Government & Politics

The Truth Behind School Anti-Gun Madness: In The Battle of the Razors, Occam’s Beats Hanlon’s

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"GUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

“GUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

My parents once gave me a tie clip with a tiny derringer on it, which I wore to school frequently. Occasionally, I loaded it…you see, the gun took a miniscule cap, and when you pulled the trigger, the report was shockingly loud. Had this been the kind of itsy-bitsy gun that 12-year-old Joseph Lyssikatos had on his key chain (his gun was slightly larger than a quarter; mine was slightly smaller than a nickel), then his school might have had a valid reason to object. But it wasn’t. His gun was a decoration only, but it didn’t stop the school from suspending him for three days.

I’ve been pretty dense about these cases, I must admit. I used to think it was just no-tolerance idiocy, merged with post-Sandy Hook paranoia, that was behind all of the silly news stories. It finally dawned on me that it is far more sinister than that: this is a deliberate and relentless process of state indoctrination. The schools, teachers and administrators are determined to make  future generations of Americans just as fearful and negatively disposed toward guns, and thus toward self-sufficiency and the Second Amendment, while pushing them to embrace complete dependence on a government that cannot be depended upon, and trust in a government that has proven progressively more untrustworthy. Continue reading →

Are Universities Ethically Obligated To Tolerate Professors Who Embarrass Them By Saying Idiotic And Offensive Things?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Apparently the answer to the above is “Yes.”

"Duh!"

“Duh!”

If the university is a state school, then for it to fire a professor who makes ridiculous, foolish or hateful statements that make people wonder why they should ever entrust the minds of their tender charges into an institution that would knowingly hire cretins and jackasses to pollute student RNA, then this is probably a First Amendment violation, since it amounts to the government punishing speech and chilling free expression. If, on the other hand, the university involved is not a state school, then to send a professor packing because he or she has rammed his or her foot down his or her throat up to the knee is a violation of the crucial principle of academic freedom, which is, in brief, that to encourage the free discussion of ideas on a college campus, education being the purpose of the institution, literally no idea, point of view or position should be blocked or chilled by substantive negative action.

Three cases of recent vintage illustrate the university’s plight: Continue reading →

The Klan’s Birthday Cake, Individual Boycotts And The Ethics Of Refusing to Give Service To Jerks

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments
"Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birthday, Dear Racists..."

“Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birthday, Dear Racists…”

[UPDATE: Apparently, the “news story” that prompted this post is a fake. In that case, I want to thank the hoaxers for  inadvertently sparking a useful discussion—nothing in my post is dependent on the factual nature of the story. I wasn’t the only one fooled, and I originally noted the links on reliable sites. On the other hand, to hell with people who plant fake stories that are not obviously tongue in cheek or satirical: it’s a despicable practice, and abuse of the web, and right down there with public vandalism and creating computer viruses as unforgivable public conduct. I apologize to readers here for misidentifying a false story as true, but I’m not the unethical jerk involved. If anyone knows who that is, please forward their names. I have some choice words for them.]

As I wrote the first time I stuck my ethics big toe into this kind of controversy, I am conflicted over the current trend of forcing certain kinds of service providers to serve customers they just don’t feel like serving. I have consistently come down on the side of the rejected customer, even when the service, as in the case of bakeries and photography salons, edges perilously close to art. I think I am there still, but my resolve is weakening. I think. Let’s look at this again, in the context of the kind of recent case that always eventually occurs when one sits on the slippery slopes.

A three judge panel of a Georgia appellate court recently ruled in favor of Marshall Saxby, the Grand Wizard of a local KKK chapter, after he sued a local bakery for refusing to bake a cake for the KKK chapter’s  annual birthday party. Elaine Bailey, who owns Bailey Bakeries, said she rejected the Klan its activities violated her religious beliefs, and Saxby claimed that Bailey’s refusal of service discriminated against his religious beliefs.

The difficulty with making an ethical call on this case and others like it (and sort of like it, arguably like it or a little bit like it) is that the crucial question in ethics analysis, “What’s going on here?” cannot be answered with certainty or clarity. There are ethical arguments and ethical principles, on both sides, making the issue an ethical conflict (rather than an ethical dilemma). In an ethical conflict, we must prioritize among important ethical principles that are opposing each other.

Let’s answer “What’s going on here?” in some of the various ways this case allows, as if only one of these ethical principles were in play: Continue reading →

Grassy Knoll Ethics: How Deception Breeds Distrust

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

UmbrellaMan2

We once again must squarely face the hoary  quote from Walter Scott’s epic poem Marmion: “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” It is hoary because it is true, and this month’s Smithsonian Magazine reminds us of how true it is, recounting how well-intentioned deceptions by the news media regarding evidence in the assassination of President Kennedy helped create a conspiracy theory that will not die, and that may have begun the slow, relentless deterioration of America’s trust in its own government that has reached dangerous proportions today.

Frame 313 of Abraham Zapruder’s accidental record of one of the pivotal moments in U.S. history gave him nightmares, and when he sold the rights to his amateur movie to Life Magazine, he insisted that frame be withheld from the public, and not published. “We like to feel that the world is safe,” documentary maker Errol Morris explains in the article.“Safe at least in the sense that we can know about it. The Kennedy assassination is very much an essay on the unsafety of the world. If a man that powerful, that young, that rich, that successful, can just be wiped off the face of the earth in an instant, what does it say about the rest of us?” I understand, but withholding the truth is not the way to make the world seem safer. As the story of the conspiracy shows, it is how we end up trusting no one. Continue reading →

Ethics Note To Senator Cruz: You Can’t Begin A Principled Stand With A Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Little is more damaging to the public’s trust and faith in government than when elected officials engage in gratuitous lies—statements that can only convince those who don’t bother to check the facts underlying them, made for their momentary impact on the theory that the effect is worth the eventual exposure of the lie for what it is. Such lies are detestable, because they not only reinforce the impression that politicians lie when their lips are moving, they also convey the message that lies are merely tools of the politicians trade, and not even particularly shameful or worthy of criticism. When a politician engages in such transparent dishonesty, he or she is saying, quite literally, that lying is no big deal.

It is a big deal. It is especially a big deal when the point of the lie is to fool the public into believing something the politician is doing is a big deal itself, when it is really a sham.

Welcome to Sen. Ted Cruz and his fake filibuster, also known as Ted Cruz’s Bad Jimmy Stewart Impression.

"Ted, I knew Mr. Smith, and you're no Mr. Smith. You're not even Rand Paul..."

“Ted, I knew Mr. Smith, and you’re no Mr. Smith. You’re not even Rand Paul…”

Evoking memories of the Frank Capra classic, “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington,” Sen. Cruz told the world that he was going to talk on the floor of the Senate against Obamacare until he couldn’t stand any more…you know, just like the Jimmy’s idealistic junior Senator in the film, who finally collapses of exhaustion to end his filibuster but whose courage makes the corrupt, manipulating senior Senator from his state confess that he was trying to fund a lousy health care b…no, wait, it had something to do with a kids camp and influence peddling. I haven’t seen the film in a while.

Cruz, however, unlike Stewart, is not engaging in a filibuster, because he is not trying to block a vote or anything else: Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a vote on funding the Affordable Care Act for today, whereupon Cruz has to sit down and shut up whether he can still stand or not. Continue reading →

Why Are The Core American Rights Ethics Alarms Malfunctioning?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The spark for this post is the recent fiasco engineered by Modesto Junior College in California, which told a student that he could not pass out copies of the United States Constitution outside the student center on September 17, 2013, which happens to be Constitution Day. College police and administrators demanded that student Robert Van Tuinen stop passing out Constitution pamphlets and told him that he would only be allowed to pass them out in the college’s tiny free speech zone, and only after scheduling it several days or weeks ahead of time. Fortunately, as is almost always the case in such campus outrages, The Fire, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (and what does it tell us that this indispensable champion of individual rights is widely regarded as a “conservative” organization?) was at the ready, and ripped off a letter to the school administrators that served the dual purpose of warning it to back off and holding it up to national ridicule. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

dunce-capSenators should not intentionally set out to make the American public stupid, or to validate invalid ethical constructs. Thus this explanation of his current proposal from Sen. Rand Paul needs to be derided, and should also cause concern for anyone who thinks it’s important for the Republican party to find some leaders who are trustworthy. Paul, in the course of pushing his stillborn, grandstanding plan to use a constitutional amendment to require government bigwigs to live with the same health care laws they impose on the rest of us, said this to The Daily Caller:

“My amendment says basically that everybody including Justice Roberts — who seems to be such a fan of Obamacare — gets it too. See, right now, Justice Roberts is still continuing to have federal employee health insurance subsidized by the taxpayer. And if he likes Obamacare so much, I’m going to give him an amendment that gives Obamacare to Justice Roberts.”

See, the fact that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional using a highly-controversial legal distinction in no way suggests that he personally “likes” it, and anyone who thinks that is what judicial opinions, especially Supreme Court Opinions, mean is shockingly ignorant of the judicial system, the legal system, the law, the role of judges in society, the Constitution, and by extension, pretty much most of the principles that give government, management and leadership any integrity or competence. The fact that such an anyone has risen to the level of U.S. Senator goes beyond shocking to terrifying. Continue reading →

The Allen Brauer Tweets: Rendering A Sincere And Credible Apology Impossible

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments
Hellspawn and Public Louse, Amanda Carpenter. Nice disguise!

Hellspawn and Public Louse, Amanda Carpenter. Nice disguise!

The Communications Chair for the Sacramento Democratic Party, Allan Brauer, sent a series of cruel and uncivil tweets assailing Sen. Ted Cruz aide Amanda Carpenter for her own Twitter missive cheering on GOP opposition to gun control, the President’s Syrian policy—whatever it is—and the Affordable Care Act. After some online drama, he apparently regretted his rash and hurtful words,  and sent Carpenter this apparently heartfelt apology:

“Hi- am truly sorry for my tweet. I was very upset and lashed out. Your kids are not fair game either. My apologies.”

She graciously accepted. How could anyone quarrel with this resolution of the incident?

Here is how: Brauer, who has a record of social media viciousness, made it very clear in the course of the  controversy launched by his commentary that he didn’t regret what he had said at all. Here was his first tweet:

Brauer tweet

After being swarmed by various Twitter users who protested his language and sentiments, Brauer followed up with these well-chosen and unrestrained statements to them and his Twitter followers: Continue reading →

Update: “Ethics Quiz: Photojournalism And The President’s Meaningful, Meaningless Bowed Head”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

 

Putin and obama2

Last weekend’s Ethics Quiz involving the photojournalism ethics of publishing a photo appearing to show President Obama in a submissive or shamed posture as Vladmir Putin passed was handicapped by the mysterious unavailability of the photo in question, which the Washington Post published at least twice but has not made available on-line, even to accompany letters criticizing it. Well, the Post published the photo, in its print edition, yet again today and still I cannot track it down on the Post website. One reason appears to be that it comes from a Russian news agency.

I have found the version above, however, taken by the same photographer a split second after the one in question. In this one, Putin has just passed the President; in the photo the Post used, he was just about to pass him. The expression and postures of everyone in the two photos are the same.

You may want to reconsider the post “Ethics Quiz: Photojournalism And The President’s Meaningful, Meaningless Bowed Head”with it, rather than what I used last week, in mind.

(And why didn’t anyone tell me that the “a” and the “l” in “photojournalism” were transposed in the headline?)

 

And The Lies Just Keep On Coming

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
"Yes, children, there really was a time, long ago, when the American people got angry when their leaders lied to them...."

“Yes, children, there really was a time, long ago, when the American people got angry when their leaders lied to them….”

I wonder at what point President Obama decided that he could just lie with impunity, and that most Americans wouldn’t care. We should care, you know. There is no reason that I can see why anyone here or abroad should trust the President or believe him or anything he says.

I take no satisfaction or joy in writing this.  It is a terrible development for everyone, and I wish it were not true, just as many of the President’s supporters will deny that it’s true. It is true nonetheless. Continue reading →