Character

The Trump-Epstein Statue Mini-Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

[Before I return to my own blog after circumstances beyond my control left me unable to post for most of yesterday, I want to thank the EA commentariate for coming through with a stellar performance on yesterday’s emergency Open Forum. I expected nothing less, but the range of posts and topics was dazzling.]

I missed the Mall statute controversy until this morning. Here is the statue, which was only on display for a day before the National Park Service took it down:

Nice.

A permit for the thing was approved on September 16, and originally authorized the disparaging statue to remain on display at the National Mall until 8 p.m. ET this coming Sunday. A plaque beneath the bronze figures of the late convicted pedophile and sex trafficker and the President of the United States read: “In honor of friendship month, we celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend’ Jeffrey Epstein,” followed by a silhouette of two hands making a heart shape. The stated purpose of the artwork was “to demonstrate freedom of speech and artistic expression using political imagery.” That was deceit. The purpose of the statue was to promote the desperate Axis talking point that President Trump was involved in Epstein’s criminal activities, of which there is no evidence whatsoever and has never been any evidence.

Again, nice.

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Most Fascinating Ethics Quote of the Year: President Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”

President Trump, in his eulogy for assassinated conservative activist Charley Kirk at the massive memorial service in Phoenix

Can a quote be both ethical and unethical at the same time? You have to hand it to Donald Trump: his statement above at the Kirk memorial service had progressive heads exploding all over the map, and some conservative heads too. It was a genuinely provocative line, rich with contradictory meanings and implications. Did the President intend it that way? Who knows? They will be arguing about Trump’s brain in history and psychology tomes for a hundred years. I find myself hearing Wilford Brimley’s voice echoing through my brain in his iconic scene from “Absence of Malice”: “Mr. Gallagher, are you that smart?” Except in this case, it’s “Mr. Trump.”

Of course the line triggered the Trump-Deranged into self-identification, as with this guy…

But Trump didn’t say he hated half the country. Now Joe Biden came a lot closer to doing that when he accused Republicans of being fascists who are existential threats to democracy, though it was in a national speech to the nation not a memorial service. (I think that’s worse, myself.) We can’t be sure whom Trump regards as his “opponent.” Those who want him dead, as about a quarter of all Democrats according to one poll? Those who tried to impeach him twice and put him in prison using contrived prosecutions? Those who call him Hitler? The journalists and pundits who have been lying about him since he was elected in 2016 and before? Continue reading →

On Re-Watching “The Magnificent Seven” and Finally Realizing What It’s About

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I am trying hard to write about something other than the Charley Kirk Ethics Train Wreck despite the din making even thinking about other ethics issues difficult. Naturally, my default solution is the Great American Ethics Genre: the American Western.

I have been bringing a younger friend up to speed in his cultural literacy pursuits, and recently had him view the original John Sturgis-directed version of “The Magnificent Seven,” a great ethics movie and one of the ten best Hollywood Westerns ever made, a tough field. I have written about the movie several times on EA, but I am abashed to say that it never quite sunk in what the film was really about until that last viewing.

The film is about professionalism. Once that bell rang, I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t realized it before. It is a filmed course in professionalism—the quality of justifying the trust a particular practitioner of an occupation dedicated to public service must maintain to be considered a professional. I would love to teach a professionalism course using the movie as the centerpiece.

Years ago, retired EA commenter Bob Stone-–I hope he isn’t Trump-Deranged now—wrote a piece for his own blog about how the film illustrated the difference between law and ethics. He wrote in part,

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Unethical Quote, Ethics Dunce, Incompetent Elected Official…the Usual EA Designations Are Inadequate For Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Latest “It Isn’t What It Is” Idiocy

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Rep. Crockett—-remember, she’s considered a “rising star” in the reeling Democratic Party—actually said this:

“And so I do want people to know that just because someone has committed a crime, it doesn’t make them a criminal.”

Interesting. The definition of “criminal” is literally “a person who has committed a crime” or the equivalent in every dictionary in existence, but never mind: this is the totalitarian Left of 2025, for which Big Brotherish denial of reality—you know, like “War is Peace” “or “Biden is as sharp as a tack” or “Harris ran a flawless campaign” is foundational.

Lest you think I have pulled Crockett’s latest nonsense out of a context where it is defensible (I can’t imagine what that would be, though), here is her whole rant, from an appearance on the podcast “Getting Better with Jonathan Van Ness.” Incidentally, you know everything you need to know about Van Ness to avoid him and his podcast like the plague by the fact that her statement didn’t prompt him to say, “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

Here’s Crockett’s whole statement:

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It’s Come to This: a Majority of House Democrats Chose To Avoid Angering Their Radical Trump-Deranged Base Over Appealing To Sane Americans

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

To be fair, Republican had Democrats in a metaphorical head-lock and the assassination of Charlie Kirk gave the Elephants a perfect “gotcha!” Then again, the Democrats and the rest of the Axis of Unethical conduct were begging for their just desserts and are getting it good and hard.

Well, good. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving party.

House Speaker Mike Johnson introduced House Resolution 719 this week and with over 100 co-sponsors, all Republicans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass., and Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D- Cal.) all sucked it up and supported the resolution, which, with a sane party, should have been easy. The relevant text read,

Resolved, That the House of Representatives

(1) condemns in the strongest possible terms the assassination of Charles “Charlie” James Kirk, and all forms of political violence;

(2) commends and honors the dedicated law enforcement and emergency personnel for their tireless efforts in finding the suspect responsible for the assassination of Charlie Kirk and urges the administration of swift justice to the suspect;

(3) extends its deepest condolences and sympathies to Charlie Kirk’s family, including his wife, Erika, and their two young children, and prays for comfort, peace, and healing in this time of unspeakable loss;

(4) honors the life, leadership, and legacy of Charlie Kirk, whose steadfast dedication to the Constitution, civil discourse, and Biblical truth inspired a generation to cherish and defend the blessings of liberty; and

(5) calls upon all Americans—regardless of race, party affiliation, or creed—to reject political violence, recommit to respectful debate, uphold American values, and respect one another as fellow Americans.

Only ninety-five Democrats had the sense to back the resolution even though the vast majority of Americans wouldn’t read the text and would just see it as a routine rejection of political violence and an expression of regret over the death of a murder victim. Thirty-eight Democrats voted “present,” 58 voted against the resolution, and 22 did not vote at all. That’s 117 who objected to the existence of Charlie Kirk so much that they were unwilling to support a resolution condemning political violence.

In June, the House unanimously passed a resolution honoring Minnesota House Democrat Leader Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark after they were murdered, while also condemning political violence. There were no Republican dissenters. But the Hortmans hadn’t played a part in defeating a grand scheme to remake the nation, the government and its culture like Charlie Kirk had. The Mad Left hated him and hates him still, hence today’s vote. Res ipsa loquitur.

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Comment of the Day: “An Ethics Alarms Hat Trick!Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) Earns Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote of the Month, and Incompetent Elected Official of the Month!”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This Comment of the Day on the recent EA post about the unethical, irredeemable embarrassment Rep. Greene is—there have been several of them—by CEES VAN BARNEVELDT is sufficiently long and self explanatory that I won’t delay your appreciation of it. Here you go…

***

Marjorie Taylor Greene is not a great student of history either. President Lincoln did not agree to a national divorce; he secured the unity of the United States at the great cost of 650,000 human lives.

Personally I am quite uncomfortable about the unity talk I am hearing from politicians. Unity is not an abstraction. Unity does not exist on its own; it has a focus, center, and purpose. Proper unity can only be based on a foundation of truth.

During the Civil War slavery was abolished, and after the Civil War the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment secured rights for the former slaves. The unity that Lincoln restored could only be based on the foundational truth that slavery is evil and has no place in the USA, and that the rights mentioned in founding documents of the USA also apply to the former slaves.

That means that if we need to preserve the unity of the United States we cannot skip the issue of truth, and after the funeral of Charlie Kirk simply go over to the order of the day. The assassination may have a similar political importance as the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks in 1856. The subtitle of the book “The Caning” by Stephen Pulio” is “The Assault That Drove America To Civil War”.

I do not intend to be apocalyptic with all the Civil War references, because I do not believe that we are there yet. And to stay within the marriage metaphor used by MTG in her unintelligent ramblings, I do not believe that the GOP is required to act like the battered wife who meekly returns to her abusive husband. So no kumbaya solution that leaves everything unresolved.

Here is the take from John Daniel Davidson from the Federalist today:

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We Don’t Have To Debate This, Do We? Brian Kilmede Is an Ethics-Challenged Idiot and Fox News Must Fire Him Immediately.

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Why hasn’t he been fired already? Why wasn’t he pulled off the air with a giant hook before he could complete what would laughingly be called his “thought”?

“Fox & Friends” co-anchor Brian Kilmeade, who has long been an embarrassment on Fox News’ routinely embarrassing news happy talk moring show “Fox and Friends,” said during a discussion with fellow (almost equally annoying) anchors Lawrence Jones and Ainsley Earhardt last week that homeless people (like the maniac who killed the young woman on the train in Charlotte) should be given “involuntary lethal injection(s).” Homeless problem solved!

Jones began the assault on due process, civil rights and decency by saying about the homeless, “A lot of them don’t want to take the programs. A lot of them don’t want to get the help that is necessary. You can’t give them a choice. Either you take the resources that we’re gonna give you, or you decide that you’re going to be locked up in jail. That’s the way it has to be now.” Kilmeade added. “Or, involuntary lethal injection — or something. Just kill them!”

Nice.

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Ethics Dunce: Stephen King

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Stephen King is a talented writer and master of his genre. He is also a typical knee-jerk New England Democrat whose political and social commentary has exactly as much value as Cliff’s at Cheers after four or five beers. He really stepped into the metaphorical “it” with the tweet above, for which he was roundly pummeled on social media and had to grovel an apology after Ted Cruz launched a particularly harsh attack, called the author a “horrible, evil, twisted liar” in his response.

King’s slur was in reference to comments Kirk made on his podcast in 2024, in which Kirk criticized children’s YouTube star Ms. Rachel for citing God’s wish for Christians to “love thy neighbor” in Leviticus, and added that the exhortation should include gay people. Kirk pointed out that citing scripture as authority had obvious drawbacks, noting, “By the way, Ms. Rachel, you might want to crack open that Bible of yours. In a lesser reference, part of the same part of scripture, in Leviticus 18, is that ‘thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death.’ Just saying.”

He did not, obviously, advocate stoning gays to death.

Caught, King tried to lie his way out of his own unmasking. “The horrible, evil, twisted liar apologizes. This is what I get for reading something on Twitter [without] fact-checking. Won’t happen again,” King wrote after deleting the tweet. “I apologize for saying Charlie Kirk advocated stoning gays. What he actually demonstrated was how some people cherry-pick Biblical passages,” the 77-year-old author wrote.

But King already knew what Kirk meant, and has issued the lie anyway. How do we know that? We know because he mocked Kirk’s “just saying,” which means King knew what Kirk had said, and misrepresented it anyway as part of the Left’s desperate efforts to spin away the significance of Kerk’s assassination.

Boy, are they terrified of a tipping point! Good. They should be. Watching fish struggle when hooked is repulsive: it’s why I never could stand fishing. Watching the Axis thrash around now? Wonderful.

King and the rest, are showing the nation who they are.

Ethics Proposition: Someone Who Would Write, Say or Think This Cannot Be Trusted To Teach Children…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Fair?

Kristen Eve is a Pre-K teacher. Among her deficits is that she doesn’t understand the Bill of Rights. Or irony: I have no doubt that Kirk had sufficient integrity to understand that even an abuse of the right to bear arms resulting in his own death isn’t sufficient justification for removing that right from law-abiding citizens.

How many teachers like her do you think are out there indoctrinating kids? My guess: a lot.

Believe It or Not! The Murder Wasn’t The Most Disturbing Aspect Of The Charlotte Stabbing

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

It seems incredible, but Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska’s murder on a Charlotte light rail train was not the most disturbing aspect of her murder by a deranged man who just decided to kill her for no discernible reason. Nor is the fact that the killer had been arrested 14 times and turned back into the streets as part of the Mad Left’s urban “de-incarceration” agenda the worst aspect of the story, or even the deliberate burying of the event by the mainstream media, which felt that the public didn’t need to know this occurred because it undermines so many Axis narratives (gun control, how safe Democrat-run big cities are despite all evidence to the contrary, “Black on white crime? What black on white crime?,” the virtues of public transportation). And it isn’t the fact that so many Americans have been brainwashed that many (including commenters on this blog) have defended the media’s censorship of inconvenient reality.

No, I have concluded upon watching the various surveillance camera videos that the worst aspect of the incident is that even after the young woman was stabbed and was bleeding out in her seat, not one of her fellow passengers lifted a finger to try to save her life.

That’s some community you have there, Charlotte. Be proud…

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