Government & Politics

Presenting Rationalization #45: The Abuser’s License, or “It’s Complicated”

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

complexity

I owe Carol Costello for this one, which she unveiled today while explaining why it was unfair to criticize Janay Palmer for marrying Ray Rice, the pro football star who punched her lights out in a hotel elevator when they were engaged.  “It’s complicated,” Carol said, as her entire argument, as if this settled the issue.  My rationalization alarm immediately began clanging. Then I thought about all the other times I have heard that explanation used to avoid accountability or blame for wrongful action. Thus Ethics Alarms will add to its useful and always growing Rationalizations List…

45. The Abuser’s License:  “It’s Complicated”

 Costello later noted that the decision to stay with a potentially deadly partner was related to the emotion of love, as if love deserves an ethics pass that other emotions do not qualify for.  In this context, “It’s complicated” is a matched set with #23. Woody’s Excuse: “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

Love does not get a pass, or warrant one. Love is one of the most powerful of the non-ethical consideration magnets that stop ethics alarm clappers from moving when they should, and the sentimental, warm and fuzzy tradition of excusing harmful, irresponsible, clearly wrongful conduct because it might have been motivated by love is a rejection of ethics in favor of romance. Love is not the most benign of impediments to sound ethical reasoning, but rather one of the most insidious. Some of the worst crimes in human history have been rationalized by lovers. If the the coded meaning of “It’s complicated” is “it’s love, and we can never plumb the mysteries of the heart!”, the sentiment should be received with exactly the same contempt as “It’s greed,” It’s hate,” or “It’s revenge.”  Continue reading →

Government Horror Story: What Happens When We Expect Bureaucrats To Protect Us

/ Jack Marshall / 73 Comments

Horror1

Indignant and self-righteous activists  argued that the real problem underlying the shootings at Virginia Tech, the D.C. Naval Yard, Newtown, Tucson and elsewhere—other than the Second Amendment, of course– was the failure of the health care system and the government to apprehend and stop emotional disturbed citizens before they start shooting.

This might have some validity, if it were not for a fact that Big Brother worshipers know but refuse to acknowledge. The health care system and the government are operated by people, many of them dedicated and competent, but a lot of them fearful, lazy, irresponsible and stupid. When we place power over the lives and liberty of others in the hands of such people, bad things happen.

They just happened to my family, and I am furious—both at the immediate fools who have abused us, but also the smug social architects who always think a new law and more government control over our lives is the solution to every problem.

At this moment, be warned:

I hate you people.

Stay out of my way. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Observations On The Illegal Immigration Ethics Train Wreck, The Ugliest Of Them All”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

green-cardChris Marschner, the Ethics Alarms master of the long form comment, has delivered another. This is his analysis of what a fair, rational and ethical approach to the nation’s illegal immigration problem might look like. I’ve never read a better one, not that there are many lawmakers, and certainly not many advocates for illegals, who appear to be interested in ethics or rationality where this issue is concerned.

I don’t agree with all of Chris’s conclusions, but I would endorse his approach over any other I have seen floated by elected officials, scholars and pundits. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Observations On The Illegal Immigration Ethics Train Wreck, The Ugliest Of Them All”: Continue reading →

The Problem In Ferguson Goes Deeper Than Racism…

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments
A horror story lies within this map.

A horror story lies within this map.

….and focusing only on race just makes understanding and dealing with the real problems impossible. Nonetheless, activists, the news media and the government intentionally ignore the complexities involved, which collectively define a human tragedy and a failing of U.S. governments at all levels.

Washington Post writer Radley Balko has delivered a shocking, disturbing, depressing and eye-opening investigative report on how small municipalities in St. Louis County operate, and how demographic, political and economic trends inevitably cause the tensions and distrust we saw burst into conflagration in the wake of the Mike Brown shooting. If Balko does not win a Pulitzer for this marvel of reporting and analysis, then the awards should eliminated.

You must read the whole piece here. It’s unethical for a responsible citizen not to; I really believe that.  I was originally going to post some excerpts,but I’m not going to, because I know many will just read them and skip the whole, long report. This is a significant and brave work, and attention must be paid. Continue reading →

Unethical Tweet Of The Month: New York Magazine Columnist Frank Rich

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
Stay classy, Frank.

Stay classy, Frank.

Full disclosure: I went to college with Frank Rich. He gave me a rave review for a performance once. When he turned into the vicious, biased, hateful jerk he reveals himself to be in his not merely progressive but irrationally  hostile to conservatism op-ed columns and, prior to that, his vitriolic and hyper-critical theater reviews for the Times, I don’t know. Maybe if I had befriended him back then, he would not be the bitter misanthrope his is today. Maybe just an outstretched hand, a kind word, or a sharp, “Why don’t you stop being such a dick?” would have turned the tide of his life around. Alas, we shall never know.

Here is what Rich tweeted yesterday, upon learning of the guilty verdict handed down against former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife:

Rich Tweet

Continue reading →

A Question With Answers That Might Clarify The Ferguson Controversy: Why Haven’t You Heard About The Shooting Of John Geer?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

John Geer

There was a fascinating editorial in the Washington Post this morning, I thought. See if you agree. It read in part…

At point-blank range, a Fairfax County police officer a year ago fired one shot, killing an unarmed man standing inside his home. The man, John Geer, was distraught and had been drinking — his longtime girlfriend had moved out and called police when he threw her things into the front yard — but he held no hostages, brandished no weapons and, so far as we have learned, posed no serious threat either to police or to public order…Shot in the chest, he was left to bleed to death inside his doorway while police officers, remaining outside the house, did nothing for an hour. Five and a half hours after the shooting, his body remained sprawled on the floor where he died.Incredibly, the authorities in Northern Virginia — including Fairfax County police and state and federal prosecutors — have refused to furnish any explanation for this stupefying sequence of events last Aug. 29 in Springfield. They have stonewalled…The officer who fired the shot, who remains on the force with full pay, has not been identified.

The authorities conduct themselves as if the case presented insurmountable complexities. This strains credulity. It involved one shot, one gun, one shooter and one fatality. It took place in broad daylight, at mid-afternoon. It was witnessed at close range by at least two other police officers, as well as friends and neighbors of Mr. Geer. And still authorities refuse to act or discuss Mr. Geer’s death…Will no one take responsibility and make some decisions in the unexplained death of Mr. Geer?

Don’t you think it would have been helpful, not to mention responsible and ethical, for the Post to remind its readers of this case while it fully participated in the media-driven race-baiting and hysteria over the shooting of “unarmed black teen Michael Brown” in Ferguson, Missouri?

It is also interesting, given the fact that the Brown-Wilson case is still very much in the news and on the tips of accusatory pundits’ tongues, that the Post neglected to mention the irony embodied by the quite legitimate lament of its editorial now. Ferguson? What’s that got to do with Fairfax? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: CNN Morning Anchor Carol Costello

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
Sorry Carol; you should have had this years ago.

Sorry Carol; you should have had this years ago.

I just checked. I was certain that I had named Carol Costello an Ethics Dunce a half-dozen times at least, and discovered, to my shock and shame, that she has never been designated one here. Unethical Quotes of the Month, the chief offender in various disgraceful and biased performances by CNN or the news media as a whole, but somehow the most throbbingly ethics-challenged broadcast journalist not employed by MSNBC or Fox has never been honored as an Ethics Alarms Ethics Dunce!

Well, that streak ends now, and I can make it short and sweet.

This morning, Costello once again confidently proclaimed her lack of familiarity with the concept of ethics by summing up the conviction of former Virginian Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife for bribery and corruption this way:

“Now the Virginia legislature needs to pass tough new ethics laws so this never happens again.“

I’m just going to go into my shed with a hammer, and club myself into oblivion, because obviously my life is pointless and an utter failure. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month, Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck Division: Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California Law School

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments
"Hey! If we riot, the Dean says The Supreme Court will have to see it our way!"
“Hey! If we riot, the Dean says The Supreme Court will have to see it our way!”

“Taken together, these rulings have a powerful effect. They mean that the officer who shot Michael Brown and the City of Ferguson will most likely never be held accountable in court. How many more deaths and how many more riots will it take before the Supreme Court changes course?”

—Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine, in an op-ed in the Sunday New York Times titled, “How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops.”

The passengers on board the relentless Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck were recently honored by the addition to their number of distinguished legal scholar and law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who, it mist be said, apparently accepted his ticket in exchange for getting publicity in the Times for his new book,“The Case Against the Supreme Court.” If his op-ed is typical of his approach to that topic, I think I’ll pass.

Each of the three sentences in the quote above is ethically offensive, and, I think, well beneath what the public should be able to expect from the dean of a major laws school, and what the Times should tolerate from one.

Let’s take the last two first:

2. “They mean that the officer who shot Michael Brown and the City of Ferguson will most likely never be held accountable in court. “ The statement assumes that Officer Wilson ought to be held accountable in court, which immediately aligns the dean with the lynch mob demanding “justice” before they have any idea what justice is in this case. Chemerinsky is a political liberal, as one would expect in his position at that institution, but he has an ethical obligation to use his knowledge, erudition, influence and reputation to clarify a difficult situation for the public, not make it worse. Nowhere is his op-ed does he allow for the possibility that Wilson might be innocent of wrong doing in Brown’s death. In my view, he, like Eric Holder and so many others, is now pandering to the anti-police, race-grievance Democratic base, also known as “California.” His opening paragraph is carefully crafted—Chemerinsky has published a lot of papers, treatises, law journal articles, opinion pieces and book—to make it clear that he thinks the officer should be indicted. He begins: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Blindly Partisan and Hateful Website Commenters

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

argument

I just learned that CNN closed its online message boards. I understand why, and no, it was not a move designed to stifle the increasing volume of anti-Obama comments, as some have suggetsed. I have been thinking about writing about this for a while, and the CNN move is an ideal opportunity.

The discourse on most news aggregator websites and news sites is beyond abysmal and uncivil: it’s an embarrassment to the nation. On such sites as CNN, Mediaite, The Daily Beast, The Daily Caller, Politico and others, virtually every thread follows the same, sad, pointless, idiotic path. Maybe there are a few substantive comments, then someone makes a cheap partisan crack, followed by an exchange of increasingly nasty comments based on familiar talking points from the right or the left, then, finally, name-calling, often with a racist, sexist or homophobic tone.  If you have the patience to wade through the crap, a thoughtful comment may sneak in, but who has the time or patience, or utter emptiness of life to do the wading? Here is a section from the middle of the comments on this Mediaite story…this one was about Bill O’Reilly being critical of Obama’s handling of ISIS, but honestly, the subject doesn’t matter much,. All the threads read the same way. Eventually every one gets around to someone insulting Obama, and immediately an Obama defender will mention Bush, who was, I should note, President six years ago, but I digress: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Roshomon, Good Citizenship And Ethics: The Case Of The Concerned Stranger And The Indignant Father”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Poster - RashomonJeff Gates, the father, photographer and writer whose essay in the Washington Post prompted my post here and a lively discussion thereafter, has been kind enough to contribute additional thoughts and clarifications in response. This is one of the really good things about the internet, and his willingness to enhance the discussion with additional perspective reveals good things about Jeff as well. His original article is here.

At the outset, I want to clarify something about my post that I kept intending to do but obviously did not, at least not well. The fact that the man who was suspicious of his photo-session with his daughter said later that he worked for Homeland Security didn’t figure into my analysis at all, and still doesn’t. I am concerned with the original encounter, and the question of whether this was excessive Big Brotherism clouds the issue, which I see, and saw as this: we should applaud and encourage proactive fellow citizens who have the courage and the concern to step into developing situation that they believe might involve one individual harming another.  As the man needed no special authority to do that, I don’t care whether he was a federal agent or not; I thought it was pretty clear that this was not official action. Indeed, I think as official action, the man’s intervention was ham-handed and unprofessional.

Here is Jeff Gates’ Comment of the Day, on the post, “Roshomon, Good Citizenship And Ethics: The Case Of The Concerned Stranger And The Indignant Father.” Continue reading →