Childhood and children

Confronting My Biases, Episode 6: Pot Users

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The status of marijuana in the U.S. is a mess, with the drug still being illegal under federal law and the states slowly sliding down the slippery slope to legalization, because they see revenue in it. The confusion is going to get worse before it gets better. Ohio was the only state to legalize marijuana for “recreational use” last year. The Kentucky General Assembly legalized medical marijuana this year, but patients will have to wait until 2025 for the program to kick in. Voters in Oklahoma rejected the legalization of recreational marijuana in last March, and Hoosiers voted against legal marijuana in Indiana in early April.

The Department of Health and Human Services sent its latest findings on marijuana to the Drug Enforcement Administration, recommending that it be reclassified as a Schedule III drug. That classification would mean that the substance has a “moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.” However, I wouldn’t trust the now thoroughly woke HHS to do an unbiased study on the topic, since the most stoned American are progressives and Democrats. Throughout the last few years, there have been various studies suggesting that the drug is not as harmless as its proponents have been claiming it is, and there is enough evidence of heavy use of pot causing long-term cognitive problems to tell me that we still don’t know what lurks in the genie’s bottle.

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Now Here’s A Scary Poll Result…”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Ethics Alarms post regarding the Harvard-Harris poll showing that Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 had wildly diverging beliefs from the rest of the population in supporting “woke values and victim culture” ended with the plaintive query, “Now what?”

Michael R, in his Comment of the Day to “Now Here’s A Scary Poll Result…,” answered the question thusly:

***

Hmm… So, maybe you CAN’T allow people who hate this country and what it stands for teach the children. Maybe you CAN’T let them control the media including the news. Maybe you CAN’T let them be hired by the government and take over the 4th branch. We have allowed this for 50 years and now we are surprised by the results.

Who could have predicted this would be the outcome?

Of course, everyone with a brain predicted this at least since the 1970’s. Now, the problem is what to do about it? You can’t fix the education system.

  • You can’t hire teachers that aren’t fixated on spreading the woke mind virus because the people doing the hiring only hire people who have appropriate brain washing.
  • You can’t become a teacher if you don’t support the woke mind virus because the education faculties will throw you out otherwise.
  • Even if the faculty don’t want to throw you out, the professional standards call for DEI, pronoun usage, etc. It is a requirement of the program that you believe these things.
  • If you don’t pledge allegiance to the woke agenda, you don’t meet the requirements of the teacher ed program. Even if that is ignored, the accreditation body would remove the department’s accreditation if they allowed an outsider to become a teacher.
  • Even if you somehow overcame that, the teacher’s union would eliminate any teacher hired who didn’t conform.

There are a couple obvious options.

Continue reading →

Fire The Teacher And School Board, Pull Out All The Students, Raze The Building And Sow The Grounds With Salt…But First, GET OUT!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Ugh. Here is another one of those “conservative stories” that so far the progressive media has ignored. I can’t find any non-conservative reports, but it appear to be real. A tenth-grade teacher of “Ethnic Studies World History” at Chief Sealth International High School (Could there be a description that screams “Woke mania!” any more shrilly?) failed a student on a class quiz called “Understanding Gender vs. Sex” because he wrote that only women can become pregnant as an answer to one question and and that only men have penises on another.

According to local radio 770 KTTH, some of the questions on the quiz focused involved personal pronoun use (“When someone uses ‘they/them’ pronouns, what does that mean about their gender identity?”) and stereotypes. (“True/false: Transgender people are gay”). Question 4 asked for a true or false response to the statement, “All men have penises.” The student chose “true” because 99.9% of the time it is true. The teacher marked it incorrect. Question 7 was another true or false question, “Only women can get pregnant.” Again, The same student marked this statement “true” as well. The teacher believes that men can get pregnant, though 99.999999999999999999999+ men throughout history and currently could not and can not.

The child’s mother is perplexed, reportedly telling the Jason Rantz Show on the radio station that her complaints have gone unanswered, and that her son says he has been called “fucked and racist” and “a product of the patriarchy” by teachers in the school.

Continue reading →

You Know The Headline On The Previous Post? Forget It. Denver Just Proved That The Great Stupid Has Civilization By The Throat [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Well that was certainly a short-lived ray of hope! Just as some states are realizing that one idiotic woke education policy is ruinous and needs to be reversed, Denver has come up with something infinitely worse.

Get ready for “language justice.”

The Denver school district is adopting a “language justice” policy as a “long term goal.” This astoundingly stupid movement encourages non-English speaking conceivably to the extent of allowing students to use their native language in school. Teaching English to non-English speakers, you see, is oppressive and rooted in racism.

Continue reading →

Ethics Villains: Carron J. Phillips And The Woke Activism Website That Employs Him [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This is what Woke World has become in the Age of the Great Stupid, as the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck continues to run amuck. It is, essentially, a race-baiting bully. (Among other revolting things.)

Carron J. Phillips, a writer for the recently resurrected website Deadspin, which wasn’t reliable in its original form as an internet tabloid, decided to use this photo of a young Kansas City Chiefs fan sitting in the stands…

…to justify the headline,

The “native headdress” complaint ignored the fact that the NFL team’s name is “The Chiefs” and that fans have been showing their support like this…

…for decades. And, of course, that the target of Phillips and Deadspin is a little boy who we now know was 5-years-old. But wait! There’s more! After Carron posted that photo on X with a link to his despicable article, X-users responded with this…

Continue reading →

Confronting My Biases, Episode 4: People Who Are Still Wearing Masks

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I can say right up front that I’m not getting over this one.

I am a bit less hostile if the mask-wearer is elderly, as I can imagine that they might be seriously immuno-compromised. But when I see a family with young children and they are all masked, I can only think “child abuse” and “morons.” Indeed, I am tempted to ask them what the hell they think they are doing.

Today, in Northern Virginia, I still see teens walking alone outside wearing masks. I still see clerks at my CVS wearing masks, often working side-by-side with maskless co-workers. Most of the masks I’m seeing now are not the medical-grade masks that might have some small value in preventing infection: they are primarily plain old cloth masks or paper masks, as in “useless.”

The mask-wearers are, I am certain, almost 100% woke, virtue-signaling knee-jerk progressives who would happily elect Kamala Harris as President if given the chance. Wearing the things is a political statement as much as anything else. I perceive the masked as gullible to government propaganda and media scare-mongering for political advantage. I view them as fearful, lazy and apathetic individuals who have completely rejected core American character traits, like risk-taking, autonomy and independence.

Perhaps most important of all, I view the wearing of masks now as a deliberate signal that the individual does not want to interact with me, the community or society. I can’t read their expressions; when they talk, it is muffled and I have trouble hearing them. For me, they might as well be wearing paper bags over their heads.

I believe the masked among us are eroding the vital inter-relationships, human contact and communication that makes society enjoyable and productive.

No, I’m not getting over this bias.

I’m not even sure it is a bias.

It Appears That SCOTUS’s Dobbs Decision Saved 30,000 Lives So Far

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

How does one make an ethics case that this is a bad thing?

A new study by economists at Georgia Tech and Middlebury College, published by the nonprofit Institute of Labor Economic, indicates that in states with significant limits on abortions or outright bans, births have increased. One of the study’s researchers, Caitlin Myers, went on NPR’s “All Things Considered” to discuss the results as if they were describing the Johnstown flood.

I found this genuinely mind-boggling. The exchange demonstrates how ethics rot can set in so decisively that even the most hard-wired and socially beneficial ethics alarms don’t work at all. Abortion supporters are so vehement in their love of the [procedure that prematurely ends nascent life in the womb that they are apparently willing to ignore all other issues in order to (try to follow, now…) punish Republicans who were responsible for getting a President elected who appointed Justices to the Supreme Court who were finally willing to over-rule a decision, Roe v. Wade, that most legal scholars, even those who defend abortion, conceded was poorly reasoned and wrongly decided.

Myers says at the end of the interview,

Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “What Do You Conclude From This Woman’s Head-Exploding Rant?”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Do you know what I am thankful for? I’m thankful for the engaged, wise,, articulate and loyal group of commenters Ethics Alarms has. Thank-you. You all make every day an adventure and a revelation. And you make me laugh.

For a vivid example, I awoke this morning to this Comment of the Day from Rob Thompson, who doesn’t weigh in here often—the last time was four years ago—but makes his contributions count. Here are his thoughts on this the likely roots of this horrifying and annoying video and its likely roots, which I apologize for having to post again but the discussion can’t be fully appreciated without it.

This is Robert Thompson’s Comment of the Day on the post, “What Do You Conclude From This Woman’s Head-Exploding Rant?”…and have a wonderful, warm Thanksgiving, everyone.

***

Her video typifies what we see every day. Many high school students follow this mentality of “I wasn’t taught this” placing the onus on the educational system. And while this has merit, it isn’t the only problem.

Continue reading →

The Rest Of The Story: The Mother Of That Six-Year-Old Who Shot His Teacher Is In Prison. GOOD!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

But some conservative pundits have a problem with that.

Ethics Alarms covered the revolting tale of the Newport News, Virginia second-grader who shot his teacher in a January post. The position here is and has always been that when children get their hands on guns and shoot anyone, including themselves, parents who own the guns should be held strictly responsible, and should go to jail. Amusingly, some commenters here thought I was jumping to conclusions assuming that parents were at fault in the Newport News case. “What happened to waiting for facts before making a judgement?” caviled one. MIA Ethics Alarms gadfly P.M. Lawrence (where have you been, P.M.?) offered several unlikely scenarios that didn’t involve parental misconduct. I was confident that Occam’s Razor applied, and that this was res ipsa loquitor: if a second grader shoots his teacher, the parents of that second grader are almost certainly at fault.

Continue reading →

Fairfax County Public Schools Join The Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck In Damning Fashion

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Fairfax County, just a short trip from my home in Alexandria, Virginia, is supposed to be one of the elite public school systems in America. Consider that, as you ponder this story.

Above is a photo taken of two Fairfax High School students during a meeting of the county’s Langley High School Muslim Students Association, in which they hold up a crude drawing in which the stars on the American flag are replaced with swastikas, and the message “Free Palestine!” is written in between the squiggly stripes. This took place on school property, in a sanctioned extra-curricular activity. [Supplementary questions I’d like to see answered: 1) Why are there religion-segregated activities in a high school? Isn’t allowing that inherently divisive? 2) Where is the faculty advisor?] An Asian American student leaked the photo to the public on social media, thus allowing the community to see what a bang-up job Langley was doing educating its young charges. The inflammatory image inspired pro-Palestine ( that is, pro-Hamas) students to stage a “walkout” on November 10, as students chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Rep. Tlaib’s lie to the contrary, that slogan is a call for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Continue reading →