Ethics Quotes

Ethics Observations on Vivek Ramaswamy’s “Rant”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Quixotic GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is an entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking feature of the primary season because, whatever you may think of his positions, he’s unusually articulate and adept at spontaneous responses. His outburst in Scott County, Iowa, when a Washington Post reporter asked him to “condemn white supremacy and white nationalism” is a classic.

He was asked the “gotcha!” question following the endorsement of his candidacy by former Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King, who was punished by the party after repeatedly appearing to embrace white supremacists and their rhetoric. Ramaswamy took off like Harold Hill telling the crowd about the dangers of a pool table in River City:

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Unethical Quote of the Month and Ethics Dunce: Ex-Harvard President Claudine Gay

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

I was prepared to write a sympathetic and generous post in response to the resignation of Claudine Gay from the presidency of Harvard University. It must be a crushing blow for her, both personally and professionally. At this moment, I can’t think of a fair analogy from the past in any field: the closest I can come is Richard Nixon’s forced resignation from the American Presidency. She was celebrated as a great trailblazer as the first black and first black female president of the world’s most famous university only a few months ago. Her fall was rapid and ugly.

I an not sympathetic any more, however. Her Unethical Quote of the Month is her resignation letter, which you can read here. It is disgraceful. She never alludes to her failure to adequately address the anti-Semitic and pro-terrorism demonstrations on the Harvard campus. She never mentions her plagiarism in multiple scholarly papers, without which she probably could have survived the criticism arising from her inept testimony in Congress. What she says, in the midst of empty rhetoric about her aspirations and how much she cares about Harvard, is this:

“[I]t has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

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Stupid Unethical Quote Of The Month: Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. He’s a threat. And you know—We’ll bring in adversaries and I’ll bring it in right now—Even Vladimir Putin—Has anyone ever heard if Vladimir Putin?—of Russia says that Biden’s — and this is a quote – ‘politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.’”

—–Donald Trump, in the same stream of consciousness rant that produced his previous Unethical Quote of the Month in New Hampshire (the clip is here)

I don’t have to explain what’s wrong with this, right? I don’t have to explain it because if you read Ethics Alarms, you must have at least a sufficient number of functioning brain cells to know why this is a stunningly idiotic thing for Trump to say. Now, I might decide that it is interesting that Russia’s Machiavellian dictator is using the various prosecutions of Trump by Democratic officials and Biden’s Justice Department to point out the hypocrisy in U.S. democracy under Biden, and refer to that Putin quote (if it really is a quote) for that purpose. However, I would never use a Putin in an appeal to authority, which is what Trump did in New Hampshire.

‘You don’t believe me that Biden is a threat to Democracy? Well, even such a distinguished expert as the Russian dictator agrees with me, so there!’ is what Trump said, in essence. Putin cannot be used as an authority because Putin is a proven liar, and is especially useless for that purpose regarding the United States, which is, after all, supporting a nation Russia is currently fighting. What Trump said is literally as absurd as it would have been for Richard Nixon, running for President against Hubert Humphrey in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam war, to quote Ho Chi Minh or Chairman Mao saying that the Johnson administration was filled with warmongers and fools. Nixon didn’t do that, of course, because whatever else he was, Richard Nixon was a good lawyer, and knew that if you use an unreliable and discredited authority in a brief or oral argument, the court is going to think, “Wow, this guy is desperate. And an idiot…”

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Yes, Donald Trump Of Course…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country, that’s what they’ve done. They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia…all over the world they’re pouring in.”

–—Presumptive GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump during a rally in Durham, NH.

To its credit, C-Span introduced the clip of Trump blathering by noting he was talking about illegal immigrants, and I’m sure he was. However he never said “illegal immigrants” or anything similar. He just gave a number that could be illegal immigrants or just immigrants. “When they let 15, 16 million people into the country…we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he began. Wait, we “let” legal immigrants into the country: is Trump complaining about them?

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Ethics Quote Of The Month: Political Cartoonist Michael P. Ramirez

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Today, political correctness and the woke movement have defined words and images as weapons that should be banned for offending political categories and self-defined oppressed groups. It is tolerance of all ideas—except those they disagree with, and it follows the adage that if you can’t win the argument, you change the rules. It treats people as children who must be shielded from conversation, unable to manage a verbal exchange without supervision, and it is a direct threat to freedom of speech and liberty—as well as the truth.”

—Political cartoonist Michael P. Ramirez, whose cartoon mocking the hypocrisy of Hamas for decrying the deaths of Gaza civilians while it used civilians as human shields was pulled by the Washington Post for supposedly engaging in racial stereotypes after its staff objected vehemently.

The original cartoon and the Post’s craven decision to pull it was discussed on Ethics Alarms, here. “How ironic,” I wrote, “now Ramirez can draw a similar cartoon about the Washington Post’s hypocrisy.” Ramirez decided to write an essay instead. He continues in part,

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Look! Intersex Track And Field Athlete Caster Semenya Is Back In The News With An “It Isn’t What It Is” All-Time Classic

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Let’s see: the last time I mentioned Semenya was at the end of last year, musing about what to do about another mutant in sports, Jeremiah Johnson, then a 12-year-old junior high school running back from Fort Worth, Texas who weighed 5-foot-11 and weighed 198 pounds, counting his facial hair. (I’m afraid to check on what size he is now.) The question is how schools and sports organizations should treat outliers who break all the rules naturally, and clobber the competition. Semenya, you will recall (we have discussed her a lot) is intersex, meaning that she has some of the primary and secondary characteristics of both sexes. It also gives her testosterone levels about 15 times higher than her female competitors. Though she has won many international competitions and set many women’s records (in the 400m, 800m, 1,000m and 1,500m races). A Swiss ruling in 2019 banned Semenya from international races between 400 meters, and Switzerland’s highest court backed the decision. To compete, she would be required to suppress her natural male hormones, which she refuses to do.

Writing about both Johnson and Semeya, I wrote last year,

“We can’t have special leagues and categories for however many gender categories science identifies and activists fight to have recognized, and there is no justification for creating artificial standards to eliminate outlier performers. The “solution” imposed on Caster Semenya—force her to take drugs that eliminate her natural advantage—is horrifying. How is this different from banging brilliant kids on the head until they have brain damage and no longer dominate their less gifted fellow students in school? What right do the sports czars have to declare an unprecedented, unique competitor unfit to compete because her, or his, unique qualities are advantageous? Why are so many woman condemning Caster as a cheat, when they should be defending her as a human being with as much right to compete as she is as anyone? Because she’ll win? Because it’s unfair that God, or random chance, or her own dedication rendered her better at her sport than anyone else?”

The unique physical characteristics of many, many other elite athletes can be said to have bestowed the exact same kinds of “unfair” advantages that allow Semenya to excel. The only question should be: Are these her real, natural abilities? If so, it is unethical to punish her for being born superior. Meanwhile, biological men transitioning into womanhood are allowed to dominate women’s sports competitions in the U.S. This makes no sense at all.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Nikki Haley

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“You’re just scum.”

—-GOP Presidential nominee hopeful Nikki Haley, taking her feud with debate troll Vivek Ramaswamy to the next, uncivil, level in last night’s debate.

Nice. I suppose this is a victory for feminism, as the first Presidential candidate debate participant to resort to direct personal insults is a woman. Yay! I knew they could do it! Prior to this, the limits of what had been considered over-the-line personal denigration had been Barack Obama’s snotty “You’re likable enough” faint-praise shot at Hillary Clinton, and, though technically a Vice-Presidential debate, Lloyd Bentsen hitting Sen. Dan Quayle below the metaphorical belt by saying that he was “no Jack Kennedy.”

Ramaswamy and Haley have been spitting criticism at each other from the first debate, but when the tech entrepreneur accused the former South Carolina governor of hypocrisy for criticizing his having a TikTok account while her adult daughter also uses the the platform, the feud escalated quickly.

“She made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time,” Ramaswamy said. “So you might want to take care of your family first before preaching to anyone else.”

“Leave my daughter out of your voice!” Haley said, doing her best imitation of Will Smith after he slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. When her derivative line prompted a few claps after his remark had sparked some boos, Ramaswamy added, “You have her supporters propping her up — that’s fine.”

“You’re just scum,” Haley responded wittily.

Nice. Be proud, Republicans! It was only moral luck that we were not treated to an ensuing exchange of,

“Bitch!”

“Asshole!”

“Slut!”

“Dickweed!”

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Unethical Quote Of The Month & Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Many of these lawmakers on the other side of the aisle who had their hair on fire about what appears to have been an inadvertent action taken by Congressman Bowman, to which he is now being held accountable for, within the criminal justice system, regularly defend violent individuals who overran the Capitol on Jan. 6, as part of an effort to halt a peaceful transfer of power. And these violent individuals brutally beat and seriously injured 140 police officers, on the day of the insurrection. And many of them, who are having a panic attack, publicly, about Jamaal Bowman have actually defended or refused to comment on the violent mob on January 6.”

—House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the man every Democrat in the House voted for to be Speaker, “explaining” why Rep. Bowman shouldn’t be censured by the House for breaking the law, indeed two laws, as well as violating the House ethics code. 

To be blunt, this statement by Jeffries exhibits the approximate ethical comprehension of a Cocker Spaniel. It reveals him to be a shameless liar and an ethics corrupter:

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Barack Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“The Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis; it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region….”

—–Former President Barack Obama, sticking his nose into a matter that he should have no say in, and further enhancing his established record as a foreign policy incompetent.

The former President’s advice comes in an annoying post on Medium titled, “Thoughts on Israel and Gaza.” Primarily, his comments are stupid, but individuals with out-sized influence on public opinion, like irrationally popular ex-Presidents, have an ethical obligation to avoid allowing their stupidity to infect public affairs. How could anything “further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations” when for generations Palestinians have wanted to kill as many Jews as possible and wipe their nation from the map? Is Obama warning Israel that they risk really, really making Palestinians hate them? And nothing Israel does that isn’t suicidal will assist “efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.” There will be peace and stability when the Palestinians genuinely condemn terrorism and accept that Israel is a legitimate nation…in other words, never.

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Unethical (And Stupid) Quote Of The Month: Eric Levitz, Who Ironically Enough Writes For NY Mag’s “Intelligencer”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Last night, I asserted that this report indicated that babies were beheaded. This was an overstatement. I should have said that the report established that babies were found headless, a fact that lends plausibility to claims of beheading, but which does not prove them.“

—New York Magazine reporter Eric Levitz on Twitter/X, going for the all-time record in Hamas-excusing spin.

Oh. What?

Yes, it’s come to this: a progressive reporter, naturally inclined to make excuses for the Palestinians because they are “of color” and supposedly oppressed, twists reality and his brain into pretzel-shapes in order to discredit the confirmed reports of Hamas terrorists beheading Jewish babies.

Let me see, what else could explain baby carcasses with missing heads? 1) Maybe they never had heads in the first place. 2) Maybe their heads just fell off, like the coughing jaybird’s head in the old song. 3) Maybe the heads were still attached, but these were turtle-human hybrid babies, and they just pulled their heads inside. That’s about all I can think of. You?

Old friend (and one of my board members at the American Century Theater) John Podhoretz caught this one, commenting, “I suppose there has been a worse set of sentences ever written but I can’t quite imagine what they might be.”