Childhood and children

From Australia, A Cancel Culture Chapter That I Don’t Understand At All

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

The above cartoon is the work of Michael Leunig, an Australian cartoonist of some note. Apparently the drawing got him into serious trouble with the social media and political correctness mobs Down Under. Color me completely bewildered, mate.

I have always regarded Australia as a having an admirably  rough, honest, brutally independent and common sense-based culture. Apparently I’m missing something; maybe one of Ethics Alarms’ Australian readers can explain what. (There have been about 24,000 views of the blog there so far this year; Australia is the second largest source of Ethics Alarms readers outside the U.S., after Canada.)

Because of the cartoon, Leunig, who has been creating cartoons professionally to express political and social commentary for half a century, is being threatened with cultural “cancellation.” He writes in part that the drawing has “brought so much hostile public reaction that I began to lie awake at night wondering why I had followed such a troubled, painful and precarious career path….

…[To]be so hated, insulted, slandered in the public domain for this – as I was – is indeed a dismal fate for the lone cartoonist. It speaks volumes about the current condition of civil society and tolerance. This is bigotry. The malice has been astounding and so extreme that it has plunged me into a deep contemplation about the nature of angry hatred. Indeed, I am coming to the view that there is an emerging new form of hatred in society which might be more of a mental illness than a passing emotion. Perhaps I would call it “free-floating, obsessive compulsive hatred”.

His son wrote of the effect on the cartoonist’s family: Continue reading →

Should Abortions Be Ruled “Non-Essential” Medical Procedures In The Pandemic Crisis? An Ethics Decision-Making Exercise

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

News Item:

Texas and Ohio have included abortions among the nonessential surgeries and medical procedures that they are requiring to be delayed, setting off a new front in the fight over abortion rights in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

Both states said they were trying to preserve extremely precious protective equipment for health care workers and to make space for a potential flood of coronavirus patients.

But abortion rights activists said that abortions should be counted as essential and that people could not wait for the procedure until the pandemic was over.

On Monday, Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, clarified that the postponement of surgeries and medical procedures announced by Gov. Greg Abbott over the weekend included “any type of abortion that is not medically necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.” Failure to do so, he said, could result in penalties of up to $1,000 or 180 days of jail time.

Oh-oh.

Is abortion truly a non-essential medical procedure? Is it ethical to treat it as one? This is a perfect storm of an ethics conflict colliding with an ethical dilemma, with so many of the factors that confound ethical analysis present. For example, is the shortage of beds and the stresses on medical services really the only factors being considered by those in making the policy decisions in Texas and Ohio? Is the pandemic really a cover, in whole or in part, for other motives, like a desire to limit abortions generally for as long as possible? Is the ethical response by a pregnant woman to comply with the policy, even to the point of giving birth. There are many ethics decisions involved here.

Let’s just focus on one of them, the decision to call abortions non-essential procedures, and run it through one of the ethics decision-making systems. I’m going to use Professor Laura Nash’s 12 Questions, from her Harvard Business Review article, “Ethics without the Sermon” (1981)]

1. Have you defined the problem accurately?

In other words, “What’s going on here?” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Apparently More Than A Couple Teens, Which Is Already Too Many…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

From the Purcellville, Virginia Police Department:

Yesterday, March 18, 2020, an incident occurred at a local grocery store involving juveniles reportedly coughing on produce, while filming themselves and posting it on social media. Police responded and are currently investigating the incident. The grocery store immediately removed the items in question, and has taken appropriate measures to ensure the health of store patrons.

We are asking for parental assistance in monitoring your teenagers’ activities, as well as their social media posts to avoid the increase of any further such incidents. We have learned that this appears to be a disturbing trend on social media across the country, and we ask for help from parents to discourage this behavior immediately. Please talk with your children and explain to them why such behavior is wrong, especially given the current situation regarding the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19). …

Ah, those wacky, wacky kids! Well, they’ll grow out of it, right?

Here’s a poll:

Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/14/2020: Mrs. Jobs, Senator Schumer, Mayor de Blasio, And A Possum

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Hi!

I’m working on Part III of the Wuhan virus ethics series, so I’m going to try to keep related matters to a minimum here. A couple links you can check out to relieve me of the necessity of commenting on them: Here’s Ann Althouse writing about her “social distancing” without, apparently, any awareness that the average American is not retired, financially well off, with a spouse, with grown children, who are happy blogging and reading all day. And here’s Ruth Marcus, long one of the more blatantly biased (and dim) members of the Washington Post’s editorial board, authoring an op ed with the head exploding headline, “Why Joe Biden is the antidote to this virus.” I intend to keep this utter crap on file for the next time someone argues that degrees from elite institutions are evidence of intellectual ability. Marcus has a Yale and Harvard  Law degree.

1.  Rich people have a right to their wealth; it’s a shame, though, that their riches can’t buy IQ points, or the wisdom to know when to shut up. Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve , told the New York Times,

“It’s not right for individuals to accumulate a massive amount of wealth that’s equivalent to millions and millions of other people combined. There’s nothing fair about that. We saw that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries with the Rockefellers and Carnegies and Mellons and Fords of the world. That kind of accumulation of wealth is dangerous for a society. It shouldn’t be this way….I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn’t care about the accumulation of wealth. I am doing this in honor of his work, and I’ve dedicated my life to doing the very best I can to distribute it effectively, in ways that lift up individuals and communities in a sustainable way. I’m not interested in legacy wealth building, and my children know that. Steve wasn’t interested in that. If I live long enough, it ends with me.”

What a stupid, ethics-challenged, smug and selfish person. The tell is offering the non-argument that people being able to make as much money as they can and want isn’t “fair” and that it “shouldn’t be that way.” How articulate and persuasive! Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Sunday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/8/2010: Daylight Savings Time Edition”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

When Still Spartan is in a substantive commenting mood here attention must be paid, since you never know she will grace us with her perspective again. This Comment of the Day was really a comment on a comment, in this case mine.

I wrote, admittedly hyperbolically, “I will note that the Sanders-Warren-Klobuchar call for free child care for all is meant to ensure that as many kids as possible are raised by non-parents and illegal aliens. And no, I do not think that is a good thing.” While acknowledging that the statement was designed to explode heads, I won’t retract it, as breaking up the close family unit and having children raised beyond the influence of parents is a long-standing tool of leftward conversion, and we have a movement afoot to allow illegal aliens work and frolic here without interference, and the same ideological source places workplace competition with men above parenting as a priority for all women.

However, Still Spartan’s retort was, as usual, well-reasoned and properly sharp. Here is her Comment of the Day on the post, “Sunday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/8/2010: Daylight Savings Time Edition.”

I, incidentally, am half-Spartan. Still.

Comments like this is why I don’t participate fully in this blog anymore. It first assumes that both parents want to work. Even with “free childcare,” the reality is that most households need both parents working to meet bills — let alone trying to save for retirement and their kids’ college. I personally would have loved it if I could have taken a few years off. If we had, we wouldn’t even have been able to make the mortgage payment. Second, it assumes that there is something wrong with both parents working. I am a really good mom, I mean … really good. Yes, that is is conceited to say, but damn if I don’t have healthy, smart, capable, talented, loving, and well-rounded kids. And, as much as I love my mom, I am superior to her in all areas, even though she was a “stay at home” parent. I also can give my children far more than my parents ever could. If my kids are passionate about something (right now it is music and (ugh) ice skating), I get to say, “Yes, we can do that!” I was never able to do any activities or go to camps growing up. And I got to graduate with a ton of debt (which is now paid off thank goodness) because my mom stayed at home? Continue reading →

Sunday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/8/2010: Daylight Savings Time Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Well, It SHOULD still be “Good Morning!”, but it’s not…

1. The most unethical Presidential campaign in recent history.  This profile of in Wisconsin, nicely illustrates the central ethics rot at the core of the Sanders campaign and his appeal. Michelz, we learn, is desperately in debt. He is therefor banking on Sanders to solve his problems by taking money from other people and giving it to him.

This is where the hyping of “income inequality” leads, and it is the basis of Sanders’ unethical message. It is inherently unfair that other people make more money than you do, so the government should use its power to “equalize” income and wealth. We learn in the course of the piece that in last week’s California primary, 47 % who said income inequality was their most important issue picked Mr. Sanders. 13% voted for Joe Biden.

How do individuals brought up in the United States, a nation built on the belief in personal liberty and the responsibility for choosing and making one’s own path in life, come to believe that there is an intrinsic right to a level of wealth and success, regardless of personal choices, industry, talent and character?  We don’t need to ask how we came to have a Presidential contender whose strategy is to appeal to such people and exploit their unhappiness with their current state in life. That is a market-tested approach to acquiring power that has been effective around the world, with disastrous results.

2. Thank you, 1960s! From the res ipsa loquitur department: A new Pew Research Center study of 130 countries and territories shows that the U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households. From the study:
Continue reading →

Noonish Ethics Warm-Up (But It’s Morning To Me!), 3/6/2020: Bill Clinton Returns, And Other Amusements

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Morning already, Sea Dog?

I guess I have to admit that I don’t bounce back from travel like I used to…incidentally,the original voice of Captain Crunch was the great Daws Butler, who was Hanna-Barbara’s answer to Mel Blanc, and every bit as versatile as the voice of Bugs, Porky and Daffy. He was Fred Flintstone, Huckleberry Hound, Quickdraw McGraw (and Baba Looey) Yogi Bear and Elroy Jetson, just to name a few of his 459 characters.

1. Enemy of the people…the Coronavirus situation is a perfect example of how the news media’s inability to avoid partisan bias does tangible harm. It is literally impossible to get straight reporting. The left-biased news media wants to make the situation seem as dire as possible, wants disruption of the financial markets, wants to undermine trust in the federal response, all because they so, so want to see President Trump defeated in November and they can feel that objective slipping away. The conservative media is determined to bolster the administration, and give the cheeriest spin on the pandemic possible. You either have to choose what you want to believe, or, like me, resign yourself to uncertainty because we have a corrupt and unethical journalistic establishment.

After the head of the World Health Organization (WHO)  estimated the global mortality rate of the coronavirus to be 3.4%, President Trump said on Fox News that his “hunch” was that it was much lower.

“I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number, and this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly, they don’t even see a doctor, they don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about these people.”

He was immediately attacked in the press and mocked on social media, because, you know, he lies, he’s an idiot, and he doesn’t believe in science. His “hunch,’ however, is almost certainly right, and for exactly the reason he talked about. From The Hill:

“Experts warn that the figure from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus comes full of caveats and is likely to change as more people get tested and undergo treatment for the virus. ‘I think it’s lower because we are missing mild cases,’ said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. ‘We should be preparing for [the worst] cases, it’s true, but also going out to see what the real number is….Folks want to be able to understand what the true risk is. They want to know just how deadly is it, how deadly is it to me? The challenge is, we don’t totally know.'”

Joe Biden, meanwhile, noted that the outbreak occurring during The Great War made it hard to separate the Real McCoy from the malarkey.

Oh, lighten up! I’m just having a little fun. Continue reading →

There Are Many Ethics Villains In This Story, But The Boys Put In Handcuffs Aren’t Among Them.

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

In July of 2019, 10-year-old Gavin Carpenter and a friend were playing outside with toy weapons near a Fort Carson, Colorado intersection, acting out a favorite video game scenario. One of the weapons was an an orange Nerf bow that apparently didn’t work.  Gavin had a toy gun with an orange tip. It was also broken. The boys might as well have been using their fingers, or sticks.

As part of the game, they pretended to shoot at passing cars. One driver stopped, and was furious, shouting at the boys, who ran  to a grandparents’ house. The man called the police.  The County Sheriff’s deputies arrived and arrested both Gavin and his friend. They were  handcuffed and taken to the Colorado Springs Police Department for mugshots and fingerprinting.

For pretending to shoot at cars with obvious toys that couldn’t shoot anything. And they were ten.

Gavin was finally released into his parent custody at10:30 p.m. They  hired an attorney to help get the charge expunged from Gavin’s record, but the District Attorney was intent on prosecuting.  The boys were moved into a diversion program requiring community service,writing an essay, and other hoops to jump through. 216 days later, what was charged as Felony Menacing was finally expunged from their records

Now the rogues gallery inhabiting this revolting episode: Continue reading →

Monday Morning Warm-Up, 3/2/2020: Idling, Stigmatizing, Lying

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Good Monday!

1. Totalitarianism watch.  Idling one’s car for longer than three minutes, or more than one minute while adjacent to a school, is illegal in New York City. There have been anti-idling laws since 1972, but they were previously examples of the law being used to encourage conduct rather than enforce it. Now, with socialist Bill de Blasio at the city’s helm, the laws are being enforced with a vengeance.

The city is offering bounties to  citizens who report their neighbors, for example. “If you witness a vehicle idling illegally, you can potentially receive a reward for your enforcement efforts through our Citizens Air Complaint Program” says a city website.

Nice.

The theory is that forcing people into not idling their car will mitigate climate change, just like forcing people to ride bicycles and to stop having children when the Left gains sufficient power and the Green New Deal is within reach. Cars idling for no reason is a pet peeve of mine, particularly when they idle in a parking space with cars waiting while the driver checks his or her messages on a cell phone. There are, however, good reasons for idling. I have idled while recharging a dead battery for example. I have idled in sub-freezing weather to keep the car warm while my wife, who had a cold, ran into a 7-11 to buy some cough medicine. The blunt boot of the law does not belong in this matter, like many matters that today’s progressives and socialists want to turn into government edicts.

Oh—the PR geniuses in de Blasio-land decided that the ideal spokesperson for the anti-idling campaign is washed up rocker Billy Idol. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Who Killed ‘Judith’s’ Baby?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

 

This is “extreme free-birthing“…doing it all alone. Not recommended.

I love it when a new commenter makes an entrance with a Comment of the Day, and that’s what Megan did in response to last week’s post about the credulous mother-to-be who placed inordinate trust in the opinions of amateurs and well-meaning activists with tragic results.

Here’s the way the poll on that story has turned out; polling closes in a week, so if you haven’t voted, time is running out:

Frequently first time visitors with especially impressive debut comments are only interested in a single issue, and go recede into the mists of anonymity from which they came, never to be heard from again. I hope that isn’t the case with Megan.

Here is her Comment of the Day on the post, “Who Killed Judith’s Baby?”

I’d like to offer my 2 cents as a pregnant woman who is currently planning a “freebirth” (but is open, of course, to taking whatever unpredictable path unfolds in labor).

Judith is responsible for her body and her baby. This is one of the core beliefs, in my opinion, of anyone who is willingly choosing to go this route in pregnancy and childbirth. The freebirth movement was born out of women who wanted to take more responsibility for their pregnancies/births, rather than feeling like another number on an OB conveyor belt. Typically, it is women who want to lead the decision making process when it comes to what is done or not done to their bodies (which includes their babies, obviously).

There are so many problems in our current obstetric system, it is one of the least evidence-based areas of medicine, period. There are been plenty of research to show that new technological advances have NOT improved average outcomes in the past 30-40 years, such as constant fetal monitoring, multiple ultrasounds, C-sections, inductions, etc. That being said, if you’re going to make radical choices that go against common sense consensus and what history has shown to be true about pregnancy (ie: a pregnancy lasting 44 weeks + has a very high risk of stillbirth), you must also be willing to suffer the consequences of those choices. Judith will live with the consequences of her choices for the rest of her life, it is heartbreaking. No one will suffer more than her, and my heart goes out to her. There is no worse pain than losing a child.

I still believe that women should always be the final decision makers over their bodies, even if those decisions are shortsighted or ill-informed.

If anyone is interested, the reason I am planning a birth without medical professionals present (except that I will have a friend present who received midwifery training but never ended up becoming licensed) largely has to do with my first birthing experience in the hospital, and the protocols in place that are presented without care for a woman’s bodily autonomy. I was given ZERO choices about how my care proceeded at 40 weeks, was told that I HAD to be induced, after having 2 HBP readings over the course of 24 hours. I had zero symptoms of preeclampsia, was incredibly healthy, and felt great. I’ve since consulted with several OBs who agree that mine was an unnecessary induction. Nevertheless, the OB that was on staff that morning was a cautious one, proving that sometimes all it comes down to is a provider’s personality, and I was shuffled into the standardized induction protocol. This turned what I believed would be a powerful, momentous, incredible experience in my life (initiation into motherhood) into one of extreme pain (pitocin contractions don’t give you breaks!) and then numbness (epidural to numb the pain), leaving me feeling helpless and completely dismissed by staff. I’m one of the “lucky” ones who goes through this process and doesn’t end up with a C-section (you’ve got about a 50/50 chance after being induced with pit). Continue reading →