time. Trump Started This One Without Much.” Either way, the sense that the Times, like the rest of the Axis of Unethical Conduct, is actively rooting for the President to fail is palpable. True, has been trying to make him fail regarding, well, everything, for a decade.

Baker’s rigged analysis hides the clear reason why Trump’s public approval of a bold military response to a rogue international evil-doer is low: “Traditionally, Americans stand behind their president when he first orders troops into battle,” he writes. Yes, he doesn’t write, and that was before, for the first time in American history, a President’s opposition and the mainstream media set out to strip a newly elected President of the traditional public approval of whomever is in the office from the moment this President was elected. Usually a new President has overwhelming support when he is inaugurated. Not Trump, in either term. Democrats and the media declared him an illegitimate President (that Electoral College thingy, and everyone knows Putin gor him elected) in 2016, and he had been tarred as Hitler and a “convicted felon” before his second term in 2024. That cloak of respect and honor had been a key feature in every President’s power since George Washington, and the Axis stripped it from Trump and, I believe, the office itself, permanently.

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics and Human Nature Observations on Ethics Mega-Dunce Jurickson Profar”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The recent post about a highly-paid baseball player recently being suspended for the entire next season after being caught using forbidden PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs) inspired a fascinating comment by Ryan Harkins that examined an entirely separate aspect of the incident than any I had considered.

There is another angle on the case that I missed too. I had focused on how foolish it was for a player who had already achieved a guaranteed contract to risk it by cheating; so far, offender Jurickson Profar has forfeited over $20 million. But in today’s Athletic, Brittany Ghiroli observes that even though he has been revealed to be a cheat and that the one outstanding season he had that caused the Atlanta Braves to sign him to a three-year, $42 million guaranteed contract was likely the result of “juicing,” Profar still will receive all of his salary for the final year of his contract, $15 million. She writes in part, regarding why players risk taking steroids in the first place, what she has been told by other players:

“Guys didn’t take performance-enhancing drugs thinking they were risking their careers. Many of them did it so they could have careers — so they could elevate their stats, sign a big multiyear deal and set themselves and their families up for life. Sure, there was a risk of getting caught and forfeiting some pay. But baseball contracts are guaranteed. So as long as they didn’t get caught three times, teams were on the hook to pay them. Big risk, big reward. And until that reward goes away, the risk will always be worth it to certain players.”

Her solution, which she says the players union will never allow, is to make a rule that being caught using steroids allows a team to cancel the rest of a players’ contract.

Ryan’s focus is on human nature’s trap that may have snagged Profar after he had won his rich contract. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics and Human Nature Observations on Ethics Mega-Dunce Jurickson Profar”:

***

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Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

One thought, which many have been expressing: The Axis of Unethical Conduct—the “resistance,” Democrats and their captive media—are hoping that the United States loses the war against Iran. If the U.S. prevails, the party will have to defend its openly anti-American stance across the country. Right now, its only position is “We hate President Trump.” That was also its message in 2024.

Good luck with that.

Meanwhile, consider that DHS ad above, which seems to have helped get Kristi Noem fired. It’s moronic, pandering and manipulative, but to my eye, pretty much routine campaign ad stuff. Surely that clip-show didn’t cost $220 million, which is what you might think watching news reports.

The floor is yours…

Remembering the Alamo, Davy Crockett, and the Butterfly Effect

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Alamo fell just before dawn 190 years ago today. An estimated 220 men died in the furious attack by would-be Mexican emperor Santa Ana’s army of 5,000: once it breached the walls of the fortified mission, a massacrec commenced that was over in 20 minutes.. The defenders had come from many states, territories and nations, and eventually they knew they were going to die if they stayed. Only one of them, Lewis Rose—maybe—decided to leave. Even the messengers sent out by William Barrett Travis to seek rescuing troops returned to the Alamo knowing hope was lost, and they they would be killed. After 13 days, during which the Alamo was pounded by cannon fire, forcing the men to spend the night making repairs, the battle was over. But those 13 days gave Texas General Sam Houston time to raise the army that would defeat of Santa Ana at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Ethics Alarms has posted ethics essays about the Alamo almost every year since the blog began. It is my favorite U.S. historical story, mixing drama, legend, ethics lessons and fascinating personalities, notably Jim Bowie, Travis, and, of course, Davy Crockett. Here is my first post about Davy, from March of 2010, posted to mark the passing of Disney legend Fess Parker, whose portrayal of the frontiersman on TV brought Crockett out of the historical shadows.

Crockett was the most important casualty of the battle, because at the time of his death he was the first modern celebrity, famous in part for being famous, celebrated by dime novels and sensational, and fictional, stage plays. His death focused public attention on Texas as nothing else could. Actress-singer Zendaya is the most popular celebrity in the U.S. today: imagine what the public reaction would have been if an Iran-backed terrorist attack had eliminated her. (Try to imagine it without reflecting on the relative values of a nation whose top celebrity is Zendaya as compared to a nation whose children idolize “The King of the Wild Frontier”). In that 2010 post I wrote in part,

“Like another iconic figure who once portrayed him, John Wayne, what Davy Crockett symbolizes in American culture matters more than his real life story. He built a reputation for being the perfect example of the rugged American individualist, standing tall for basic values, especially honesty and courage, while keeping a sense of humor and an appetite for fun.  In his doubtlessly ghost-written 1834 hagiography, “Narrative of the life of Colonel Crockett,” Crockett stated his credo as

“I leave this rule for others when I’m dead: Be always sure you’re right–then go ahead.”

It is as good an exhortation to live by the ethical virtues of integrity, accountability and courage as there is, and it gained great credibility when Crockett remained in the Alamo to die defending a nascent Texas republic, in complete harmony with his stated ideals. Battling for right against overwhelming odds,remaining steadfast in the face of certain defeat, never complaining, never looking back once he had decided to “go ahead,” Crockett’s legend is a valuable and inspiring, if not always applicable, example for all of us when crisis looms. Nobody who ever saw the final fade-out of the Disney series’ final episode, with Fess Parker furiously swinging “old Betsy,” Crockett’s Tennessee long rifle, like a baseball bat at Santa Anna’s soldiers as they swarmed over the walls, ever forgot the image, or mistook what it meant. Davy knew he was going down, but he would fight the good fight to the end….”

They don’t teach the Alamo in schools any more except in Texas, and the woke historical revisionism of the battle casts it as a minor event and even a shameful one, since many of the Texas settlers Mexico invited to settle its Texas territory brought slaves with them. In our “1619 Project” World they were fighting for white supremacy against a brown army.

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“Is We Getting Dummer?” The Primaries This Week Tell Us “Yes”

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

I have written a couple of times about “IQ 83,” by science fiction author Arthur Herzog. A man-made virus escapes a lab and begins reducing the intelligence of Americans to idiot levels. “Is We Getting Dummer?” shouts a typo-filed New York Times. The scientist responsible for the disaster desperately tries to come up with a cure before his own IQ drops so far that he is endorsing Kamala Harris and losing Scrabble games to Joe Biden. (OK, that last a part isn’t true; the book was published in 1978. The scientist would have become a Jimmy Carter supporter.)

This past primary Tuesday gave us more cause to wonder if the Founders’ audacious experiment is nearing a bad end. We may not be smart enough to keep a republic. In my previous IQ 83 post, I revealed that Michelle Wu, then a Democratic City Council member in Boston, argued that because use of the crumbling public transportation infrastructure of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority was dropping and rush-hour traffic was increasing, the solution would be to let everyone ride buses and subways for free. She explained that the system was too expensive to repair, see, so the solution was to stop getting any revenue from it at all, because public transportation “is a human right, like health care and education.” It was pointed out by some above an 83 IQ level that a free bus that doesn’t run very often isn’t worth much, but never mind.

The Rest of the Story: Wu was elected Mayor of Boston.

Six years later, the signs are no more promising:

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