Childhood and children

Ethics Quiz: Sympathy For Really Stupid Accident Victims

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

That’s a scene above from Quentin Tarntino’s “Death Proof,” and a dumber movie you are never likely to encounter. The clip is there not to celebrate the movie, originally half of a misconceived bomb called “Grind House,” but to illustrate the real and incredibly stupid phenomenon called “car surfing,” which has had a recent resurgence among teens thanks to social media.

15-year-old Cyprus High School (Utah) sophomore Ava Broadhead is now in a coma after she fell off the top of a moving car. She was car-surfing, and “unfortunately, pavement isn’t as forgiving and the victim hit their head,” a police officer told the news media. Ava suffered massive head injuries and faces a long recovery, with the chances of regaining her previous level of brain function slim.

A GoFundMe page seeks donations for Anna, stating, “Your generous donations will go directly toward her medical care and the resources needed to support her recovery. Any amount, no matter how small, will make a huge difference in Ava’s journey. If you are unable to contribute financially, we ask that you keep Ava in your prayers and share her story to raise awareness about the real dangers of car surfing.”

Who has have explained to them the dangers of riding on the outside of a moving car?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

How much compassion and sympathy, if any, is appropriate in response to someone harming themselves by engaging in such reckless behavior?

This kind of story always puts me in a quandary; I think I have posted about my dilemma before. My son nearly got himself killed or crippled a few times, although never doing anything quite as stupid as car-surfing. I note that the Go-Fund-Me page has raised only $6,000 so far, and I strongly suspect the weak response is because many have the same reflex reaction I do, which is that I’d rather give money to the victims of misfortunes they didn’t almost literally ask for. Anna’s story reminded me of the July Fourth accident this year when an idiot put fireworks on his head and set them off.

Of course Anna gets some points off her Darwin Awards score by virtue of her tender age…but how many? She devastated her own life while immersing her family in tragedy and the crushing burden of caring for her. It wasn’t intentional, but a drunk getting behind the wheel of a car isn’t intentionally trying to kill anyone, either.

I know that this self-inflicted tragedy will naturally cause many to blame social media. The suspicion lingers, however, that anyone foolish enough to try car-surfing is going to be disaster-prone one way or another.

Supporting Abortion Is the Most Unethical Reason To Vote For a U.S. Presidential Candidate Since the Dixiecrats, and Maybe Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 57 Comments

Were it not for the apparently huge number of women willing to make a radical incompetent, Kamala Harris, the leader of the nation because she favors allowing mothers to kill their unborn children at will, the Democrats would be facing the prospect of a landslide loss come November. Almost every other major demographic group has moved toward Trump and for a very obvious reason: the Biden Presidency has been a disaster, and the Democratic Party has abandoned any fealty to American values, principles and democracy in pursuit of unbridled power. Yet a growing number of voters now say abortion is their top issue in 2024. Amazing. Amazing and indefensible morally and ethically.

Think about that. Abortion—killing unborn human beings—is the most important issue for millions of voters. This isn’t a virtue or a process embraced by admirable cultures: the Soviet Union used abortion as a primary form of birth control, and so has China. These are nations that do not value human life as our founding documents declare that our unique society does. Abortion doesn’t make America stronger economically, or keep the world safe from ruthless foreign regimes, or help small businesses thrive, or make the nation energy independent; it doesn’t make our public education any better, reduce crime, drug addiction and disease. In the vast majority of cases, abortion accomplishes two objectives: it allows women an extra level of protection if their sexual activity results in an inconvenient pregnancy, and it lets mothers employ medical professionals to kill their unwanted children before the law protects those innocent lives.

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A “NOW You Tell Us?” Classic

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Dr. Bruce Levy, a Nashville, Tennessee, medical examiner who testified under oath 24 years ago that Russell and Kaye Maze’s young son, Alex, had been shaken to death by his father now says, “Oopsie!”—he was wrong.

“I recant my trial testimony that Bryan Maze suffered from shaken baby syndrome,” he stated in a sworn affidavit. “If called to testify now, I would assert Bryan Maze’s brain, at the time of his death, showed no indication, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, of prior trauma or abuse. Instead, the residual brain lesions viewed at autopsy more likely than not resulted from a natural disease process.” He swears that would now classify the child’s manner of death as “natural.”

Gee, that’s nice. The father, Russell Maze, was convicted of aggravated child abuse before Bryan’s death and of murder after the child’s death . He is now serving a life sentence, and has been in prison for more than two decades.

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Another Parent Is Being Charged With Manslaughter Because of His School-Shooter Son. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I surmise that the woke establishment has concluded in its unparalleled wisdom that parental responsibility is just a scapegoat for society’s evil gun problem. What will stop these mass shootings, see, is “sensible” and “common sense” gun laws that never seem to have any features that would prevent the tragedies that have triggered the anti-Second Amendment crowd.

Colin Gray, the father of 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter following his son opening fire at his school this week, killing four people and wounding others. (Yes, the shooter was named after a gun.) The AR-15-style rifle he used was a Christmas gift from his dad. Fourteen-year-olds can’t legally own guns, of course. Still, in Georgia, giving a child a gun is not a crime, nor does Georgia have a law requiring guns to be locked away from children. But Jennifer and James Crumbley were convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year in Michigan because their son started shooting up his school. Prosecutors convinced a jury that the Crumbleys knew of their son’s dangerous proclivities and mental problems, and allowed him access to a gun anyway.

Georgia is following what seems to be that precedent despite having far weaker gun laws than Michigan. The elder Gray isn’t being charged with breaking a gun law. The criminal prosecution is more akin to the theory behind the prosecution of dog owners who let their untrained and dangerous canines roam free and the pets rip someone to pieces.

The anti-gun Left’s reaction is nicely encapsulated in Times reporter and anti-gun zealot Megan Stack’s op-ed in the Times,

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Now THIS Is An Unethical Surgeon…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Don’t you just hate it when you’re under anesthesia for a serious operation, and while you’re unconscious your surgeon lets her 13-year-old daughter take over?

Graz University Hospital in Austria ( Graz is the regional capital of Styria, Austria’s second-largest state) released this apology: “The hospital’s management would like to express its utmost regret and extend its sincere apologies for this incident, and is working to fully clarify the matter.” The “matter” is this: After a 33-year-old man was flown to the hospital with serious head injuries following an accident, the female neurosurgeon, whose name has not been revealed so far, apparently allowed her 13-year-old daughter to scrub in. Maybe it was “take your daughter to work” day or something, but the aspiring distaff Doogie Howser was accused by a whistle-blowing member of the surgical team of actively taking part in the emergency surgery, including drilling a hole in the patient’s skull to relieve pressure from cranial bleeding.

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Come On, Prof. Turley: “Let’s Go Brandon!”= “Fuck Joe Biden!”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

A student known only as “D.A.” was told last spring by Assistant Principal Andrew Buikema and teacher Wendy Bradford at the Tri County (Michigan) Middle School to remove his “Let’s Go Brandon!” hoodie. The school’s dress code states that school officials can “determine [if] a student’s dress is in conflict with state policy, is a danger to the students’ health and safety, is obscene, [or] is disruptive to the teaching and/or learning environment by calling undue attention to oneself.” Western District of Michigan Judge Paul Maloney ruled that the teacher and the principle were within the standards articulated by SCOTUS in in Tinker v. Des Moines in banning the hoodie.

“If schools can prohibit students from wearing apparel that contains profanity, schools can also prohibit students from wearing apparel that can reasonably be interpreted as profane,” Maloney wrote. (The district had banned shirts with the phrases “Fet’s Luck” and “Uranus Liquor” on them.) Maloney added that administrators and teachers could prohibit apparel that said“F#%* Joe Biden,” for example.

“Because Defendants reasonably interpreted the phrase as having a profane meaning,” Maloney said, “the School District can regulate wearing of Let’s Go Brandon apparel during school without showing interference or disruption at the school….”

The judge is right. Prof. Turley, whose analysis Ethics Alarms usually concurs, is wrong this time, and so is FIRE. He argues in part,

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More Election Ad Deceit in NH

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Former Senator Kelly Ayotte is the GOP candidate for Governor of New Hampshire. She is also one of the long-time Roe v. Wade opponents who is being targeted by pro-abortion groups in attack ads. If you listen closely, some of the ads reveal the dark and ominous heart of the ‘We Love Abortion!’ movement.

I have had to watch one such ad repeatedly while following the Boston Red Sox as they are just-barely contending for a wild card berth. A sad-eyed mother reveals that when she was pregnant, a doctor who checked out the embryo (that was well past the usual legal abortion period in many states including New Hampshire) told the mother that “my baby would not survive.” She goes on to say that Ayotte is so cruel that she would make a mother like me “carry” a baby for months knowing that “it would not survive.” Ayotte supports the current 24 week limit on abortions.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Why does a public school herd its students into campaign events — replete with student musicians repurposing the school’s fight song to support a political candidate? It’s compulsory schooling and compulsory participation in politics. The purpose is openly political.”

Bloggress Ann Althouse, criticizing a Harris campaign stop at a high school in Georgia.

I am inclined to agree with Althouse and see this as totalitarian-ish indoctrination, but only because the public schools have been tending increasingly that way in recent years. It’s possible, I think, that the motivations of the teachers and the school were not partisan but educational. In a healthier era when parties didn’t try to demonize each other, a chance to experience a Presidential campaign up close would have been regarded as unique teaching opportunity. I know that in 1960, when I first began my obsession with U.S. Presidents, I would have loved to be in the middle of a candidate’s visit, and which candidate would have mattered to me not one whit.

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The Great Stupid Rolls On: Remarkably, “Finger Gun 5” Surpasses the Original and All the Previous Sequels In Cruelty and Hysteria

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is where the “Do Something!” mentality regarding guns gets us.

Ethics Alarms has covered four previous instances where demented and incompetent school officials in Tennessee have yielded to panic as the justification for policy and expelled—not merely suspended, but expelled—-for a whole year, a 10-year-old boy after he pointed his finger in the shape of a gun and made mock “machine gun” noises.

I reviewed the history and the abject stupidity of this plot last September in “That Bomb “Finger Gun” Should Have Never Been Made At All: How Did We End Up With ‘Finger Gun 4’??” and I am not feeling all that well this morning, so excuse me for not rehashing this idiocy again: that post is pretty thorough. It recalled the original school administrator finger gun hysteric’s “comment “justification” that it was important for an unlicensed finger gun wielder to “understand the implications of the gesture”, to which I responded as I ruled the school’s conduct child abuse,

What implications of the gesture? That he is about to shoot bullets out of his finger? That he intends to kill someone with all the firepower an unarmed 6-year-old can muster? That he is making a mimed reference to a Connecticut school massacre he probably doesn’t know a thing about? Why should it matter what his “intent is? It’s a hand gesture! It isn’t vulgar or threatening except to silly phobics in the school system.

and concluded, focusing on “Finger Gun 4,” in which that idiot school administrator cited the current “climate” as justifying the suspension of another six-year-old,

Here’s the climate: teachers and administrators see their roles as cultural revolutionaries and believe schools should be turned into breeding grounds for future progressive voters who think the United States is racist, abortion is a right, open borders are compassionate, income redistribution is essential, reparations must be made, and guns are evil, along with whites, men, and Republicans. The implications are that no responsible parent should entrust their kids to public school.

The justification for this instance of “Do something!” grandstanding is a new state law that had only recently gone into effect. It was passed after a former student shot and killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville (Look! The Barn Door Fallacy!) and requires students to be expelled for at least a year if they “threaten mass violence” on school property. Of course, no one in their right mind thinks that a 10-year-old making his hand into a gun-like shape is seriously threatening anyone, but these people are not in their right minds.

They will, of course, all be voting Democrat in November.

___________________

Pointer: Reason

Comment of the Day: “As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With ‘Think of the Children!’ Porn: The Sequel”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This is an unusual Comment of the Day by Chris Marschner (on the post,“As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With ‘Think of the Children!’ Porn”), but it makes an important point, indeed, the crucial point that exposes the intellectual dishonesty of the Times’ “Think of the Children!” campaign to demonize Israel as it tries to defend its right to exist.

***

I reworked the original Times story to reflect a similar situation in the mid-20th century. All I did was change the name and the players. If the Times had written its report this way, then the Brits, the French, the Poles, the Czecks and others would be goose-stepping to their new bosses and Israel would not exist.

It is obvious to any rational thinker that when a nation faces existential peril from zealots who believe they are the rightful heirs of the entire region and that no one except the devout believers of Mohammed may live peacefully there, that when they are attacked they must eliminate the immediate as well as the long term threat in order to minimize civilian losses. We did this twice in the Pacific and Europe when despots saw opportunities for empire building.

My NYT rewrite:

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