Ethics Quotes

Unethical Quote of the Month: Rev. Pat Robertson

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“I’ve got a dear friend [who has]an adopted son, a little kid from an orphanage down in Columbia. Child had brain damage, grew up weird. And you just never know what’s been done to a child before you get that child. What kind of sexual abuse [there] has been, what kind of cruelty, what kind of food deprivation, etc. etc. You don’t have to take on somebody else’s problems. You really don’t.”

—-Televangelist Pat Robertson weighing in against international adoption on his syndicated TV show, “The 700 Club.” He was responding to a letter from a woman who had adopted three children from other countries, and whose social life had suffered as a result.

Worse than weird

No, of course you don’t “have” to take on anyone’s problems, especially those of helpless orphans in poor countries. You can ignore them completely. You can concentrate on helping people here, and that’s admirable, or you can just help yourself and fulfill your minimal societal obligations without hurting anyone. It is certainly strange, however, to hear a Christian minister discourage the sacrifice and courage of parents who choose to rescue international orphans, and express such callousness in the process.

A fellow minister, Russell Moore, properly put Robertson in his place: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Vice-President Biden (No, Not THAT Unethical Quote!)

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

 “I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security. I flat guarantee you.”

—-Vice President Joe Biden, in reply to a supporter at a campaign stop in southern Virgina who told him,  “I’m glad you all are not talking about doing anything with Social Security.”

I know this feels like “Pick on Poor Joe Biden Week” at Ethics Alarms, but everyone has a lot of catching up to do in that regard.

The Washington Post picked up on the above quote by Biden, which it made the subject of an editorial and pronounced “depressing.” It is more than depressing, but then, the Post has to protect Democrats even when they prove themselves irresponsible or dishonest, as Biden does with this “guarantee.” As the Post quite accurately points out, Social Security is going broke, its trustees have called for immediate reforms, and the longer the government waits to do what is needed, the harder it is going to be to do it. Biden, however, and presumably his superior, President Obama, apparently believes that either refusing to take the steps that are essential to prevent a Social Security meltdown or lying to the public about the fact that they will have to take them is preferable to the alternative: responsible fiscal policy and governance and leveling with the public. Critics can scream about the broken system, economists can repeat the math, op-ed writers can warn against constantly “kicking the can down the road” until, like Greece and other profligate and incompetent societies, there is no more road, but if our leaders refuse to show political courage and do their duty, the U.S. has a guarantee, all right—a guarantee of future fiscal catastrophe. That’s okey-dokey with politicians like Biden however. He doesn’t need Social Security, and besides, he’ll be happily drooling in Madam Kluck’s Home for the Bewildered by then. Based on his recent conduct, maybe sooner than he thinks. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Booty Connoisseur Aaron Morris

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“Her booty looked so good, I just couldn’t resist touching it.”

—-18 year old Floridian Aaron Morris, who was arrested and charged for fondling the buttocks of the woman ahead of him in line at the local Wal-Mart.

Ah, the gateway to an unethical life!

Just 11 words, yet such an eloquent discourse on the ethical reasoning abilities of so many Americans! Bravo, Aaron!

In those 11 words,  he summed up the mindset of an ethics-free life. He molested a stranger because he wanted to. She didn’t matter, her dignity didn’t matter, her embarrassment didn’t matter. As a citizen, he was either ignorant of the law against battery (any touching of another without permission is battery, and has been for centuries) or contemptuous of it. His simple, selfish, impulsive action violated the Golden Rule, as well as nearly every other ethical principle. It was unfair, disrespectful, irresponsible, and uncaring. It violated the basic bonds of trust between strangers in a community.

At least Aaron was honest about it.

That’s something to build on.

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Facts: Sun-Sentinel

Graphic: BS Report

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

 

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Scores An Ethics Alarms Hat Trick: “Ethics Dunce,” “Incompetent Elected Official of the Month,” and “Unethical Quote of the Week”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Take THAT, Bill of Rights!”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel gets, and richly deserves, the first Ethics Alarms Hat Trick for his astounding attack this week on a private citizen, Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy, for his personal, faith-based social views (specifically those opposing same sex marriage)  and the fact that he gives financial support to advocacy groups that back them.

Here is Emmanuel’s unethical, Hat Trick-winning (and un-American) quote:

“Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members, and if you’re going to be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect the Chicago values.”

Thirty despicable words these are, born of the worst kind of liberal arrogance and thuggery, embodying dishonesty, disrespect, abuse of power, irresponsibility, and ignorance of the Bill of Rights…and they are jaw-droppingly stupid to boot.  Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Ken at Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“But the government doesn’t get to pick and choose what social causes are permissible, and any government actor who aspires to that power is a lowlife thug. What’s particularly alarming about Menino’s thuggery is how openly his referencing to licensing “difficulties” reveals how things really work in government: whatever rights you think that you have, practically speaking some bureaucrat can punish you for exercising them on a whim, and there’s very little you can do about it. Menino represents the ethos of government actors who think quite frankly that this is right and just and how it should be — that they, our masters, should be able to dictate what we think and do and say if we want to do business in their fiefdom”

—-Ken, Ethics Alarms 2011 Blogger of the Year, on Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s public attack on Chick-fil-A, the food outlet whose president openly opposes same sex marriage and contributes to anti-gay marriage organizations.

Banned in Boston

Some things never change, do they? Once my old home town used to ban books and plays that contained ideas and content the powers-that-were disapproved of, and now its mayor actually thinks its his job to decide what political and social views a business owner or any citizen can safely support without facing active government enmity and sanctions. Boston, which was the nation’s first cauldron of free thought and passionate dedication to governments allowing free thought to thrive, quickly came to exemplify the liberal hypocrisy of being so dedicated to freedom that it will punish and censor anyone who doesn’t adopt its virtuous and obviously wise and correct views of the world. Menino’s threatened abuse of power to compel Chick-fil-A’s ownership “think right” is a classic in this category. The mayor told the Boston Herald: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week (Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck Division): George Zimmerman

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“I feel like it was all God’s plan…I do wish there was something, anything I could have done that wouldn’t have put me in a position where I would have had to take a life.” 

—–George Zimmerman, shooter of Trayvon Martin, now facing charges of second degree murder, in an interview this week with Sean Hannity on Fox News

In the sage and concise words of frequent commenter and Ethics Alarms critic tgt, who brought this quote to my attention ( the idiocy of a murder defendant submitting to a televised interview was too much for me, and I could not bear to watch it):

“Whether it was murder or self defense, don’t pretend you were just a bystander in the process. You absolutely could have done other things. If you think you made the right choices, defend them. Don’t pretend they were out of your hands.”

And the ethics train wreck rolls on…

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Pointer: tgt

Facts: Orlando Sentinel

Graphic: Without a Peer

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

 

Unethical Quote of the Week: Tia Skinner

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Tia wonders why her family has abandoned her. Uh,…Tia? Aren’t you forgetting something?

“It’s been rough. It’s hard losing your whole family in a blink of an eye. It’s tough because that’s my family; they’re supposed to stay by you through thick and thin.”

—– Tia Skinner, a teenager serving life in prison for plotting a home invasion attack  that killed her father and seriously injured her mother, who was stabbed 25 times.

That’s right, Tia: it’s your family’s fault.

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Pointer: James Taranto

Facts and Graphic: Detroit Free Press

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Ethics Quote of the Week: Joe Paterno

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“This is not a football scandal and should not be treated as one.”

—The late Joe Paterno, legendary Penn State football coach, in a previously unreleased and unpublished column he wrote in the wake of the  Joe Sandusky child abuse scandal, in which he played a major role. The internal Penn State investigation into the university’s handling of the episode was released today.

Denial

In denial to the end, Paterno never understood how he, and football, contributed to the culture that allowed Sandusky to prey on young boys with the passive assistance of Joe and the school he loved.

Of course the scandal was about football. It was about how reliance on football to the exclusion of all other priorities and values warped an academic culture. It was about the danger of elevating a football coach to such status and power that his tunnel-vision could infect an entire college campus. It was about how the grotesquely exaggerated importance, popularity, visibility, and financial profitability of a football program can elevate those responsible for its success to a degree where they become unaccountable, and able to exploit their power for private and possibly criminal motives. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Day: Comedian Chris Rock

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

“Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren’t free but I’m sure they enjoyed fireworks”

—-Chris Rock, in a 4th of July tweet

Crispus Attucks. Missed the fireworks.

Let’s see: what’s wrong with this comment?

Ignorant, racist, divisive, unfair, disrespectful, bitter, dumb, and not funny…what else?

In analytical terms: What an ass!

Ethics Quotes of the Day: On Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“

“Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever,
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.

“Let despots remember the day
When our fathers with mighty endeavor
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray
That by their might and by their right
It waves forever.”

—–John Phillip Sousa, “The Stars and Stripes Forever”

“Democracy is like sex. When it is good, it is very very good. And when its is bad, it is still pretty good.“

—–Anonymous.

“The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.”

—-Henry Ward Beecher, American preacher

“Democracy is moral before it is political.”

—- Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice

“The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.”

—-  Jimmy  Carter

“A constitutional democracy like ours is perhaps the most difficult of man’s social arrangements to manage successfully. Our scheme of society is more dependent than any other form of government on knowledge and wisdom and self-discipline for the achievement of its aims. For our democracy implies the reign of reason on the most extensive scale. The Founders of this Nation were not imbued with the modern cynicism that the only thing that history teaches is that it teaches nothing. They acted on the conviction that the experience of man sheds a good deal of light on his nature. It sheds a good deal of light not merely on the need for effective power if a society is to be at once cohesive and civilized, but also on the need for limitations on the power of governors over the governed.”

—- Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court Justice

“In contrast to totalitarianism, democracy can face and live with the truth about itself.”

—-Sidney Hook, American philosopher and historian

“America’s experiment with government of the people, by the people, and for the people depends not only on constitutional structure and organization but also on the commitment, person to person, that we make to each other.”

—-Robert Hutchins Continue reading →