Author: Jack Marshall

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/30: Memorial Day Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

That’s my Dad! Our family will be visiting his final destination (and my mother’s as well) at Arlington National Cemetery today. Major Jack Anderson Marshall, Sr. was a decorated war hero, a wounded veteran, and a man who hated war and guns but knew when they were necessary. World War II was the defining experience of his life, and his traumas, triumphs and travails in those years, which began for him before the U.S. entered the war (Dad signed up with the British to fight in Africa) crystalized an ethics code that he conveyed to his two children by example and through intense dinner-time discussions.

I think about him just about every day, so I don’t need this particular holiday for that purpose, but this particular Memorial Day reminds me that I still have to find time to get his fascinating and inspiring memoirs published, which have been languishing in my care since Dad died during a nap on December 1, 2009. (I can’t believe it’s been that long.)

My father was proud that he would rest at Arlington, and took me on periodic outings there in his eighties to “scout the neighborhood.” A Kentucky boy (and Boy Scout), Dad liked to say that he was going from Arlington, Massachusetts (where I grew up), to Arlington, Virginia, where my parents moved to be near their grandchildren, to Arlington National Cemetery. He loved the United States, Loved its history and culture, loved the military, and genuinely loved this holiday. He was one person I could say “Happy Memorial Day!” to and not feel a little goulish.

Happy Memorial Day, Dad.

And thank-you for your service.

1. A superb analysis of the Princeton and MIT ethics abuse of two distinguished professors has just been posted on his blog by Curmie. He provides context and details of the persecution of David Sabitini (MIT) and Jonathan Katz (Princeton), both of which were covered on Ethics Alarms but not nearly as well. I recommend it highly.

2. “Do something! Do something!” I was tempted to make this story a full post (and rant) as either an Unethical Quote of the Day or a mass Ethics Dunce. Before leaving the Uvalde church yesterday where he attended the obligatory service for the victims of yet another mass shooting , Biden encountered angry demonstrators gathered nearby, some of whom booed him as others chanted, “Do something! Do something!” The reason I didn’t make this a stand alone post is that I am applying some restraint in recognition that people in the grip of emotion say and do stupid things. Nonetheless, there are far too many Americans who, prodded by irresponsible politicians and pundits, are using “Do something!” as if it is a legitimate policy position. The chant is offensive, brain-dead, un-American and dangerous. We don’t run to the government to solve our problems, giving it an invitation to abuse its power. The President isn’t God, a King or a Magician, and making one feel omnipotent is suicidal for a democracy. Nor is demanding “something” fair or helpful.  Uvalde has some very specific problems that only its community can solve, like an incompetent, badly-led police force, teachers who leave school doors open that are supposed to be locked, and citizens who ignored one warning sign after another that an angry teen in their midst was potential menace. Meanwhile, telling aspiring totalitarians like the current crop of Democrats to “Do something!” in the midst of hysteria and exploitation is how democracies disappear. Felling insecure? Unsafe? Dissatisfied? Run to papa, have him kiss the boo-boo, trust him to make everything swell. Saying that to this regime is like sending the kid on the yellow inflatable raft out to play with the Great White Shark in “Jaws.” Continue reading →

One General Ethics Lesson From Uvalde: We All Have A Duty To Be Proactive Citizens [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

As with virtually all of the previous mass shootings (and Salvador Ramos’s mother’s infuriating statements notwithstanding), there were a plethora of ominous signs that this 18-year-old was a virtual ticking time bomb, and that he had gun violence on his mind. Yet nobody with that information did anything. Yes, hindsight bias is, as the saying goes, 20-20, and yes, the fact that the Uvalde killer went through with his stated fantasies and desires and murdered 19 children and two adults is moral luck of the bad variety, just as his doing nothing would have been moral luck of the fortunate variety. The point is that pro-active citizenship could have prevented the tragedy, as it could prevent many tragedies.

More such information will probably emerge but so far we know…

  • For days, Ramos had been telling one girl online in Germany that he had “a secret” that he would eventually reveal. When he said he was about to attack the elementary school, she was not sure if he was serious and did not make any effort to contact the police.

 

This is basic ethics decision-making: if you are wrong about one course of action and the worst consequence is sounding a false alarm, and the consequence of the alternate choice is that people die, the decision should be clear. The girl now says she regrets her decision. That and 20 cents, my father used to say, will buy her a ride on the subway. Continue reading →

Update On The Uvalde Massacre Extension Of The Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck, Part 4: ‘Don’t Confuse Us With Facts, Our Minds Are Made Up!’ Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Well, I tried again to discuss gun regulation with my next door neighbor following the Uvalde shooting. (The first time was a week before the shooting, discussed here.) We were talking over the proverbial fence about the Uvalde police chief, and her husband said, “Watch: now the whole thing will be blamed on him.” Before I could get out, “Well, not the whole thing, but you have to agree that the police share some resp…,” my neighbor said, “They’ll blame everything but the real cause: there is no reason to allow people to buy automatic weapons.”

“To be completely accurate,” I said cheerily, “you can’t legally buy automatic weapons. That guy in Texas had a semi-automatic.” She literally ignored that distinction. We talked for another 15 minutes, and she kept saying “automatic weapon.” “It’s just the difference between 400 bullets a minute and 300 anyway,” her husband offered. I assume he believes that; when I noted the same distinction between semi-automatic and automatic in a discussion on Facebook, my sister called it “semantics.” It’s not semantics! Moreover, an AR-15 can get off about 40 accurate rounds in the hands of a trained shooter, and about 25 when being used by someone like Ramos. An AK-47, a genuine “assault rifle,” fires about 600 rounds a minute. Hmmm…40 vs. 600. I’d say that’s a material difference. But my neighbor didn’t want to hear it, and didn’t. Continue reading →

What’s This? An Unemotional, Unbiased, Rational Analysis Of The Gun Debate In The Wake Of The Uvalde Shooting?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Indeed. Not surprisingly, it comes from the fertile mind of Prof. Eugene Volokh, proprietor of the esteemed legal scholarship blog The Volokh Conspiracy, now hanging out at Reason, after a brief residency at the Washington Post a long tenure as an independent site. Volokh takes his cue from the recent story, predictably buried by the mainstream media but fortuitously timed in the wake of the tragedy in Texas, of a gun-owning and legally-carrying woman in West Virginia who was attending a party when a man who began firing an AR-15-style rifle into the crowd. She drew her weapon and shot him dead before anyone was wounded.

Volokh asks,

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Law vs Ethics: A SCOTUS Decision Rings Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

It’s not surprising that last week’s decision in the Arizona case of Shinn v. Ramirez and Jones didn’t get much coverage outside of the legal media. The decision is procedural rather than substantive, and the majority opinion by Justice Thomas in the 6-3 holding is hard sledding. Nonetheless, it is a classic example of law trumping ethics. The Justice Sotomayor dissent, joined by the other two liberal justices, argues that it trumps law as well.

I would not argue that law must never trump ethics, for law requires consistency and systemic application over the long term to have credibility and integrity. However, Shinn involves a man facing the death penalty, and the decision by the conservative justices chose the virtues of finality over the possibility that the government might be executing an innocent man.

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Dazed And Confused Ethics Phantasmagoria, 5/28/2022

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Almost nothing in this post makes sense to me, beginning with the video above on Disney+. “What’s going on here?” People are losing their minds, that’s what appears to be going on here. (Incidentally, I cancelled our Disney+ subscription. I did not realize that the “plus” stood for pro-gender identity crisis/pro drag queen propaganda. If that was going to be a theme, I believe Disney was obligated to inform me.

1. In a related vein: Mattel.

What is this? What the hell is a “transgender doll”? Is this “Ick” or unethical? Surely there aren’t a sufficient number of male-to-female trans kids in the market to make this new Barbie, modeled after excessively praised trans-gender actress Laverne Cox, profitable, even considering the weird Barbie collectors, who would snap up a T-Rex Barbie if there were one.

It appears to me, and don’t hold me to this in my current state of confusion, that Mattel is pandering to an unhealthy and an unethical cultural movement to make gender dysphoria both desirable and epidemic. That would be irresponsible, and thus unethical. Also profoundly stupid. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Update On The Uvalde Massacre Extension Of The Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck, Part 2: Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Breyer’s Self-Refuting Dissent”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

As it did eventually in the Parkland school shooting, the consideration of the accountability for the death toll of innocents in the Uvalde shooting has turned to the conduct of those charged with protecting the victims. It is a separate issue from the culpability of the shooter, whose conduct, intentions and ethical and moral bankruptcy remain the same regardless of the actions of those who helped or hindered it. It is also a separate issue from the question of what public policies might have realistically prevented the tragedy before it took place. It is germane, however, to the matters of government trust, accountability for the loss of life, and particularly the reasonableness of constructing a free society where citizens are entirely at the mercy of the competence, wisdom and character of government agents.

Especially because of the latter, some commentators appear to be trying to rationalize and even excuse the conduct of the police in Uvalde who, by their officials’ own admission, allowed the murderer to keep shooting while they prevented others from trying to intervene, while holding back themselves because they feared being shot.

Commenter Jim Hodgson, in this Comment of the Day on the post, “Update On The Uvalde Massacre Extension Of The Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck, Part 2…“:

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I was the first supervisor of my previous agency’s SRO program, and I helped teach Active Shooter Response to all our law enforcement deputies for nearly fifteen years. Continue reading →

Update On The Uvalde Massacre Extension Of The Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck, Part 3: Six Ethics Dunces

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Gabe Kapler, San Francisco Giants Manager

Kapler, who is what is considered a deep thinker by the standards of Major League Baseball, refused to stand for the National Anthem. His explanation before the game:

“When I was the same age as the children in Uvalde, my father taught me to stand for the pledge of allegiance when I believed my country was representing its people well or to protest and stay seated when it wasn’t. I don’t believe it is representing us well right now.”

Erma Bombeck once wrote that it is impossible to argue with a six-year-old without sounding like a sic-year-old, and this applies to my going into much detail explaining why Kaplar’s gesture of protest is shallow, facile grandstanding and nothing better. He was a major league player from 1998-2010 and always respected the Anthem. Nothing that happened during those years made him feel the U.S. wasn’t doing the right thing? I don’t believe it. Nor is the National Anthem meant as a means of endorsing national policy. Nor is the fact the Kaplar’s father has a distorted concept of what showing respect for the nation, it’s history, its sacrifices and its values by joining your fellow citizens in an expression of gratitude and honor an excuse for his adopting a similarly infantile view.

On Ethics Alarms, I don’t allow commenters to pass moderation if all they can muster is “I agree” or ” I disagree.” It’s a lazy and useless response. It’s easy to say, “I don’t like this,” especially if you are ignorant and have nothing to contribute. OK, Gabe: what would you have the U.S. do about school shootings? We’re all ears. But he knows he works in San Francisco, where the USSR national anthem would probably attract as much fealty as The Star Spangled Banner. Insulting the nation is good enough: he doesn’t need to articulate an argument.

Gustavo Arellano, LA Times Columnist

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Fine, You Loved Your Maniac Son. Now Shut The Hell Up, Mom!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

There is a point where loyalty, unconditional love and bias-born blindness can no longer be tolerated nor excused, and Adriana Reyes, the mother of mass murderer Salvador Ramos, reached that point and passed it.

Her various efforts to defend her now fortunately dead son or to mitigate his incomprehensible crimes do nothing but harm. They contribute just this to understanding of the tragedy: Ramos was raised by a stupid, distracted mother with the ethical instincts of a sea sponge. Thanks, Adriana, but we kind of figured that out. We don’t need the reminders.

Reyes has now said…

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