Citizenship

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 →

The Florist, The Gay Wedding And The Slippery, Slippery Slope

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments
OK, she's a jerk. But is it ethical to say she can't be a jerk? Isn't America about having the right to be a jerk?

OK, she’s a jerk. But is it ethical to say she can’t be a jerk? Isn’t America about having the right to be a jerk?

Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts proprietor Barronelle Stutzman had been selling flowers to Robert Ingersoll and his partner, Curt Freed, his partner, for a decade, but drew a line in the sand when they wanted her business to supply the floral arrangements for their same-sex marriage. She refused, citing her relationship with God. This week, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a consumer protection lawsuit against  Stutzman, drawing a line of his own.

There are legal and ethical issues mixed up here like gazpacho, and some of them are not difficult. For example, whether Stutzman should have the legal right to do so or not, her decision to reject and stigmatize long-time customers is indefensible ethically. It is cruel, unfair, ungrateful and disrespectful. They were good enough to profit from for ten years, but not good enough to accommodate at the most important time of their lives? Such conduct earns a massive ethics “Yechh.”  Continue reading →

Why Does MSNBC Give Melissa Harris-Perry A Platform?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

This isn’t a free speech issue at all.

Soviet schoolchildren, 1954. They belong.

Soviet schoolchildren, 1954. They belong.

Prof. Perry, an MSNBC talking head, has the same right to make inflammatory, un-American statements that any of us do—and that is the kind of statements she regularly makes—but she is a Marxist. Her ideas and words are cultural poison. A cable network that promotes them is irresponsible.

Now, this is MSNBC, the network that allows Al Sharpton and Ed Schultz to broadcast their hateful rants to the nation, so we knew it was irresponsible, I suppose. These two buffoons, however, are not preaching concepts alien to core American values, and Harris-Perry is. Their presence on the network is unprofessional and obnoxious. Hers is unforgivable.

In a recent MSNBC promo advertising its house communist, Perry, scripted and saying exactly what she intended to convey, is heard saying that Americans..

“…haven’t had a very collective notion that these are our children. We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities…Once it’s everybody’s responsibility and not just the households, then we start making better investments.”

Here’s the video:

She was shocked—shocked!—that these words were controversial and widely condemned. She took to her blog to condemn her critics and, she claimed, “double-down” on her statement. She did not double down, however. She lied and obfuscated, just as any good communist, radical and totalitarian must.  Continue reading →

Jay Leno, Age Discrimination, And Our Cultural Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments
Jay Leno, when he was talented.

Jay Leno, when he was talented.

One of the purposes of laws is to point the culture toward more ethical awareness and eventually, conduct. In the case of age discrimination, however, this isn’t working very well, and the recent foofaraw surrounding Jay Leno’s forced exit from the “Tonight Show” gives us some hints of why this is so.

NBC and the TV reporters covering the situation (in case you have a life: Leno has been forced to give up his 30 year reign at NBC’s flagship late night show in favor of his current follow-up on the NBC schedule, the lighter-than-air Jimmy Fallon) do not disguise the reason for Leno’s ouster: he is old, or at least considerably older than Fallon. Never mind that Jay still leads in the ratings over the despicable David Letterman, the Hell-spawn Jimmy Kimmel, and Jay’s former victim, poor, betrayed Conan O’Brien at TBS. Leno is 62, so he and his gray hair are being jettisoned by NBC in its fear that Kimmel, recently installed as competition by ABC, will siphon off more and more of the younger demographic that sponsors crave. I would think it would be much easier to tell Leno to start encouraging parents to torture their children too, but hey, what do I know?

What is telling is that nobody seems to see anything wrong with this. Old guys are a drag, we all know that, I guess. How many MSNBC hosts and Democratic Party flacks have loudly proclaimed that the Republican Party’s problem is that it is run by old guys? Old guys are trouble, sooner or later, so it certainly makes sense that anyone running a business or an organization figures out ways to dump them in favor of new blood, unless that pesky law stuff gets in the way. Then, of course, age discrimination is bad, bad, bad. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colorado)

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
"MMM! Guns bad! Congresswoman lazy!

“MMM! Guns bad! Congresswoman lazy!

Asked how a ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds would be effective in reducing gun violence, Rep. Diana DeGette, the sponsor of Federal legislation to prohibit the sale or transfer of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds, replied with ignorant semi-gibberish worthy of recent Miss Universe competitors. She said, and I’m not making this up:

“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”

Uh, no, Congresswoman, that’s not how it works, or the theoretical reason for your own legislation. Magazines can be refilled, like Pez dispensers. It’s not as if they have to be thrown away once they are empty. Your reason for the legislation—now read your talking points  from the anti-gun lobby!—is that shooters in the process of massacring school children will have to stop to reload after only ten bullets.

Is it too much to expect that elected officials actually understand the things they set out to regulate and prohibit? That they—OK, their staffs, then, assuming the elected representative involved can read—do a modicum of research before sponsoring legislation? That they actually know what they are talking about and answer the most basic of questions—-why will this legislation help?—-accurately and articulately?

Yes, in this case apparently it is. Like  gun control or oppose gun control, all Americans have an equal stake in competent legislators who pass laws based on knowledge, not ideological cant at the lizard-brain level of “Guns bad!!! Ban bad guns and you know, gun things!” Too much of gun regulation reform advocacy has been carried on at this level in the public and the media; for a U.S. Congresswoman to do likewise is a disgrace.

______________________________

Pointer: Tim Levier

Facts: Denver Post

Unethical Quote of the Week: President Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens and we’ve moved on to other things? That’s not who we are. That’s not who we are. And I want to make sure every American is listening today…Shame on us if we’ve forgotten. I haven’t forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.”

—-President Obama, at a White House event designed to re-energize the push for stricter gun control laws.

Wrong.

Right back at you, Mr. President.

Right back at you, Mr. President.

Shame on the President…for not only making a facile, lowest-common-denominator appeal for gun control regulations, but for implying that policy should be made in the heat of emotional rather than after rational debate and analysis, looking at all sides of an issue, rather than just the most sensational.

Shame on the President…for insulting principled opponents of the Democrat’s irresponsible, hysterical and cynical effort to portray the complex issue of fire arms regulation as a matter of “saving the children” by accusing them of forgetting the horrendous massacre of toddlers at Newtown.

Shame on the President…for dishonestly suggesting that the measures under consideration, good and bad, would have necessarily done anything to prevent the Sandy Hook rampage by a deranged killer. If it would not, then why is the date of the event, whether it was 10, 100, or 1000 days ago, relevant to anything? Investigators found that Adam Lanza had a 28 inch Samurai sword in his arsenal. How many children might he have killed in the same amount of time with that, rather than his assault rifle? Watch “Kill Bill, Part I” and get back to me. Continue reading →

Comment of The Day: The Same-Sex Marriage Wars

/ Jack Marshall / 466 Comments

supreme-court-gay-marriage-demonstration

The Inquiring Mind left a plaintive and provocative comment on an earlier post regarding the gay marriage controversy, now once again above the fold, and it was apparently swallowed by my spam file. I haven’t see much of an uptick in Ethics Alarms comments lately (and tgt is on semi-hiatus), but the spam has gotten out of control: apparently this post was deleted, even though I try to check the spam comments (about 500 a day now) to make sure legitimate ones don’t get thrown out with the bath water. I apologize to IM, and am posting the recovered comment partially in compensation, and also because he expresses a sentiment that I have heard and read from others.

I’ll be back at the end; in the meantime, here is Inquiring Mind’s Comment of the Day regarding the tactics of gay marriage advocates:

“Jack, since the aftermath of Prop 8, I have always wondered – is the thuggery/coercion and thought control a “bug” associated with the push for gay marriage, or is it a “feature” that comes with the enactment of gay marriage?

“I just want to review the conduct of gay-marriage supporters: Continue reading →

Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck Classic Quote: “A Foolish Consistency Is The Hobgoblin of Little Minds…”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments
ralph_waldo_emerson

I hear Ralph was good with a knife.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who uttered the title above, would have loved the Federal government, for which consistency in logic or policy is often alien indeed. In the midst of a mass effort to disarm the American people of guns with the dubious logic and arrogant presumption that they don’t need powerful weaponry since, after all, the government will save us, the TSA, it has been revealed  to me by my observant son, has secretly adopted exactly the opposite position, using polar reasoning.

My son, who likes knives almost as much as he likes guns, showed me several potential weapons in his collection that would legally pass through the new air travel regulations. He notes that officials defending the lifting of the ban on blades that could do as much damage as the box cutters of 9/11 have pointed to the self-reliance of air passengers, who have subdued several mid-air threats. “Don’t you get it?” my son says. “They’re arming passengers! They won’t say that directly, but it’s pretty obvious. The passengers on Flight 93 had to boil water and use food carts. Now hijackers might be facing a hundred angry people with knives.”

I get it! An armed and ready populace is a good thing! When the government says so, that is. So…. it makes sense to arm untrained air passengers when they face a deadly threat without police nearby, but schools should be “gun free zones” and it’s nuts to arm untrained teachers…indeed, trained and law-abiding gun owners should be disarmed lest they shoot Harvey Milk. I hearby predict that the little knife policy will last until a child gets killed by a mad airplane coach passenger wielding one, whereupon President Obama will invoke his “save just one child” rule, Rep. Rangel will declare that millions of children are being killed by little knives, and Jim Carrey will tweet that nobody who cares about children would oppose a little knife ban. The knives will then be not only prohibited again on airplanes, but will be confiscated by edict, since there’s no Bill of Rights provision protecting little knife ownership.

The behavior of our elected officials is consistent after all.

Emerson’s quote applies perfectly.

Hand-Out Ethics: Buying Junk Food With Food Stamps, Or A Leap Down The Slippery Slope?

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Maybe I got something out of law school after all.

11-nanny stateWhen I read opinion columnist Charles Lane’s lament that food stamp regulations didn’t limit the kinds of nourishment that could be bought by them to things Mrs. Obama would approve of, my mind flew back many decades to a memorable Contracts class in my first year of law school. The late Professor Richard Alan Gordon was thundering in his most stentorian tones—and boy, did he have stentorian tones!— about the class reaction to a case we had just discussed involving a Washington, D.C. family on welfare that had gotten itself in legal trouble by purchasing a stereo system on credit. One poor student was the target of the verbal barrage, having just opined that the family should have spent its government assistance on necessities like food, and not entertainment.

“And who are you, Mr. Anderson, to make the determination of what is a “necessity” for a fellow citizen? Shall the family in question not be permitted to feed its soul, as well as its gut? Is it the attitude role of the government to assume that accepting its assistance in dire circumstances involves one’s surrender of the basic human rights of choice, preference, taste and self-determination?”

I miss Dick Gordon, who became a cherished friend (and a terrific Learned Judge in “Trial by Jury”), and I miss the scathing letter he would have written to Charles Lane. In his column, Lane writes:

“The point is to increase the amount of real nutrition per taxpayer dollar. The counterargument is that it’s not fair to restrict poor people’s grocery choices. You hear this a lot from the food and beverage industry, for which SNAP has grown into a significant subsidy. Sorry, I don’t get it — morally or pragmatically. Of course the federal government should be able to leverage its purchasing power for socially beneficial purposes. If you take Uncle Sam’s help, you play by his rules. I repeat: This is a nutrition program, or so the taxpayers who fund it are told. It should nourish.”

“If you take Uncle Sam’s help, you play by his rules.” This is the crux of Lane’s argument, Mr. Anderson’s, and all the Nanny State advocates who cheer on Mayor Bloomberg’s assault on personal freedom. Ethically, there are strong arguments in all directions: Continue reading →