Comment of the Day

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote of the Month: Georgia Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Tim Levier, by his own admission in a Devil’s Advocate mood, gifted Ethics Alarms readers with the a bold defense of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the anti-merit fad that has kept affirmative action on life support quite a bit after its expiration date. If EA had such a designation as “The Silk Purse” award, this would win it. I applaud the effort, so here it is, the Comment of the Day on the post about an absurd word salad extolling DEI in Georgia. I may be back after Tim has his say…I haven’t decided yet.

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“Diversity involves recognizing, including, celebrating, rewarding and utilizing differences of gender, race, ethnicity, age and thought – sweetening and often strengthening the pot.”

I don’t know what mood I’m in but I’m up for a little “Devil’s Advocate” today. Let’s give it a go.

I have many thoughts regarding the DEI space – but one point I’d like to make clear is that the concensus often focuses on how to measure and demonstrate improvement on a quantitative scale when DEI often, in my opinion, is more important from a qualitative standpoint.

In the rush to “prove” and “show results”, the drivers of the movement are seeking and promoting changes in outcomes rather than the root causes related to opportunity. In so doing, they may “move the goalposts” to arrive at a certain outcome. Reasonable people know instinctively that this is bad, as articulated in Charlie Kirk’s hypotheticals about adding white Americans to the NBA or whether black commercial airline pilots demonstrated the same skill, knowledge, and experience as their peers or were they a beneficiary of reduced expectations. The “rigging” of the outcomes complicates perceptions of DEI and creates negative emotions among the opponents of the measures.

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Ethics Quote of the Month: SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“If it’s totally stupid, you don’t go along with it…”

—Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in comments at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., as he explained why he thinks the traditional reverence for Supreme Court precedent (stare decisis) makes neither legal nor logical sense

In discussions with some of my more fair and rational progressive lawyer friends about the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, several of them admitted that Roe was a terrible opinion, badly reasoned and sloppily written. This has been the consensus of most honest legal analysts since the 1970s, but never mind, Roe declared the right to kill unborn children for any reason whatsoever a right, so for abortion-loving feminists and their allies (including men addicted to promiscuous sex without responsibility), Roe was a “good” decision. But my colleagues who knew it was not just a poor decision but a terrible one condemned anyway, because, they said, it violated stare decisis, the hoary principle that the Supreme Court should eschew over-turning previous SCOTUS decisions even if they were outdated or clearly wrong, in the interests of legal stability, preserving the integrity of the Court and insulating the institution from the shifting winds of political power.

Like many principles, that one sounds better in the abstract than it works in reality, and Roe is as good an example as one could find short of Dred Scott. Roe warped the culture and turned living human beings into mere inconveniences whose lives could be erased at whim. How many millions of human beings don’t exist today because of the ideological boot-strapping logic of that decision, which bizarrely equated the right to contraception to the right to kill the unborn?

Reverence of bad decisions as beyond reversal is also a handy political weapon: as several wags have noted, stare decisus is mandatory when the precedent at issue is progressive cant (like Roe), but when the Left passionately believes a SCOTUS decision was wrongly decided, it’s time for an “exception” to stare decisus. In his recent appearance at D.C.’s Catholic University, where he taught at the law school until protesters against Dobbs in his classes forced him to stop, Justice Thomas pointed to Brown v. Bd. of Education, the landmark decision that overturned a well-established Court precedent holding that “separate but equal” was a principle that allowed segregation in the public schools as he neatly eviscerated the intellectually dishonest position that SCOTUS precedent must be sacred.

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Why Fake Ron Howard Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

This is the second of the Ethics Alarms commentariate’s critique of the smug and facile defense of Progressive World offered by “Ron Howard,” placed in his metaphorical mouth by someone who thinks that the popularity of the messenger is more important than the quality of the message. Sadly, the fallacy is too often borne out.

#2 is the work of DaveL, and it is notable for its succinctness. Part I is here. “Ron’s” screed is included in my original post. Now here’s Dave:

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The piece as a whole tends to suffer from 4 main flaws in its thinking, all of which are related to one another:

  1. External locus of control: The piece refers in many places to the idea of the strong helping the weak, the wealthy helping the poor, etc. But it doesn’t ask where rich and poor people, or strong and weak people, come from. They’re assumed to just be. Some mysterious force beyond mortal ken makes them that way. Sometimes that’s the case – often it’s not. Which leads to:
  2. Ignoring effects of the second order and beyond: You want regulations to make things “safe”, but what does that do to make housing affordable? What does it mean for a job to be well-paid when so much of your earnings are diverted for the use of others? What happens when you make it more comfortable to be dependent, or more of a strain to be a contributor?
  3. Refusing to see tradeoffs: These things they want are often interrelated in a way that makes them actually oppose one another. You don’t get to have everything you want, only to choose where to strike a balance. Which leads into…
  4. Black-and-white thinking: You want housing to be “affordable” but also you want regulations to make them “safe”. How “safe” is “safe?” How “affordable” is “affordable?” One reason they can’t see tradeoffs is because they collapse these ideas from continuums to dichotomies.

Why Fake Ron Howard Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About, Part 1

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I posted about the “why I am a liberal” social media post that has been surfacing on Facebook and challenged the Ethics Alarms commentariate to dissect its rampant generalities, facile assumptions, and logical fallacies. As I wrote in the post, some previously intelligent people of my acquaintance have been reposting and praising the thing, attributing its authorship to Hollywood nice guy director Ron Howard. He didn’t write it, so this is a textbook “appeal to authority,” especially since the arguments “Ron” makes are flawed at best. They are, however, typical progressive talking points. There is no reason to believe the real Ron Howard has any political science or philosophical acumen or expertise, as he has spent literally his whole life in front of cameras or behind them.

Four EA comment stars took up my challenge, and they all shined. As promised, I am posting all four, each of which would make an excellent civics class topic, if there were high school civics classes that didn’t focus exclusively on leftist cant. (Are there any any?)

You can review Fake Ron’s manifesto here. Rebuttal #1 is by Gamereg; his numbered points correspond to “Ron’s”:

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Comment of the Day: “An Ethics Alarms Hat Trick!Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) Earns Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote of the Month, and Incompetent Elected Official of the Month!”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This Comment of the Day on the recent EA post about the unethical, irredeemable embarrassment Rep. Greene is—there have been several of them—by CEES VAN BARNEVELDT is sufficiently long and self explanatory that I won’t delay your appreciation of it. Here you go…

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Marjorie Taylor Greene is not a great student of history either. President Lincoln did not agree to a national divorce; he secured the unity of the United States at the great cost of 650,000 human lives.

Personally I am quite uncomfortable about the unity talk I am hearing from politicians. Unity is not an abstraction. Unity does not exist on its own; it has a focus, center, and purpose. Proper unity can only be based on a foundation of truth.

During the Civil War slavery was abolished, and after the Civil War the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment secured rights for the former slaves. The unity that Lincoln restored could only be based on the foundational truth that slavery is evil and has no place in the USA, and that the rights mentioned in founding documents of the USA also apply to the former slaves.

That means that if we need to preserve the unity of the United States we cannot skip the issue of truth, and after the funeral of Charlie Kirk simply go over to the order of the day. The assassination may have a similar political importance as the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks in 1856. The subtitle of the book “The Caning” by Stephen Pulio” is “The Assault That Drove America To Civil War”.

I do not intend to be apocalyptic with all the Civil War references, because I do not believe that we are there yet. And to stay within the marriage metaphor used by MTG in her unintelligent ramblings, I do not believe that the GOP is required to act like the battered wife who meekly returns to her abusive husband. So no kumbaya solution that leaves everything unresolved.

Here is the take from John Daniel Davidson from the Federalist today:

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Dunce And Unethical Quote of the Week: Emmy Winner Hannah Einbinder, Plus Another ‘Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias’ Moment by the Times…”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I used to follow up every Oscar telecast by chiding the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences for their omissions in the annual “In Memoriam” segment, which were often egregious. (How do you snub the likes of Harry Morgan and Stella Stevens?) I never did the same with the Emmys because I never watch the Emmys, but it has occurred to me that increasingly that awards show is more indicative of the state of American culture than the Oscars. Movies are going the way of live theater (Gee, thanks Wuhan virus!), and given the incompetence and political arrogance of Hollywood, it’s not the tragedy I once would have thought it was.

I found a special treat in the comment by AM Golden about this weekend’s Emmy Awards broadcast, as I saw an Emmys version of my annual Oscar posts! Here’s that Comment of the Day on the post “Comment of the Day: Ethics Dunce And Unethical Quote of the Week: Emmy Winner Hannah Einbinder, Plus Another ‘Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias’ Moment by the Times…”. I’ll have a few comments at the end…

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Does anyone care about these awards anymore? Does anyone know any of the actors nominated?

As is my tradition, I skipped the ceremony and watched the In Memoriam this morning. I do this to grumpily catalog how many deaths were overlooked.

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Comment of the Day: “About That Climate Change ‘Consensus’”….

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It’s about time recent EA comment auteur Holly A. was recognized with a Comment of the Day, and she actually had two strong candidates back-to-back. I chose the second. Both involved the same issue: garbage “climate change” advocacy and activism unhinged to actual facts. In the first comment, Holly impressively examined both the professors and the paper that sparked my post. I responded with gratitude, but noted that the technical details of the paper were not my concern. I wrote in part,

The ethics bottom line remains the same. There is not any “consensus.” The data is inconclusive. The hysteria is manipulated and politically motivated. Spending large amounts of treasure to alleviate a problem that is not well-understood is irresponsible. The news media has no interest in informing the public, and the people and politicians talking most loudly about climate change literally don’t know what they are talking about.

Fair?

Here  is Holly A.’s response, the Comment of the Day on the post, “About That Climate Change ‘Consensus’”….

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I would say mostly fair.

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Comment of the Day: “Return of the ‘2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck’”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

AM Golden invades the realm of Ethics Alarms long-form historical ethics commenter Steve-O-In NJ with an epic Comment of the Day, and a thing of beauty it is indeed. The post also brings back many memories I would rather have left buried. Here it is, in reaction to the essay, “Return of the ‘2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck'”:

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This is a 60-plus year process in the making. Barry Goldwater ran a fairly incompetent campaign but he absolutely had the news media biting at his heels the entire time. They gushed about Bobby Kennedy in ’68, they took potshots at Nixon. By the time Reagan came along, he faced hostility from a large segment of the press and Hollywood. In the meantime, Brain Trusters infiltrated the universities and encouraging the student protest movements instead of explaining how our Constitution was designed to work, culminating in a culture 50 years later that understands its country so poorly that it gets its news from Jon Stewart who is able to ignorantly proclaim that the Constitution doesn’t say that protests have to be peaceful.

In the election of 1992, Arsenio Hall ranted in his monologue when President George H.W. Bush said he probably wouldn’t appear on Hall’s show after Gov. Bill Clinton did, yelling about what made Bush think Hall wanted him on his show. Open hostility over who may or may not be a guest on Hall’s show paved the way for the venom spewed on every Late Night show today.

Believe all women? Not if they accused the first “black” President, Bill Clinton, of sexual harassment and even rape. “Anyone can drag $100 through a trailer park,” right? Bubba was caught with his pants down and allowed us to be caught with ours down on 9/11/2001 when he blew off an offer to hand over Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, the culture wars were heating up and Americans were becoming concerned about the country’s direction.

George W. Bush – faced with a supremely hostile news media and entertainment industry – endured screeds about stolen elections, fake Presidencies and two mocking cable television shows (“That’s My Bush!” and “Lil Bush”) before he gained some respect after 9/11, but never really got the credibility he deserved. In pop culture, far too many Bush-deranged Harry Potter fans believed they saw the myopic Ministry of Magic’s denial that the evil Voldemort had returned in the efforts by the Bush administration to urge vigilance in watching out for terrorists. Ah, remember when J.K. Rowling was the voice of truth? The damage to the American public’s understanding of the Constitution, particularly the Judicial branch, continued apace

Bob Dole and John McCain were treated as racist, sexist old men who would put this country into a Nazi theocracy; Mitt Romney was framed as a racist, sexist and religious nut who would send this country into a weird Mormon Nazi theocracy. All three were all virtually Hitler.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama was the be all and end all of existence. He who could do no wrong—and could not be touched because he had black skin and anyone who criticized him was a racist—took full advantage by damaging America on the world stage and inciting racial divisiveness on a scale that hadn’t been seen in 50 years.

When Donald Trump was campaigning in 2016, the news media covered him incessantly. It now appears that they wanted him to be the nominee because, in the words of Stephen Colbert on the day my family and I sat in his audience in NYC on a hot July day as he did a riff on how corrupt Hillary Clinton was, “Hillary so corrupt the only candidate she can beat is Donald Trump!”

It turned out she couldn’t even do that.

So the forces that had been coming together for 60 years—the biased news media, the leftist entertainment industry, progressive-dominated academia and other elite, corrupted professions coalesced into a single so-called Resistance Movement. Trump says people coming through our border with Mexico aren’t all angels, they accuse him of saying all immigrants are criminals. Trump says not everyone protesting in Charlottesville was a racist Nazi, he’s accused of “bothsidism” and pestered endlessly about condemning white supremacy even though he did condemn it. Trump is falsely accused of colluding with a foreign power, leading a big chunk of the population to believe his Presidency is the result of another stolen election.

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quote of the Week: The New York Times”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Steve-O-in NJ has some trenchant comments about what the Democrats are doing, or trying to do. Personally, I think the operative word here may be “denial.” Or cowardice. Or a political party that has become wedded to lies as its primary tactic whatever the issue, and can’t kick the habit even when it obviously isn’t working any more.

At the 1968 Masters Tournament, pro golfer Roberto De Vicenzo (above) signed an scorecard without checking it, thereby costing him a spot in an 18-hole playoff for the storied championship. He said, “Oh what a stupid I am!” and it stuck with me, as well as with many others, remembered as a poignant expression of regret and self-recrimination. I wasn’t in the ethics biz back then, but I admired the golfer for an honest, brutal assessment of his accountability. I am certain that he never again signed a scorecard without checking the strokes.

What the apparent plan of the Democrats in the wake of last November’s disaster—that is, the Harris-Walz ticket and their stunningly incompetent campaign—is to admit nothing, learn nothing, and to keep existing in as miasma of self-deception. Good luck with that. And I can’t wait to hear the argument asserting why anyone should ever trust a party that responds to failure like that to run anything, not just an economy, but a shoe-shine stand. President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced last week that about $4 billion in unspent federal funding for California’s absurdly delayed and overbudget high-speed rail project has been terminated.  This boondoggle was originally passed as a ballot initiative in 2008, a 800-mile rail line to be completed by 2020 in two phases on a $33 billion budget, connecting San Francisco with Los Angeles and branches stretching north to Sacramento and south to San Diego. In 2019, Newsom announced that there was no path to completing the original plan after costs ballooned, so the project was cut back to a 171-mile section between Merced and Bakersfield. Of course, the responsible course would have been to end the project entirely. High speed rail, however, as one wag wrote last week, is to transportation what wind farms are to energy: woke, virtue-signaling fantasies unmoored to reality.

Here is Steve-O’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quote of the Week: The New York Times”:

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Comment of the Day 2, “All That Jazz” Edition: “Does Jazz Really Need DEI?”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I never know when a relatively obscure topic will strike a chord and produced a bumper crop of terrific comments. “Does Jazz Really Need DEI?”turned out to be such a post. Here is the second standout response, a Comment of the Day by johnburger 2013 on the post, Does Jazz Really Need DEI?

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Here I thought Berklee College of Music was a serious institution. Silly me. Any institution with the following mission statement should be dismissed:

“The mission of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice is to support and sustain a cultural transformation in jazz, with the commitment to recruit, teach, mentor, and advocate for musicians seeking to study or perform jazz, with gender justice and racial justice as guiding principles.” (emphases added).

Just out of curiosity, what the hell does “gender justice” mean and what does it have to do with vamping in E flatMinor? Do we only study songs written by women? Do women prefer major modalities over augmented fifths? Do women avoid playing the F#maj13add4addflat7 chord?

Music is the one medium where gender and race are monumentally irrelevant. Is Within Temptation fantastic because the lead singer is a woman? No. The combo is great because their music is complex and full of surprises. The Warning (my most recent favorite band) isn’t great because it consists of three Mexican sisters. No. They are great because their music is intricate and heavy. The fact that they started out very young and have gained world-wide recognition as a family band is interesting but they are phenomenal musicians and songwriters. Kiki Wongo isn’t great because she is a woman, but because she has talent and tone, and can melt your heart or tear your face off with her guitar playing (Smashing Pumpkins realized her greatness when they selected her out of 10s of thousands of applicants for their lead guitarist on their latest tours). Linda Ronstadt wasn’t great because she is a woman; she was great because her voice compelled attention and takes you on all kinds of sonic adventures. [Editor’s note: Linda cannot sing any more because of Parkinson’s, but she was indeed great, and is still a great interview.)

As for “racial justice,” does that mean that only minorities are allowed to play jazz? Dizzie Gillespie, Miles Davis and John Coltrane are not considered jazz geniuses because they were African American. No, they were great because they wrote and played the vocabulary for modern jazz. What about Buddy Rich? Was rich great because he was white? Hardly: he is great because he could play drums like nobody’s business and had a sublime sense of rhythm.