Citizenship

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Dunce: Guitarist Carlos Santana”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Michael has posted the Comment of the Day regarding my post of Carlos Santana’s criticism of Georgia’s new anti- illegal immigration law. The post expresses my continuing amazement and dismay at the strong support for illegal immigrants in the media and in segments of the public, which I view as both irrational and impossible to defend without recourse to rationalizations and dishonesty. In his comment, Michael is less critical of these defenders as he explores the factors that could make reasonable people oppose efforts to crack down on illegals.

“I can understand why reasonable people are against laws that punish illegal immigrants. I understand your conviction that a law should be either enforced or repealed, but sometimes a law is a bad law that, for whatever reason, legislators cannot or will not turn into a good law (given your frequent posts criticizing Congress, you can understand why some bad laws are not changed). When such a bad law is in place, there is often sympathy for those who break it because reasonable people conclude that, if they were in the same position as those who break the law, they would break the law as well. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Guitarist Carlos Santana

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Legendary rock guitarist Carlos Santana thought it was appropriate to lecture a ballpark full of Atlantans when he was  honored with a “Beacon of Change” award at Sunday’s MLB Civil Rights Game at Turner Field. Pronouncing Georgia’s  new immigration law just signed into law by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal “anti-American,” the Mexican-born Carlos Santana said,“I represent the human race. The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Dear Carlos: If you can't say something responsible about immigration, please just shut up and play.

Later, he told reporters , “This is about fear, that people are going to steal my job. No we ain’t. You don’t clean toilets and clean sheets, stop shucking and jiving.”

Santana is entitled to express his opinion; he is even entitled to express stupid and ignorant opinions. But when he uses his fame, name recognition and a forum given to him as an honor to express a stupid, ignorant and irresponsible opinion, that is intolerable. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Sen. John McCain

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Arizona Senator John McCain has seriously tarnished his reputation for integrity  since losing the Presidential election in 2008, particularly during his last campaign for re-election to the Senate. The best of McCain was on display this week, however, as he delivered a strong and eloquent denouncement of torture (a.k.a “enhanced interrogation techniques”) on the Senate floor, in response to the ethically offensive arguments being put forth by many conservatives that the successful elimination of Osama bin Laden somehow magically transformed the evil practice of torture into a respectable tactic of national security. It is an important, courageous and persuasive statement from a U.S. Senator with special qualifications to make it, as one who had been tortured himself, and as fine a legacy as McCain, or any Senator, could aspire to.

Sen. McCain said, in part (you can read the entire text of his speech here)…

“Mr. President, the successful end of the ten-year manhunt to bring Osama bin Laden to justice has appropriately heightened the nation’s appreciation for the diligence, patriotism and courage of our armed forces and our intelligence community.  They are a great credit and inspiration to the country that has asked so much of them, and like all Americans, I am in their debt.

“But their success has also reignited debate over whether the so-called, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ of enemy prisoners, including waterboarding, were instrumental in locating bin Laden, and whether they are necessary and justifiable means for securing valuable information that might help prevent future terrorist attacks against us and our allies and lead to the capture or killing of those who would perpetrate them.  Or are they, and should they be, prohibited by our conscience and laws as torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Continue reading →

Appearance of Impropriety I: Federal Judge in a Whites Only Club? Ethical, As Long As He Doesn’t Like The Policy. Wait…WHAT?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Our Motto: "Trying to find a qualified black member for 110 years...and still looking!"

Is it an ethical violation for a Federal judge to belong to a whites-only country club?

Sure it is. Was that so hard?

Apparently for a judicial appeals panel in Tennessee, it is.

In May of 2008, an anonymous woman complained to the chief judge of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals that Federal bankruptcy  Judge George Paine II’s  membership in the ritzy Belle Meade Country Club violated the judicial ethics code of conduct that decrees that judges “should not hold membership in any organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin.”  This was a reasonable complaint to make, since the judicial codes for both Federal judges and Tennessee judges say that…

 CANON 2: A JUDGE SHOULD AVOID IMPROPRIETY AND THE APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY IN ALL ACTIVITIES

2 C   A judge shall not hold membership in any organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Washington Post Columnist Michael Gerson

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“In determining who is a “major” candidate for president, let’s begin here. Those who support the legalization of heroin while mocking addicts are marginal. It is difficult to be a first-tier candidate while holding second-rate values.”

—-Washington Post columnist and former Bush advisor Michael Gerson, pronouncing presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul’s Libertarian endorsement of drug legalization ethically unacceptable.

Gerson’s deconstruction of the all-too-common and increasingly ominous calls for legalizing addictive drugs nicely captures the trio of ethical flaws of the advocacy: it denies the crucial and legitimate government role defining responsible conduct for society, it embraces the myth that recreational drug use “does no harm,” and it is arrogant and selfish, condemning the poor and reckless to problems that their fragile resources cope with, in order to bestow a dubious “freedom” that the drug advocates do not need. Continue reading →

The Jaundiced Eye of Noam Chomsky

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I’ve been enduring, teeth gritted, the America-hating propaganda of Noam Chomsky since my college days. He is a brilliant linguistics professor who has credibility as a social critic only because his world view—briefly put, that the United States is evil, and anything that indicates otherwise is the result of a conspiracy–has been so supportive of and nurturing to the extreme Left. It is hard to quantify how much harm he has done to this nation or how many potentially productive minds, foreign and domestic, that he has warped with his bile, but I am sure it is substantial on both counts.

We are fortunate, I guess, to have his assessment of Osama Bin Laden’s death, recently published and available for reading here. The piece is res ipsa loquitur that the man is so consumed with unreasoning hatred for his country that he cannot process the truth or think straight, but I know that plenty of Chomsky followers will be cheering. Thus I am grateful that Christopher Hitchens has authored an admirable take-down of the professor, here.

The Great Norwalk Kindergarten Heist

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Tanya McDonald controversy

A homeless woman is facing 20 years in prison if she is convicted of stealing over $15,000 of Norwalk, Conn. taxpayer funds. The details of her crime are controversial: she lied about her residence to get her child into what she believed was a better school system, but one that, as non-resident, she was not entitled to use. The details also create a tangled mess of law, justice, ethics, fairness, compassion, public policy, finances, class and education.

Let’s try to unravel it, shall we? Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Osama’s Assassination: The Ethics Elephant in the Room”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

First time commenter Margo Schulter delivers a powerful, passionate and eloquent absolutist rebuttal to my post asserting an ethical defense of Osama bin Laden’s targeted killing/assassination/execution by U.S. military personnel. My immediate response to her can be found in the comments to the original post here; I don’t want to re-post it with this post because Margo’s thoughtful comment should be read and thought about prior to considering my rebuttal. Ethics Alarms is blessed with many sharp and persuasive comments, and this is one of the finest. In the grand tradition of absolutism, her answer to my question about firing the bullet that would kill an unarmed and submissive Osama  is “I wouldn’t fire that bullet to save the whole universe.” And she explains why:

“Please let me try to put my best foot forward, and keep a spirit of civility and friendly inquiry, as I say that my whole being — my guts, heart, intuition, and intellect –cry out, “No exceptions! Executions, extrajudicial or legal, are _wrong_!” I wonder what an MRI might show, and what neuroethics might say, about how people in the U.S.A. and elsewhere have such different reactions to what I would call a consummately evil and dehumanizing act.

“Please let me also apologize for the length of this comment, nevertheless just the starting point for a dialogue with lots of ramifications. How do pacifists like me see the scale of moral evils in different kinds of violence, and when might we consider using certain forms of nonlethal force? Also, there’s a way that President Obama might have modified his strategy a bit to fit Frances Kamm’s Doctrine of Triple Effect (DTE), illustrating what I see as the dangers of this intellectually intriguing concept. I’d love to join a dialogue going in any or all of these directions.

“It’s curious. You write, “I assume you shoot him dead.” And my whole being cries out, “You assume wrong!” While I’m not a physicalist, I do recognize that while we’re in this world experience and behavior are mediated through the brain, so I wonder what an MRI or the like would show for
people who have these radically different intuitions. Continue reading →

Guess Who Invited Donald Trump to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner?

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

OK, who's the wiseguy that brought the skunk to the picnic?

I missed it, but the Washington Post of April 28 revealed who it was that invited Donald Trump, fresh from a month of trying to make the President’s citizenship a campaign issue while denigrating Obama’s integrity, legitimacy, and honesty, to the annual light-hearted White House Correspondents Association dinner, where the President is always a featured “performer.” It was buried in the gossipy Style section, but there was the culprit. Who invited him?

The Washington Post invited him, that who.

Inviting Trump to that event is in approximately the same good taste as inviting blogger Pamela Geller to a Park51 (a.k.a. “the Ground Zero Mosque”) controversy, or allowing a group of “Truthers” to crash a testimonial to Dick Cheney.

What could the Post have been thinking? “He’s a fascinating figure to Washington right now!” the Post’s representative breathlessly explained on the 28th. We are to assume, then, that if the dinner was being held this week and Osama bin Laden hadn’t been dispatched (most respectfully, of course) to Davy Jones’ Locker, the Post might have invited Osama’s bullet-riddled corpse to slump at its table.

The Post was stirring the pot, is what it was doing, and that is not the media’s proper of ethical role. If the intention was to set up Trump, who had been called everything from a joke to a fool to a thug to a racist by various Post writers only days before, to be insulted to his face by host Seth Myers and the President, that is taking sides in the news rather than reporting it. If it the intent was to position volatile elements together in the hopes of sparking a story, that is unethical  journalism too.

The paper got both results that it presumably desired: Trump was a sitting duck at the dinner, and then he embarrassed himself by later complaining about the skewering he so richly deserved. It also, not for the first time, showed how rusty those old ethics alarms are at the offices of Washington, D.C.’s most prestigious newspaper.

[Thanks to sharp-eyed Post reader Robert Sher.]

In Search of Accountability, Fairness, Justice and a Champion: the Unending Persecution of Anthony Graves

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Job would pity Anthony Graves

Governments and other bureaucracies are capable of unimaginable callousness, stupidity, and wrongful conduct, allowing individual fools to multiply their power to harm exponentially, and then to see an inhuman computer-driven monstrosity run amuck as everyone denies responsibility. You could not devise a better example of this process than what Texas is doing to Anthony Graves.

He is an innocent man convicted of murder in 1994 who was released last October after spending 18 years in prison, condemned to death. He had been convicted with fabricated evidence and coached testimony employed against him by former Burleson County District Attorney Charles Siberia, and a state investigation got a Texas judge to set Graves free. But the maw of Texas bureaucracy wasn’t through ruining his life. Continue reading →