Citizenship

The Ethics of Ignorance

/ Jack Marshall / 59 Comments

Jamestown Cannibalism

I don’t know Albert T. Harrison, though he may well be a neighbor: we both live in Alexandria, Virginia. He is probably a good and decent man, in fact, I’m pretty certain of it, and it pains me to take him to task for what he wrote to, and was subsequently published in, the Washington Post’s weekly “Free for All” page. His letter is already on the web, however, and I’m sure other good, and, like Albert, willfully ignorant Americans are reading it and nodding their heads. His is an unethical, irresponsible, cowardly and dangerous position, and it has too many supporters already.

I’m sorry, Mr. Harrison, but you force my hand.

This week, scientists determined with near certainty that rumors of cannibalism in the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, were true. The remains of a 14-year-old girl from an excavation at the site of the settlement showed unmistakable signs of deliberate butchering. From the Post story: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Mayor Bloomberg’s Pizza Petard

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
"No pizza for you!"

“No pizza for you!”

I came thiiiiis close to making this an Ethics Hero post, then I realized that the story was a gag.

But fictional tales pose real ethics dilemmas: let’s see if you can resolve the one raised by this spoof.

According to the satirical  Daily Currant, Mayor Bloomberg, better known in NYC as the Nanny Mayor who has, among other measures, decreed how much sweet soda pop one is allowed to sell or purchase to consume, was having a business lunch at Collegno’s Pizzeria. When he asked for second slice of pizza, however, he was refused.

“I’m sorry sir,” the Currant quoted owner “Antonio Benito” as replying, “we can’t do that. You’ve reached your personal slice limit.” And he wasn’t kidding.

“OK, that’s funny,” the alternate universe New York Mayor remarked, “because of the soda thing … No come on. I’m not kidding. I haven’t eaten all morning, just send over another pepperoni.”

“I’m sorry sir. We’re serious,” Benito said. “We’ve decided that eating more than one piece isn’t healthy for you, and so we’re forbidding you from doing it.”

Bloomberg, in the Currant’s account, then snapped., saying:  “Look jackass. I fucking skipped breakfast this morning just so I could eat four slices of your pizza. Don’t be a schmuck, just get back to the kitchen and bring out some fucking pizza, okay.”

Benito stood fast! “I’m sorry sir, there’s nothing I can do. Maybe you could go to several restaurants and get one slice at each. At least that way you’re walking. You know, burning calories.”

Zing!

If only it were true… Continue reading →

If We Could Trust The Government To Take Care Of Us, There Wouldn’t Be Idiotic Laws Like This One

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
"You have to take it this time, honey, because the law says you're a nuisance if you call the cops again..."

“You have to take it this time, honey, because the law says you’re a nuisance if you call the cops again…”

Did you know that many cities and towns across the country have what are called “nuisance ordinances,” “crime-free ordinances,” or “disorderly behavior ordinances,” that subject landlords and tenants to fines when the police respond to a proscribed number of “disorderly behavior” complaints within a designated period of time?  Such ordinances specifically include “domestic disturbances” as among the forms of disorderly conduct that be punished under the law.

What are the predictable consequences of such laws? Landlords evict tenants who cause them to be fined…including women who call the police because they are being beaten by their husbands or boyfriends. The laws, therefore, penalize the victims of domestic abuse, and create a powerful disincentive for them to report it, since they must, in effect, choose between a beating and homelessness. They also tend to affect single mothers and those who live in poor neighborhoods.

Wait…what? What idiots would pass such a cruel and stupid law? The answer, unfortunately, is lots of idiots, because elected officials, as a general rule, are wretched at ethics chess, among other skills. They don’t think about the unfair and irresponsible results of their well-meaning, bone-headed, poorly drafted and ill-conceived laws by considering their likely consequences two, three and four moves ahead, which is what ethics chess requires. A law can have unethical and unintended outcomes that render it far worse than whatever it is the measure was intended to address, but determining what those outcomes are takes more care, diligence, intelligence and patience than most of our elected officials can muster. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: New York State Senator Greg Ball (R)

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
Trust me, guys, you really don't want to vote for Greg Ball again...he's embarrassing your district.

Trust me, guys, you really don’t want to vote for Greg Ball again…he’s embarrassing your district.

Every now and then, a public official says something so brain-meltingly ridiculous that I wish I had a traditional blog and could write, “What an idiot!” and leave it at that.  This is one of those times.

Republican New York State Senator Greg Ball must represent the troglodyte section of New York—you know, that famous district heavily populated with prehistoric cave-dwellers who were discovered frozen in 1989, thawed out alive, and became politically active?—based on his unapologetic,nail-spitting, un-American tweet regarding the younger, surviving terrorist brother who engineered the Boston Marathon bombing:

Ball

What an idiot.

No, no, I can’t say that.

This is an unethical tweet. It’s an irresponsible tweet. Supporting torture “to save more lives” explicitly rejects the principles of the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitutional requirements of Due Process and the Bill of Rights prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and compelled testimony against self-interest. The “anything to save more lives” illogic, though recently adopted, to his shame and disgrace, by the presumably less idiotic President Obama in his quest for more gun regulations, is, of course, the open door to martial law and the permanent trade of liberty for security. I wrote about this at some length in the wake of the Abu Ghraib fiasco; reading “The Ethics of American Torture” again now, I would hold the same today, as would, I hope, most of you. (Don’t bother to read this, Senator Ball; it’s more than 140 characters, and you wouldn’t understand it anyway.) I wrote in part, Continue reading →

The GOP Out-Newtowns The Democrats…Impressive! Also, BLECHHH!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
"Anything you can do I can do better...!" An appropriate accompaniment, and, ironically enough, from "Annie Get Your Gun"!

“Anything you can do I can do better…!” An appropriate accompaniment, and, ironically enough, from “Annie Get Your Gun”!

Further proving my conviction that there is no ethical difference between the two political parties at all (they are both habitually dishonest, corrupt, incompetent, hypocritical and Machiavellian), the Republicans opposing immigration reform are in the process of proving they can play the Newtown game too, only more shamelessly. This is why neither party can ever maintain the moral high ground in any issue, ever. While one party is using unethical arguments and tactics, it is just a matter of time before the other party, despite all its protests when it is the target of  them, will employ exactly the same measures—and argue that it’s not, of course.

Blechhh.

The Newtown game, if you didn’t get the reference, is when apolitical  party cynically seizes on a human tragedy and draws a specious and tendentious connection between it and a desired policy initiative. Gun control was never about stopping elementary school massacres, since what occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary was unprecedented, but suddenly the old, old debates about semi-automatic weapons and background checks were cynically recast as test of whether lawmakers cared about kids or not. Which is more important, an archaic Bill of Rights provision about militias, or saving toddlers from being mowed down in cold blood? Why, if only one child is saved, isn’t it worth limiting our right to arm ourselves? Have you no heart? Gun supporters, Republicans, conservatives and fair minded citizens  capable of thought were properly offended at these tactics, while, naturally, the integrity-free mainstream media adopted the same “save the children” mantra.

None of this stopped the Republicans who continue to oppose unavoidable measures necessary to clean up the mess left by decades of bi-partisan negligence regarding illegal immigration from using the latest high-profile tragedy—the Boston Marathon bombing—as a tool to derail the  push for immigration reform.  Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce (Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck and U.S. Public School Incompetence Divisions): Logan Middle School in Logan, W.Va.

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Sigh.

Send him to the re-education center...

Send him to the re-education center…

I’ll stop flagging the unethical conduct of anti-gun hysterics during the Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck when they stop abusing kids and law-abiding citizens in their deranged determination to turn America into a gun-free zone through fear-mongering and intimidation. I’m genuinely sick of writing about this stuff, but not as sick as I am of the idiocy that produces it. Has any sane, prominent, respectable voice from the gun-regulation side registered strong objections to incidents like what happened in Logan? If so, I must have missed it. That’s illuminating, don’t you think?

Jared Marcum, an eighth-grader boy at Logan Middle School in Logan, W.Va., was suspended and arrested by police for wearing a pro-NRA T-shirt that depicted a firearm and the phrase “Protect your right” to class. He was charged with “obstruction and disturbing the education process.” It appears that his teacher asked him to remove his shirt, and he refused, prompting the arrest. Marcum was on solid ground, and his teacher was not.  The school dress code reads in part: Continue reading →

Let Me Explain It To You, Ruth: It Is All About Trust

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

zombies-anti-gun-560x335

Washington Post editorial writer Ruth Marcus gave us a jaw-droppingly arrogant and willfully obtuse lament yesterday. She is in despair. Why would such a sensible, unthreatening gun control measure as the Manchin-Toomey background check amendment fail to pass the Senate? Poor Ruth just can’t understand it. The Senators voting against the bill were so “impervious to logic.” It just didn’t make sense!

What is ruefully amusing and telling about Marcus’s “how dare anyone disagree with us?” rant is that her essay answers its own question.  It is stuffed full of the elements that completely justify Senators or anyone who respects gun-ownership, the Second Amendment and guns opposing any proposals at all that come out of the post-Sandy Hook exploitation campaign by Marcus and her political compadres. It all comes down to trust, Ruth, and you are one of those who is untrustworthy on the topic of guns. Your column proves it, just as President Obama’s petulant outburst of contempt against gun rights absolutists proves his untrustworthiness. Continue reading →

The Internal Revenue Service’s Unethical Compassion

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

News Item (ABA Journal):

Too bad---if only your family tragedy had gotten more publicity, the IRS might have given a damn.

Too bad—if only your family tragedy had gotten more publicity, the IRS might have given a damn.

“After Monday’s fatal bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the Internal Revenue Service has announce that the April 15 income tax filing deadline will be extended by three months for those affected by the crime…”

Oh! Does this mean that the Internal Revenue Service has a new policy that grants penalty-free extensions to taxpayers who experienced a personal tragedy on or about April 15? Well, no, it doesn’t. Does it mean that all the other victims of crimes and tragedies across the nation will get similar compassionate treatment? No, it doesn’t mean this either. What it means is that someone—I wonder who?—is using a Federal Agency to make political hay and get positive publicity from journalists who are incapable of thought.

This is an ethics foul, a significant one, and I would think an obvious one as well. The government’s tax-collecting agency must display absolute integrity and consistency at all times, and must not be influenced or driven by politics or public relations. There are citizens across our land who had family members raped on April 15, or who were raped themselves; who had children or parents die, who were in horrible accidents, whose home or business burned down, who lost their jobs, or who were diagnosed with dread diseases that will change their lives forever. Why are the Boston victims receiving compassionate treatment,while  these citizens are not? You know why: because this was a high-profile tragedy, to which I say, so what? What is the ethical principle being articulated here that is worth sacrificing the IRS’s integrity? That high-profile victims deserve more compassion than other victims? No, the principle is that a government gets better PR brownie points by making beneficent gestures to well-publicized victims who are on TV than it does, say, to a tax-paying father whose kid was gunned down in a drive-by on tax day.

Well, it’s a cynical, sloppy, incoherent, irresponsible ad hoc principle that operates on a double standard, and is inherently unfair and unjust. It also necessarily raises the questions, how else does the IRS play favorites? What other political activities does the IRS perform for its masters?

That’s how trust in the government erodes, and the IRS is asking for it.

_______________________________

Pointer and Facts: ABA Journal

 

Why The Gun Bill Deserved To Lose, and Why We Should All Be Glad It Did

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments
A bad day for Machiavelli is a good day for America.

A bad day for Machiavelli is a good day for America.

Consequentialism rules supreme in Washington, D.C.; that is the tragedy of our political system. If unethical conduct is perceived as having a positive outcome, few in D.C. will continue to condemn the means whereby those beneficial and lauded were achieved. Worse, the results will be seen as validating the tactics, moving them from the category of ethically objectionable into standard practice, and for both political parties

Thus we should all reluctantly cheer the likely demise of the Senate’s gun control bill yesterday. The compromise background check provision that failed wasn’t perfect, but it would have been an improvement over the current system. Nevertheless, the post-Sandy Hook tactics of gun control advocates, including the President and most of the media, have been so misleading, cynical, manipulative and offensive that their tactics needed to be discouraged by the only thing that has real influence in the nation’s Capital: embarrassing failure.

The tainted enterprise begins with the fact that it should not have been a priority at this time at all. Newtown did not signal a crisis; it was one event, and that particular bloody horse had left the barn. The supposedly urgent need to “prevent more Sandy Hooks” was imaginary, but it apparently served the President’s purpose of distracting attention from more genuinely pressing matters, notably the stalled employment situation and the need to find common ground with Republican on deficit and debt reduction. Meanwhile, the conditions in Syria have been deteriorating and North Korea is threatening nuclear war: why, at this time, was the President of the United states acting as if gun control was at the top of his agenda? It was irresponsible, placing political grandstanding above governing. In this context, Obama’s angry words yesterday about the bill’s defeat being caused by “politics” were stunningly hypocritical. The whole effort by his party was about nothing other than politics. Continue reading →

Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck Update: Integrity Check For Liberal Media Bias Deniers

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is really pretty simple, or ought to be.

That's some watchdog you got there...

That’s some watchdog you got there…

On Tuesday, CNN released a press announcement unequivocally stating its support for the background check provisions of proposed gun control legislation. It declared that it would devote two days to the issue, and on Wednesday, Democratic Senator Joe Manshin (WV) thanked CNN news anchors for their support in the gun debate, saying to John Berman and Christine Roman, who had just presented, as promised, a completely one-sided view of the issue, “We appreciate your support.”

This, from the self-proclaimed “Most Trusted Name in News,” is the canary dying in the mine of honest, objective, ethical national journalism. It shouldn’t matter if you approve of background checks, though that is CNN’s disgraceful gambit: a large majority of the public does, and a large majority of the public approves of unethical journalism when it supports their preference. Not to be indelicate, but they are fools. A news organization that only presents one side of an issue or that slants its coverage to influence policy isn’t a news organization at all, but an ideological shill, and a tool of political manipulation. Continue reading →