Update: The Judge Kyle Duncan/Stanford Law/Heckler’s Veto Fiasco Aftermath (So Far)

It remains to be seen whether the Stanford Law students’ “heckler’s veto” of invited Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan will be a tipping point in national recognition of how far our educational institutions are drifting away from liberal principles like freedom of speech, or whether the mainstream media’s now routine efforts to suppress any news event that threatens the woke agenda will smother the disgraceful story in its metaphorical crib. Incredibly, The New York Times didn’t cover the story at all, as of this morning. Over at the Washington Post there was also no news coverage, but now-irrelevant pundit George Will got an op-ed out titled “Expensively credentialed, negligibly educated Stanford brats threw a tantrum.” That’s pretty safe: the Woke, meaning most of the Post’s readers, never read Will, and since he threw a tantrum and began supporting the Democratic Party because the aging, bowtie-wearing elitist thinks Donald Trump is an unmannerly cur, a lot of conservatives no longer read him either. Since the frightening ethics debacle of law students at an esteemed law school showing contempt for a federal judge and the schools DEI administrator cheering them on, there have been many newsworthy developments and reactions, even if our Leftist propaganda machine (aka the mainstream media) doesn’t want us to know about it….such as:

Continue reading

A Comment Of The Day Spectacular! Re: “Ethics Conundrum: Is Teaching That Communism Is Evil History or Indoctrination?”

This has never happened before. The Ethics Alarms post on teaching communism attracted a modest number of comments (only 9 when you subtract my kibitzing), but five of them, by Ethics Alarms stalwarts JutGory, Steve-O-in-NJ, Extradimensional Cephalopod, Chris Marschner and Steve Witherspoon, rate Comment of the Day status. I’m posting them together (you can also go straight to the post itself, here, and find the whole conversation) for clarity and convenience, and also because I’m afraid if I post them individually a new visitor might think that I have died….

First up, Extradimensional Cephalopod:

***

There is no excuse for any kind of indoctrination. Existentialist epistemology provides a bright line between education and indoctrination.

Here is how to teach about communism without indoctrination:

“Here is what happened in these communist countries: the communications, the policies, the statistics, the conflicts, et cetera. Here is how we obtained this information. Some people say there are alternative inferences we could draw about the past based on the raw data in the present; here are some of the arguments about which inferences are more likely. Write a short essay on how people drew their various conclusions about historical events from the evidence available.

“As for communism itself, some people say that the principles of communism are inherently dysfunctional for running a society, and here is their reasoning for concluding this, both in the abstract and based on the historical events we discussed earlier. Others say that communism could still work in theory. They draw different conclusions from the historical events, saying that communist principles did not contribute to the downfall of communist countries. Write a short essay on how people drew their various conclusions about the causes of the collapse of communist countries from the evidence available.

Any proponent of the feasibility of a political ideology is asked answer an indefinitely long series of questions in the form of “how would your society handle X situation?”, because any real such society would have to answer those questions in real life, and before we go through the effort of overhauling everything people like to make sure the new society has plans for how to deal with the situations it creates. The plans the ideology provides must be convincing–they must be solutions whose outcomes people would consider both desirable and probable, otherwise people will dismiss the ideology as incomplete at best and irredeemably flawed at worst. Write a long essay on some situations communism might have to deal with, the results you predict from those situations, and the various opinions people might have about the results. At least one of those situations must involve experts making a mistake, and at least one must involve people breaking rules. ”

This approach is infinitely more rewarding for society than simply telling people that an idea is good or bad, and that’s just off the top of my head.

By the way, having spoken with communists, I find that despite providing good descriptions of the problems of capitalism, communism fails to provide any answers beyond “tell everyone about communism and then we’ll all get together and confiscate the property of the rich, and we’ll share it fairly.” I am disappointed that communists don’t seem inclined to remedy this critical lack of foresight.

***

Here is JutGory:

Continue reading

Wait, How Can Rebeca F. Rothstein Still Be Employed As A Middle School Teacher? Why Are Parents Allowing Her To Warp Their Children? I Don’t Understand This At All…[Expanded]

This story is incomprehensible.

Rebeca F. Rothstein apparently still works at North Bethesda Middle School in the Montgomery County School District despite posting on social media that “‘as a teacher I wish we could do more with our students like teach anti-racism and how to be kind people. Does anyone else feel like… we can skip the math, skip the science, like we’ll do that next year. Maybe this year we focus on teaching our youth how to be anti-racist.” Elsewhere she posted about providing “Marxist literature” to her students. “Fuck capitalism,” she wrote, and in another post shared that she was “tired after a long day of indoctrinating students.” In a video she put on TikTok, Rothstein said,

“I had to un-brainwash myself from capitalism in order to fall in love with socialism and communism. If everyone had the same amount of money, then money wouldn’t be worth anything.”

Wow. I sure want a teacher with that kind of keen insight teaching our next generation!

Continue reading

Observations On A Telling Exchange In A New York Times Opinion Column…

The column is a weekly feature on the Times opinion pages. Snarky progressive shill Gail Collins supposedly debates pseudo-conservative pundit Bret Stephens (who has called for the repeal of the Second Amendment) on various issues of the day. It is written as a spontaneous conversation, which it obviously is not: I detest the format, which is inherently deceptive. Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch used to have a radio spot where they would debate an issue “from the right and left.” The two were obviously reading from an agreed-upon script, and not very convincingly. It insulted listeners’ intelligence, as this column insults Times readers. Here’s how today’s installment begins:

Continue reading

The Unethical Fake Country Of “The United States of Kailasa”

I don’t know about you, but I sure wonder why the United States continues to prop up the United Nations, which, among its many other recent failures, did nothing to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The United States is still by far the largest donor to the U.N., contributing more than $12 billion in 2021, almost one-fifth of the generally anti-American organization’s budget. President Trump, you may recall, tried to cut funding, but that’s because he was a bigot and a xenophobe in Putin’s pocket.

No, that’s not a digression: the United Nations is so incompetent that it allowed a fake nation to attend two of its meetings recently. Above is Vijayapriya Nithyananda, who said she was representing Kailasa as its “permanent ambassador” to the UN at one of those meetings. There is no “Kailasa,” though it has a website. Does that make it a “virtual nation”? I don’t know and don’t care. The site claims that Kailasa includes “two billion practicing Hindus” among its population, and that it has a flag, a constitution, a central bank, and passports.

Come to think of it, Kailasa would probably be a better U.N. member than Iran, among others.

Continue reading

In Virginia, More Evidence Of Gross Public Education Incompetence

Here is what Al Gore might call an “inconvenient truth,” except that this really is truth, while Al’s was propaganda: there is no valid reason for any responsible parent to entrust the mind and future of a child with the kinds of teachers, administrators and “experts” currently being produced by the U.S. education sector.

What you see above is one more piece of damning evidence.It is a recent test question in an advanced placement (AP) government course in Fairfax County, Virginia’s largest school district, one of the largest in the country, and just a short drive from my home. The question challenged students to choose an “accurate comparison of liberals versus conservatives,” giving them multiple choices.

It sure stumped me. After all, the difference between liberals and conservatives lie in belief systems and ideological orientation, not occupations and demographic categories. However, this basic fact appears to have escaped the creators of the question. (The “correct” answer, at least according to the dimwits who devised the thing, is “C.”)

Continue reading

Ethics Conundrum: Is Teaching That Communism Is Evil History or Indoctrination?

All of the turmoil over public school indoctrination of students regarding such matters as climate change, systemic racism and LGBTQ normalization naturally raises the question of whether there are legitimate topics for indoctrination in the United States. Should students be taught, for example, that democracy is good? That the Bill of Rights are crucial to the united States’ culture? That capitalism works/

What about teaching students that Communism, at least in its execution, is a dangerous and deadly ideology? Is that a fact?

I was prompted to consider this issue after reading NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd’s characteristically inarticulate objections to Gov. DeSantis signing a bill last May designating November 10 to be set aside for teaching Florida students at all grade levels “about the evils of communist regimes throughout history.”

“I don’t know if DeSantis is going to be talking to swing voters, here’s like one of the things he said in Vegas yesterday; take a listen to this,” Todd like said prior to playing like a clip of the Republican touting his program. “You know, …it’s sort of like, look, being a Floridian, I sort of know what he’s trying to play there and all of that. I went to Florida public schools we were taught this: It was called history. It just seems like a weird politicizing—you know he’s going out of his way to politicize something.”

Isn’t it amazing that NBC has employed an individual presiding over an iconic news show who speaks that way on live TV?

Continue reading

Monday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/13/23: “It’s All Over! What’s The Point?” Edition

“Republicans pounced” on the discovery that aging juvenile climate scold Greta Thunberg had deleted the above tweet since, you may have noticed, either humanity has not been wiped out five years after her warning, or, if doom is imminent, we might as well be comfy and have fun while we wait for the inevitable. No, it’s not a “gotcha!”; it’s a mandatory “you’re a demagogue, a fake dealing, you traffic in fraudulent science and hysteria, and we’re on to you” statement that is long overdue.

This is an example of the kind of ethics-related items that get lost when I go too long without warm-ups and similar collection posts. Last week I inadvertently deleted a file of topics on the metaphorical Ethics Alarms runway, and I’ve been trying to reconstitute the file since.

Jane Fonda, who now sports pink hair as befits her finally unmasked little old lady status, provided another nearly-missed item, when she told the fawning idiots of “The View” that her solution to the proliferation of anti-abortion laws around the country”, the communist, anti-American activist declared that “does involve murder,” in addition to “marching and protesting.” After it appeared that some people, even from the progressive camps, had a problem with this, Jane resorted to Rationalization #55,The Joke Excuse, or “I was only kidding!” Whether she was kidding or not (the women on “The View’s” panel weren’t laughing) similar “jokes” aimed at progressive policy-makers have been used to justify censorship and even criminal investigations. I think her earlier comment in the segment was even more telling, when she said,

“We have experienced many decades now of having agency over our body, of being able to determine when and how many children to have. We know what that feels like. We know what that’s done for our lives. We’re not going back. I don’t care what the laws are. We’re not going back. It’s true. It’s the truth. We’re not going to do it. We’re going to fight.”

Talk about insurrections! When hard-liners on gay marriage like Mike Huckabee suggested that “God’s law” dictated defiance of the Supreme Court, critics (like me) correctly condemned that approach. On “The View,” Fonda’s unethical rejection of  the judicial system prompted Sunny Hostin to say that Fonda was set to “get a Nobel Prize very, very soon.” The frightening thing is that the way the Nobel Peace Prize is deteriorating, she could be right.

If “The View” was a legitimate public interest news show and not a coven of biased dim-bulbs, someone should have asked Fonda to clarify her position. Is she saying that “agency” over her body justified taking an innocent human life? If not, is it that she regards unborn children as not human, or not lives? Or does her advocacy of “murder” to reinstate that “agency”apply to the unborn? Anyone making extreme statements like Fonda’s must be required to defend them, but they seldom are.

1. While we are on the topic of “insurrections”: I noted yesterday that the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences choosing smug leftist asshole Jimmy Kimmel as the Oscars host contradicted the stated goal of avoiding political polarization and luring the alienated half of the country back to the broadcast after years of insulting it. I read that Kimmel had been sternly instructed to go light on politics—you know, because he’s such a trustworthy guy. Predictably, this ass went ahead and snarked anyway, in his introduction to the Best Editing category, “Anyone who has ever received a text message from their father knows how important editing is.  Editors do amazing things. Editors can turn 44,000 hours of violent insurrection footage into a respectful sight-seeing tour of the Capitol. Their work is underappreciated.” Not to belabor the obvious, but in an actual insurrection, the man designated by the judge at sentencing as its symbol won’t be found in any footage being led around by police. Continue reading

Not Quite An Unethical Lawsuit, Just An Unusually Stupid One

Some slick lawyers somehow talked some dumb and greedy jocks into launching a class action suit against Ivy League colleges because—get this-–they don’t have athletic scholarships. The Hail Mary lawsuit argues that Brown, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell Universities, Dartmouth College, and the University of Pennsylvania have illegally conspired to limit financial aid by banning athletic scholarships.

They also ban chess scholarships, Gilbert & Sullivan scholarships, and cooking scholarships, incidentally.

“Regardless of whether considered as a restraint on the price of education, the value of financial aid, the price of athletic services, or the level of compensation to Ivy League athletes, the Ivy League Agreement is per se illegal,” the lawsuit states.

Continue reading

Now THAT’S An Unethical Umpire!

There is an ethical argument for this ridiculous, game ending call, though not a very persuasive one. At the college level, the umpire was teaching a young player a lesson: don’t show up the umpire, or your team might be hurt.

I said it wasn’t very persuasive. Obviously punitive calls like this hurt the game in the yes of fans while undermining trust in umpires. (Ethics Alarms is breathlessly waiting for robo-called balls and strikes). The late Red Sox TV color man Jerry Remy, a former player, used to talk about how certain umpires would deliberately “squeeze” him in their strike calls because Remy was a frequent complainer, but none, presumably, was ever as obvious about it as the ump in the video. That was both ridiculous and stupid; he has, reportedly, been suspended.

Good.

_____________

Pointer: Tim LeVier