Ethics Quotes

Unethical Quote Of The Month: The New Republic’s Corey Pein [CORRECTED]

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Liberals are notoriously loath to take their own side in a fight. But their reticence may well be changing in an age of “vigilante, white nationalist terror”—openly condoned and supported by an incumbent president who has suggested that his armed devotees won’t stand for his removal from office. Increasingly, the antifa left is arguing—and training—in response. They are worried not only about an armed reckoning following a contested election, but also about rising violence from the paramilitaries loyal to President Donald Trump.”

— Corey Pein in The New Republic’s Antifa-justifying article, “Antifa Is Arming Itself Against a Trump Crackdown”

This is an extreme example, but still characteristic of the parallel universe, delusional projection of their own desires onto the President by the deranged anti-Trump Left.  To be succinct…

  • WHAT “vigilante, white nationalist terror”? I have seen lots of fake “hate crime” hoaxes and real attacks on people wearing MAGA hats who were minding their own business, but what is this referring to? Funny, I seem to recall that it was a group of Republican Congressmen who were attacked by a pro-Bernie sniper on a baseball field. Did that Charleston church shooting by Dylann Roof make this an “age”?
  • When has the President said that that his supporters will take up arms to prevent his removal from office? The reference cited in the article says nothing about removal from office.
  • WHAT “paramilitaries”? What rising violence? A recent study found less evidence of racial prejudice under Trump than Obama. [Correction: the original post mistakenly referred to “hate crimes.”]

Whacked-out opinions are fine; I read them every day. I’ve even had one or two myself. Hallucinations and paranoia unmoored to reality, however, is not fit to print in a national publication, whatever its politics. This appears to be near total fabrication to try to justify the Left’s own “paramilitary,” the Antifa.

Being hysterical is unfortunate. Trying to spread hysteria is evil.

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Pointer: Ed Driscoll

The Attack On Andy Ngo

/ Jack Marshall / 58 Comments

This is yet another story among many exposing the ugliness at the heart of the “resistance” and the increasingly fascist American Left…and, as the night follows day, another story that the mainstream news media is attempting to minimize.

Andy Ngo, a conservative journalist and pundit with the emerging online opinion and news website Quillette, attended  a Portland, Oregon “Him Too” rally over the weekend. “Him Too” is a counter #MeToo movement that focuses on false rape and sexual assault allegations.  It was a small rally, with only a few dozen attending; heck, there are probably only a few dozen non knee-jerk progressives in Portland.  The left-wing/Anfifa/Trump Hate  mob that showed up as a counter-protest (aka. “organized effort to constrain free speech by intimidation”), however, was much larger.

That group generated masked thugs who attacked Ngo, a recognized  anti-Muslim critic, a hate-crime skeptic and a foe of the Antifa itself.  Proving his assessment correct, the Antifa beat him and threw what the news media is calling “milkshakes” at him, a description that  is literally a lie designed to trivialize what occurred.  Several of the missiles were cups full of quick-setting cement, not dairy products.  Bloody and battered, Ngo  began livestreaming  on his phone after the attacks, and could be heard asking a police officer, “Where the hell were all of you?” He was admitted to a local hospital for treatment, and at last report, was still there.

While this was occurring, Portland’s finest did nothing to intervene; the police just watched, even as some of them were struck by eggs thrown by the Antifa and the Left’s counter-protesters  threw trash cans, newspaper stands, and patio furniture into the streets. . Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, is also the police commissioner, so media accounts that he cannot be said to have encouraged this dereliction of duty are also partisan, misleading spin.

Wheeler avoided commenting on his police force’s disgraceful performance until yesterday, when he tweeted some insulting boilerplate:

But “we” didn’t stand against the violence, not when a journalist whose political positions are anathema to the hard left views of Wheeler’s city was in the process of being beaten. Note also that the Mayor slyly blames the victim, who, like the group that dared to rally against a popular progressive cause, “incited violence.”

The last two tweets concluded,

How hard is the “real time” decision to stop a mob from beating up a journalist? Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Senator Elizabeth Warren

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“We should not be criminalizing mamas and babies trying to flee violence at home or trying to build a better future. We must pass comprehensive immigration reform that is in line with our values, creates a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants including our DREAMers, and protects our borders.”

—Massachusetts Senator and Democratic Party chief (no pun intended) demagogue Elizabeth Warren

I was excoriated on Facebook earlier this year for suggesting that Democrats and progressives now support open borders but just don’t have the guts to be honest about it. Of course, there is no other explanation for the behavior of the House and Democrats—as well as the news media that now works for them—regarding the illegal immigration issue except stealth institution of an open borders policy.

Thus, in a perverse way, we should all be grateful for Elizabeth Warren for revealing her considered calculation–she’s a Harvard prof, remember, so she must be smart—that a declaration of support for this suicidal policy is what the Democratic “base” craves.

However, the statement (more here) is so flagrantly self-contradictory and dishonest that it makes you want to plotz, as Woody Allen would say, and the fact that a law professor would endorse a Bizarro World system in which an act is illegal or not depending on one’s motive for breaking the law shows just how brazen, cynical and untrustworthy this woman is. The entire statement is calculated to both make people dumber and to exploit those who are critically impaired intellectually already.

How can the borders be protected if anyone can cross them without fear of consequences, and the U.S. has removed the law that sends a clear message, “Don’t do this!”? And how spectacularly dishonest must a politician be to use the transparently meaningless and deceptive cliché  “comprehensive immigration  reform” in this context? Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/25/2019: The Greatest Morning Warm-Up Ever Blogged!

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The movie “The Greatest Story Ever Told” was far from the “Greatest Movie Ever Made,” as the Duke’s casting as a Roman soldier demonstrated vividly.

OK, not really, but it better be good after yesterday’s potpourri never made it off the launch pad due to a series of unfortunate events. I’m using “The Greatest Legal Ethics Seminar Ever Taught!” as a title for an upcoming program I’m writing now, so the rhetoric is on my mind. My teaching partner complained that the title really puts the pressure on us to be outstanding. And that’s the point…

1. Harvard’s new President punts. Of course. The Harvard alumni magazine this month was notably light on criticism of the Ronald Sullivan fiasco, with only two critical letters on the topic, one of which made the suggestion that it might be a “conflict of interest” for someone who is defending a #MeToo villain to also serve as a residential faculty member (what was previously called a “House Master,” but that triggered some delicate students who felt it evoked slave-holders. No really. I’m serious. I don’t make this stuff up. Organizations capitulate to these complaints now, like Major League Baseball changing the name of the “Disabled List” because disabled rights activists complained). It is assuredly NOT a conflict of interest, though, by any definition but an erroneous one.

Deeper in the magazine, we learn that new President of Harvard, Lawrence Bacow, was asked during a faculty meeting about his views on the episode. His response was essentially a Harvard version of Ralph Kramden’s immortal “huminhuminahumina” when “The Honyemooners” hero had no explanation for some fiasco of his own engineering. Bacow said he would respect “the locus of authority,” meaning College Dean Rakesh Khuratna, who fired Sullivan after joining in student protests over the law professor and lawyer doing exactly what lawyers are supposed to do.

So now we know that, not for the first time, Harvard is being led by a weenie. What should he have said?  How about “I am firing Dean Khuratna, and offering Prof. Sullivan his position back. Any Winthrop House students who feel  “unsafe” are welcome to transfer to Yale”?

Most news media gave inadequate coverage to this story, and none, in my view, sufficiently condemned the university’s actions or the un-American values they represent. At least the New York Times is keeping the episode before its readers by publishing an op-ed by Sullivan titled “Why Harvard Was Wrong to Make Me Step Down.”

2. Insuring the life of a son in peril. Is this unethical somehow? It honestly never occurred to me. When I had to give a speech in Lagos, Nigeria, one of the most dangerous cites on Earth, my wife tried to take out a policy on my life with her as the beneficiary. I thought it was a good and prudent idea. But in Phillip Galane’s “Social Q’s” advice column, a son writes that he is still angry, decades later, that his late father did this , writing in part, Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Year: U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

“One of the ironies today is that people are saying it is President Trump who is shredding our institutions. I really see no evidence of that. From my perspective, the idea of ‘resisting’ a Democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him, and really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president. That’s where the shredding of our norms and institutions is occurring.”

—The Attorney General, on CBS This Morning today.

Exactly. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“I do think that the argument can be made that the case law establishes that there is one and only one reason that must be the reason for there to be a constitutional right to an abortion (other than to protect her own life or health): The woman must actually believe that what she is destroying is not a person.”

—-Blogger/retired law professor Ann Althouse, commenting on today’s SCOTUS decision in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.

The Supreme Court  rendered a split decision on Indiana’s contested abortion law. The Justices upheld  part of Indiana’s 2016 law placing  restrictions on the disposal of fetal remains after an abortion, but left the  part of the law overturned that would have prohibited women from choosing the procedure after of a diagnosis or “potential diagnosis” of Down syndrome,  “any other disability,” or because of the fetus’s gender or race.

Justice Thomas wrote a dissent taking issue with the latter, writing in part, Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Stephen Fry

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“I really will not allow the simple 👌 gesture to belong to the moronic dogwhistling catfishing foghorning frogmarching pigsticking dickwaving few who attempt to appropriate it for their own fatuous fantasies.”

—–British actor, writer, wit and all-around smart person Stephen Fry upon being warned that some people may think that he’s a white supremacist because he flashed the “OK” sign on Twitter.

Good for him.  He didn’t grovel. He didn’t apologize. He simply said, in essence, “Oh, sod off, you fools,” and that was that.  He rejected the right-wing trolls and the leftist speech police simultaneously, with open contempt. And that’s how to deal with political correctness bullying. Someone put him in touch with Harvard College.

On the down side, he’ll probably never be able to see the Cubs play in Wrigley Field.

_________________________

Pointer: Jim Treacher

 

Ethical Quote Of The Month: Will Middlebrooks

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“Don’t take one thing for granted. Not a single thing. Because when it’s gone it’s gone. Love and enjoy your teammates. You’re surrounded by some of the best players in the world and guess what, you’re one of them kid! Believe in your abilities day in and day out and never, ever let off the gas. Play this game like you know someone is coming for your job and today could be the last time you ever put on a big league uniform.”

—Former Boston Red Sox rookie sensation Will Middlebrooks, now retired, giving advice to current Red Sox rookie sensation Michael Chavis through an interview with Boston radio station WEEI’s Rob Bradford.

Although Middlebrooks’ sage advice was given in the context of playing Major League Baseball, it applies equally well to all passions, pursuits, opportunities, privileges, jobs, pleasures, honors, relationships, and  professions, as well as love, youth, and life in general. It is the present day Will Middlebrooks telling his younger self what he wishes he had understood before it was too late. Continue reading →

Oh, I Can’t Let THIS Pass! Unethical Quote Of The Week: White House Correspondents’ Association President Olivier Knox

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“February 2017 is when the President called us the enemy of the people. A few days later my son asked me, ‘Is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?’”

—Olivier Knox at last week’s White House Correspondents Dinner.

At the same dinner, “entertainment” Ron Chernow—will he trade in his historian gig for stand-up? I can see it now—Laugh with the Hysterical Hystorian!—said in one of his funnier lines,

“H.L. Mencken once warned of a political system that would ‘keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’ We simply cannot allow the press to become an imaginary hobgoblin exploited for political gain.”

Great irony, Ron! The press has just completed nearly three years of trying to frighten the public by claiming that the President stole the election and is a Russian agent, but it’s the President who is alarming the public with “an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.'” HAHAHAHAHAHA! Good one!

Well, as someone who has written some comedy routines, I agree that it’s important to know your audience. In this case, that means knowing your audience is smug, arrogant, lacks self-awareness, and afflicted with permanent delusions of virtue.

But back to Knox. The device he stooped to use is known (here)as the Amy Carter Maneuver, when an adult places words in his child’s mouth for dramatic effect. Surely you recall Jimmy Carter’s infamous gaffe in his debate with Ronald Regan, when he said,  “I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry — and the control of nuclear arms.”  Amy was 13, and most viewers found the device nauseating. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“There’s the Muellermania paradox — a highly emotional reaction to the way Trump seems to have been highly emotional. (Have you heard he said “I’m fucked” when he found out they’d appointed the special counsel?!!! That seems like a perfectly normal reaction to me but a lot of people are hyperventilating about how cahraaazzzeeee it is. Are they hyperventilaters mentally sound enough to be trusted?)”

—Bloggress and law prof Ann Althouse, commenting on the Mueller Report freakout.

I’m sitting here trying to get the Red Sox out of their slump, and Friday traffic here, as usual, has slowed to a trickle in the afternoon, and I tried to post a link on Facebook, encouraged by a commenter here who said  he had been successful, only to be, once again, told by Our Social Media Masters that I am unworthy, so I’m going to put up uncharacteristically brief posts as they occur to me.  The all-time record for posts here is seven. I should be able to beat that. I’ll read them.

The Red Sox are already losing 2-0.

Ann is essentially apolitical, but frequently annoyed, as I am, at the irresponsible, unfair and biased attacks on the President. Democrats are embarrassing themselves, pundits are embarrassing themselves,  “resistance” celebrities (like Rob Reiner–what made you this way, Rob?) and my Facebook friend bitter-enders are embarrassing themselves. Continue reading →