An ethically clueless woman asked the New York Times advice columnist “The Ethicist,” aka. NYU’s Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy prof, an even more ethically clueless question than his usual inquirers.

She said that a friend of her teenage daughter obviously has a serious drinking problem, passing out, falling down and urinating on herself. Should Mom alert the girl’s parents?

“…Her parents, however, are known to be very strict, and the girls fear that telling them will result in severe punishment rather than support, or that it will ruin their friend’s trust completely.As a parent, my instinct is clear: If this were my daughter, I would want to know so I could intervene before something catastrophic happens. But I worry about blowing up this girl’s home life or driving her behavior further underground if her parents react punitively rather than therapeutically. Do I have a moral obligation to inform her parents, even if it might mean harsh consequences for her? Or does my duty lie in guiding the teenagers on how to handle this among themselves?”

What a moron.

Oh no, clearly your duty is to wait until this girl dies, or lets untreated alcoholism ruin her life, because you wouldn’t want her to stop trusting her friends like your daughter! Not only that, but we all know that the ascendant Left doesn’t believe in harsh consequences for anything, not even murdering one’s children. By all means, leave the girl’s fate in the hands of a bunch of teenage girls! They are renowned for solving complex problems with impeccable judgment. Look at this from the drunk girl’s perspective, ideally after about four shots of bourbon.

The woman actually employs the Golden Rule, which is ideally suited for ethics issues like this, then tries to talk herself out of the right response because of toxic empathy. Buried in The Ethicist’s typically wordy response (he has a column to fill, after all) is this definitive point:

“It’s hard to see how she can get the assistance she requires without her parents knowing.”

No, that’s impossible to see.