Comment of the Day

Comment of the Day: “The Naked Teacher Principle, Brought To You By “Only Fans” Again and Of Course”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Cees Van Barneveldt argues in this morning’s Comment of the Day that The Naked Teacher Principle (NFP) “is wholly insufficient for today’s educational environment at public schools.” Beginning with a sentence in the final paragraph in my post, “The Naked Teacher Principle, Brought To You By “Only Fans” Again and Of Course,” it moves into new vistas where no previous EA post on the NFT has gone before.

And here it is…

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...with holding a parent’s trust as a role model and a conveyor of societal values… 

Assume that I were a parent of two teenage sons, and they are both educated at a public school. What reasonable expectations should I have for their education, and their development as young men ready to conquer the next stage of life? I mentioned the word “men” in the previous sentence, as we cannot skip sexual development, and the development of a healthy identity. What good parents want is that their boys grow up to men with character, who are secure in their manhood, who know how to properly interact with others including with the other sex, have healthy friendships, do not grow up to be bullies, are able to form healthy relationships and marriages.

The main responsibility for a healthy sexual and moral development of children lies with the parents. Sending a child to school means that some of activities of raising a child is delegated to a third party; however delegation of that task should leave the ultimate responsibility for moral development with the parents. Delegation requires trust. Trust that the values taught at school do not undermine the values taught by the parents and that are commonly held in the parent’s community. Trust that the schools are transparent to the parents about critical issues pertaining to their children. Trust that the teachers of the school act as proper role models, living out those values. This has implication for which teachers you hire and fire; which the NTP relates to.

The current day public school environment betrays the trust of parents in multiple ways. Schools deliberately undermine existing societal values by aggressively pushing radical social and sexual agenda’s favored by radical minorities by shoving these issues into the faces of very young children. I have mentioned transgenderism in a previous comment. Before the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage (Obergefell) the issue pushed at schools was everything related to homosexuality. This has resulted in a lot of sexual confusion, and a pandemic of children who at a way too young age are put on path of irreversible steps to gender transition. Even worse is that the public schools go to great lengths to hide all this from the parents of the children involved. This type of environments does not generate teenagers who are secure in their sexual identity, who know they are accepted; instead it creates teenagers who are physically and mentally damaged. It creates freaks like Tyler Robinson who was up to his ears in alternative sexualities like furry and transgender, and who proceeded to murder Charlie Kirk.

The current day public school environment betrays the trust of parents by pushing all the DEI and CRT crap on children. “Toxic Masculinity”, “Smash the Patriarchy”, “Men are trash”, “Women are the Future.”A couple of days ago we saw that this junk is aggressively promoted by the teacher unions. The result of this are dispirited and cynical young men who “fail to launch,” and will not leave their parents house until in their thirties, do not date and become INCELs, who resent women, and are open for the racist and antisemitic ideas of Mick Fuentes as a raised middle finger to the indoctrination they got at school.

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Comment of the Day: “Not An Ethics Quiz: The “Lake America” Sweatshirts”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I’ve been remiss in posting deserving “Comments of the Day,” and I apologize. It’s not that there haven’t been worthy submissions, its just been a fact that getting content up on EA at all has been especially challenging of late. The last Comment of the Day was almost a month ago. Yikes.

Below, after a brief observation on the specific incident inspiring the post, Charles Abbott segues from the CEO fired for trolling the Trump Deranged in social media with a photo saluting “Lake America” to the ideological grandstanding that has taken over Facebook, at least based on what I am reading there.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Not An Ethics Quiz: The “Lake America” Sweatshirts”:

It seems the safest thing to do is simply to shut up. That will be a post for another day.

I want to redirect this comment to the topic of your experiences on Facebook. I’m not an expert on the the topic but I’ve had a Facebook account for approximately 20 years now. Like many of us.

You often post that you are surprised by the sorts of posts and comments and behaviors you see on Facebook from people you know personally and/or professionally.

Here’s the way it looks to me. If Facebook has ever been a place where people went to debate things in good faith, or to seek the truth, or to strive after correcting error, that time is long gone.

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Comment of the Day: “Baseball Ethics Quiz: The Hug”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

If I have learned one thing writing Ethics Alarms since 2009 is that I don’t know anything, particularly regarding which posts will spark the most interest or the most lively debates. I never expect the usual volume of commentary on my baseball ethics posts (the first ethics post I ever wrote, on the old Ethics Scoreboard, was on baseball: Pete Rose), but yesterday’s quiz regarding Red Sox pitcher Peyton Tolle’s impulsive hug of an opposing player as he applied an inning ending tag spawned commentary that raised some aspects of the incident that I never considered.

Best of all was this Comment of the Day by AM Golden, on “Baseball Ethics Quiz: The Hug.”

[Oh: I’m from Old School Boston. I have always been uncomfortable with hugs of any kind, from any one, for any reason. I have learned over the years when to submit and also when taking the initiative in a hug is expected of me and therefore only polite.]

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For transparency purposes, I have to disclose that I am a big fan of hugging.

It took a very long time for me to realize that not everyone likes to be hugged, though. Also, that there is a time and a place to hug people.

A workplace setting, for example, that wants to be taken seriously might want to discourage hugging among colleagues and, especially, between superiors and subordinates. An employee that wants to be taken seriously might decide that hugging people in the office undermines that goal. One never knows how another person may react to spontaneous hugging, after all. It might be welcomes, it might be spurned, it might give you an unwanted love interest or it might get you reprimanded by HR.

During a baseball game, a player is expected to be professional. Is it any different from being in a boardroom, a classroom or an examining room?

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Comment of the Day: “On The Lindsay Clancy Support Movement: ‘What’s Going On Here?’”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I’m getting this Comment of the Day by Tim LeVier up about a week late. Fortunately, I was reminded of the topic because essays and articles about the weird outpouring of support for a child-killer keep coming. Here’s the beginning of one I read today in The Free Press:

“Struggling, sleep-deprived moms are propping up their phones in their bathroom, hitting the record button and throwing ice at it while screaming for a whole minute. “Instead of having a screaming match with my toddler,” one mom wrote in a social media post, “I throw ice into my tub. It allows me to feel angry without being destructive.” Moms are also setting up ring lights to film themselves hysterically sobbing in front of their small children. Others are filming their crying babies with the caption “Me too, Lindsay,” in solidarity with Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mom who killed her three children—ages 5, 3, and 8 months—and is currently on trial for murder. This brain rot has spread like wildfire, as the algorithms made sure it would, and in the momosphere—the network of TikTok moms and mommy influencers and mom bloggers—it has been almost universally embraced as a healthy, liberating way for mothers to exhibit their rage.”

Tim’s analysis is as useful as I found it to be last week. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “On The Lindsay Clancy Support Movement: ‘What’s Going On Here?’”….[Oh…I know it’s foolish and biased to judge people by countenance, but boy, if I were casting Medea—or Lizzie Borden—that face would be irresistible.]

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I have to break down any comment by the groups involved:

1. L. Clancy – She’s on trial. She did the deed. By her plea, I would say that’s an admission of being the one to have done the deed, her defense is not that she didn’t do it, her defense is that there’s disagreement to the severity of the charge due to her mental health.
That is a proper question and should be settled by the courts / justice system.

2. The Parents and their Fundraisers – As I had heard it, money was being raised to support her parents through this and provide them with a place to stay because 3 years of motel rooms adds up.

It is a noble enough goal for the parents to attend the trial and confront the facts and reality of what is determined regarding your child. The people legitimately raising funds and supporting only this goal are probably showing some kind of exemplary ethics in being able to overlook the “Ick Factor” of the case and demonstrating a duty to care. How much easier would it be for the parents to not confront reality and wipe their hands of their daughter?

3. The Grifters – Ostensibly, there must be online grifters that have their own interests in play. They find hot button issues to sell some t-shirts and signs and whatever else will turn them a profit. They’ll lie about donating money and they’ll fan the flames to market and sell their wares.

These people are scum and not real people. They likely use AI generated video characters to fan these flames and profess their own special kind of virtue.

4. The Protestors / Defenders / Supporters – Providing financial and material support to someone they have no prior connection.

These people are deranged and one has to question where they came from and who has time to commit to such folly at a time when everyone and their mother is complaining about the cost of things. Why would anyone protest due process? She’s making her case in a court of law and the fair process will play out resulting in a judgment. This isn’t an area for “opinions” and to influence an outcome. Its meddlesome and the act of a narcissist that believes in one’s own “greatness” or “importance” over that of an impartial judicial institution.

Comment of the Day: “Making Ethics Sense of the Jason Arday Saga”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Ryan Harkins contributed the second Comment of the Day to grace EA’s cyber-pages today, and like the earlier one by Humble Talent, it is excellent. Since the topic is Jason Arday, I believe I am allowed to give a brief update on this latest story of the academic world’s DEI disgrace:

  • In a substack essay, Max Klinger wrote about his experience in the Cambridge department that later hired Arday for its faculty. He wrote in part, “I studied in the academic department at Cambridge that later employed Jason Arday. Here’s just some of the crap I learned: For one module, I wrote a lengthy essay about how cultural products like kids’ cartoons and jazz songs serve as instruments of capitalist oppression. I got a top mark on that paper (despite knowing at the time that I was essentially regurgitating complete crap).While studying for another paper I had a debate with the professor, an eminent anthropologist, because she insisted that native tribes could fly through the trees – not metaphorically, but that they could literally fly because they believed they could fly. After all, who are we to question ‘indigenous ways of knowing’…For a different course, I read long ‘research papers’ which argued that the fact that black kids are excluded from schools more than white kids proves systemic racism exists in education. Crucially, they ignored the fact that white kids are excluded more than, e.g., Japanese kids, a statistic which, applying the exact same logic, would suggest that the education system is systemically biased in favour of, erm, Japanese kids (which obviously it isn’t)…”
  • The United States Mission to Belgium, under U.S. Ambassador Bill White, released a statement condemning Ghent University for retaliating against the American scholar who blew the metaphorical whistle on Arday’s plagiarism. “The United States government regularly funds and supports research, academic exchanges, and other engagements with overseas universities,” it said in part. “Dishonest, corrupt institutions that engage in, or reward, scapegoating mob behavior are not desirable partners for us. This is particularly true where the purpose and effect of the scapegoating is to punish accurate journalism unearthing academic dishonesty. We are therefore reviewing any relationships we have with Ghent University.” Good. No Democratic administration would do this, and you know why.
  • So far, there has been no report on what was Arday’s cause of death. Everyone assumes he took his own life, but no information has been forthcoming on how, if indeed he did. I find that strange. But then everything about this sad tale is strange.

Now here’s Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day on the post, “Making Ethics Sense of the Jason Arday Saga”:

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Comment of the Day: “Another Trump Derangement Update!”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day on the post “Another Trump Derangement Update!” is clear, perceptive, and helpful. It needs no more introduction from me, so here it is…

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I remember during Trump’s first term, I made a Facebook post that tried to explain to lefties the concept of “resistance burnout”…. Basically, if you approach everything Trump does with the exact same amount of action and outrage, then you lose the ability to signal what is actually important, and everything just ends up sounding like an adult from Charlie Brown. I used how Trump muzzled the EPA’s Twitter account and how he appointed a man actively being sued by the EPA as head of the EPA as examples of something very low stakes and something legitimately bad.

Because there is some there there, and a sane resistance has a place. I’ll put it out there: I was absolutely more than willing to talk about how awful Biden was, and how the 25th was probably more appropriate for him than any other President in living memory. See: “Weekend at Biden’s” and “President Autopen”… That wasn’t normal either.

Because Trump isn’t normal, but just saying that is insufficient. “Normal” isn’t a moral state of being. What he does is important, and while I could be annoyed at all the capital projects, particularly during a cost of living crisis (I am), or his instinct to rhetorically pee on everything he can in an attempt to get his name on things (ditto), or his desire to add acreage to the American empire by floating ideas that are just… Never going to happen, as some kind of legacy project (also yes), these things are relatively unimportant. We need to be able to walk and chew gum, and separate the annoying things Trump does from the things that are actually problems.

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Comment of the Day: “On The California-Texas Foiled Baby Murder Case, Part I: Prelude”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Tim LeVier, who I believe is tied with Glenn Logan as the longest tenured commenter to your host’s ethics pronouncements, delivered as probing and ethical a suggestion for handling child birth surrogacy as I can imagine.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “On The California-Texas Foiled Baby Murder Case, Part I: Prelude,” which, I must mention, is getting remarkably little publicity from the pro-abortion Axis news media. Gee, I wonder why…

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The underlying problem in these surrogacy cases is that these contracts seem to be “early”. I’d like to read the actual contracts in these scenarios to see what they contemplated, if anything. In truth, the surrogacy contract should be accompanied by a fully funded escrow account and a trustee. Payments from escrow should be structured for specific milestones and performance. The contract should recognize the surrogate’s absolute right of autonomy, but contractually, “life of the surrogate” should be the only consideration when allowing the surrogate to terminate.

Let’s generate a fictional scenario where the couple will pay $50k (inclusive) for a surrogate. The escrow account should be funded at 200% or $100k. If you can’t fund this escrow account in advance, you don’t get to sign a contract.

Payment for attempt ($5k)
Payment once pregnancy is confirmed at 8 weeks ($5k)
Recurring payments for pregnancy support ($10k spread-out)
Success fee for birth ($30k)

But also, the extra escrow is for additional success fees for a multiple birth scenario (Twins/Triplets) ($20k/ea)

Have a condition for payment from escrow for “Failure to adopt” or “Termination of Contract” from the bio-parents. ($5k/ea)

Termination of contract should be clearly stated as the limit of the bio-parents decision-making once pregnancy is established.

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Comment of the Day: “Abortion On Demand Up To Birth”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

John Paul submitted a thorough and perceptive comment on the recent post about Massachusetts adopting a law permitting abortion right up until birth.

I was reminded that my Nobel Prize-winning biology professor when I was a Freshman in college, George Wald (perhaps the best teacher I have ever had, and I’ve had some great ones), said, “To me, the question of when an unborn person acquires the status of a human being appropriately protected by law, morality and ethics comes down to two choices: at birth, or at conception. Any other dividing line is arbitrary. Given those choices, I have to conclude that it must be birth.”

Here is John Paul’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Abortion On Demand Up To Birth”:

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“How can you honestly and sincerely defend the new Massachusetts abortion law? If you can, how do you look yourself in the mirror or sleep at night?”

Going to play (a little bit) devil’s advocate here, because I was genuinely curious. I too am horrified that such a law could be passed. I wanted to know what reason could even come close to anyone think this is a good idea. How could anyone look at this, say, “that seems good,” and sleep at night without having the fires of hell consume their dreams?

Desperate, I searched the internet, and this is what I came up with.

1. The language of the law does not permit women to abort babies after 24 weeks. It allows physicians and doctors to rely on professional judgment without fear of prosecution.

2. Abortion is so broadly defined that it includes miscarriages and stillbirths.

3. A patient’s mental heath might change after the 24th week.

4. Late term discovery of fatal fetal abnormalities discovered.

5. Late term severe (but non-fatal) abnormalities discovered.

6. Mothers having to travel out of state for abortion services.

7. Keeping the decision between doctor and mother.

8. The belief that viability is not a adequate legal dividing line.

9. The belief that the government should have no say in abortion at all, and this is the only way to guarantee it.

10. Political/ideological commitment to abortion.

11. Life of the mother.

There might be more. Most of what I have seen falls into one of these categories. If anyone has any to share, feel free to add to the list. However, just because it is a reason doesn’t mean it’s even a good reason or a well-thought-out reason.

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Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Minnesota Star Tribune”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

As promised, I am posting the second half of the Ryan Harkins Comment of the Day double-header. This one is an analysis of the revolting Minnesota debacle that had “Knucklehead” Tim Walz pardon a confessed child rapist on the flimsiest of justifications to allow the man to escape deportation, whereupon he was deported anyway. [Is Vang wearing pajamas in that photo? I guess it’s a practical choice for a rapist…] Then Minnesota’s spectacularly incompetent governor complained that no one should suffer because of their “worst day” (the man had repeatedly raped the same girl for years), and was applauded by the state’s biggest newspaper for “standing behind” his indefensible pardon. Walz also implied that the ultimate deportation lacked “due process.”

At the risk of hitch-hiking on Ryan’s post, that last issue is one I find especially perplexing. The Biden Administration deliberately refused to enforce our immigration laws, flooding the nation with so many illegal immigrants that the procedures in place for finding and deporting them were bound to be ineffective, too expensive, too time-consuming, too much of a burden on the courts, and sure to inflame public opinion, making the necessary response politically impractical. It was, progressives thought, a fait accompli, silently accompanied by gloating and mockery. “Sure we ignored the law, and there’s not a thing you can do about it, so there!”

I believe that it was crucial to do something about it, and if it took a uniquely bold and defiant President willing to bend procedures, process, the law and public tolerance to accomplish an important mission, that is what Presidential power is for. Our best Presidents were willing to take matters right up to previously uncrossable lines and sometimes over them, and the Trump Administration commitment to dealing with the illegal immigrant avalanche is in the tradition of Jackson, Lincoln, FDR and Eisenhower at their best.

Sure it’s a slippery slope, and of course Democrats are indignant that their plot is being foiled. Nevertheless, I believe the President has to have the power to do what is in the best interests of the nation when situations arise that the usual processes can’t handle.

Here is Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day on the post, “Unethical Quote of the Month: The Minnesota Star Tribune“:

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Train Wreck Update, In Which the Complicit and Corrupt NYT Journalists and Pundits Can’t Bring Themselves To Be Honest About Graham Platner”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Graham Platner seems like old news now that the Maine Democrats have another working-class hero to run against Susan Collins: a temperamental logger instead of a part-time oyster fisherman, Troy Jackson. I meant to post this Comment of the Day a week ago but got distracted: never mind. Ryan Harkin’s observations are still relevant, and, as always, he does a thorough and articulate job. This is the first half of a Ryan Harkins Comment of the Day double-header, with the second half arriving tomorrow morning.

Here is Ryan’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Train Wreck Update, In Which the Complicit and Corrupt NYT Journalists and Pundits Can’t Bring Themselves To Be Honest About Graham Platner”:

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I think the observations from various conservatives is correct about the Democratic Party’s embrace of Platner: they are looking for the Democratic answer to Donald Trump, and thought maybe they found him in Platner. The problems here are manifold, though. First and foremost, they don’t understand what makes Trump popular to conservatives. Second, in searching for a masculine model, they have no idea what actual masculinity is. They took Trump’s crass behavior and somehow reasoned that they needed someone crass. (As though all their foul-mouthed, guttersnipe-turned-millionaire grifters weren’t crass enough!) They noticed Trump’s promiscuity and thought they needed someone who treated women dirty. They saw Trump’s businessman persona, and they thought they could create a businessman aura around their candidate. The problem in all of this is the Democrats cannot (and have for a generation at least) see anything beneath the surface. They are so caught up in superficial details and labels that they cannot even fathom there are depths that have to be considered.

Conservatives don’t like Trump’s promiscuity or narcissism; they tolerate it for Trump’s other characteristics and Trump’s record. Trump professed a love for the United States, which Democrats can never do. Trump identified the problems conservatives have, especially the hostility they have felt at values that have underwritten the United States since its founding: faith in God, self-determinism, and hard work. They have felt repressed by governments who catered to anyone but them, and especially to those groups who specifically weren’t them. Faith in God was derided; self-determinism was racist, violent, and toxic; hard work was treated as something to be punished. They have been struggling with the feeling of being replaced by foreigners, all the while being told they were imagining things. They were forced to observe, and call phobic if they didn’t support, every alternative lifestyle they had always believe was detrimental to a healthy family life. The list goes on and on.

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