Comment of the Day

Comment Of The Day: “Latest Admittees To The “Do Something!” Hall Of Fame”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I am pretty sure that I have neglected to post a fair share of Paul W. Schlecht’s deserving and entertaining commentaries as Comments of the Day; he deserves better. He has a unique style, often sliding into satirical rants. In the case of the UN’s climate change propaganda arm, however, his tone is not only appropriate, it’s welcome and necessary.

Here is Paul’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Latest Admittees to the ‘Do Something!’ Hall Of Fame.” Incidentally, I hope Paul forgives me for substituting “fuck” for “F***K, but I hate all of the “polite” ways of writing and saying that word, since they all mean the same thing.

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“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific and intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations, set up at the request of member governments, dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impacts.”

An absolute epitome of grift/graft, the UNIPCC conducts no research of its own, which should come as no surprise. Follow the money; it’s not in the research, it’s in the solutions recommended by the Summary for Policy-Makers (SPM) addendum to its Assessment Reports (AR’s).

While this may come as something of a surprise, the “solutions” quite often benefit financially those who propose them. Anyone wondering why the UNIPCC has fought reform and scrutiny, wonder no more.

The UNIPCC answers to no one, has no obligation to give an audience to anyone who doesn’t confirm the “Consensus” and has NO Conflict-Of-Interest (COI) provision.

A while back, an INTERACADEMY COUNCIL investigation recommended sweeping changes to the UNIPCC.

“*(T)he council said (thatthe UNIPCC) needs a full-time executive director, more openness and regular changes in leadership. It called for stronger enforcement of its reviews of research and adoption of a COI policy, which the IPCC does not have, even though its parent agencies do.” The COI issue was raised because of former Chair Rajendra Pachauri’s work as adviser and board member of green energy companies, etc., etc., etc.

The UNIPCC’s response? “FUCK OFF!!…a somewhat more direct iteration of “BITE ME!”

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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Observations On The House Passage Of H.R.5 (The Parents Bill of Rights)”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Jim Hodgson produced two COTD-worthy responses to the post about H.R.5 which…

…dares to require schools to let parents know what they are teaching, urging students to read, and otherwise indoctrinating their students. I chose this one.

The issue of federalism didn’t enter into my ethics analysis, but it is a valid point: why is the Federal government dictating education policy to the states? Well, it’s an ends and means problem: while a majority of the states are considering laws similar to H.R. 5, those dedicated to using mandatory government education to raise a generation of anti-American little Marxists who change their genders like socks present what may well be an existential threat to the United States envisioned by the Constitution. “The Constitution,” Justice Jackson memorably said in Terminiello v. Chicago (1949) , “is not a suicide pact.”

Is Jim’s Comment of the Day an ethical comment or a political one? We inevitably end up on political turf frequently here, but politics is often inextricable from ethics, as ethically corrupt as it so often is.

Here is Jim Hodgson’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Observations On The House Passage Of H.R.5 (The Parents Bill of Rights)”:

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For an old states-rightist like me, the true sadness is that the local and state governments haven’t acted on this matter (and many others) long before now. You know, enumerated powers, like the Constitution says. But, here in post-Constitutional America, that fussy old document is but a minor impediment to the communists in the land.

I have been active in a number of local, regional and state political campaigns since the 1980s, and have come to know many of the candidates (both incumbents and challengers) personally. I can state with utter certainty that only a minority of them, despite their likely protestations to the contrary, remain dedicated to the causes (and voters) that got them elected in the first place, or to following through with making the changes they declared vital and pledged to make once they got into office. Holding political office is such a process of being co-opted and corrupted for most people. The so-called conservatives have “gone along to get along” until there seems to be little left to conserve. The principled liberals have allowed their Democratic efforts to be hijacked by the radical “social justice” mob. Special interests and money control both parties, top to bottom.

I contact elected officials regularly about a variety of issues, both personally and on behalf of organizations to which I belong. I always make my communications polite, short and to the point, usually containing a bullet list of items, and often a reminder of the official’s prior stated position on the matter at hand. Except from those who know me from a campaign, I seldom get more than a perfunctory “Thank you for contacting us.” message. I get particularly aggravated by members of my state legislature when they ask for input on an upcoming committee or floor vote but seem to have their minds made up despite the amount of public input they get to the contrary of their eventual vote. These legislators depend heavily upon the short memories, attention spans and naivety of the voters to maintain their continuation in office.

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Comment Of The Day: “Stanford’s Disgraceful DEI Dean Throws Down The Guntlet…NOW Will Stanford Fire Her?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

EA has featured a lot of posts about the Stanford Law shout-down of a conservative federal judge and the school’s “DEI” dean’s complicity in making certain that he did not get a fair opportunity to deliver his remarks. It is, I believe, quite possibly a tipping point regarding many important cultural issues, including Leftist censorship, the decline of higher education ethics and academic freedom, the corruption of the legal profession, and most of all, the toxic influence of the “diversity/equity/inclusion” cult to undermine core societal values in the U.S. The mainstream news media is doing its best to keep the story and its implications far from the consciousness of the average member of the public.

Glenn Logan has offered a helpful Comment of the Day which analyzes Stanford Law School Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach’s defiant and telling op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Glenn is one of many experienced bloggers in the Ethics Alarms commentariat, and at times like these it shows.

Here is Glenn’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Stanford’s Disgraceful DEI Dean Throws Down The Guntlet…NOW Will Stanford Fire Her?”

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Steinbach wrote: “Regardless of where you stand politically, none of this heated exchange was helpful for civil discourse or productive dialogue.“

True, but only because one side decided the right way to deal with debating controversial issues was to make sure that the other side of the debate could not be heard without wading through repeated ad hominem attacks and invective.

At no point does Steinbach recognize that the students were driving the lack of civility. It is also true that the judge’s remarks at certain points crossed the line, but he was under constant attack to the point that he was unable to deliver a coherent presentation. Steinbach either does not recognize these facts, or is okay with them. Based on her prepared remarks, the latter seems to be the betting favorite.

So how can this possibly square with her implied desire for civil discourse? Easy — discourse can only be civil when it’s hers, or she agrees with it, or it is had on her terms.

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Comment Of The Day: “Fire Them All: No, Training Cannot Fix Teachers Like This One”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Sarah B., proving that Ethics Alarms Comments of the Day do not have to be novelettes in order to make the grade, offers her reaction to the post about the Texas charter school’s grudging admission that forcing 7th graders to pose like sex workers seeking a “date” may not have been appropriate classroom fare:

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I saw this and it saddens/frightens/infuriates me so much that I can hardly express it.

I believe that this exhibit, one of so many examples, proves that I need to change my answer to a question I get asked a lot.

“Why do you homeschool?”

Usually I cite my wanting to raise my children in my value system, the need of my second child to have incredible flexibility for medical appointments, a desire to control various aspects of the curriculum such as including cursive and home ec, inculcating them in my faith, nationwide illiteracy rates of 45% in fourth grade and 25% in 12th grade (local isn’t much higher), and my experience as a math tutor showing me that children are not taught math appropriately anymore.

The answer I should give is, “Why don’t you?”

Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Weather Lady’s Collapse”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Curmie’s typically erudite and perceptive Comment of the Day below made me happy and sad at the same time. Happy, because it is the kind of superb commentary Ethics Alarms readers excel at producing, making the site unique in the blogosphere whether a significant numbers of people take advantage of the resource. Sad, because I should have authored its equivalent in the first place, and might have come closer if I were not forced daily into squeezing posts into randomly distributed periods during the day that I don’t have to devote to earning enough money to keep the Marshalls from a future living in a cardboard box in the woods.

Curmie’s analysis also alerted me to something I had missed in the video, the mysterious statement “Not again!” from one of the anchors. This reminded me of the just-created whale in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” hurtling to Earth through space (along with a pot of petunias) that similarly thinks, also inexplicably, “Oh no, not again!”

Here is Curmie’s Comment of the Day, a deft examination of humor, ethics and human nature, regarding the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Weather Lady’s Collapse”:

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I find this one fascinating for a variety of reasons. One of those is that I no doubt had a different reaction to seeing the event under the headline “BREAKING: CBS LA Weather Forecaster collapses live on air.” So I can’t say how I would have responded had I simply been watching that news show.

Part of my response is also based on the initial movement, the slow bend forward toward the desk. That seemed almost choreographed, as if she was going to pound her head on the desk as some sort of statement on the imminent forecast, described by the co-anchor as “the calm before the storm.” It’s the slide out of the chair that changes the dynamic. That’s definitely unstaged.

More importantly, I’d read your statement that she’s recovering at home before I viewed the video. This takes us very close to the notion of aesthetic distance, that unspoken understanding that what we are watching isn’t actually happening. Hence, we don’t run for cover when the bad guy in a play or a movie appears with a gun and looks threatening, and we’re not confused when the actor who played Hamlet is miraculously alive to take a curtain call even though the character is dead. Or, in this case, that she suffered an episode, but is on her way to recovery.

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Comment Of The Day: “On The Looming Indictment Of Donald Trump”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Jim Hodgson takes on, in his Comment of the Day, the unpleasant topic of where the current escalating divisiveness may take us. It immediately reminded me of this New York Times fantasy feature from 2021, where several artists—and you know the ideological orientation of artists—were asked to “redesign the American flag.” One artist wrote,

The colors of our flag are intended to stand for unity, valor and justice. The gray, monochrome flag represents America surrendering to its fall from power and loss of the ideals it once stood for….

He produced this design:

No, that’s not a mistake, that’s it. Another flag was this:

Here is Jim Hodgson’s Comment of the Day on the post, “On The Looming Indictment Of Donald Trump”…

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“What exactly makes us a country?”

From the perspective of our federal overlords, this country is approaching the big government perfection that has been the objective of politicians since Hamilton first moved us toward empire, and Lincoln and the Radical Republicans advanced the federal hegemony against the interests of the states.

State governments have been largely complicit as well. The South, of course, was forced to remain in the Union by force of arms, and only allowed to “return” to the Union (the one they supposedly could not leave) after they wrote new constitutions acceptable to the US government. The increasing centralization of power in Washington brought the states to line up like hogs at the federal money trough. Acceding to the popular election of US senators and not moving to counter the myriad instances of federal overreach decade after decade, has led us, like the proverbial frog in slowly warming water, to the boiling point we now face. The desired outcome is for us to capitulate our freedom for the “security” of a totalitarian socialist state.

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A Comment Of The Day Spectacular! Re: “Ethics Conundrum: Is Teaching That Communism Is Evil History or Indoctrination?”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This has never happened before. The Ethics Alarms post on teaching communism attracted a modest number of comments (only 9 when you subtract my kibitzing), but five of them, by Ethics Alarms stalwarts JutGory, Steve-O-in-NJ, Extradimensional Cephalopod, Chris Marschner and Steve Witherspoon, rate Comment of the Day status. I’m posting them together (you can also go straight to the post itself, here, and find the whole conversation) for clarity and convenience, and also because I’m afraid if I post them individually a new visitor might think that I have died….

First up, Extradimensional Cephalopod:

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There is no excuse for any kind of indoctrination. Existentialist epistemology provides a bright line between education and indoctrination.

Here is how to teach about communism without indoctrination:

“Here is what happened in these communist countries: the communications, the policies, the statistics, the conflicts, et cetera. Here is how we obtained this information. Some people say there are alternative inferences we could draw about the past based on the raw data in the present; here are some of the arguments about which inferences are more likely. Write a short essay on how people drew their various conclusions about historical events from the evidence available.

“As for communism itself, some people say that the principles of communism are inherently dysfunctional for running a society, and here is their reasoning for concluding this, both in the abstract and based on the historical events we discussed earlier. Others say that communism could still work in theory. They draw different conclusions from the historical events, saying that communist principles did not contribute to the downfall of communist countries. Write a short essay on how people drew their various conclusions about the causes of the collapse of communist countries from the evidence available.

Any proponent of the feasibility of a political ideology is asked answer an indefinitely long series of questions in the form of “how would your society handle X situation?”, because any real such society would have to answer those questions in real life, and before we go through the effort of overhauling everything people like to make sure the new society has plans for how to deal with the situations it creates. The plans the ideology provides must be convincing–they must be solutions whose outcomes people would consider both desirable and probable, otherwise people will dismiss the ideology as incomplete at best and irredeemably flawed at worst. Write a long essay on some situations communism might have to deal with, the results you predict from those situations, and the various opinions people might have about the results. At least one of those situations must involve experts making a mistake, and at least one must involve people breaking rules. ”

This approach is infinitely more rewarding for society than simply telling people that an idea is good or bad, and that’s just off the top of my head.

By the way, having spoken with communists, I find that despite providing good descriptions of the problems of capitalism, communism fails to provide any answers beyond “tell everyone about communism and then we’ll all get together and confiscate the property of the rich, and we’ll share it fairly.” I am disappointed that communists don’t seem inclined to remedy this critical lack of foresight.

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Here is JutGory:

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Comment Of The Day: “Regarding Tucker Carlson’s Newly Revealed J6 Surveillance Videos”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Here is Steve Witherspoon’s Comment of the Day on the post, Regarding Tucker Carlson’s Newly Revealed J6 Surveillance Videos:

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Personally I don’t care who the video evidence was released to as long as it is released to the public in a responsible manner. I’m not a big fan of Carlson’s tactics but he’s the one who now has all the video. We can’t do a damn thing to change that fact so, so be it. He had better take this responsibility to the people of the United States very seriously.

The government and the political left has had an absolute monopoly on the evidence to support their narrative since January 6th, 2021. It may be the tit-for-tat rationalization, but it’s fair political gamesmanship for an opposing narrative to be presented (using the video evidence) that completely contradicts the narrative that has been pushed by the political left.

Jonathan Turley has a blog post out this morning about the QAnon Shaman, The Curious Story of QAnon Shaman: Fox Footage Raises New Questions Over the Chansley Case.

In the midst of all the internet trolls commenting on Turley’s site, I wrote,

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Comment Of The Day: “Using Personality Testing For Anything But Party Games Is Unethical”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I was very pleased that the post on personality testing triggered the lively discussion it did. The topic is a long-time source of irritation to me. Reducing the infinite variety and complexity of human character to any test should obviously set off ethics alarms, and making life-changing decisions based on such lazy short-cuts to assessing character is a bright-line Golden Rule breach. Anyone who wants to start understanding my character should read all of the posts on Ethics Alarms, and even then should prepare to be surprised.

Before I get to Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day, let me relay the link to Extradimensional Cephalopod‘s website and its basic mindsets section in his Foundational Toolbox for Life.

I’ve combined two of Sarah’s comments here, because they are closely related and I couldn’t choose between them. Here is her Comment of the Day on the post, “Using Personality Testing For Anything But Party Games Is Unethical”…

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I know a manager who believes strongly in personality testing, and focuses heavily on the Clifton Strengths profile. He has convinced everyone that it is the way to go and has every one of his employees list their five strengths in order on their work emails, just like some places want preferred pronouns. Everyone I have talked to about this seems totally bought into it. I volunteer here, and thus don’t have to have my Clifton profile done, but when I was introduced to my supervisor (T), he introduced himself as a strategist, which means that he knows how to get from point A to point B in the best possible way, but has a weakness with communication, so we should just all do what he says without question, because he knows better than we do and he doesn’t have time to communicate. If you want someone who is good at communicating, talk to person H. Another of my supervisors (D), introduced herself with her main strength, the ability to think out her problems very well, but as a down side, she must have time to think, so don’t bring her a problem and expect a solution that week. She needs quiet time to work it out.

This is not a way to introduce yourselves, in my opinion. Frankly, I’d rather be known for who I am and let you determine what you think my strengths and weaknesses are, rather than a self reported test that gives me, however accurately, an assessment of those things I am strong at and tells me to make them stronger. I’d rather work to be a well rounded person. I’d also rather think of myself, not as a combination of personality traits, but as a whole person, a person who may have strengths and weaknesses, but who can work to overcome weaknesses and may let certain strengths founder as a choice.

Even if strengths are good things to have, we have to work on our weaknesses too. Frankly, T lets his “strength” in strategizing be an excuse for acting like a controlling jackass. If something doesn’t work perfectly, he blames it all on others, and says we didn’t listen enough. He cannot handle changing conditions, because they throw off his plan, so he gets stressed and pushes people badly. I have nearly quit because of him, but am too stubborn and want the experience for later in life. D uses her “strength” as an excuse to not organize or prepare for anything, all with the excuse that she didn’t have adequate time to think through the problem. If a problem arises needing a quick solution, she shuts down totally, claiming that there is nothing to be done, and won’t accept anyone else’s solution to the problem. We go from about to do our work to completely cancelling our work in moments.

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Comment Of The Day: “‘Ick Or Ethics’ Ethics Quiz: The Self-Repossessing Car”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

There were many enlightening responses to the ethics quiz involving Ford’s patent application for devices that would allow a deadbeat car purchaser’s automobile to progressively punish its owner and eventually repossess itself.

This one is through the auspices of Ethics Alarms vet Neil Dorr, whose Comment of the Day followed the post, “‘Ick Or Ethics’ Ethics Quiz: The Self-Repossessing Car”….

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To my eyes, this extends far beyond normal penalties for a non-payment or breach of contract, especially since they get increasingly punitive and paternalistic. In most cases, if you stop making payments on a car they send you increasingly-nasty letters before finally hauling it away in the middle of the night. None of it includes the “tsk tsk” finger-wagging demonstrated here. Limiting you to “emergency use only” (whose emergency?) “Geofencing”? That’s what we do to dogs and cattle by way electronic collars (which often prove ineffective). “Annoying sounds”? Like the ones they play outside of convenience stores here to discourage vagrancy? Then, a final “lockout” where your allowed the privilege of looking at your car, shading some driveway, and providing them free storage (at least until they call it home) without use. Talk about cruel and unusual.

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